Sigi spent that night wandering aimlessly about her apartment. She couldn't sleep and she wasn't sure why. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw another pair staring back, a greyish-blue set, fraught with anger and pain. She regretted ever asking her mother if she had known Loki.
The amount Sigi knew about the Agardian was minimal. And still, after her attempted healing, she felt like she had known him longer. There was something familiar about the way he acted, the way he thought. It was as if he was her opposite, a reflection where on paths where she had found herself amongst peace and healing, he had found only war and death. Despite the opposing views, there was that glimmer of similarity, the way sun and rain both came from the sky and had their own ill effects in too much excess. It was perhaps a poor metaphor but Sigi was struggling to explain it within her own mind and was grasping for words. Something about Loki felt familiar to her, as familiar as the opening chords of her favorite song or the taste of a cup of coffee or the scent of her favorite perfume. It was an utterly perplexing realization and Sigi could not understand where it had come from.
An anxious, distraught feeling came over her as she struggled to label what she was feeling. One word kept surging forward in her mind with a bolt of fear and surprise: love.
Sigi had been in love before; she was no stranger to it. But it had never felt like this. Sigi wasn't entirely certain of what she was feeling. One moment she hated Loki for what he had done to those she cared about, especially Phil. She hated how he treated Thor and how he quickly he turned his anger to violence and hate. A moment later she could feel nothing but sympathy for him, a sense of understanding she was certain no one on Asgard harbored for Loki. Later she was overwhelmed by confusion and perhaps a certain sense of derision for the wearing down of what stood for morality in her world. Soon after she would enjoy the sense of cognitive dissonance, the fact that her mind was being pushed to reconsider. And then she would fall into fear, the fear of where she was heading both in mind and in action. Sleep was a thousand miles away as she struggled to juggle all of these thoughts and rationalize her way through it all.
Being so closely aligned with death, it was difficult for Sigi to feel good in her life. She could see what no one should see, know what no one should know. The uncontrollable clairvoyance labeled her as a wild card, an unpredictable force in a world that urged for control and order. Though it had troubled her younger years, she had come to accept it as part of herself. But that didn't mean it had ceased to resonate with its disorder and malaise in her everyday life. Being forced to deal with unsolicited knowledge of a fate yet to come had shaped her into an ambiguous, changeable being. And now, she found herself drawn to a similar force. That was all. It was a strange sort of curiosity. She was not in love. Love was for children; a simple notion, far too simple to explain her situation.
But still, she could not sleep.
Exhausted, she dragged herself to Selvig's lab the next dawn, searching for answers. Knowing her mother would tell her nothing, Selvig was her next best bet with his knowledge of Norse mythology. He was working alone that morning, tinkering with some contraption on a table near the back of his lab. Well, he wasn't completely alone. A brunette with dark-framed glasses was sitting at the desk in his office, working at a computer.
"Your wi-fi down here sucks," she groaned as Sigi entered.
"Blame Stark. He was messing with the router yesterday. Probably changed the settings," Selvig said, looking up. Sigi gave a little wave and leaned against one of the tables.
"I was wondering if you could do me a favor," she asked.
"It depends. What did you have in mind?"
"Tell me what you know about the Norse gods."
"Where do you want me to start?"
"Anywhere, really."
Selvig sighed. "Do you know anything about your namesake?"
"Other than the fact that it refers to a glacier? Nope."
This caused Selvig to look incredibly troubled. "I… I don't want you to think that you're being predestined to any certain fate if I tell you."
Sigi covered her face with hands. "Fury told you about what happened on Asgard, didn't he?"
"Yes, but… well, it's more than that," Selvig shook his head. "You're only part Asgardian, your life has been different than theirs so far. We have no way of knowing how close the myths are to their lives and I don't want to bother you with stories that may not be your own. Drawing in ideas of predestination and fate would only be troubling, I think."
"Sigyn," the girl at the computer, reading from the screen, "was the Norse goddess of…"
"Darcy, no," Selvig said sharply, cutting her off. "Sorry, that's Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster's research assistant. Jane's at a meeting with Fury and she's left her to me."
"And the crappy wi-fi. But it's all good," Darcy grinned. "Selvig and I go way back."
"God help me," Selvig muttered under his breath.
"So there is a Norse goddess with my name?" Sigi asked. "Tell me more."
"Fury told me about your abundant curiosity. Please, trust me when there are some things you shouldn't know."
"I thought you were all big on the knowing of things," Darcy called from the computer. "The whole 'S.H.E.I.L.D. shall keep no secrets' stuff."
"This isn't S.H.E.I.L.D., Darcy," Selvig groaned. "These are the stories of a world I never knew was possible and if she what it were drawing from…"
"Do I become like him? Like Loki? A killer with a thirst for blood?" Sigi demanded. "Do I kill someone important? Do I cause the end of the world? What if I do something and already put these events into action, Dr. Selvig, and I could have avoided it if I'd known? What then?"
Selvig looked down at his wristwatch and then at Sigi with a sad, serious glance. "Okay. I'll tell you. But if you hear anything that upsets you, don't say I didn't warn you."
"Fair enough."
