Work Text:
01. Sam Sparro— Black and Gold
After the fall, she says very little about him, about any of it. The Warriors Three get in all their jokes and jibes in short order, and so she is quickly relieved of the burden of pretending that she feels entirely as they do.
She stands on the jagged precipice of the ruined bifrost, looking out across the stars, golden flecks of light set against the deep black of space. Perhaps the stars are now as they always were, a study in contrasts, in opposing forces: light and dark, heat and cold. She feels colder now than she did when he was here. There is an empty space at her side and a chill in her heart that she fears will not fade.
02. Jason Mraz— The Woman I Love
“There was absolutely no reason to antagonize a nest of space scorpions,” Sif says, when at last they are alone.
“There was a reason, my lady,” he says, and she lets out a short, disbelieving bark of laughter.”You may not particularly like the reason, but I did have one, I assure you.”
“You were bored,” she says, and he doesn’t bother to deny it.
“I was bored,” he agrees.
“Husband,” she says, rolling her eyes, “was there truly no other way to cure your boredom?”
“I can think of several now,” he says, reaching for her hand and pulling her toward him. “You didn’t enjoy the battle?”
Her hands grip his forearms as she pushes back to look up at his face. “Oh, please. Do not begin to pretend that you caused all of that mischief on my behalf.”
“Come now, lady, were you not entertained?”
“For a time,” she says. “But can we not make our own entertainment?”
“Certainly,” he says, and kisses her.
They do not return to the subject.
03. Lady Gaga— Bad Romance
Sif knows that it will end, and badly. It cannot be otherwise, but it does not stop her from wanting it, it does not stop her from taking what she wants, her fist wrapped up in his dark hair as she kisses him, more teeth than lips or tongue.
If he’s surprised, he does not show it. His fingers are chilly against her skin, but she feels as though she’s been set aflame, burning from the inside out, and she kisses him like he is the only one who can cool her.
Nothing about any of it is tender, but they have never been friends, not really, and this will not change that.
04. Lady Gaga— Speechless
She has no words for traitors. She is a warrior, and what she has to say will not translate into any language in any of the nine realms. Instead she must say it with her fist and her glaive.
She only regrets that her armor does not cover her heart in the way that she most needs.
05. Barenaked Ladies— Sound of Your Voice
Here in the void between worlds, there is nothing he would say that he longs for, not from Asgard, the glorious eternal realm of all his misfortunes. (Is it any wonder, Odin Allfather, that your adopted son was given to such intricate scheming, when he was only a cog in the wheel of your plan for someone else’s realm?)
There is nothing there for him; there never was. Certainly he has no memories of lazy mornings, waking to the low murmur of his lady’s voice, no visions of long dark hair, not his own, fanning out across green silk sheets, morning light glinting off armor that was not his own, a smile curving his lips as warm hands trailed across his bare skin.
(Was this love, then? The word is bitter and cold.)
If he did have those memories surely he would have excised them wholly by now, for if he is to be a villain, then let him be villainous and utterly, completely alone in it, let him have nothing and no one and let him revel in the freedom of loneliness, no fathers to disappoint, no brothers to devil, no warrior women with hard hands and soft lips.
He is alone now, but no longer lonely; he was only ever lonely in their company, and she was never really his lady, for she belonged to Asgard, and he belongs nowhere.
In the long cold dark he imagines they will beg for his return. Come home, they’ll say, and they will pretend it is out of sentiment and out of kindness but it would only be another lie, and he would rather make his own than hear more of theirs. (Come home, but where? To Asgard? To Jotunheim? Neither is home and neither will have him and he will have them all.) He will not, though they may beg and plead and scrape and bow ‘til Ragnarok takes them all and gives them new life, converting their constituent atoms into something new. (Will they suffer to have their atoms combined with his? Can even the end and the beginning of all things truly eradicate the ill will they must bear him, must always have borne him, knowing that they’d let a monster take up residence in the heart of their home?)
There is nothing there and there is nothing here, only cruel memories and the gentle sound of a voice that will never again wake him from the dark.
06. David Ryan Harris— Tricks Up My Sleeve
He has absolutely no idea how one might go about courting a warrior. Does one offer to polish armor? Sharpen her knives?
He’s taken to leaving her flowers wrapped around weapons, snippets of verse interpolated among treatises on warfare. Mixed messages, possibly, but it would hardly be the first time someone has accused him of such.
Thus far, she has not responded to his efforts, which might be cause for despair, but neither has she punched him or threatened him with violence if he does not cease and desist, which might be cause for jubilation, really. She will eventually have to say something, though whether it will be with her words or her fist, he cannot tell.
07. Rachael Yamagata— Reason Why
Sif rarely lets her thoughts wander to what might have been, had it not all gone the way of pain, in the end, but there are moments when the uselessness of all that wasted time threatens to overwhelm her and there is nothing for it but to remember.
In another life, perhaps, they could have found some small measure of happiness. They had it, briefly, for a fraction of a second, for little moments, the rare times when he looked at her with an unbridled awe and reverence as though she were the one of royal blood, as though she were the only reason for his existence, and in those moments she felt her own heart unbraced and unguarded, and though she curses her foolishness now, she knows that her own face was a mirror to his for those brief happy seconds.
But then the light would shift and the shadows would return, and there were neither words nor actions to banish them entirely.
08. Landon Pigg— Take a Chance
It is centuries before they will leave him to his own devices again. Not that he blames them— attempting to rule the universe, not really his best plan, and poorly executed for all that— but it does try one’s patience to need a chaperone to wander through the library. It’s also something of a challenge, causing trouble with a gag and no magic, but he’s managed that well enough over the last hundred years. He may not be chasing the title of Ruler of All any longer, but he remains the God of Mischief. Some things never leave you.
She hasn’t left him, not yet.
09. Sara Bareilles— Morningside
The day that she realizes she loves him, she runs. She leaves, she rides off into battles, she punches and kicks and conquers and slays, and none of it, no matter how exhilarating, brings the thrill and the rush that comes of her skin against his. No other enemy will ever get as close; no other lover will ever dance so far from her reach.