We're All Mad Here
A Thor, Norse Mythology Fanfiction
Dis/claimer: Thor characters and events belong to Marvel. Norse Myths are part of the public domain, which belong to everyone (and that includes me! Ha!).
A/N- Born from a prompt off of norsekink on LJ that would not get out of my head. These kinkmemes will be the end of me.
The prompt:
Ragnarok doesn't come. Fenrir slips his chains, Jormungandr leaves the sea, but Ragnarok doesn't come.
Eventually Thor finds a way into the cave where Loki was being punished-and finds a blind, gibbering thing on a makeshift throne, making bizarre pronouncements to his wife and children. The God of Mischief is the God of Madness now...
The Story:
The bowl was steady in her hands, for she had learned patience, and moving would slosh the venom over fingers and scar the skin to the bone. She could have -should have- left. But the snake did not move, enchanted as it was, and so nor did she. Besides, Sigyn mused, all she had left was here. The remains of her child she hadn't the time to mourn anywhere but her heart, and the run-away husband that had brought ruin to everything he touched. It was madness that she stay, they said, madness that she even cared. Even as far down as they were, buried deep within crust of Midgard, she could hear the whispers picked up by Ratatoskr and carried by the howling winds to their cave.
"Why are you still here?" Her husband whispered, tired, refusing to look at her.
"I am your wife." She stated, frowning as the level of venom in the bowl rose. It would need to be emptied soon. She wished she'd had the presence of mind to take up a jug, or a bucket, but everything had happened so fast and it was all there was at hand...
She tried not to think of her sweet Vali, transformed by an angry, rushed word, and his state of mind. Trapped in a body he did not understand, followed by guilt of an action not his own...
She repeated her statement, firm. "I am your wife." Loki had expressed his dislike of her time and again, but he had given her children, beautiful, handsome boys, and had loved them with her. He had doted on them, as much as she. Her heart ached as his prophecy came true.
"I told you they wouldn't let us keep them." Loki whispered, and as she shifted her feet, carefully moving the bowl, the bound god grew still and silent. The venom hissed more than the snake it came from as the acidic liquid trickled down his face, bubbling, gouging tracks. Sigyn dumped her bowl, carefully, and returned to her post with the assured patience of a glacier. The room smelled of rotten meat -the eternally discomposing flesh of her child- but all she could think of was the green of the serpent's dripping venom. It matched Loki's eyes. He blinked back blood and tears, focusing on her. "I am the mother of monsters. All that comes from my womb is tainted."
Sigyn felt her own eyes harden like the rocks that surrounded them. "They did not come from your womb, husband."
Loki laughed, short and corrosive. It grated against Sigyn's skull. "My loins then. Every child, every one, I have ever had is a monster."
"Not mine."
"No. No they weren't." His voice turned back to a hush. "But they are, now. The Bölverkr saw to that."
They shared the silence and misery, two statues among the dark and damp. The venom came. The bowl filled. Sigyn walked away to dump it in the chasm and returned to the victim of the fates. But he never cried out. As always, there was a quiet strength to him that could not be forced. He was change, a force of nature, the bubbling stream with raging, unseen torrents underneath.
"Shall I tell you a secret, loyal Sigyn?"
"You, sharing secrets?" She bantered back, for what else was there for her to do?
He smiled, and it was brittle. "I don't want the world to end." He head rocked to the side, cheek pressed into the rock as he pouted. "My children are here." He rattled the slimy, enchanted entrails of their Narfi. "If Ragnarök comes, everyone dies. They die. Jörmungandr, Sleipnir, every one..."
"Vali." Sigyn breathed, heart screaming. Even half-mad as he was, he was still alive. Still hers. Out there, somewhere.
"Vali." Loki echoed. "I do not wish to end the worlds."
"No one wants that, husband."
"Do they? Do they really? I sometimes wonder..." Loki trailed off, and as his body began to shudder Sigyn startled and checked her bowl, but no. The venom was still caught, and Loki was as fine as he ever would be in the prison. Quiet laughter. "They expect me to break free, you know, not even blood ties are indefinite."
"I expect they do."
"They wish me to seek revenge. They have foreseen it, for who would not seek vengeance for the death of their child? So it was done for Baldur, so I shall do for Narfi. So they believe."
Sigyn said nothing. She herself was within rights to seek out Thor and extract blood payment, she was the mother, but she could never best the Thunderer in combat and Loki was her husband. And her child was still here, holding his father in place, however unwilling his frozen spirit.
"Why are you still here, Sigyn?"
She closed her eyes and exhaled. "I am your wife." Arranged though it may have been. A futile attempt to chain the trickster and curb his attentions.
"My wife." He seemed to find it funny. "Am I your lord, whom you've sworn to obey?"
"Yes."
"No sane man would let this insult go unpunished." Loki whispered, and his words were heavy with something that crawled down Sigyn's back. "Drop the bowl."
Sigyn startled, and sucked in a breath as the poison damped her fingers. "What?"
"I do not wish to lead my children to their deaths. Drop. The. Bowl."
Sigyn stumbled back, the clay bowl tumbling from her hands as she did so, watching the snake wreath in something like ecstasy as it's venom soaked her husband's face. The liquid pooled over his eyes, turning a sick, puss filled yellow, and Loki twitched and whimpered. Yet he did not scream. He did not thrash in pain as expected. He keened high when the pain grew too much. Sigyn stepped back until she hit the rough wall of the cave. The broken bits of bowl sizzled in the pool of spilled venom, and she finally understood.
She mourned, tears spilling wantonly from her eyes, and beat the ground with her fists. This was why they were left unattended. One could not witness such a thing and think it right. Blood and pus and skin bubbled together, a cauldron of the flesh, and through it all Loki shivered limply, embracing the pain like an old lover. With no reprieve he would go mad from it. And he ordered her no reprieve...
"No sane man." She choked through her tears.
It took years -decades- but eventually he broke, and her husband's cries echoed through the chambers in a symphony.
Sigyn danced to the music, offering what comfort she could with the energy of her spirit, and with each kick of her feet the earth quaked.