Sorry for the delay; I had to clean my boyfriend's room all day because he was being lazy playing "Shogun 2". I never want to hang a shirt up again... Enjoy!
By the way, I don't own anything of "Thor", only my story and my writing.
The more Loki thought about it, the more it seemed that the people he wished to talk to the most were the ones that were always retreating from him. He had left the conference room feeling more frustrated then he had in such a long time...
Obviously Sigyn did not wish to see him, but a part of him wished that she wanted it more than anything else so that he could feel like he had actually been forgiven rather than dismissed like a child who had just done something so stupid that his parent could not look at him.
Trying to bury the feeling of being walked out on, Loki decided to go to the one place he had thought about every minute since the last time he was in Vanaheim: the beautiful gardens on the outskirts of the gulf just beyond the palace.
Not wanting to wait at all, Loki began to walk with strides of almost four feet. Then he abandoned that walk to jog, and did the same to that job to run. His running scuffed his boots terribly, but he cared not. Technically, he did not have to be back in Vanaheim for another decade or so.
By the time I come back, she'll be reaching her halfway mark, and will most certainly have forgiven me...
At the moment, Loki could have almost stopped running. He didn't know why he said that; the more he reran the sentence though his head, the more he wanted to trip himself sprinting at full speed. Loki never even thought such idiotic things, and now he was disgusted with himself. He was so aware of her mortality, and he couldn't possibly compare with how aware she must have been about it too. To think that she lived out her years so far growing and developing while all her friends and family stayed exactly the same. To think that the children that she played with when she was little would still be children when she was on her deathbed one day. Sooner than any Aesir or Vanir realized, except perhaps for Njord. He had to see his daughter withering under her short expectancy every day.
Except now Loki knew very clearly that Sigyn was none of Njord's. He wondered if she knew.
I need to see her again...
And he really did. Loki needed to see Sigyn again before he left Vanaheim. After his revelations, Loki felt the need to speak with her for more than a couple of minutes. He didn't know what inside him was making this such a necessity, but he did not bother to question it. At times like this, he was thankful for being lonely; it gave him the time to contemplate a million different scenarios in his head and actually notice things, unlike those he was raised with.
Going to the garden was an excellent idea, he thought.
Sigyn was incredibly sore and drained from a day of helping her father and his men load their ships. She looked at her arms, thinking how small her arms were, and how much stronger they needed to be in order to be any sort of help with... that sort of thing. Her appearance looked enough like she was capable, but she new better. She thought herself pretty useless to all the other men and her father. Even when they were sick and exhausted to the point of unconsciousness, they were possessed more than five times her capability. All day, she was left to carry bits of rope and empty boxes.
But she was always so stubborn. If the box was too heavy, she'd just carry it until her legs gave out because she was too hard-headed to admit that it was too much for her, and she didn't want to look like the weakest link among the workers. But she knew deep down that she was only trying to prove a point that would never be made clear. Sigyn didn't want to be wearing herself down all day, but she thought it would be preferable to an occupation as mother. Heavy-lifting was not exactly desirable, but she would rather do that than carry about children all day. Children that she had with a man who would not want her after she had given birth to all the babies that were in her ability to conceive.
She could always leave Vanaheim for Asgard like her sister had... but she knew that her weak form wouldn't survive such a travel. When Loki had retreated back to the highest realm via the Bifrost, Sigyn thought that the vortex would have killed her if she dared touch it.
Loki...
Sigyn shook her head as if to empty her head of her thoughts of him. Seeing him today was both a surprise and a relief, but she would admit it to no one. It was much too embarrassing, thinking about him... She had thought she had rid her mind of him sixteen years ago, but seeing him had just uncovered something that she had worked so diligently to suppress for so long. She also thought that running away from him earlier today would have made it easier for her to again bandage up and stow away the feelings that had been uncovered, but it did nothing. In fact, she almost felt worse for it, and now she would not see him again until... until she was reaching into her mid-forties. She cringed at the thought.
For now, all Sigyn could do was go to her garden. She could never thank her father enough for granting her the permission and the land to use as she saw fit, and she never stopped tending to it. At least she knew she could do that better than anyone in Vanaheim and Asgard combined. However, he only wished that she could actually do something useful with the flowers she grew; blossoms were not a valuable commodity to the Vanir, as they were too plentiful.
Her refuge was not far from where she had been working all day; it sat in a wooded area a few hundred feet from the gulf where the ships had been docked, ready to stretch out their legs in the open ocean. Looking up, she saw the night was coming to life in small increments across the sky, stars revealing themselves in the areas between complete darkness and receding dusk. To make use of the light that was failing her, she broke into a run.
Loki was at the same spot that he had been when he was in the garden last, and unfortunately it had not become any more comfortable in sixteen years. Comfort or not, he filled with nostalgia as he saw the same rose that he had inspected his first time here sixteen years ago. Its petals were still as fresh and unharmed as they were last time, and the scent was still a wafting perfume that invaded his senses and swam across the inside of his forehead. He ran his fingers across the plant's layered bloom, but he feared that the roughness of his hands would tear it apart, so he let it go. The head of the plant bounced when it left his touch, and then went back to being eerily stationary.
His attention to it was broken when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the area where he was sitting, but did not necessarily feel the need to move. Instead, he was just thankful that his idea to stay here past daylight times was not a waste. Not that staying in this garden was a waste to him, but he could not spend all night sitting on a plank.
