"a species of desperation"

Genre: Angst, Romance
Rating: PG-13
Time Frame: Thor AU
Characters: Loki/Sif, Thor, Odin

Summary: In the end, his choice is simple. He must decide if the sins against him were greater than the sin he would commit by lashing out now, when he was needed more than ever. In the end, it all came down to the winter blood in his veins . . . An AU when the trip to Utgard goes differently than expected.

Author's Notes: I know, even more new fic from me! My muse has been on a roll this week, what can I say? But, that said, this fic is my salute to kick off the release of Thor: The Dark World. This story is already written in its entirety. It's six chapters long, and I will post a chapter a day to properly celebrate the new film. (For which I cannot wait. Cannot.) This story is completely self-indulgent and feel-good . . . at least, my version of feel-good, that is, so expect your angst and happy endings and shippery goodness. This is my thank-you to all of my loyal readers who have enjoyed exploring this world as much as I. You guys are the best. :)

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, but for the words.

"a species of desperation"
by Mira_Jade

"We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by the things we try our best to despise. In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back." - Thirst for Love by Yukio Mishima

.

.

Utgard was nothing but cold shadows and massive planes of glittering blue ice. Perhaps it would have seemed warmer in the sunlight. Perhaps, Loki thought dryly, if there was ever sunlight to be had.

Their company moved swiftly over the ice and the glacial drifts, heading towards what would have, at one time, been a bastion of power for the race of winter-born giants. The soles of their boots gripped at the ice, slipping before finding purchase. Their breath frosted on the air. Fingers tapped restlessly at steel, glinting in the ever-night like the sun above them could not.

It was so very empty around them, he thought. Loki imagined that he could feel the winter running up and down his spine, he imagined that he could feel it settle next to his bones. He inhaled, and felt his lungs fill with the bite of cold like an embrace. He never had liked summer, he thought distantly. And yet . . .

"It's cold . . . too cold," Volstagg muttered from ahead of him. "The frost shall make our steel stick."

"It's making something else stick, as well," Fandral bemoaned. "I'm beginning to doubt that even sweet Hilga's arms shall be able to warm me upon our return."

From ahead of them, Thor held up a hand. Silence instantly fell upon their group in reply. Fandral rubbed his hands about his arms as if to give to them warmth, his breath a puff of vapor on the air as he sighed in frustration. Hogun raised a brow at his friend as he passed, while Volstagg patted him on the back, rubbing vigorously for warmth to bloom. Fandral stumbled forward at the strongman's form of comfort, nearly slipping before he caught his stride. Volstagg chuckled.

"Alas, my friend, but not all of us have your . . . insulation to warm us," Fandral complained petulantly, but he picked up his stride nonetheless.

Loki watched from the side, but made no comment where none would be welcome. Steadily, he walked on.

To his left, the shield-maiden was as quiet as he. Her silence was an oddity for Sif, who would normally be quick to join in the jest and the japes. When he looked to his right, thinking to steal a glance, he found that she was already staring at him. She never did try to hide her looks, not like he, and she wore the question in her eyes like a challenge, plain for him to see. She already had her glaive drawn in deference to the cold. The winter-blue shadows danced over her shield; turning her pale skin a shade of ice, the grey of her eyes a color of cold.

He swallowed, and felt the skin about his throat stretch.

(She had been cross with him before their departure; pushing him against the wall of the stables, her fist settling like a warning about his throat. "You," she said simply. She had not asked him if he had opened the ways to allow the intruders into Asgard. She did not insult his intelligence or her own. She knew, her fingers said as they tightened, finding the soft points of his skin and pressing. He did not think to break her hold so much as he held his breath against the touch. He swallowed, and felt the shape of her thumb. He felt the callous there as it caught against his flesh.

I had to make him see, he thought, but did not say. I could not swear fealty to such a King, such a pride, and neither could you. So why do you look at me so? She had released him when the guards announced that the horses were ready, and had not looked back.)