Selvig gestured for her to follow him into his office. Two chairs were facing each other, parallel to the desk Darcy was sitting at, and Sigi and Selvig took a seat.
"In mythology, and only the mythology as far as I know," Selvig emphasized, "Sigyn is the goddess of fidelity. Her name translates to something along the lines of 'victorious girlfriend' –"
"BAMF," Darcy said loudly.
"And she is known for her constancy towards her husband." Selvig gulped. "Who is… Loki."
Sigi choked on her own spit and ended up coughing and laughing at the same time, curling up into a sodden heap in the chair. "You have got to be kidding me," she cackled. "Wait… is this a joke? Tell me it's a joke. Stark put you up to this, right?"
"I wouldn't joke about such things, Sigyn," Selvig assured her. "I'm completely serious."
Darcy read from the page on the computer's browser. "Sigyn, wife of Loki. Damn, girl, that is a serious commitment."
"Oh my God," Sigi choked. "No. No no no, no no no no."
"There should be a few more 'no's' there," Darcy said.
"You knew this?" Sigi cried, looking at Selvig. "Does Fury know? Does Phil know? Do the Avengers know? Does… does Loki know?"
"I highly doubt that Loki knows his own future," Selvig assured her. "But yes, I knew, and I told Fury and Agent Coulson. It was part of the reason why Fury was so keen on you staying away from Loki in Asgard. Which failed beautifully, I might add. If Fury wasn't so interested in finding out your heritage, he never would have sent you."
"And in the end, he never would have had to in the first place," Sigi muttered, raising an eyebrow. "Ironic. Well, there goes any hope of Fury ever trusting me again."
"I wouldn't worry too much. There are differences between you and the goddess. For one, Sigyn was not part human, as you are. Who knows what that means for everything else?"
"Perhaps it means nothing. How much do they know about her otherwise?"
Darcy scrolled through the Wikipedia article. "Not much… hey, there is a glacier with the same name as you!"
"Yes, I don't believe there is much written about her in the mythology," Selvig said. "There's a story of aiding Loki during his imprisonment but little else."
Sigi blanched. "You don't say. Well, this has been enlightening. I think I'm just going to go throw myself off the nearest cliff now."
"Sigyn, there's no reason for you to have this reaction," Selvig assured her. "Fury won't be sending you back to Asgard so there's no reason to fret. You haven't done anything."
"Haven't I?" Sigi wondered. Perhaps not in action or in deed had she done anything, but her thoughts were definitely not as loyal to S.H.E.I.L.D.'s aims as Selvig anticipated. Perhaps because there was a growing part of her mind that felt – and accepted that it felt – a certain amount of empathy and interest in Loki's character. The villain that had nearly destroyed the world had become incredibly human – well, at least human-ish – to her and this was causing a growing degree of cognitive dissonance to her already boggled mind that no amount of late night rationalizing could fight off.
Thor, she wondered. How did Thor deal with this? Loki was his brother (more or less) and certainly cognitive dissonance plagued him more than her. But then again, perhaps Thor had a stronger moral compass than Sigi. The ability to heal anyone and everyone and seeing what sort of death awaited them affected one's judgment and it was much harder to draw the lines between good and bad when everyone simply ended up dead. It wasn't a "we all deserve to die" idea, but more of a "we all deserve to live" line of thought in which it was a real bummer that people did die and that anyone thought killing another person would solve any sort of problem ever was a grave mistake (pun intended).
Perhaps this was the difference, then, for Thor. Loki had tried to kill Thor, more than once. Sigi wondered what brought a person to truly want a sibling dead. As an only child, it was impossible for her to imagine. Not that she thought it likely for her to understand anyway. But she could not stop her mind from wondering and pondering what drove the god of mischief to do what he did. It was so far removed from anything Sigi could ever see herself doing…and yet a certain familiarity was still tied to it all, brought on by a being who did not belong and strove to find a place to inhabit outside traditional modes of order.
Sigi thanked Selvig for his time and wandered off to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. Feeling rather morose and uncertain what to do with herself, Sigi sat down at a table near the windows that looked out onto the street and tried to reason with herself. Selvig was right; there was no reason for her to be distraught about a myth written hundreds and hundreds of years ago that likely had nothing to do with her life. However, what bothered her was the tendency for these myths to be relevant despite those claims and the fact that Fury had kept this information from her. It made little sense, really. If the myths didn't matter, why had he warned her to stay away from Loki and yet kept his reasoning from her? It was as if he himself did not want to admit to the determining quality of the mythology but certainly wasn't going to take any chances with Sigi. And yet, it had happened anyway…
It was with a burning realization that Sigi singled out what bothered her about all of this. It was not the idea of being married to Loki that disturbed her. It was the very opposite. It pleased her. And this was what horrified her more than anything else.
She gave a strangled sob and did a face-plant into the table before her. It was a Thursday. She never had gotten the hang of Thursdays.
Whew, we finally got that connection established; that's been a long time in coming. I hoping to keep adding new chapters regularly but no promises - the coming bits are proving rather difficult to write, but I think it's working itself out. Thank you all for reading and following!