Chapter Text
It was the scent that woke her.
It was hot. It was both sweet and savory. It was roast duck and ripe plums, and neither of these things. It was the most scrumptious thing that she had ever smelled, and her mouth watered.
She opened her eyes, but she did not truly see her surroundings. She was blind with hunger. She found the source of the miraculous aroma by scent and touch alone. When she found it she did not hesitate. She sank her teeth into it.
Heat filled her mouth. It felt perfectly natural to drink instead of eat, she could not remember taking nourishment any other way. She felt her dry, empty flesh soaking up life and strength the same way that parched earth would drink down a thunderstorm. It felt as if every nerve and synapse in her body was firing at once, each one of them sending the same signal.
Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.
It seemed there could be no end to this ecstasy. It would go on and on, for as long as her heart still beat, for as long as the other heart still beat.
The other heart? Whose heart was it, and why did she feel every beat of it in her own body?
That hardly seemed to matter, strange though it was. Nothing really mattered but the heat and the pleasure.
Then she heard a soft voice speaking her name.
“Sif,” the voice said gently. “That is enough.”
Hearing her name made her pause, but it was only when she felt a hand smooth over her hair that she truly came back to herself.
She realized then that she was clutching a wrist in both of her hands. Her teeth were buried deep in that wrist, and the glorious taste in her mouth was familiar; copper and salt.
Her mouth was full of blood.
Instantly she began to gag and retch. A wooden bucket suddenly appeared in her lap, and as she vomited up every drop of blood in her belly, someone rubbed soothing circles over her back, and held her hair out of harm's way.
At last she wiped her mouth on the back of one trembling hand, and raised her head.
Loki was bending over her, his hand resting on her shoulder. He gave her a shaky smile.
“It's alright, Sif. You were...you're hurt, but I will make you better.”
“I am not 'hurt',” Sif managed to say in a raw voice. “I have been bitten, and the only thing that will make me better is a sharp object to the heart.”
Loki sighed, and took the bucket from her lap. “That's my Sif, always the optimist.” He dropped to his knees so that they were at eye level.
“There is a way to stop the change. You will not become a Blood Drinker, I swear it.”
He smiled, and it was not his usual ironic smirk. It was a true, sweet smile that filled his eyes with light and took years from his face.
“I will take care of you, and you will be good as new.” He reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear with his right hand, and rested the left on her knee. It was then that she saw the jagged red wound in his left wrist.
“Loki, you idiot, what have you done!?” Her voice was half shout, half sob. “That was your blood, I drank your blood, and now we are both doomed!”
“No one is doomed. In order to turn me, you would have to drain me to the point of death, and then force me to take your blood. No harm has been done.”
She could not take her eyes from the wound, the mixture of red blood and swiftly purpling bruise that marred his white skin. She thought of how badly she must have hurt him, and nausea rolled through her belly again.
“I am sorry, Loki,” she said. “I am so sorry!”
“Don't be. It does not feel as bad as it looks, I promise you.”
Sif nodded, but her throat was still tight. She finally managed to tear her gaze away from his wrist, and when she did she realized with a start that she did not recognize her surroundings.
She was sitting on the edge of a bed with a head and footboard of plain dark wood. The bed was against the back wall of a small room with a wood floor and wood paneled walls, both aged to a soft grey. The room also held a bedside table, a dresser with a chipped porcelain pitcher and basin on top, and a window veiled by yellowed lace curtains. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth on the wall across from the bed.
“Where are we?”
“Midgard, deep in the wilderness. This is a summer hunting cabin, but it is winter now, and there is no one within a hundred miles of this place.”
She understood at once. He had brought her to the most remote spot he could find, a place where there was no one for her to hurt.
Except him, of course.
She shook her head. “There is no cure, and you know it. Why did you bring me here? Why didn't you put an end to me?”
“There is a cure. I found it in an old manuscript that I unearthed in the library, just before we left home.”
“Then why have you not cured me, if you are able?”
Loki sat back on his haunches, and touched the wound on his wrist almost absently.
“I have begun,” he answered quietly. “But it will take time.”
Sif felt her eyes widen. “You...me biting you is part of it?”
“It is all of it, actually. I must give you my blood willingly each night from the time you were bitten until the night of the full moon.”
She was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking. “No! We cannot risk that. It is a miracle that I did not kill you just now.”
“It was not a miracle. You did not wish to kill me, so you did not. All I had to do was ask you to stop, and you did.”
“This time, but who knows what will happen the next? And you realize the moon was full yesterday. Even if I don't drain you completely in one go, you will still loose far too much blood if I drink from you every night for a month!”
His chin took a defiant tilt. “I am quite strong, despite what you or anyone else might think. I am equal to this task.”
“I know that you are strong; I have never thought otherwise. But nobody is strong enough to live through what you are describing.”
“I am. I have to be.”
She felt tears begin to course down her cheeks. She had never felt so helpless or so afraid, not even in the iron grip of the Blood Drinker that had attacked her.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please just put an end to me. Or bring me a knife or a stake and let me do it myself.”
He wiped away her tears with a gentle touch. “Let me ask you this. If it were me that had been bitten, and you knew that your blood could save me, would you not give it to me?”
She answered without a moment's hesitation. “No. I would not risk my own life for so small a chance. And it would not be worth even the possibility that the plague might spread. I would grant you a clean death.”
He looked at her for a moment, his face unreadable. Then his eyes warmed, and his lips twitched up at the corners.
“You are a slightly better liar than Thor, but then there are puppies more skilled at deception than he is.”
He took her hands in his.
“I will not see you lost if there is even the slightest chance that you might be saved. Despite what you say, you would do the same for me.”
She shook her head. “I would rather die than kill you!”
“And I would rather die than kill you. So I suppose that both of us will just have to live, won't we?”
She wanted to keep arguing, but suddenly it felt as though every last scrap of energy had drained from her body. It was too hard to think, let alone speak.
Loki caught her when she slumped forward. “It is nearly dawn. I'm afraid that for the time being, you will not have much strength during the day.”
He began trying to shift her back onto the bed, but she clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder. She half expected him to shove her away. He should. She was a dangerous, unclean thing, and she had already hurt him once.
But he did not shove her away. He hugged her, and stroked her hair.
“It is alright, Sif,” he whispered. “You are safe. You will be well again before you know it.”
She was crying again, and she hated it, but she could not stop. “I'm so tired.”
“I know. Lie back and rest now.”
She let him maneuver her back onto the bed, and he pulled a faded quilt over her. She looked up into his eyes, and in the light of the fire and of the oil lamp on the bedside table, they were impossibly green.
Sif had known Loki for all of their lives, and she would have said that she knew every expression that could pass through those eyes. She had seen them flash fiery rage, and sparkle with merriment. She had seen them fill with tears, and she had seen them fill with light.
But she had never seen them as they were now, so warm, so soft, so full of something that she could not name. He took her hand and folded it between both of his.
“I will be right here, Sif. I will not leave you.”
She managed to smile up at him, though tears still trickled from the corners of her eyes. At last her heavy eyelids fell shut, and sleep flowed over her like dark water.