"You are not cold," she commented. Her eyes flickered over him, pausing on the thin layers of his leather, the summer-soles of his boots. His hands were bare to the cold so as to better feel for his knives, so as to better summon his spells. He rolled up his sleeves, allowing a long expanse of pale flesh to show. His breath frosted, but his skin did not stand on end from the cold.

"No, I am not," he answered. A heartbeat passed, and then two as they came within the shadow of Utgard's palace. Or, what would have passed as such in days bygone. "Are you?" he returned her words, the syllables not quite unkind.

Sif raised a brow in return, but did not reply. When she strode forward to walk at Thor's side, no one questioned her place, and Loki refused to quicken his stride to follow. He simply counted his steps and ignored the winter as it bit bone deep.

.

.

Of course, things went about as well as one could expect with Thor thirsty for war and with so little thought for repercussions and next within him. Loki's brief attempt at diplomacy (know your place, brother, but how those words had burned unlike any flame) had failed spectacularly, made all for naught over one stupid, infantile insult.

And now, here they were, with Ivaldi forged steel waging war against brute strength and frost strewn knuckles. Five took up arms against the might of Utgard; Thor reveling in his battle-lust as the Three grimly rose to answer the call of their prince. Sif's look was resigned as she stepped towards to the battle - she, who normally wore the fight marching in her veins, dispatched her foes with a mechanical ease, her every word turned to Thor between blows. "We must go," she hissed, but Thor listened to her as well as he had to his brother.

He shall get us all killed one day, Loki thought darkly as he flicked his fingers, ending the spell he had just used to fell the beast closest to him as he called his doubles back to himself. It was an old dance to him, of spinning and casting and letting steel find its bite deep within enemy skin. While he did not feel the same rush as Thor with the foes he killed, there was still a dark feeling bubbling within his bones for the success of the battle, for staying alive where another was not. But there was no pride to be had in this fight. No purpose. Just a mindless killing to slake the need for vengeance in Thor's bloated head.

A need for vengeance which you inspired, an unkind voice reminded him. The voice was annoyingly shaped like truth. The blood spilled today is on your hands.

He dug his blade into the next giant, and twisted with a force normally foreign to him. Rage bristled at his skin - for himself, for Thor, for Sif and her raised brow at the violence he had displayed. In an irrational moment he wanted to claw her eyes from her face when she did not turn her gaze from him. He wanted to force her to look anywhere else but at him. Wasn't Thor brilliant and golden at the battle's head, even beneath the wasteland's shadows? Better that she watch his brother than . . .

His chest heaved. His veins crawled. And just as he was about to call his sieðr to him, to draw upon the power of the Mother and turn skin to parchment and bones to ash before him -

- his spell had missed its target. His rage had blinded him, and almost instantly he had another of the Jötnar stepping forth to fill the place of the one he would have felled. A massive fist closed over his forearm, and an instinctive panic told him to draw his arm away. He mustn't let them touch him, he thought wildly. For the frost held a black touch in the use of its children, and he . . .

. . . he felt not of the wasteland's hold as it touched him. He felt naught of his skin shriveling and blacking. He felt nothing of the winter's burn. Instead he felt a sick sort of surprise rising up in him, a poisonous breath drawn from his lungs to fill every pore, reflected in the eyes of the Jötunn opposite of him as his skin turned blue and flushed against the winter like a welcome. "You," the giant rumbled as the color of his skin deepened to match that of the hand which still held him. Foreign markings swirling across his knuckles, snaking up his forearm, telling an elaborate tale he was ignorant to. "Brother, but you are . . ."

But the giant's words were taken from him. "Loki!" he heard the cry from behind the monster, and then the tip of Sif's blade appeared through the great barrel of a chest before him.

The Jötunn blinked once, then twice. His eyes were more surprised than pained as the bright ember of his gaze flashed and then dimmed. A dark liquid seeped from his mouth like sap from a pine. Blood, and Loki watched in horrified fascination as the beast fell before him, the life flickering and then going dim in the red of his eyes. Deep inside, he felt something constrict at the sight. The part of him that was instinct rather than thought twisted, as if dealt a blow, and he . . .

