When Thor made it back from Persephone and Hades’ house, he reflected on the conversation he had with Persephone and what she advised him to do. The topic of family and not leaving unsaid words as just that was one that made him consider a lot. It made him think about his brothers, about Baldr and Vali, about Heimdall. All of them that may or may not have been Odin’s preferred sons. His relationship with them was strained (to put it politely).
And that wasn’t even factoring in how he felt about Odin himself. The almighty Alfather, the person that always thought of himself above everyone. If you weren’t for him, then you were essentially against him. Yeah, that’s what Thor came to know as his normal for so long.
But then the events at the Olympic Club happened. Those two greeks were dead. Anything they left unsaid would remain that way, because somebody took that choice away from them. No final goodbyes. No one last get together before they faded into Helheim (or whatever it was the Greeks believed). Nothing but crashing down from the skylight and their skulls crashing against the ground.
It was dishonorable, really. Not on them but on their killer or killers. Whoever did it held no respect for them. An honorable death would have saved everyone the grief of seeing them fall like that.
As the God of Thunder pulled in front of his dojo, he contemplated whether or not he was going to open shop. He was livid. Anger consumed him as he lamented more and more about everything today. Persephone’s words, her children the fury that he felt that he knew needed to be dealt with in only the way Thor knew how.
But he wasn’t sure what he should do. Open up shop and help someone or go upstairs, sleep for a few hours, and then, when night takes hold of Seattle, hunt those who hurt the innocents of Belltown.
Conflicted beyond any means of clarity Thor angrily exited his truck, slamming it as he walked past his dojo and made his way upstairs. He was in no place to teach anyone. It’s not like any of his students were going to be around today anyway. They were made aware that they had today off. All classes were canceled because of the festival, but with that now being called off, there was nothing for Thor to do but relax as much as he could (that was what Sekhmet told him to do in a manner of speaking).
He pulled his keys out of his pocket but realized something when he went to turn it.
“It’s unlocked?” Thor narrowed his eyes. He was too exhausted to take on a foe, but a mere mortal breaking into his apartment? That was, if nothing else, something he could handle.
In a swift moment, the door blasted open as the God of Thunder rushed in. the light had been turned on, Thor’s eyes were red with an anger he had dwelling deep inside him and when he saw someone, he didn’t really see them. He acted instinctively and pressed his toned forearm against their collarbone, rushing them to the ground in a simultaneous moment. He sat on top of them, legs locking theirs in, pressing his forearm against their neck only hard enough to keep them in place. “You sure have a lot of nerve--” Anger quickly subsided as he saw who was under him. That blonde hair, those eyes, the expression that he remembered so fondly. “--Sif? Is…is that really you?”
"Ow..." Sif groaned after a moment of shocked silence, suspecting she was going to have more than a few bruises in the morning. Her hands moved to grip onto his powerful forearm, trying and failing to push him away. It was impossible though, he was a deity of strength and power and she, well...her hair was a Fífl.
"Is this how you greet people nowadays?" She grumbled as she gave up, flopping back onto the hard floor. It did occur to her that maybe waiting in his apartment was not as socially acceptable as she'd first assumed. But when she'd told the superintendent of the building that she was Johans wife - mortal names were kind of weird - he'd had no qualms in showing her where the god of thunder kept his spare key.
Soft green eyes roamed over his form as she waited for him to move. It was like Týr, he looked the same but also different. She could sense that he was not okay, though whether it was because of her or something else, she wasn't quite sure. Lying there, Sif became acutely aware of their rather unbecoming position, which once would have been happily welcomed by the goddess. Now though...now she just wanted to be able to move her legs again.
"You're heavy..." She added quietly, trying to hide her embarrassment as her hair flashed crimson red.
He realized this a moment too late. “Oh..Sorry..” Sif laid under him, his forearm practically almost choking her and likely not in a way that was preferred (at least in thor’s recent experience generally speaking), he removed it from her collarbone and stood up, removing one leg off her body at a time. As he stood up, he grabbed her hand to help her up. It was still daunting that she was here. After all this time, Sif, his beloved wife, was here.
Looking at her, he couldn’t help but wonder where she was for so many centuries. A thought had come to him but he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions -- not yet, at least. “I..” He swore he would never say this, but Thor felt it was appropriate. “By Odin’s Beard, I can’t believe you’re actually here.” In a moment that had him consumed by emotion, rage no longer dominant but rather a cure to a heartbreak that was multiple centuries old, Thor took his wife(?) into an embrace. “I don’t know how but you’re here.” His voice cracked as he once again had her in a tight hold, possibly nearly crushing her fragile bones with his big arms.
