Author's Note: This is my first foray into the Loki-fandom and my happy return to the fanfiction world after taking a six month break to deal with some serious health issues. While it appears that my health is not going to improve any time soon, that doesn't mean I can't be my old nerdy self in the meantime. ^_^
As I mentioned, this is my first Loki-fic. Although I am an enthusiastic (if new) fan of the God of Mischief, I'm still learning the basics of Marvel canon, so any gross errors are my fault and mine alone. Likewise, I am not a native of Stuttgart and although Wikipedia has given me a rough idea of what the Schlossplatz looks like, please pardon any geographical blunders I've made in my prose.
Lastly, the title is a reference to Macbeth's famous soliloquy that occurs in the Fifth Act of the Shakespearean play. While Sigyn herself isn't exactly Lady Macbeth, she will share some of her husband's malicious ambition in this fic. :)
Thanks so much for reading!
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of the characters and storylines associated with Marvel's Avenger comics and film.
Prologue
Stuttgart, Germany
The couple arrived at the gala twenty minutes after eight. They were casually late and on foot, emerging from the general direction of the Schlossplatz, which was crowded with the usual overflow of tourists taking pictures of the Neues Schloss. On the front steps to the museum they lingered with the other tardy guests, a crowd of lavishly-dressed if not slightly older selection of the museum's dedicated patrons and benefactors. It was a midsummer night. Delicately warm. The air had been thickened with the mingled scent of women's perfume and the deeper musk of the exhaust spewed by the cabs idling up and down the King Street. It would have been unusual, therefore, for any particular person in the mixed throng of gala attendees and tourists to be singled out. It would have been strange, of course, for anyone to notice the discreet couple. In fact, the field reporter who would interview several of the gala's guests the next morning, after it was all over, could only get a single, stuttered sound byte from a shaken lady named Adelaide Gotte.
"I had stopped on the steps…there," she would indicate, pointing to a space of brass railing. "I was putting on my lipstick, you know, I was checking myself in my compact mirror and they happened to walk past me. Them! I wonder why I didn't realize then. They looked just like us, I mean. How could…how could they possibly not have been human?"
The footage from various security cameras posted throughout the Schlossplatz and one grainy cell phone video agreed with Frau Gotte. The couple was unremarkable, even when viewed from every angle, even when their heavily pixilated faces were printed across the front pages of almost every major newspaper the world over. A man and a woman. A husband and his wife, one assumed, from the way the man gripped his companion's arm as they passed into the museum. There was a suited doorman who showed them in, security for the gala being conveniently low. A few Stuttgart police officers were stationed throughout the square to direct traffic flow. There were no politicians expected at the evening's celebrations, only a smattering of art critics, the museum's board of directors and a select group of patrons that included (the now late) physicist Dr. Heinrich Schafer.
It would be said, later, after it was all over, that the couple had been allowed to walk right into the building. Impudently. Brazenly. Together, they had walked straight through the front doors.
Once inside the museum, the man and the woman threaded their way through the crowded vestibule under the large Impressionistic era paintings that hung on either side of the information desk. Something from Degas. Not his ballerinas. The museum at Stuttgart was well-funded, but certainly not the Louvre.
The bulk of the guests had congregated in the level below the lobby. The caterers were already serving a selection of wine. A stringed quartet played a chamber piece that accentuated the polite, measured chatter of the crowd. No one cared to look at the couple as they descended the staircase to the sunken atrium. No one saw them, of course, until it was entirely too late.
At the bottom of the staircase, the couple paused. The man was easily over six feet. He wore a trim suit, a patterned silk scarf and carried a walking stick that might have seemed out of place if glanced at for more than a few seconds. The woman was also tall and broad-shouldered. She had a blunt face, her coarse hair pulled back sharply from her forehead, not styled, not shaped, but restrained in one long braid. She wore a blue evening gown with a matching bolero jacket.
By the time the man and the woman reached the atrium, Dr. Schafer and his wife were being introduced to the architect who had just been commissioned to extend the East Wing that fall. It was a project Dr. Schafer had expressed enthusiasm for, was even considering funding. Later on, in a few months time, after it was all over, the new East Wing would be unveiled, bearing Dr. Schafer's name and a memorial plaque in his honor. Because what happened that night, in Stuttgart, at the gala, what happened that night was not meant to be forgotten.
The assault was initialized by a serious of quick, planned movements made by the man and his wife. At the bottom of the staircase they separated. She walked around the left side of a roped off statue of two bulls and the man walked to the right. With one deft flick of his walking stick, the man raised the heavy-end of the cane and pummeled the chattering architect. The woman snatched Dr. Schafer's wife from his side and threw her to the floor.
Someone screamed. The stringed quartet did not realize and kept on playing. The man grabbed Dr. Schafer, lifting him up onto the hammered gold surface between the heads of the two bulls. In the coroner's office, the next morning, after it was all over, Dr. Schafer's wife would be assured by the medical examiner that her husband had been knocked unconscious by the blow, that he didn't feel what came next…
"It's his eye you need," Sigyn said. "Barton said the eye."
Loki grinned up at her. "Only the one?" he asked, slipping the extractor from his pocket and clamping it into place over Schafer's face.
Sigyn pretended to look away in disgust as the device dug greedily into the flimsy skin around Schafer's eye socket. As she glanced to the side, she saw Mrs. Schafer whimpering on the floor at her feet.
"We women," Sigyn said with a desolate sort of sigh, "what we endure for our husbands."
