Clint Barton busied himself with the task of hammering the last of the new shingles onto the roof of the house on Sigyn's island. Inside in the kitchen, Loki sat at the table, papers spread before him, a pencil in his hand, appearing to be attempting to concentrate and growing frustrated at the persistent pounding from above. Sigyn carried a glass of lemonade to the table and sat it down in one of the few spots not covered by sheaths of paper. She held another in her other hand. Spring had recently arrived, warmer air with it, warmer than usual for that time of year even for the more southerly location of the island. Loki sat back releasing his breath, tossing the pencil onto the table.
"By Odin's beard! Will this racket never end? I can't think straight." he grumbled.
"When have you ever thought straight?" Sigyn joked, standing beside him as he sat, putting a hand on Loki's shoulder. Loki put his hand to Sigyn's swollen belly, resting the side of his head against it.
"Your mother thinks herself a comedian." Loki said. "No, I don't believe so either." he said, engaging in an imaginary conversation with the unborn child.
"He'll be done soon." Sigyn reassured Loki as he reached out for the lemonade, picking up the glass and taking a drink, then sitting it back down. Sigyn moved to the door and exited, leaving the door open, the screen door closing behind her as she carried the other glass of lemonade out to Barton.
Sign looked up to the roof as Barton finished nailing a nail, taking advantage of the short span of silence after he had finished with it before he began the next.
"Clint! Here!" she called up to him. Barton looked down the slope of the roof and slid himself the few feet towards the edge and sitting with his legs hanging over, reached down and took the glass as she stretched the arm that held it up to him. "You'll be done soon, right?" Sigyn asked quietly.
"Yeah...just a few more to go. Went faster than I thought. Didn't think it'd take that long anyway. I'll get blasting the old paint off tomorrow. That'll probably take half a day, then start painting the day after that."
"Thank you for doing all this. For the cradle too. It's beautiful." Sigyn said, referring to the wooden cradle Barton had gifted to her upon his arrival.
"Figured it'd get more use here than back home. Think those days are over for us. It was just taking up space in the attic. Just needed some sanding and refinishing. Know you come here quite a bit, could use something like that."
"You have to let us pay you something. We have gold you know. It's actually worth far more here."
"Nah. You already paid for it. You saved the world...my family with it, and all it's cost me has been some bike parts, some paint and some roofing materials. Already had the wood stain. Think I got a pretty good deal. Anyway, I've kinda run out of things to do around home. Like to keep busy...plus I get to spend a few days on a private island. Can't beat that."
"So this is your idea of fun?" Sigyn asked.
"Yep. Best part is no one's trying to kill me." Barton replied as he drank the lemonade.
"Yet...Loki's been trying to write." Sigyn said.
"Why in the hell would he be trying to do that with this going on?" Barton asked.
"I don't think he realized how noisy it would be. Construction was a bit different on Asgard."
"Imagine it would be. Nothing like good old hammer and nails, though. Makes you feel like you actually accomplished something, that you worked for it." Barton said, finishing the lemonade and reaching down, handing Sigyn back the empty glass. Sigyn looked at the sweat beading and running down Barton's face.
"You're certainly doing that. Why don't you take a break?" Sigyn asked. She grimaced as she rubbed the tight muscles of her burgeoning abdomen with the hand not holding the empty glass.
"I'll be done in a few. Speaking of breaks, you need to get off your feet. You didn't have to come here for all this. Got my own ride." Barton glanced towards the Quinjet parked in the field in front of the house. "You should be back home."
"It's ok. I like coming here. I don't think I'll ever completely get used to it there. I lived in the palace on Asgard as a kid but that was so long ago. I lived here on Midgard...sorry, Earth, a lot longer. I should have at least another week, maybe two."
"If you say so. Been through it three times with Laura. Looks like you're about to pop." Barton said, pulling his legs back up onto the roof and moving back to where he had been working.
"Uh...I think I just did." Sigyn said. Barton looked back to Sigyn who stood, tense, her hand gripping her belly, the bottom front half of the long sundress she wore now wet. The empty glass lay discarded in the grass. He quickly jumped down from the roof, foregoing the nearby ladder, the drop not all that far for someone in his physical condition and with his training. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he led her back to the open door of the house.
"Good. Now maybe I can have some peace around here and get something done." Loki said, glancing up from the paper in front of him.
"You ain't gettin' nothing done for awhile." Barton told Loki. Loki's expression changed from mild irritation to surprise and concern as his mind processed what he was seeing and the situation. He jumped quickly up from the chair as Barton assisted Sigyn to the one across the table from Loki, pulling it out for her and easing her into it. Loki began scrambling to gather his papers that lay spread out across the table.
"Leave it. You can pop back in after and grab 'em. They'll be here. I've done a lot of crazy shit in my day but delivering a baby's not one of 'em and I'm not looking to start now." Barton told Loki. Loki followed Barton's suggestion, moving around the table to Sigyn as her body tensed and she groaned as a wave of pain passed over her midsection. Once it had passed, she grabbed Loki's arm as he helped her to her feet, then put an arm around her as he produced a transport cylinder in his other hand.
