Prologue: Have You Forgotten?
…
The Bus, near the California/Nevada border.
"I understand you're looking for someone," Coulson said, grateful to return to the matter at hand, and leave the subject of his rise from the dead for another day.
"I am hunting her," said Lady Sif. "Lorelei."
Lorelei. The name still had the power to make her heart sink into her stomach, and she clenched her fist so that her sword hand would not tremble. It was 600 years since the events that had bred a generation of mourners throughout the nine realms, herself included, but anger lives long among those whose lives seem an eternity to the adolescent peoples of the worlds. On her tongue the name would always taste of bitterness and betrayal.
"What kind of powers are we talking about?" asked one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, a man whose form spoke of skill in combat and whose face spoke of nothing. "Strength? Speed?"
Sif shook her head. "Sorcery. She bends and shapes the will of men to her own purpose."
"Only men? Her powers don't work on women?" A female agent, in whom Sif recognized her own fierce determination. And perhaps some of her own pain.
"No. Men have an inherent weakness we do not share." The female agent nodded; to her this was plainly self-evident. But doubt flickered in the face of the male agent. Even as she explained that the strongest of men could resist Lorelei's voice but never her touch, Sif could sense this man's complacent certainty that he would never surrender control of his own mind. He was trained, no doubt, to withstand great pain, physical and psychological torture, and all the ingenious tools that Midgardians had developed to make others speak and perform their bidding. His every bone might break, but he was certain his mind would not.
Haldor thought the same. Another name that still conjured the pain of half a millennia ago. Haldor had been too proud to be cautious, too dutiful to fear for himself, and, yes, too stubborn to admit the full extent of the danger that faced them all. Perhaps he had even imagined that love might protect him, that Lorelei's arrows of enchantment would bounce harmlessly off a heart shielded by the love that he and Sif shared.
The last time she had seen him he had looked at her with sorrow in his eyes and, worse, with a profound pity. That was the true cruelty of Lorelei's sorcery—that it left men so unchanged despite their newfound loyalty and devotion to her. Haldor had remained as brave and as generous and as thoughtful as he had ever been, and his guilt over the pain he caused Sif was real, though no amount of it could persuade him to leave Lorelei's side. In almost every way he had still been Haldor, the man who had sworn his love to her with all the quiet passion of a man whose emotions run slow but deep. And with sorrow in his eyes he had drawn his sword against her and promised to cut her down if she threatened harm to Lorelei.
No, she couldn't do this. Not now. Resolutely, Sif pushed these memories aside, and focused on explaining to Phil Coulson and his team how her enemy might be silenced once again.
...
On the whole, her prison cell had been far more comfortable. In the spare elegance of the room to which she had been confined for 600 years, it had almost been possible to imagine that she was living a life of voluntary asceticism and contemplation.
Now, in the first days of her long-awaited freedom, her situation had barely improved, and some might say it had worsened. The dark musty hole that Rooster called a bar was only another kind of prison, a miserable island amidst a vast ocean of dead, brown hills. Was she to be ruler of this wasteland, an insignificant queen ant of a fragile sand hill, populated by a few scruffy men in leather?
This Nevada, as Rooster called it, seemed already to have been washed clean by plagues. What was there to destroy in this land of nothingness?
A sound like many small explosions suddenly broke through the stale air.
"What is that?" Lorelei demanded impatiently.
"Well, it seems we've caught the attention of the law," Rooster said with a note of concern in his voice.
She turned swiftly and met his eye. "You promised to fight for me," she reminded him in a soft voice, and she felt the strength of her power over him tighten.
"Yeah, and I will," he said edgily. "But they got a lot of firepower out there. I mean, hell, they even got some Medieval Times chick. She's got, like, a sword and everything."
More than one of Rooster's words were meaningless to her, but Lorelei understood enough to know immediately who it was dogging her footsteps once again after all these years.
"Sif," she said with an angry grimace, but inside she was less certain of her emotions. On the one hand, it was more than possible that Sif had come with every intention of finishing her off completely. She did not expect mercy should things turn sour this time, least of all from Sif.
On the other hand, what good were victories, plunder, destruction and power, if they did not come at Sif's expense? It was right that the loyal Asgardian shieldmaiden should be there to bear witness and to suffer over what she had wrought, since, were it not for her, none of this would have happened.
The door exploded inwards, the cheap plastic blinds rattling widely against the glass, and Sif marched inside the dusty bar. She wore armor Lorelei had never seen but otherwise she was unchanged, from the length of her dark brown hair to her long and confident strides. Lorelei tasted blood in her mouth, and realized that she was biting down fiercely on the inside of her cheek.
"Lorelei," said Sif coldly. "Still manipulating men to do your dirty work, I see."
"And I see you're still a step or two behind," Lorelei responded with a condescending smile.
"You know how this ends, Lorelei. So come willingly."
Come willingly? She would have come willingly enough, once. She had been Sif's to command, once. How dare she speak those words to her now? How dare she order her in that cool way, like one orders a recalcitrant child? How dare Sif be so business-like, as though this were just another job and not the first time in 600 years she had been face to face with the woman whose story had briefly been her story, before the tale had splintered into jagged pieces that tore at them both?
"You mistake me for someone who fears you," Lorelei snarled. "I've bested you before. Or have you forgotten?"
Have you forgotten, Sif? Have you forgotten any of it? Have you forgotten what we once shared?