Sigyn saw his swept-back hair first, and felt almost as if she had walked in on someone in the nude. She had to stifle a gasp as she saw Loki seated calmly and quietly on the barrier of the flower bed. In her chest, she could not deny to herself that she felt relieved that he had not left. When she got over the fluttery feeling of running into someone unexpectedly, she implored, "Why are you always the one who feels the need to come here without asking me?"
"Always? Quite the exaggeration." he replied. "This is only the second time I've been here."
"That's not the point." she threw back. "I thought that you needed to be getting back to Asgard..."
"No, I do not. I am wherever I deem the most fit." he said, speaking honestly to her, which was somewhat of a luxury to his acquaintances. "This is where I wish to be, and I would enjoy it very much if you would sit and talk with me."
"Why?" she asked, giving off body language that could either be interpreted as nervousness or as the realization that she had made a mistake coming here instead of going home. Loki did not want to call it.
"Because I want to talk to you, obviously."
Sigyn didn't argue, and instead sat down. From here, Loki was about half a head taller than her, and she had to tilt her head a bit to look at him while he spoke. Her toes curled in pain when she felt her neck cramp in protest at having to bend after what she had gone through that day, but she strove to ignore it as Loki spoke.
Almost immediately, Sigyn's caution began to diminish. She could not deny that Loki was a very smooth talker, and when she spoke she drew the impression that he was actually listening to what she said instead of waiting for his turn. Also, she noticed that he had a habit of not blinking when he spoke. Either he was a very good liar or just extremely honest.
"You seem nice enough, when I get past the fact that you ran away from me like a girl," said Sigyn.
The Aesir's straight face flinched for a fraction of a second, but she did not notice. Loki felt most embarrassed.
"How sexist of you," he replied. He tried to further explain himself. "If it means anything now, I did not want to give you an answer because I felt that there was no good one for your question."
"Oh, even if you said yes, I probably would have figured out that you weren't serious anyway," she muttered, with an almost undetectable tinge of sadness. Loki would not have lived up to his name if he had not caught it.
"Are you still spiteful towards me?" he asked.
Sigyn shook her head. "No."
"You certainly acted like you still were in the conference room and when you came here."
"It was just a bit awkward because the last time I saw you, you were running away," she explained. "I saw it on your face a bit too. You don't seem to show too much, but I do catch glimpses of things."
Loki took in all her words. He did not usually speak to someone who used such informal diction, and it was almost refreshing. His mind wondered from that idea when he saw holes on the knees of her trousers and the elbows of her shirt, and the fact that her coat was gone altogether. "I'm afraid your clothing is ruined," he pointed out.
"I know..." she said sadly. "They were a gift, but I don't like how they look on me. I got the worst glares today. Almost made it not worth it."
Loki almost smiled, not because he thought this humorous, but because the same had happened to him recently when he chose to be dressed in Vanir clothing. The stitching was fantastic, and the quality of the leather looked like it would have made only half the suit cost a fortune. "You received these from someone in Asgard?"
"Yes, my sister. Well, my half-sister. She left Vanaheim sometime ago," answered Sigyn.
Loki was pieced things together in his head within a second, but feigned ignorance to make sure he was not making any assumptions. "Your half-sister? Was she from a previous marriage of your father's?"
"No." said Sigyn, looking terribly bothered.
"I apologize if-"
"Please, just drop it," snapped Sigyn. "Either way, my father never told me about it. I had to figure it out my own, but it wasn't hard to do that."
Regaining herself, she stood up and brushed off the back of her pants as if there was any salvaging the wasted garments. For an instant, Loki saw a glimmer of the anger she showed as a child, and knew that her knowledge of the situation must have held something terrible beyond the fact that she was not her father's daughter. As curious as he was, he dared not ask.
He almost did not give her credit, thinking that she could have possibly not known that she was not Vanir. Looking back, if he had asked her about it, he was sure that she would have been incredibly insulted. He barely knew her, but from what he could gather she did not miss much. He respected that.
"Are you leaving for Asgard tonight or do you want a room?" she asked, looking at him with all seriousness.
"If it is acceptable, I would like a room." he answered, fairly excited at the chance to stay in Vanaheim for longer. He found that Odin could perhaps wait a little longer for him to return; it was not as if the safety of anyone depended on the meeting Loki had with Njord.
"Well then, I'll take you to a room at the palace," offered Sigyn. "I'm sure father won't mind, and royal quarters would be more appropriate than an inn, what with you being "ambassador to Asgard" and whatnot."
Standing up, Sigyn found that Loki was at least a head taller than her; she had not noticed it in his time here as she had only ever seen him seated ever since he arrived. It was a bit intimidating, and she blushed without thinking. Once she felt her cheeks burning, she looked away from him in embarrassment.
Loki had noticed her blushing, and smiled. Trying to be as polite as possible, the prince stuck out his elbow in her direction. She understood and took his arm within her own, giggling as she did so; she had never had a man offer to walk arm-in-arm with her before, and it was most flattering. Sigyn thought that her heart might leap out of her chest, and her mind began to wander to places it had been earlier.
"Loki, would you... would you want to start over?" she asked.
He looked over at her, looking confused. Inside, he was not in the slightest, but again feigned ignorance. "As in friends?"
Sigyn's heart sunk at the word, but she dared not think why it did. It felt as if her knees might give out at any moment from the agony that was in her now, but she strove to keep up with his fast pace and long strides.
Perhaps I still...
No she did not, she assured herself. "I suppose, yes," she agreed.
Loki did not look at her. "I see nothing wrong with that."
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. If it seems like I'm not explaining everything that needs to be, trust me, it will be explained later. I like to leave my writing interpretive sometimes ;)