Sif froze in place, taken aback by the outburst of emotion from a man who she had previously known to be much more composed. Not that she judged him for it. She had already cried at least three times since awakening. Eventually she rested her head against his chest, though she felt more awkward than comforted by their closeness. Hands warily moved to halfheartedly grip onto his shirt, which smelt weird and not at all like the one she had worn only half a day before.
"I-I flew in the sky." She announced ridiculously, "Well I mean, I woke up first. Then Týr found me and I got on a plane..." Sif mumbled her lacklustre explanation, probably providing more confusion for the god than anything else. "It was far out!" She said with a small smile, pleased at her attempt to use 'modern' english. Sif had in fact watched Good Morning, Vietnam on the flight over and had entirely failed to comprehend it being set almost 60 years in the past. It had been enough to realise that the tiny people weren't actually stuck behind the screen.
“Far out?” Thor couldn’t help himself as he laughed. Laughed so bad that it was almost like a croak due to the fact that he was high on emotions. Going from ire to yearning to whatever he was experiencing now, it was all just so much. He could feel himself breakdown at any given moment, yet something he clung to outside of physically clinging to Sif was what she mentioned about waking up. As he released her from the hug and looked at his wife, he blinked at her. “Did…you say you just woke up?” There was a part of him that almost felt relieved. He spent so long searching for her and she was still in those chambers the entire time.
"Why are you laughing?" Sif frowned, her bottom lip forming a small pout. Folding her arms across her chest she took a step back, strangely feeling a small amount of relief now that there was physical space between them. Had things changed whilst she was in the chamber? Or had it been even before the fall? Ignoring these doubts she nodded slowly at his question. "I woke up in Denmark. I guess most other people awoke years ago but I've been sleeping since the fall..." Her hands ran comfortingly up and down her arms as she dared to approach the one thought that had been stuck in her head. There was no point hiding from the fact that he had lived so many centuries without her.
"So...you've been around this whole time?" She asked simply, watching for his response.
In the midst of Thor’s own emotional roller coaster that carried him from joy and anger to some form of sadness and hope that he couldn’t explain, it took the God of Thunder a few extra moments (albeit accelerated by the pout on Sif’s face) to process exactly what she said. The years he spent searching for her, those decades upon decades of never giving up until the renaissance era, she wasn’t elsewhere trying to find her life nor was she just hiding in plain sight like he thought she had been. No, she was asleep. Asleep in Denmark. That in itself had forced Thor to take a step back (in a manner of speaking) because so many thoughts went through his head.
“Y-yeah..” He muttered slowly to her question. Shaking his head briefly, he took in a deep and slow breath, inhaling and exhaling. “A lot of us have been. And I looked for you, Sif. I spent centuries trying to find you. I figured, all of the time I spent, you were just, you know, either not wanting to be found or hiding where I didn’t look.” It was funny in a way. Thor searched high and low for her and she was sleeping in fucking Denmark, of all places. How in Helheim did he never consider that?
"You did?" Sif paused before taking a seat on the very edge of the couch, not willing to make herself too comfortable. "I wish I'd just been hiding. Sleeping wasn't all that fun." The memories of the nightmares were blurry and clipped at best, but she still had an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever she thought about them. "Thank you though...for looking. What--what happened after you stopped?" She didn't want to know but part of her just needed him to say it outloud because this feeling of being in limbo was awful. She thought of everything she had wanted to say to him before the fall but now it just seemed...pointless. Everyone else had been given two thousand years to change and she, well she was just the same as before. It was endlessly frustrating.
There was a lot of weight in the question she asked and it was weight that Thor didn’t know how to drop (so to speak). It was true he spent all those years aimlessly searching for her. Trying to find someone who left no breadcrumbs or strands of hair for him to follow was a lot more difficult than it might sound like. He remembered going aimlessly around the lands, fighting his way through armies, trekking paths that a god without divinity shouldn’t. It was strenuous on his body and at times, he had to find some level of comfort in the company of others, but Thor never stopped.
Until he did.
And Sif was asking for what came after.
He leaned against the counter, his back to it and arms crossed over his chest as his sapphire eyes had looked over to Sif. “You have to understand something first. It was five centuries. Five hundred years I spent looking. Tirelessly and aimlessly, I went to places, fought people trying to get from point a to point b, hoping for some shred of a trail that you may have left behind. But…” He fell silent as his head did the same. He gritted his teeth and his grip on the countertop was so tight that sparks centered into his fingertips caused parts of the fake marble to break off. As the broken pieces fell to the ground, Thor just continued, “...But there was nothing, Sif. No trail of you. Nothing to go off of. And after five hundred years of nothing, I was tired. I was broken and tired. I thought you were dead or you simply didn’t want to be found. So what was I supposed to do?”
