Chapter One

Sigyn crushed another spider beneath her water bottle as it scurried across her nightstand, the third one of its kind to meet such a fate that evening, before wiping the remains off with a napkin. The bed she sat cross legged on was stiff and creaked with each movement, and the television screen flickered occasionally. She chose this motel for its location, the lack of sober guests who might recognize her, and that the clerk had barely looked at her when she came in. She was a ghost here, invisible, which was exactly what she wanted.

The sound barely worked on the television, but when the picture was clear the news was still showing the damage she's done at one of the bridges. It had been an accident really. Had her spell worked, she could have jumped into the swirling vortex in the river and left this realm behind with the only damage being done to a couple confused and misplaced fish. But her spell had failed and left part of the bridge cracked. No one was hurt, but the bridge was closed which was causing a small uproar. Construction was taking too long as crews were stretched thin cleaning up the damage caused by other 'superheroes'. The clock tower an electrical grid Spiderman, Electro and Harry had destroyed was still being repaired, and there were sections of New York that still bore scars from her husband's attack two years ago.

This realm wasn't safe for her. That the All-Father had trapped her here for her exile was tantamount to a death sentence. S.H.I.E.L.D. HYDRA. The Avengers. Spiderman. Various world governments. There was no shortage of prison guards to watch her, and deal with her if need be. She thought of returning to Norway; she and Loki had a cottage by one of the fjords. It was old, they hadn't been there for centuries, but it would be quiet and at least as close to 'home' as she could get. Pride however had ended that idea long ago. She would not be made into a hermit, cowering in the mountains. Besides, strange women living alone in the forests would attract more attention than one single woman in a metropolis.

The news showed the clock tower where Spiderman fought Harry. It only made mention of Electro, and named him the killer of this Gwen Stacy girl. Oscorp, in looking out for its bottom line, had covered up Harry's involvement. And with the extent to which the spider venom had damaged him, he wouldn't have been easily recognizable.

Sigyn pulled the newspaper article that mentioned him out of her bag. She'd left him in Ravencroft for both their sakes, back when she thought she could get off this realm. Now that she couldn't, the guilt at the thought of him sitting alone in that place crept in. And if she was being honest with herself...he was the reason she hadn't found another city to hide in. She could help him, teach him to control his abilities rather than have him fend for himself. The All-Father had condemned her to solitude, and Harry had been sentenced to a life of isolation, and Sigyn was determined that neither of them would suffer those fates.


His veins felt like they were on fire, and his skin felt like it would crack and split. Even his tears burned his eyes as he screamed his throat raw. He was going to die, he realized; the venom was going to dissolve him from the inside.

"Shhhhh," a voice said from above him, as his body stopped writhing as though it had been issued a command. Fingers combed through his hair, a touch as gentle as the voice that spoke. "It's alright, little goblin." Their face was blurred, like looking up from under water, and he was slowly moving towards the surface.

Harry opened his eyes to a throbbing headache and groaned. His dreams had been weird ever since she showed up but this was new. Usually when he saw her she was a fleeting fragment, not interactive. Nor had he ever awoken with such a headache.

"Hello, Harry." That same voice from his dream spoke to him again and for a moment he thought he was still dreaming. He nearly rolled off his bed and scrambled to sit upright. She was on the other side of the bars, her face partially obscured by her hood. Still, he knew that voice.

"I didn't think I'd see you again, fairy godmother."

"Things have changed, so I thought I'd pay you a visit."

A visit. So she was going to leave him in this god-forsaken prison again. "Not much has changed except my cell. Ever since you last showed up, they feel the need to put me in a smaller cage."

"So I've noticed. Would you like to be free of it?"

Harry knew one day he would escape Ravencroft. Either Fiers would get him out or he'd gain enough control of his transformation to fight his way out. But he never imagined he'd be out in under a year. He slid off the bed and approached the bars. "What?"

"Unless of course you like this shoebox they've placed you in."

"No." Freedom was so close it was making his head spin. "You've got to get me out of here." Her hand came through the bars and cupped his cheek. "Please, I can't stay here."

"Be patient just a while longer, little goblin. I swear, in a few hours you will walk out of here."

She was gone just as suddenly as she had appeared, and if it weren't for the lingering touch on his cheek he would have sworn she never was there. His heart beat wildly in his chest and he had to stifle the manic laughter threatening to burst past his lips.

However, his euphoria was short lived. Each second felt like an hour, each minute another day. Pacing back and forth in his cell made him agitated, but he would bounce and tremble if he sat still for too long. He wished she had told him even part of the plan; anything would be better than this limbo she put him in.

"Mr. Osborn." The guard gave him no time to answer before the barred door slid open. "The director will see you now."

The new director was some interim whose name Harry hadn't bothered learning, though now he was wishing he had as the guard walked him through the complex. His visions of freedom crumbled with each step. Had Sigyn been discovered? Was she in a cell of her own or worse? If she was and they had found her his treatment would be worse.

The interim director was a tall, slightly pudgy man with curly brown hair and a receding hairline who was hunched over the papers on his desk. One of the doctors stood next to him, looking at the papers on his desk as well as his own tablet.

"It seems your time with us has come to an end, Mr. Osborn." Harry may have never met the man but there was a distant quality to his tone, as though he was merely ordering a new shipment of meds. "You're free to go."

"What?"

"Your godmother is here to take you home."

He hadn't noticed her sitting in the corner though with the black wide brimmed hat she was wearing he should have. The hat still partially hid her face but he could still see her lips curved into a smirk. She rose and walked over to him in one fluid motion, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Ready?" He nodded; questions were best saved for late.

