#v. never known a silence like the one fallen here. ( between the avengers + thor: the dark world )

[victoriousfidelity]

@emeraldxphoenix sent: [ show ] for sender to purposefully reveal their scars for receiver to see extensive scar related prompts. | accepting.

For the first month of his imprisonment upon his return to Asgard, Loki refuses to see her. And yet every day - against Odin's orders - Sigyn cloaks herself with her magic and goes to his cell, ensuring that he knows she is there and that she will not be dissuaded from visiting. She knows that Frigga is doing much the same, though the Allmother's visits must be conducted through magic alone; she is under far more scrutiny than Sigyn is.

Once Loki finally agrees to acknowledge her, it is only the first step on a long path they must walk.

The state she finds him in varies from day to day: stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that anything is amiss one day, furious with everything in the Realms the next, barely hiding his distress another. On his less lucid days he murmurs fragments of things which make her blood run cold, and she loses count of the amount of times he insists to her that he is a monster, that he is beneath her. But no matter what he says, Sigyn is patient and unyielding.

He is her husband. She loves him. She is not leaving.

It takes six months for Loki to finally drop the glamour he has worn since even before he was brought back to Asgard. Even despite his weakness (which is so obvious to her) he stubbornly, desperately keeps the true extent of his physical state from everyone - including her, even though they are both fully aware that she knows his Seiðr well enough to recognise when it is being used. She has not pushed the matter, though. She hasn't touched him without him first initiating the contact, and she has not even dreamt of trying to use her magic to uncover what it is that he is hiding from her. But she knows that it is bad.

The catalyst for the eventual revelation comes after she sees him wince, and cannot stop herself from expressing concern. He removes the glamour then, almost like a challenge; as though daring her to look at him - to truly look at him, to see the ruined state he has been left in and see if she can still claim to love him.

She doesn't hide her reaction from him - she won't lie to him, especially not now. But if he expects to see disgust on her face, to see revulsion in her eyes as she looks over him, then what he's met with is the exact opposite.

Sigyn looks at him - properly, for the first time since before his fall - and feels her already battered heart break a little more. The scars, the injuries which haven't been allowed to heal correctly, the fact that he is thinner and more frail than she ever remembers seeing him before. It is too much, and for a moment she cannot say anything - nor can she prevent the tears which suddenly burn in her eyes. She does not let them fall, though; a steadying breath later, and she lifts her gaze to meet his.

"Can I come closer?" She asks, her voice soft. Even now, she will not do anything he doesn't want her to - but she needs him to know that this will not make her leave.

[victoriousfidelity]

"I do not need others to tell me what you are." Comes her response, the words as resolute as her gaze is. "Loki, look at me. Do you think that I am not furious that you were lied to? Do you think that I am like them?"

The questions hang in the air between them, and then a far more gentle one follows: "Your heritage does not make you a monster. Not to me. Or have you forgotten that not every Realm shares the Allfather's prejudices?"

Loki scoffs bitterly, not at her so much as his predicament.

"Do you hope to learn that I am not what they say? These hypocrites who raise me in lies and wonder why I do what I can to prove my worth, why I turn to conquest when that has always been Asgard's right, why I turned on my brother before he could destroy me because of my heritage. They treat me now at last like the monster they pretended I was not and so here is my cage."

Buried beneath his spite he knows his wrongs, he knows, but he will not allow himself to see them. To examine himself is to give in to fear and everything that he has suffered, every bad choice he has made.

[victoriousfidelity]

verse drop, 1/7 (mcu canon verses).

[victoriousfidelity]

verse drop, mcu canon.

[victoriousfidelity]

For as much as he tries to push her away, Sigyn is equally as unyielding. She wears her loyalty (and her heart) on her sleeve even now, almost like a challenge; daring him to keep going down this road and discover just how pointless it is to try and convince her to do anything other than what her heart tells her to do.

She did not mourn him for as long as she did only to allow herself to be kept from him now - whether by Loki's own attempts, or Odin's sentencing of him.

But she does wince, at his turn of phrase. The analogy pains her; he is no beast, and she has never been his keeper. The expression only lasts for a fraction of a second, though, before she replies.

"Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I am. How could I not have come here, Loki?"

It wounds him to force this rift between them, and yet Loki can't seem to help but damage everything around him. He doesn't know how to stop, after learning what he was, what he is. There is poison in his thoughts that has been there even before Thanos' influence. How can she love him knowing what he is? What he's tried to do; what he's done? Loki rails between a twisted wish to protect her and a disbelief that anyone on Asgard can be true to him anymore. He is riddled with fear and distrust, even of those he deems most precious.

"Can the beast trust its keeper after it has savaged his guests? After it has run wild? You should not be here, Sig."

@victoriousfidelity