Niffleheim. The frozen land of Hel. The world where rime and mist were born, and where all go when they die, damned and blessed alike, to be ruled by Hela. But not everyone who comes to these shores are dead. Not yet, at least. On the shore of corpses, near where Nidhogg the Dragon gnaws the roots of the world tree, stands the Hall of Nastrond. It was a prison for the most fearsome and dishonored dead…and sometimes…for the living as well.
The frozen mountains around the shores rose up to point at the sky, forever caught between reflecting the sun and rejecting its warmth. Beneath the waters it was almost possible to see the shifting shapes of the souls who were anchored there and drifting like seaweed. As the water receded, it became possible to hear their cries for help as the one, lone figure moved quietly past them.
Loki stood for a moment on the edge of the shore, studying the prison that was before him. It was not a prisoner he sought, but this realm's ruler. Hela, he knew, was always watching this one area with spells and other objects of power. She knew when someone approached it and was swift in dealing with them. Malekith the Accursed was one she had fought to take from the realm of the living and place under her care and he was not one that she would allow easily to leave from this place.
Even as he approached the prison, he knew her gaze was upon him, knew that she watched him and waited for him to act. Yet, she did not come to him. He paused in the entrance and place one hand upon the stone, feeling its chill creep into his and lodge itself there. For a moment, he could almost see the blue of his Jotun skin and jerked his hand away, inhaling sharply and hissing out the breath. She was not his enemy, she never had been, but that didn't stop her curiosity.
"You brought three realms to their knees," came a female's voice. He didn't turn, already knowing she wouldn't be there. "Most would say that it was because you are a second son and were denied a crown not twice, but four times. Vanaheim and its Dark Elves through your wife denied you when Angrboda took that throne, Asgard threw you aside for Thor, the Jotunheim abandoned you before you were old enough to work magic, and Midgard refused to bend knee before you. Was it worth it? Was it worth being banished from Asgard, destroying much of the Jotunheim, and cutting off the realms from each other and Asgard's protection? Was it worth inviting those of ill intent to fill my realm with the despair and horror of those not yet old enough to see or strong enough to defend themselves?"
He looked sideways to his left where the shadows weren't quite right, where they shifted in an odd pattern. Of course, he realized. Of course. Hela had inherited Sigyn's compassionate nature and would not have welcomed the influx of dead among those who would not have been strong enough to fight against the parasites that lingered in the shadows. She liked when individuals lived long lives and came to her when they were old enough to tell her stories of their lives. The damned like the ones left on these shores were those that had committed crimes like rape and murder and genocide. Sigyn might have forgiven him the attempted genocide, but Hela was not quite so forgiving as her mother.
"We will bring genocide to the known universe at the end of everything. She or I will die and leave the other to slowly go insane and destroy life as it was once known. Would that I had left her in the Abyss, it would have been I that brought Ragnarok and she who perished," Loki said with a shrug. "Deaths brought too soon are a small price to allow for the rest of the universe to continue on as they are."
She stepped away from the shadows and he saw the grief written into the lines of her face. For a moment, he simply studied her and noted the changes she had gone through in the last hundred years since he had seen her. When she spoke, her words wrapped around him like two tons of brick. "You sound like Odin."
He could only stare at her as she studied him. "I am-"
"-a sorcerer, trickster, and liesmith," she finished for him. "Isn't that what he is? So, I repeat, was it worth it bringing three realms to their knees and shattering the Bi-frost?"
His eyes flashed even as he turned to fully face her. "Yes," he said softly. "Sigyn will always be worth the cost of death and destruction and chaos I must bring to have her at my side. She is worth the cost of losing four thrones I never desired, she is worth the cost of trusted friends and allies and the children we have borne and raised. Whatever destruction I must create with my magic, my life, and my fate I will find her no matter how far she is taken from me or how well guarded. If the price of finding her were Ragnarok, then I would surrender gladly to that madness."
The shock that flickered through her eyes was brief, but it was enough to tell him what he wanted to know. Here in this place, where she ruled, she could wear any form that pleased and travel as she pleased to look after those that were in her charge, but she was still limited in traveling between the realms. Unlike him, she could exist freely here in Hel, because it was her realm even as it was a place that leeched life from those living that were foolish enough to trespass into its reaches. It was the one realm where his power did him no good even if he sent one of his clones and directed it from somewhere he was safe to do so.
Quite simply, she had something that he needed and he had something that she wanted. "I need information and you desire to see your mother again. She is once again in the realm of the living and unless you know the stabilization for the shift, you will never walk those realms with her," he said, dropping back into formality.
It had always been the easiest way to deal with her, a way for them to connect without remembering their differences without stirring up painful memories. "You…knew that this…" she trailed off, uncertain about how to phrase it, but he was already shaking his head.