Had she seen? He thought wildly, pulling the ruins of his sleeve down over his skin, even as the flesh returned to the pale cream of the Aesir. Did she know?

Know what? He thought next. What did it mean? He only knew that his heart was moving too quick in his chest, and his thoughts were spinning in his mind. He had . . .

But any further thought was cut off by the scream of rage and pain that cut through the melee around them. All stopped as the Jötunn king stepped down from his throne, walking with quick, massive strides through the body-strewn field to where the giant Sif had felled twitched with his last moments. The king wore a tender look about his face as he dropped to his knees, his blood red eyes softening until Loki felt as if he should look away as if from a private moment.

"Helblindi," Laufey rumbled, his voice shaped like grief. "My son."

Opposite of the grieving monarch, Sif took a step back, only realizing too late the foe she had smote. Her fingers were white upon the strap of her shield, grim for the repercussions to come, even as Thor looked on in dark satisfaction.

Suddenly, the winter around him was almost tangible enough to touch. He could feel the cold like an embrace, he could feel the planet down to its core beneath his feet. The ice pulsed, but it was a tired beat, an old beat; as if drawn through lungs trying to breathe without a heart to grant them strength . . . He could feel the king's grief as the sky darkened overhead, as the air turned sharp with the threat of snow. Laufey was connected to his land much as Odin was to Asgard and Yggdrasil herself, and now the land reacted. The land answered.

When he looked up, Laufey's crimson eyes were dark. Black ice appeared around his hands as he gently laid his dead son down and advanced upon the shield-maiden.

Sif held her shield high, and dared him to come closer.

And then, many things happened at once. With an unintelligible sound of rage, Laufey swept his hand, and the black ice leapt for Sif like something living. With a shout of her own, she held her shield high against the onslaught, her feet braced against the ice to anchor herself as if she had roots. All sprang forward to give their aid, even Loki who thought for me, she slayed the winter-prince for me, but they were all flung back by the roar of the byway in the air. Help had come from Asgard, in the form of Odin himself, and all were pushed back from the battle as the Allfather stepped from the bridge of the heavens to confront his old enemy.

Loki fought for purchase on the ice against the blast, digging his knuckles into the ground and keeping his place. The force of the bifröst had pushed Sif back into him, and he caught her when her bones proved to be useless in her limbs. Where normally she was such a strength, she was now as something liquid in his arms, and when he touched the bare skin of her hand he felt . . .

Ice, he thought with a grimace. And not the frostbite that had touched Volstagg earlier, this was something different. Something more. At the touch, the core of him recoiled from the black nature of the spell used to enchant the element. Her veins swam with something dark and soulless. His senses, heightened from Helbindi's damning touch (and he could not think about that now, he could not), sang a black song of the darkest part of the ice. The blackest of curses, an infection that ate and consumed as the wasteland itself consumed, and . . .

When Sif's eyes rolled back to look at him, they were filled with pain. She, who had once been skewered through by the tusks of a wild boar without flinching; she, who had known broken bones and severed skin and every ache and agony of war, looked at him with pain and fear in her eyes. At the look, something inside Loki broke.

Odin and Laufey were trading harsh words aplenty, Thor as well, but Loki did not care. He knew only that they had to get away in that moment. They had to get home, where the air was warm and steel reflected flame rather than ice, and -

"Father," he interrupted, his voice quick and anxious to his own ears. "The lady, she . . ."

His words broke off. He did not have a shape for them. His tongue knew not how to form his thoughts, as if he were a mewing babe fresh from his mother's womb. Sif's hands were pale and white at the knuckles as she clung to him, as she struggled to rise.

Laufey laughed at the fear in his voice. "A life for a life," the winter-king muttered, and something like understanding lit in Odin's eye, for a moment later the byway was roaring, and there was nothing but the howl of the cosmos and the sweet feeling of his bones being pulled through the stars as he held Sif tight against the onslaught of the great ways around them.

Hold on, he thought as he held her even closer still, hating how she clung to him. Please, just hold on . . .