For Asgard!

"Undoubtedly. And I can be very persuasive, I think," Loki said, smirking up at Sif. The remark on carrying her to safety was a tease, nothing more; the idea of having to rescue Sif, ever, was highly amusing just for its unlikeliness. Covering her back in a fight was one thing - they had all done that for one another, in their long companionship - but actually needing to come to her aid was something else. Sif had a keen warrior's instinct, that ability to understand everything that was going on around her. Loki himself was quick, fierce, intelligent and self-aware, and even he knew that in understanding the move and flow of the battlefield, like waves of the ocean, was something Sif clearly outstripped him in. In matter of fact, he had a high opinion of her skills, and felt that in those respects she was a more honed warrior than Thor, but he was not about to voice that.

"Maybe their rushing about is a good thing," he mused. "Our own people do suffer from an epidemic of stasis. Never changing, never learning; we have all the time in the world, but still never enough." He closed his eyes, enjoying, for a moment, the sunlight, but also because when Sif brought up Thor he had to laugh in an unpleasant way, and it was easier to hide how deep his disagreement was. "I hope I don't sound like him," he said. "His ideas are too rooted to the ground, and he is eternally stubborn, lazy in his thinking, but his emotions? I wish my own heart were so fluid, sometimes, but perhaps it is easier in the long run to not fall for every pretty face I meet. Those unlucky few can stay as a few."

Not to mention the fact that, really - with Sif around, most women didn't stand much of a chance. It wasn't that he was stuck on any feelings about her, though her presence was exacerbating emotions he thought long dead - it was that when he remembered how he felt for Sif, the idea of feeling that for anyone else because highly improbable to him. So difficult and painful; he preferred the coolness of being alone.

"I think many things of Ruby, but since she has not made her own discoveries yet, it would be in poor taste to voice my suspicions to you, yes?" he said, opening his eyes finally, shading them from sunlight with his hand. "Ow," he added, since she had poked him. Not that it actually hurt.