He didn't have much in the way of personal effects, just the pair of jeans and boots he'd been wearing that night, so he was given a fresh, plain white t-shirt to wear. His hands shook the entire time he was changing, fumbling and struggling as though he'd never dressed himself before. There was no telling how long Sigyn's...whatever the hell she had done...would last and the last thing he wanted was guards busting, guns pointed at him, while his pants were down. When he was done, he found Sigyn just outside the door. "One more thing." She pulled something out of her purse, a pendant secured on a bit of cord, and slipped it over his head. "Family heirloom."

It wasn't Harry's first time being bailed out and escorted out of jail, but it was the most intense. He was certain that at any moment, one of the guards would notice him and drag him back to his cell. Sigyn, meanwhile, looked completely at ease.

"Keep your head up, little goblin," she whispered. "Look like you don't belong here and no one will suspect a thing."

Once they were outside, past the large main gates and free, Harry quickly fell in step with Sigyn as she walked down the sidewalk into the heart of the city. Every few paces he had to check to make sure no one was trailing them.

"No one's coming, relax."

"Well can we at least get off the main roads? Go down an alley or something? Somebody's bound to notice me."

"So long as you wear that pendant, no one will recognize you."

He held the pendant between two fingers, a flat disc of hematite etched with symbols he didn't understand. "Can you at least tell me where we're going then, or what our plan is?"

"So full of questions," She answered with a calm smile. "First, we get lunch."


Charmed amulet or not, Harry still fidgeted and glanced around the room, noting the exits and looking for anyone who might be watching them. Sigyn was still as calm as ever, sipping on her tea and looking like she'd done no more than gone shopping.

"Alright, I gotta know. How'd you do it? How'd you get me out without a single shot fired?" he whispered.

"You are fortunate your company kept your involvement out of the media as much as they could." She sipped her tea once more. "Your computer systems are primitive; it didn't take much to erase your medical records from Ravencroft, and I erased your involvement from police records. After that it was simply a matter of altering a few memories. By nightfall, no one who works there will remember you."

"You...did all of that in a few hours?"

She nodded. "It's time consuming but not difficult."

A waiter came by the table and Sigyn ordered enough food for the both of them. The T.V. over the pub's bar had the news on, flipping between a pair of news anchors at their desk and images of a bridge with a chunk taken out of its side. It had caused quite the buzz at Ravencroft; there was concern that, if it was more than someone with a few sticks of dynamite, they wouldn't be able to contain them at the facility. Still, for all the talk, he'd never imagined how much damage there'd be.

"That's insane," he murmured, not realizing he'd said it out loud.

The waiter turned and looked at the television. "I still can't believe it. My cousin lives over in that end of town and she said the traffic is terrible now with people trying to avoid the bridge."

"At least she's alive," Sigyn said.

"That's the weird thing. If you're trying to cause chaos, why do it in the middle of the night when there's practically no one on the bridge?"

"Who knows the inner workings of a madman?"

"Yeah, really. Anyway, I'll put these orders in for you."

Sigyn wouldn't look at him or the T.V. "Was that...?" he whispered once the waiter was gone.

"An accident. Had it worked, there would've been no damage."

Harry didn't ask what it was that was supposed to have worked. His memory of their last visit was coming back in sharper pieces. She had talked about moving on; I will go wherever the Fates take me. "So why'd you come back? Not that I'm not grateful you got me out, but I never expected to see you again."

She stirred her tea, carefully mulling over her words. "I made a mistake wiping your memories and leaving you in that cell. I thought I was keeping you safe from both of our enemies. But the more I thought about it, the more wrong it felt to leave you behind."

It felt like there was a pebble lodged in Harry's throat when he swallowed. He'd spent so long being dumped and abandoned that his chest physically hurt at the thought of her coming back for him. "Yeah, but from the way you were talking, it sounded like you weren't even going to be on the same realm...planet...anymore."

"My plans changed."

"Because of me?"

"You and other things." He tracked her glance to the T.V., still focused on the bridge story. "For better or worse, Midgard is my home for the foreseeable future. And I don't think either of us has much in the way of friends right now."

"Friends." He hadn't considered anyone a friend since Peter and that had ended in disaster. Fiers wasn't one either; he was at best an associate and ever since his first meeting with Sigyn something about the man had unsettled him. Maybe it was because he'd never seen the man's face, or because the more he talked the more he felt like a cog in someone else's machine. A way into Oscorp's vaults. Sigyn had at least tried to help him. One of the runes behind his ear itched and he scratched at it. "Will you help with...this...whatever you did to control my disease?"

"Of course," she answered with a smile. "What kind of fairy godmother would I be if I didn't?"

He looked down at the table, trying to hide the fact that he was grinning. "Don't know where we'll go though. I'm pretty sure Oscorp sold my apartment and all my assets."

"An apartment is the easiest thing to replace," she said with a wave of her hand. The waiter came back with their food, and Harry's mouth started to water. Food at Ravencroft had been scarce and tasted like shit. His stomach growled, but he forced himself not to scarf his sandwich. Last thing he felt like doing was throwing up. There was a brief look of compassion in Sigyn's eyes before she continued. "What I need to know is who's still a threat. Who else knows about you?"

"Menken. I didn't get a chance to kill him. He was there when I..." He remembered the needle pricking his skin, that brief moment of sheer joy and hope that he might just be cured before it crashed in an instant. His hand trembled as he recalled the pain shooting through his veins.

The memory stopped when Sigyn placed her hand on his. "It's alright, Harry. I'll take care of Menken. Is there anyone else?"

"I'm sure he has cronies that will back him."

"Well, we'll see how long that lasts. Do you care about what happens to Menken?"

He shook his head. "Do what needs to be done."

The smile she gave was slight and deadly, promising blood and vengeance. And Harry would be lying if he wasn't just a little bit comforted by it.