The way his face changed at her answer hurt, dully. She turned, meaning to start back to where her gear was. “Did I say you should?” she flashed back, over her shoulder. He wanted … something. She wasn’t sure what it was, only that want rode him, and it ran higher when he looked at her. “Stay.”
“Then I ask nothing of you, except your company,” he admitted, stepping towards her once again. Without his consent, his hand reached out and brushed her hair, the very slightest of touches. He wondered if she was listening to his emotions, if she could feel how the sensation swelled through him like a familiar warmth, like a hearth after a winter storm.
Summer stilled, again, at the tickle of his hand on her hair. “There’s the silver tongue I remember.” She closed her eyes, thoughts whirling again, seesawing back and forth as though scales fallen out of balance. “Loki … I wish you would speak truth to me. I know you want something.” The moment shivered, a pure drop on the verge of falling. Her voice was low, almost pleading. “What is it?”
He felt the swell of an old frustration, a familiar weight—no, a pull—a yearning in all directions at once. A painful exhaustion that rooted him in place, hidden under the dark boughs of the forest, with a neglected friend whom he never should have let leave his sight, unable to go forward or back. Unsure of how to try.
“I want everything and nothing. I…wish I knew.” His voice sounded ancient and childish all at once. “Can’t you hear it? With your gifts, couldn’t you tell me?”
There was no thought in the way she turned, arms reaching out to clasp at him, pull the height of him into her embrace, only instinct. The ache in his heart, that laced his voice, tore at her. She tugged him down til his head rested on her shoulder and her hands linked behind his back. “Oh, darling,” she murmured, low and sympathetic, “still so very much pain. No, I can’t tell you with my gifts what you want, only that you do want.” One hand stroked, gently, over the soft shirt and hard muscles of his back. “If I were to guess, I would say you want what you have always wanted. To be seen, and wanted, as you truly are. To be believed in, and desired for yourself. Oh, darling.”