"No," he said, softly. "There was no time to teach you the finishing touches on the clones. Tying it to teleporting and then switching yourself with them is something that I discovered later. I…didn't have the experience to teach you, nor did I know what Odin was going to do. If I had, you would never have lived in Asgard. Sigyn and I would have taken you and Fenrir to any other realm. At that time, we knew enough defensive magic to have shielded ourselves and you both from Heimdal's gaze, but…"
"They were still family and you couldn't let them go, not then," she finished for him and then took a step forward when the dead started to try and grab at her clothes. She tossed them a disdainful look as she walked closer to the shore where he stood. "Scavengers always are the messiest to deal with. They think themselves so intelligent until they die and then they come here and think they can sweet talk me into bringing them back to the realm of the living. There are even those that try to bribe me." The look she gave him was sidelong and considering. "This is my realm, wrested fairly from the previous overlord, and hard fought to bring some form of order to the dead. Even if you are my sire, I will not take kindly to attempts to blindside me, threaten that which is mine, or take from me those who now reside within my care."
He understood the unspoken do not keep this from me even if she was too proud to say it. She was through and through his daughter and his blood, despite how she had been conceived and he had never once doubted the affection he held for her. This, however, was not something he could afford to budge on. "Hela," he said softly. "I do not seek to trick you. You and your siblings are safe from at least that from me. I need to speak with Skurge. He would have found his way to you in very unusual circumstances."
A flicker of understanding flashed across her face even as a smile curled her lips. "The victims of Fate are always a less than pleasant surprise, but he was quite welcome indeed." She paused before she glanced back at the prison. "I may or may not have given him to Malekith to amuse himself. They make quite the pair."
"Hela," he said patiently and she grinned at the familiar tone.
"If you will send Auntie Amora to add to that particular collection, then you are welcome to any souls that I have within this realm so long as no harm comes to those that are not of the damned," she said and the smile turned more than a tad feral. "What I am curious about, though, is why you want to speak with him. Is it not enough that you succeeded in ripping from him his entire existence as well as his life. What more is there that he could hold for you?"
"Amora's plans."
When he finally returned to himself, within one of his own hidden locations, he suppressed a groan and stretched out his sore muscles. Directing one of his clones within Hela's realm had taken more out of him than he cared to admit. Extracting the information from Skurge had not helped the matter either, but had been well worth the effort required of it. Skurge had, after all, been one of her pawns-a prized one, to be certain-but nothing more than that and he had not known a great deal.
It was still useful, he reflected, to know that Amora was indeed after Thor's little human band among others and that she had made several attempts that had been thwarted. What was disconcerting was that the witch was collecting the wills and minds of individuals across the realms. They were not those of influence or great power, but there had to be something to attract her attention after every careful plan she had made in the past. Ensnaring him had made sense because he was a sorcerer powerful in ways that she would never match. Ensnaring those like Stark made sense because they had resources, but it still felt like an…empty answer…to him.
Whatever the reasons, he was sure that between himself and Sigyn, they would be able to think of some reason Amora would need individuals from every realm. The thought of her made him stir from the half sleep he had fallen into while pondering the information he had gathered. Almost idly, he traced a scrying spell into the air above him and watch as an image of her was reflected into the magic above him. She was, to his surprise, toe-to-toe with Stark and arguing heatedly. When he sat up and widened the radius of the spell, the situation still made no sense.
There were two other humans, only one of whom he recognized as the rage monster that had smashed him in New York. The other was a human male that was…glowing…a strange orange color. As he watched, the monster used a small silver needle attached to small glass sphere on the other human. Where the needle punctured the human's skin, the orange beneath his skin began to swirl into a blackened…goo…that cracked his skin and oozed up from the wounds. The human must have made a sound of pain because Sigyn was spinning and already mouthing the words for a shield and…
The scry vanished as the teleportation grabbed him and flung him through the between of realms, hurtling for her. The spell deposited him at her back a moment before the explosion ripped through the room. It was enough time for him to grab her around the waist and throw his power behind hers, forcing the flames and intensity of the blast into a confined space around where the human had been. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck as she worked to dispel the heat without reducing all of them to cinders.
When the flames had been starved of oxygen and there was nothing but cinders left of the man, Sigyn yanked herself out of Loki's grip and spun to face Tony, white faced and furious. "I told you what was going to happen! And now you've wasted that man's life being stubborn! The alchemical base of the Extremis compound mixes differently for every host it infects! What will work for Pepper will not work for everyone else! There is no easy fix for this thing! There is no 'one cure for all!' You have to tailor it to each individual!" she snarled, stepping closer.
There was a subtle shift in the atmosphere around them, a metallic clicking, and that was all the warning that Loki had before Stark's pet released a cocktail fume tailored to their biology. He had just time enough to teleport, catch her around the waist, and snap shields into place before Stark and his monster started coughing and staggering back.
Jarvis ventilated the fumes after that, saying, "My apologies, but there was a sixty-seven percent chance that you were going escalate the argument."
Her hand tightened on Loki's arm until her knuckles were white and his armor dented under the pressure. She stared at Tony for a moment longer and then turned her head away. "Loki," she said, quietly and then they were gone in a flicker of green flame and rushing air.
A/N: First, the beginning was inspired by Thor: The Dark World Prelude. It's a lovely companion piece for the new movie (I may or may not have seen it four times since it was released). Second, with everything I've learned about Sigyn as I've written her and everything I've learned about Tony from the movies and the comics, I can't see how this might have ended any other way. Lastly, the story seems to be circling in on itself and coming to an end. Thoughts so far?