Author's Note: Hey. So it's, uh...been a while. Several years, to be exact, and I still can't ever manage to wrap my mind around the reception that Sága received when it was posted, and continues to receive. I can't tell you how grateful I am to everyone who read and reviewed that story of mine, and helped me to become the writer I am today.

I saw Thor: Ragnarok the other day, and realized that, while I haven't written much for the character in so long, I wasn't quite done with Sághildr, and she isn't done with me. I had to do something, had to get it written down. I have several strong ideas of where I want this to go, but it isn't totally mapped out in my head yet, and my life looks very different today than it did when I was publishing the original story. I can't make much guarantee for the promptness of updates, but...we'll see what happens.

Anyway. If you read, please review and let me know what you think. And thank you.

Chapter One: Beyond Yggdrasil

Before the Other Lands, the thought of exile would have ruined her. For a thousand years, she had striven to assert her right to belong in her father's country. To waste all those centuries, all her efforts, all she had so long desired... Once, that would have been unfathomable. But time seemed of little consequence, once you'd gone without it.

The convergence had changed everything—or, at least, her relationship to it. The æther had taken her somewhere...new. It had taken her somewhere very, very old.

The land beyond Yggdrasil had been expansive, to say the least; even her keen eyesight could not see to the end of it. But the fabric of space was as thin, there, as that of time. She wandered for an eternity, never tired, never hungry, hurtling through any portal she came across in the desperate belief that—somewhere—one would take her to a place that she could recognize. And when the fear set in that her mind, jumbled as it was by her journeys across that wretched land, might fail to remember her own universe, she had taken matters into her own hands.

A fit of despair had revealed that she could not bleed there; and so she had taken the sharp rock with which she'd intended to end her trek, and carved her memories into her arms—the gleaming city of Asgard, the towering New York skyline, the ruin of Jotunheim, fiery Muspelheim, golden Nidavellir against darkened Svartalfheim...and Vanaheim, where she fell through the final portal and landed face-first in a wooded river, certain for one unspeakably wretched moment that she had found her way back, after all that searching, only to immediately drown.

But she had heard her father's voice say, "Get up," and she had stood, and then fallen to her knees, but her head had still been above the shallow water.

She looked, and looked again. "...Papa..?" she croaked—she had rarely used her voice in the Other Lands, as she'd had nothing to speak to—and the white light spilled from her lips and coursed along her skin, healing the cuts she'd made before the water could carry away too much of the blood that now flowed freely. "Papa, why can I not see you?"

"Much has happened, elskan mín."

Her vision swam, her father's magic pouring into her. When she opened her eyes, she was kneeling in a dark cavern, her father before her; she reached out to touch him, but her hands passed through like mist. She could yet feel the waters flowing around her. This was merely a vision.

Even so—in her journey away, she had nearly forgotten his face. She allowed her eyes to have their fill, determined never again to lose him from her memory.

"Sághildr," he called, and she shuddered.

"That—" She shook her head, not knowing when she'd started crying. "That is my name!"

"Oh, my Sága..." He reached out as if to hold her, but she was no more tangible than he. "Yes, my girl. You are Sághildr, daughter of Heimdall and of your mother Eira, guardian of Midgard—"

But she shook her head, reeling back from the vision, peering through it from her place in the river, trying to find him where he was speaking to her. "Papa, why can I not see you? Why are you not on the bridge? Why do you not bring me to you?"

He shook his head. "I am sorry, my girl, to use your own magic against you. No one must know my location, not even you. It is not safe. You may not return to Asgard, nor can I come to you. Much has happened." He stood slowly, and she followed, and the magic shifted, and they were both standing in the river, and her father was pointing downstream. "Follow the water," he told her, though his voice came from very far away. "The Vanir will take you in, and keep you safe."

But she swayed in the water, and shook her head, still searching through the realms.

There was a ring on her finger. There was a man with big, brown eyes and warm, gentle hands, who had given it to her. "Bruce," she remembered—she had carved the name into her wrist. "Papa, why can I not see him? Where is Bruce?"

Her father turned to her, tried to touch her again. "I am sorry, my Sága. He was lost through another tear in the universe. We think he was looking for you."

"No." She shook her head, her body. She scrambled out of the river, fell upon the dewy shore. She pressed her face into the grass and screamed.

"Sága, please," her father called. "You have been through an ordeal I cannot fathom. You must rest, but you cannot stay here. Komdu, elskan mín."

This could not be the life she had left. She lifted herself up on her forearms and turned to look at him, a frigid horror creeping into her chest. "How do I know, papa? What if this is...the wrong universe, the wrong...version? What if I came through the wrong portal?!"

The man with her father's face came to sit beside her, and sighed. "I...do not know, Sághildr. Perhaps this is not where you came from. Perhaps you are not the daughter that was lost to me. But if you are not, then I can only hope there is another Heimdall who has found her, making certain that she is safe. And I would owe it to your Heimdall to do the same for you."

