Legacy

In Which Sif Gets Loki'd

"How can you be sick in a hall of healers?" Ollerus complained to a now seemingly permanent lump under the blankets.

Sif could only moan and pull the blankets in tighter. Healers had no cure for her condition. The apothecaries' concoctions only treated symptoms, dulling the thud behind her puffy eyes, calming the tempest in her empty gut. There was no herbal mixture that could undo the past, make her a better mother, a better friend, or lover, or whatever she had been to Loki. She didn't even know anymore beyond its beginnings when they simply got tangled in each others sweaty company to burn off the adrenaline of the battlefield.

Those times had been so much easier.

Ollerus sighed impatiently. "Dinner is ready. Again." His voice now echoed down the hall. "Not that you'll eat it."

Yet those times also lacked a particular degree of challenge and reward.

Sif almost found the gumption to giggle at her son's familiar lack of sympathy for her ailments. It was the same treatment she had given him the last time he was sick. In war no one cared if you had a tummy bug, and the sooner she could prep him for the world outside the better.

Especially in light of recent events.

Sif moaned again, wishing it was merely a tummy bug that bound her to this bed. Not the incessant replaying and analyzing of everything that had happened these past few days. Not the dread of what was going to happen when Loki made a move to rightfully claim his child. And especially not the tease of hope that she could ever have an unbroken family, free of bitterness and betrayal.

That was a dream doomed from the start. Doomed by her own lying tongue.

"Sif." Eir appeared in the room, just in time to rescue Sif from another downward spiral of thought. "You need to eat." She set a steaming bowl on the nightstand and took a seat at the edge of the bed.

"What good will it do?" Sif grumbled.

"It will give you the energy to do what you need to do." Eir's voice was hard, lecturing, another example of the distinct lack of sympathy in this temple.

Sif sighed, her tone petulant even through the muffle of the covers. "And what is it I need to do?" She preferred to think that Eir didn't know the extent of her troubles, that the elder hadn't found Sif doubled over next to the river in a mess of tears, mud, and bawling confession of her encounter with Loki. That she was just as ignorant to Sif's failings as a mother as Ollie was.

"Go to him." Eir yanked the blankets down so she could pierce Sif with her most adamant stare. "Apologize. Set the wheels in motion to mend your wounded family."

Sif squinted at Eir with an ugly expression.

"There will not be a better time," Eir continued. "Loki isn't lost, or exiled, or in a cell."

"But it's only a matter of time before he will be," Sif argued.

"That may be. But we don't know for certain. Perhaps being a father to a boy like Ollerus, rather than a brood of demons, will be his redemption."

"No, no, no." Sif covered her ears.

"What is this childish display?" Eir barked.

"I won't believe that." Sif leaned her head in her hands, fingers streaking through tangled hair. "I couldn't bear Ollie's heartache."

"You cannot protect him forever. It's better that you unite the two in a peaceful environment than risk it happening in the courts, or on a battlefield."

"Why does it need to happen at all?" That was a weak argument and Sif knew it.

"Don't be daft." Eir made a grim face. "You know as well as I do this is the right thing to do, no matter the unforeseen outcome. Ollie may indeed have his heart broken but let it be Loki that does it and not his mother." She leaned in, placing her hand on Sif's and quieting her voice. "We've seen first hand the detrimental effects of prolonged deception in a family."