Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

19 | The Weight Of A Storm

The Casket Of Ancient Winters had felt light when Y/N had lifted it from its pedestal and slotted it into her bag but, after retracing their steps along the endless hallways and staircases, the leather straps had begun to cut into her shoulders.

Sigrid had offered to take a turn lugging it up towards the promising breeze of the surface world, and has carried it valiantly for over half an hour.

Y/N has not told her what exactly it is she's carrying, but Sigrid seemed to understand its importance and had handled the bag as though it were a swaddled baby, her usually animated strides narrowing to carefully placed footfalls

Her cheeks flushed, she finally stops and shrugs it off, wincing.

"I don't understand." Y/N takes the pack's stretched handles, swinging it onto her shoulders and feeling her spine bow once more under its mysterious weight. "At first it didn't weigh anything besides the case it's in. It felt like a box of—of storm clouds or something."

Sigrid rubs her left shoulder where, under her borrowed uniform, Y/N knows there to be a raw pink mark.

She knows because she can feel one forming on her own collarbone as she speaks, the capillaries in her tender skin being slowly strangled.

"I guess it's like that thing people say about seeing a glass as half full or half empty. If you hold it for long enough, it'll start to weigh you down either way."

Y/N blinks in the flickering light of the sconces. "That's very philosophical."

She shrugs, or might perhaps just be rolling the stiff joints in her shoulders. "I don't just steal jewellery and coins. Most of the places I take from have great libraries."

Short of breath, they stumble up the last step of the final staircase and squint like moles emerging from the dirt as clean, white daylight floods through the windows.

Like sun-warmed water, it dribbles about their feet like a stream from a mountain and they celebrate through gasps and half-hearted exhales.

"And I thought The Palace was big before I knew it had a basement," Sigrid quips, her agile feet for once dragging against the polished floor like socks full of rocks.

Y/N's ribs expand and contract enough to huff out a single laugh, and for a little while, they follow the corridor in silence, soaking up the crisp air.

Free from the Casket's weight, Sigrid's posture soon unfurls and her eyes regain their searching, hungry spark. Energetically, they flick from a painting of an elegant older woman to a statue of a nude man riding a horse, to a pedestal sporting a deftly painted vase to a decorative clock—

Y/N notices and can't help asking quietly:

"Sigrid, do you thieve because you like it? Or because you have to?"

"...I have to. When my mother first got sick she could pay for her medicine for a while...but then she had to quit her job and...she couldn't. In fact, she couldn't really do much of anything."

Y/N gives her a sad smile. "That's why I started working at The Palace. My mother used to wash the village's clothes but she got arthritis and had to stop. I used to post my parent's my wages every week so they could afford to keep the house. When he found out, Loki went behind my back and sent them so much money I was set free from the responsibility but..." She dithers, the words forming and falling apart on her tongue.

Sigrid places a hand on her back. "...You wish you could have taken care of them yourself?"

Y/N nods, shifting the weight of her pack onto her other shoulder. "I'm really grateful—of course I am. They've got so much money now they don't have to work—for the first time since they were children. But I wanted to be the one who granted them their freedom."