With a final sob, she sat up, staring down at her hands, her arms. The magic had healed her cuts, but the lines remained, pale scars stark against brown skin. She gripped her bald scalp—she had used strands of her own hair, tied around bare branches, to mark the way she had come through a dense and endless forest, running out of hair long before she ever found the portal that freed her of that lonely place.

But she was home now.

Or, at least, as close as she was likely to come. Maybe there was another tear in the universe somewhere, one that could take her to a Yggdrasil that was no different than the one she had left. But there was no guarantee she would ever find it, and she was here now, and so was her father, and somewhere in the folds of space and time there was a man who had given a woman a ring, and she owed it to her to find him and bring him home.

She lurched to her feet, rubbed her knuckles against tired eyes, and turned to look along the river. "Just...follow the water?"

"You will be safe there," Heimdall assured her. "You must keep yourself hidden, even from me. But not forever, I promise you."

She laughed; she could not remember how her laughter had sounded before, but even so it sounded loud and harsh and bitter. "Forever? There is no such thing."

She had been in the Other Lands for an eternity. In Yggdrasil, she had been gone for two years.

The river led her to one of the cities of Vanaheim, and to a familiar face; Hogun's, his eyes still glowing with the golden light of her father's sight. What Heimdall had told him, she could not know—never before had she understood the frustration she caused her father whenever she hid herself from his sight—but Hogun had taken her in, and kept her safe, as promised.

He told her much of what had happened in her absence: of the funeral held for Prince Loki, of Thor's departure on a quest for answers, of the way the Allfather's good sense had deteriorated in the absence of his wife and sons...and of the charge of treason leveled against the now-fugitive Heimdall and his daughter.

The Allfather knew her magic, could easily sense it if she came near. Were she to set foot upon Asgard's golden shores, the price would be imprisonment, or exile, or worse.

She had been unable to access her magic in the Other Lands. Sághildr would not allow the old man to take it from her now that it had returned, nor ever again.

Her days on Vanaheim were quiet and simple, and there was much in that to be grateful for. She had not realized the true value of suns and moons that rose and set, nor of days and nights that came and went on the same circuit, over and over again. There were birds that sang the morning's arrival, and winds that blew sweet smells and cool breezes, and trees that shed their leaves and fruits. There were things to hear and see and smell and taste and touch, ever different, ever the same, and she found pleasure in both the complex and the familiar.

On her second day back, Hogun had journeyed to Asgard, and returned with a few of her old clothes, some books, and her father's pipe. She rarely went out during the day—the Vanir were still loyal to the throne of Asgard, and there was no telling what would happen if she were to be recognized—but she knew how to hide herself in the dark, and the night was her own. She'd taken to sitting on Hogun's roof, to smoke and stare at the stars, watching her old friends, searching for her lover.

Some nights, her vision would swim, and an image of her father would join her. He would tell her the same bad jokes; "I see you're keeping my pipe warm for me," and, "If your mother knew I let you smoke, well...she'd forgive me, but I would not deserve it." But he never told her not to; more than anything, he seemed only to want to speak of mamma. They would sit beneath the stars and tell stories of Eira Jónsdottir, and of Sága's childhood in Kópavogur. There were many gaps in her memory, things her mind had been unable to hold onto; but those quiet nights with Heimdall helped her to put the pieces together, to recreate the image of the woman she had been before.

Three months passed, and she knew there was little more she could gain from staying here, and only greater risk for her host if he were to be discovered sheltering her. She packed her things, both pleased and distressed to find that all she had could fit so neatly into such a small bag, and went to thank Hogun for helping her.

"You were always my favorite of Thor's friends," she told him softly, the words childishly sentimental even to her own ears, but he had smiled in return.

"I am sorry that we were not better friends to you, when given the chance."

"You have more than made up for it now. Thank you for helping me find my way."

"And where will you go? What will you do?"

"I will find Bruce Banner," she told him, as much a promise as an answer. "I will search as long as it takes."

He had bowed his head at that, still smiling. "Then I wish you a shorter journey than the one that brought you to me. Take care, Sághildr."

"And you, Hogun," she called, and let the magic of her voice whirl around her.

She had not used her magic for such a distance since her return. This time, when the magic took her...

Sághildr opened her eyes. She saw the iridescent sky, the Great Tree, the desolate expanse she had wandered for an eternity...

And she saw the roads.

Her magic had not worked in the Other Lands. But here she stood, and there it glowed, coursing through the landscape, arcing through the roots and branches of Yggdrasil, as white against the dark wood as the scars upon her arms, leading her anywhere she wanted to go.

This place had nearly destroyed her, but she had overcome. Now, it waited for her, just beyond the Nine Realms, with baited breath and open arms, like an old friend.

She knelt down, placed her hand upon the road beneath her, and knew it was the one she needed. She closed her eyes, and smiled.