"Glad we used that and not the Ladder." Sigyn said.
"I'll get on the painting tomorrow. By the time you make it back here, it'll look like a whole new place. Good luck. The ride's just starting." Barton told them.
Sigyn leaned against Loki before they both disappeared from Barton's view in the cylinder's pinkish violet light. Barton began gathering up Loki's papers into a neat stack on the table.
Sigyn and Loki reappeared in the great room of the royal chambers. Loki began to move Sigyn towards the settee.
"No! Not there...I need to change...hopefully before the next one hits..." Sigyn said, making her way to the bedroom, Loki behind her. She walked to the white and gold chest of drawers and opened the top drawer, pulling out a plain long nightgown and removed her sundress, slipping into the nightgown. As she finished, she was gripped once again by pain.
"Loki..." she said in a strained voice. He quickly rushed to her from where he stood a few feet away. Wrapping her arms around him she laid her forehead against his shoulder.
"What can I do?" he asked, at a loss as to what action to take, if any were possible.
"Just...this..." she answered as she waited for the pain to once again pass. "It's over." she said, moving to the bed and sitting down on the edge, Loki assisting her to lie down, placing pillows behind her head. He strode quickly towards the door.
"Stay where you are." he said.
"You really think I'm going anywhere?" Sigyn responded.
Much like in the vision his mother had shown him just prior to the Battle of New Asgard, Loki paced, though not in the throne room of Asgard, but the great room of the royal chambers and this time alone. The same physician that had seen to Loki during his scheme under Loriel's reign now tended to Sigyn as he had been for all intents and purposes dismissed from the bedchamber. Loki had been resolved to be at her side but was now beginning to perhaps see the wisdom in the "damn archaic traditions" he had fretted about in the same vision. Perhaps his father had been right that 'his assistance was not needed any more than a serpent had need of boots,' he thought. Of course he had never had the opportunity to hear Odin make that statement in reality, but he knew most likely it was something Odin would have indeed said in the situation. Even when by her side, he felt completely useless, a third wheel.
Mariel and another attendant wearing similar blue dresses entered the royal chambers into the great room. Mariel's eyes fell upon Loki before he had even noticed their presence. She sent the other attendant in the direction of the bedchambers and approached him as he noticed her.
"Mariel. She will be pleased you're here." Loki told her, sounding relieved.
"I'm sorry I did not arrive sooner. I was away from the palace. I thought the two of you were off world."
"We were. Obviously circumstances necessitated that we cut short our sojourn. We had been under the impression that we had another week's wait."
"Nature sets her own timetable. How long since it began?" Mariel asked.
"We have entered the 'please don't make me kill you' stage of the proceedings." Loki said. Mariel gave him an amused smile.
"If she is yet so polite in her threats to murder you, there is still much time remaining to wait." Mariel told him. Loki looked disturbed by the suggestion.
"How long?"
"Many hours yet, I would say. I don't want to intervene too early, it can draw it out even longer, but I will do what I can for her at this stage. The first always takes more time." Mariel answered.
"The first may well be the last. I have been informed I'm no longer to touch her for the remainder of eternity." Loki told Mariel who laughed upon hearing it.
"Be not troubled. She will likely say many similar things over the course of her trial. They are just words. She will recall the pain little afterwards. Once it will not be a hindrance, I will relieve her of a great deal of it." Mariel assured Loki. She noticed that his countenance was troubled and far more than usual for a man in his circumstances. "Is there something else that concerns you, beyond her discomfort?" Mariel asked. Loki turned away from her towards the windows and slowly walked towards them. Mariel followed him at a short distance. Loki reached the windows, gazing out over the city below as she stood to the side of him.
"The woman from Tartarus, Elpida, she is not the mother of Zosime. Her mother did not survive her birth." Loki said to Mariel. Mariel put a comforting hand on Loki's shoulder.
"That will not happen here. Nothing like that has happened for many thousands of years."
"Sigyn was there at the birth, she witnessed it. I worry that it weighs on her mind as well." Loki said.
"I will dispel any such fear she may have." Mariel said. Loki knew that Mariel was already in the process of doing so for him as he felt an intense calm descend over him. "I will stay with her from now until the end. Why don't you take a stroll through the gardens or elsewhere? It will help to set your mind at ease and time to pass more quickly." Mariel suggested.
Loki walked through the gardens as slowly as if his legs were made of lead, examining all the many species of carefully tended flora that grew in the expansive park like setting, Their various scents, those that had one, meshed together in the air creating a pleasant aroma that Loki found working on his mind like a drug, relaxing him as the setting itself imbued within him a peaceful feeling. His angelic subjects that also made their way through the gardens greeted him as they passed, bowing their heads.
He stopped before a crystal fountain, the sunlight upon it creating dancing prisms across the water and its surroundings. He stared at it as if hypnotized by it and listened to the sound of the water flowing from the fountain into the pool below. That a place of such beauty had ever fallen to the darkness of Loriel, been polluted by it, seemed impossible now. That he had ever engaged in such evil as he had in New York, had ever been under the thrall of Thanos, also seemed impossible, but he knew it had happened, though it now felt a lifetime ago. Thinking of that version of him was now as if looking at the life of another. There was now two versions of him he knew...the him with Sigyn, and the one without. The one without was now dead and he wished him to remain so.