Thor couldn’t hide the wave of emotions that came to the surface. He wasn’t a crying God but his eyes were puffy, evidence of his high emotions. “I had to force myself to move on. I couldn’t handle it anymore. The pain your absence brought was unbearable.”
Sif stared at the pieces of countertop that had landed on the floor, unwilling to look him in the eye. Thors words were filled with pain but her own was too much to ease his. She had known, or at least suspected such. Týr had been so unwilling to speak of his brother and there had been a hesitation that she had not dared breach. The goddess felt her hair grow longer, as if its locks could protect her from the hurt she was feeling, but she brushed it away and over her shoulders. She did not want to hide this time.
"I..." She paused. "Did you never consider that I was still asleep? I've heard I am not the first..." Sif muttered, her words barely audible. She knew it was unreasonable to expect him to wait so long, but the thought that he, no...everyone, had forgotten about her dug into her heart like a thousand shards of glass. The part of her that had wanted to lash out all those centuries ago, to free herself from the monotony of her life, started to well up inside of her once more. It called out to her and she felt so unwilling to deny it again.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised..." Sif heard herself talking but she felt so disconnected from her body, and was unable to stop the bitter words as they came pouring out. "I was never really worth anything but as your wife." Shut up Sif. "It makes sense that I could so easily be forgotten." You don't mean that. "I'm sure it must have been a relief when you didn't have to watch out for me anymore." No, that's not true...
What was she even saying? Easily forgotten?
Thor looked at Sif, listened as she spoke these ludicrous things but couldn’t find the courage to disprove them instantaneously. It wasn't that they were true - they weren’t true, but he was so paralyzed by…something (maybe that she was even speaking such things) and that just left a silence after she spoke. Never in the entirety of their time together had he known she felt these things. They were husband and wife and Thor never knew that Sif felt this way about their marriage. Blinded by his own emotions as he was, a genuine shock climbed onto his face and he forced himself to do…say anything.
But nothing came.
Damn it, why can’t I say anything?
Thor cursed himself repeatedly. And then cursed himself some more until a wave of defeat disguised as relief disguised even further as confusion consumed him and he finally spoke. “So…is that how you really feel? About us?” He asked flatly. His hand gripped the counter top, the same one that had crushed it a few moments ago. “I suppose I can't disprove your feelings. It was only 500 mortal years and without the benefit of replenishing my strength in Asgard. Perhaps I could have spent an additional five-hundred years searching even though I had searched everywhere I could think of. Maybe you were just that well hidden. Or maybe it was one of Loki’s tricks hiding you away from me.”
Thor let out a small laugh, that same defeated look on his face as he tried to grasp whatever he was feeling. He couldn’t hide it and Thor was seldom skillful at hiding his true emotions. Only exception was when the Blue Crusader went out at night. He could hide everything about him like a true stalker of the night. “Not like it matters now, does it, Sif? You’re free and instead of me, Týr found you. He did what I could not.” Despite how genuinely happy he was that she was here, an anger swelled up inside him when he thought of Týr being the one to find and bring her to Seattle, but he wasn’t entitled to such feelings. Thor knew that yet his wrath persisted.
Even with the flood of sadness and regret she was feeling, Sif still found herself blushing at the mention of Týrs name. Or more specifically, of hearing it come from Thors lips. Her hands went to her cheeks in an attempt to hide her body's reaction but it did little to ease the warmth spreading throughout her face.
"What does that even matter!?" She exclaimed, partly out of embarrassment and partly out of genuine wonder. "I would've been thankful if even Loki had found me!" Well...probably not, but that was beside the point. "Was it so important to you to be seen as my rescuer? My hero?" Sif stood as she spoke, hands running through her hair, unable to keep still. She shook her head, green eyes scanning over anything in the apartment aside from him. Any other time she would have been able to acknowledge the life he had put together for himself. To be glad that he seemed to be doing well. But now she could not, her gaze unable to focus on one thing long enough to truly pay attention.
As much as Thor wanted to say ‘no, you’re wrong. I don’t want to be your hero all the time’, the truth was he couldn’t. The God of Thunder, Mighty Thor couldn’t because that would be admitting to something that wasn’t factual. “Because it’s who I am!” He suddenly proclaimed, his voice rising to uncomfortable levels of loudness, aspects of his anger that boiled over the surface. “I’m Mighty Thor, Hero of Asgard, Savior of Midgard! It’s what I do: I save people. I’m a damn hero, Sif!” Thor stepped forward, his hands tightening as he slammed his fist down, again cackling with visible electricity, on the countertop, destroying it further.
