Chapter Text
There is a saying that love is a strong force, which comes upon you without warning. You may have been waiting for it unconsciously or consciously but the one second you were not, it arrives with a bright mischievous grin, invading your life, teasing you, setting you on fire and pulling your world upside down. And suddenly it is everywhere you go, it stalks you, it tickles you, it paints your face in light crimson, and brings chaos into your inner world, breath and emotions are thrown into a spiral of confusion. You punch it, you do not wish for it to come now, you had not asked for it and therefore you ignore it. You neglect it, refusing to let it take control over your little world. But it will not be that what stops love, love which has always done what it wants.
***
She could not stand him was what she decided after the first hour in his presence. Not that she had a clear reason for that opinion but she found she did not need one anyway.
He is arrogant. A liar he is. He thinks himself too superior to play with her and his brother in the mud.
He was tall for his young age. Raven hair neatly stroked back, slightly beginning to curl on his nape. He always wore his collar properly up (everything about him seemed proper and clean, everything but that smug twitching on his lips. It never lasted long, never turned into a whole smirk or even into a smile. It was only hinted, trembling irritatingly teasingly over the corner of his thin lips, mockingly. She hated it, she told herself. He mocked everyone. As if he was too good to smile.)
He is weird. He is different. He does not talk as much and as loud as Thor. As if not everyone should have the privilege to be able to hear him speak.
“Why does he look at me in such a condescending way?” she had asked his brother the same day. The blonde boy had laughed (he had a pleasant laughter, and when he laughed his honest eyes and his hands laughed with him. Him, she did like instantly.)
“Condescending? Nay, he is just trying to figure you out. My little brother does not trust easily but you will see this will pass soon. He is a funny boy. Do you want more of the pheasant?”
“Funny?” she had snorted, taking the plate he had offered her. “More like an antithesis to fun.” She would soon understand what the elder prince had meant with his words. But for now, she had turned her head to defiantly and angrily meet his gaze. He had kept it for a brief second before his gaze had lazily wandered away from her, disinterested now. And she found that irritated her even more. She did not turn her head again.
***
He ignored her from then on. Not even the mocking twitch that had carved itself a home at the end of his lips tugged there anymore. There was only pure disinterest, lying arrogantly over the curves of his eyebrows.
He was everything she was not. Everything the others in this golden place were not. His black and emerald stood out of it, when they should rather be melting among the shadows.
She would not see him the whole day, or the whole night. In fact he barely even showed his presence during training. The only times she could catch a glimpse of him – not that she purposely looked in his direction – was during the official dinners. He would dutifully sit opposite to his brother and her, exchange polite words with the person next to him. And the next time she would glance over – by chance, let it be understood, for she would refuse to admit that she showed more interest in him than he did in her- she by times would only catch the emerald of his coat disappearing behind the hall doors, other times not even that anymore.
“Why does he never stay until the end of the dinners?” she had asked his brother once more, attempting to cover the anger in her voice (she took a personal offense in his leavings), leaving it as casual as possible.
The blond had shrugged. “Studying, he is already proficient with magic.”
***
One day she punched him. And that was when he grinned. One of those bright grins that revealed a perfectly white line of teeth but in his case, the mirth only reached his eyes belatedly, only when her perplexed self was suddenly hanging upside down in the air. That was when she heard him giggle for the first time. And the era of pranks truly began; she got to experience what Thor had talked about on her own flesh and she was definitely not sure if she did not prefer the ignoring from before or not. Dresses turned pink, worms found her food, bird eggs her hair, the creativity increased with every day.
He would appear everywhere she was without warning. Catching her when she was secretly observing the young warriors training, startling her when she was trying to steal a practive sword, and on many other occasions. He came to be the first one to know about her greatest desire when she herself had not fully become aware of it yet. Not aware yet why excitement increased so intensely inside her by the mere sight of the guards, or why she found so much happiness in swinging a wood stick around imagining beating all kinds of monsters…
Loki had understood it even before her, and maybe the fact that on the next day Thor had seen her playing with the wood sword on the same place like that – Thor who never went to that part in the garden and could frankly not quite remember anymore what had brought him there– which had made him cheer excitedly and instantly ask her to play warriors with him, maybe that fact had been no coincidence... And maybe, the fact that the princes’ private trainer, who first had refused to listen to Thor’s begging of letting a girl take part in their morning training, had so suddenly and seemingly without any reason accepted to see the same girl’s skills two days later, maybe that one had been no coincidence either… maybe. But the now happy Sif would not know of what could have been maybe, only maybe, a certain raven haired prince’s doing, for he would well guard what could maybe be a secret.