"My King, would you care to allow me to predict your future on this momentous day?" a voice behind him said, a voice that somewhere far, far back in his memory banks he recognized but could not place, or perhaps it just sounded similar. He then realized that he'd made no formal announcement that Sigyn was in the process of labor, of his child's impending birth. He turned his head as the owner of the voice moved to stand beside him, also gazing at the fountain. The old woman stood out as odd in her cloak as Heven's constantly warm temperatures meant that it was seldom necessary to don such clothing. Loki watched as she lowered the hood that obscured her face. She turned her head to smile at him.
"I make my own future." Loki said. The woman was obviously not of angelic heritage. She appeared to be mortal, or like Asgardians, a race that was visually indistinguishable.
"So you do...so you do..." The old woman said, nodding. "However there have been times when you have been...nudged...shall we say, one way or another. Obstacles put into your path that were necessary for you to face and conquer, others removed."
"You are the old woman...the one Sigyn and I met on Midgard...all those centuries ago..."
"Yes, it is I. Have my predictions proved accurate?" she asked. Loki gazed at the old woman in awe.
"Very much so...not in the way we had expected...or that she did anyway, I thought it all nonsense at the time. You are one of them...the others, the Watchers."
"I am. It is very seldom that any being sparks our interest, especially the way in which you have, that she has. You are quite unique. One man that has affected the lives of so many across the universe for good and for ill. A man capable of such darkness, such malice and yet such goodness, such love."
"I now strive solely for the latter." Loki said.
"You have finally found safe harbor from the stormy seas. If ever again you sail them, the gale will come not from within, but from outside and you will steer your ship through it with a far steadier hand." The old woman held out her hand, in her palm lay a stone identical to the one Sigyn now carried, on it etched a different symbol, one that appeared as two triangles, their points meeting in the middle. Loki somehow knew he was meant to take it from her. He reached out, lifting the stone from her palm.
"Dagaz." Loki said.
"The symbol of light...the day, awakening, clarity, transformation, hope and happiness, certainty, and the power of change. This symbol now rules your life. Your fears for your child are unfounded. This child and all your children will bring hope and peace to the realms and to the universe. Just as when the sun rises, darkness has now been turned to light. Return now to your wife. Know that we are always watching." the old woman said. As quickly as she had appeared by his side, the old woman was now gone as if she had never been there. Loki held the stone in his hand, then closed his fist around it and turned from the fountain, walking back the way in which he'd come.
The wait of many months, many hours, and in some ways, many centuries ended as the culmination of Sigyn's effort resulted in the sound of the first cries of new life filling the room. Loki found himself unable to hold back his tears as the squalls of newborn lungs reverberated in his ears, his tears mixing with Sigyns as he held her face in his hands and kissed her. Mariel, her duty done, her abilities no longer needed, moved from the bedside towards where the physician, her white hair in its usual braided coil at the crown of her head, lifted the infant and handed it off to her. Mariel swaddled the newborn in a blanket and carried it to Sigyn, laying the child in her arms.
"My King, My Queen...your son." Mariel said. Loki, who had been sure the entire time that he would be welcoming a daughter based on his visions, was stunned at the revelation. Sitting with Sigyn resting against him, looking down at the now quiet and content baby in her arms, Loki gazed at him in amazement.
"A son...I have a son..." Loki said as if he were just coming to believe the reality before him. He joyously kissed Sigyn once again on the cheek, repeating the gesture far more gently on the forehead of his newborn child. "I have a son..."
Loki and Sigyn lay sitting up in the bed after the excitement of the day had concluded, all leaving them to enjoy their first night as a family of three. Mariel had bathed the child after his first feeding and returned him, smelling sweet and fresh and swaddled in another blanket to Sigyn before she had taken her leave, the last to go.
"I suppose we must give this child a name." Loki said.
"I'd only thought of girl names. You were so sure it was to be a girl...as you say, you're usually right. We could be like the Tartarans and wait a day or two for the right one to come to mind." Sigyn suggested. "There's really no rush."
"I have no need to wait...if you are in agreement of course. When I was in the gardens earlier, I met someone...our conversation brings it to mind. Leiffrid...what do you think?" Loki said.
"What does it mean?" Sigyn asked.
"Heir of hope and peace." Loki replied. Sigyn smiled, looking down at the infant who now slept quietly in her arms.
"Leiffrid...Leiffrid Lokison. I like it."
"It has been quite a day. You should rest now. Allow me to relieve you." Loki said, Sigyn passing the newly christened Leiffrid into Loki's arms. The baby remained quiet, undisturbed by the change. Loki rose from the bed, cradling the infant and bent down, kissing Sigyn who slid down in the bed pulling the covers farther up over herself. "Sleep now, my love." Loki walked to the bedroom door, turning down the light to a barely perceptible glow before exiting.
Loki stood in front of the window, looking once again out over the city, over Heven as the sun began to set. He gazed lovingly down at the child in his arms.
"This will all be yours someday."