Those were words Thor had often proclaimed as a motto of some sort. A personal mantra to get him through tough times. “But what kind of God am I? Really, I’m asking you. I spent so long trying to find you, trying to rescue you. Maybe it was because I needed to feel like a hero again. Maybe I needed a firm reminder that I was truly someone special again. Maybe I wanted that praise just one more time, but it wasn’t meant to be. Clearly it wasn’t, yet Týr just swoops you up like it’s nothing.” The anger became visible and Thor hated that he let it get to this point. What he hated even more, though, was that his own brother did this.
Sif couldn't help but cringe back at his fury. He had never directed his anger towards her before and for the first time, a small part of her was scared of him. She felt her hair flash white but she ignored it. "You never had to be a hero Thor. That's just what...what your father wanted." Her brow furrowed, refusing to let any of the tears that were welling up in her eyes spill over. "I just...I wanted you to be there with me. Not off fighting the Jötunn for the hundredth time. Did you even notice all those times I left Asgard?" She clenched her fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. It was painful but the pain was better than all of this.
"And Týr, he encouraged me to come see you..." Sif had never thought Thor jealous of his brother but his words said otherwise, spoke of things that maybe she had never been privy to. Or maybe she had just been too caught up in her own worries.
“Did he now? That’s interesting.” Thor couldn’t help but let out an amused chuckle. He wasn't, but part of…whatever was happening right now felt funny to him - hilarious, even. Always playing second to his brothers. Heimdall as Odin’s faithful watchdog. And now with his own wife, Týr was replacing him. Maybe even seeming like a more ideal choice. Týr was her savior, not Thor. “What else did he encourage you to do?” Thor asked with a hint of spite in his voice.
"Nothing!" The goddess shook her head emphatically as she spoke, barely able to acknowledge that she had closed the gap between them. "Did...did you even hear anything I just said!?" She found herself pushing against his chest forcefully as she spoke, hurt and confusion overwhelming her. The tears that she had tried so hard to hold back began to spill over, falling down her cheeks in a way that she could not stop. "What do you want me to say? Tell me because I really don't know! Because I think your brother thankfully managed to find me when I had just awoken and was kind enough to help me out. That's it! Would you have preferred I stayed lost?"
No, I wouldn’t…
But Thor was beside himself with an unexplainable rage and jealousy. It was obviously something that Sif couldn’t even begin to understand, but the longer he spent deep in thought, trying to make sense that Týr was the one who found her, the more it appeared that she just didn’t want to be found by him. He understood what that seemed like. He understood that even thinking that made him look even worse. So why couldn’t he stop thinking about it? Týr finding her. Týr holding something over Thor’s head that will be as eternal as their life so long they consume the ambrosia.
It built up a storm inside him, causing his fist to crackle with sparks of blue lightning yet again. He tried to control it - manage it, but nothing was working. And to make matters worse, everything that happened forced tears out of Sif’s eyes, something he never thought he would be the cause of. Thor wanted to grab and hold her, try to console her but he didn’t have the right to. He wasn’t in any position to, so Thor, as gently as the God of Thunder was capable of, pushed her back and he himself took a step back.
As he gripped the hand that visibly shook with his other, trying to keep his rage and the static that was emitting from it, Thor tried to practice those deep breathing exercises he saw online that were supposed to help with anger. “There’s nothing you nor I could say, Sif. So perhaps it’s best if you left me alone.” The way Thor looked at her, whether she would catch it, was more of a desperate plea for her to leave. In the state he was in, nobody should see him like this.
Sif could only for a long moment stare at the god in front of her, frozen in place, heart thrumming rapidly. Partly out of fear but also sadness for seeing him in such a way. He was right though. What else could either of them say? She'd never seen him so out of control and her eyes flitted to his hand as the lightning crackled fiercely. Finally, she managed a small nod of her head, tears cooling against her skin.
Pulling up her hood, she approached the door, no longer having any chance of controlling her hair as it morphed wildly from one shade to the next. That was nothing though, compared to the deep ache within her chest. Thors own pain only confirmed to her that it would have been better for them all if she had remained asleep. Better for her to have slipped into the past as a distant memory. It's all your fault Sif. Barely awake for twenty four hours and she had managed to hurt the person who had once been closest to her.
"...I'm sorry." Sif said quietly as she slipped through the door. The words were so soft when they left her lips, it would be a surprise if Thor had managed to catch them.
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