Joe's Note: I originally intended to explore more of Marvel's Asgardians as well as my homemade additions from Norse mythology in this story but I couldn't really fit the other characters that I wanted into the plot. Now that I'm going back and decompressing a bit, I have time to do things like add a chapter introducing Sigyn - and then utilize Sigyn later in the story - which is also instrumental to my plans to introduce Helreginn. We'll also be seeing Angela, Brunnhilde, Sif, and Kelda in this story, and possibly the namesake of Amora's teenage incarnation if I can figure out a way to do so organically. For now, though? My first ever time using Loki's canonical wife.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Jade, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, Daniel, Clark, Adrien, erlking, ridillin, Haematite, Charles, Jacky, Edward, Andrew, Roofcrawler, Wil, PbookR, Samuel, Mikey, Beverly, Daniel, Charles, Crygon20, Subtle, Christopher, Stephen, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Joseph, Jason, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Marc, Ziryo, Chris, George, Koby, William, Devin, JJbelle, David, Gavin, TheTenthAncestor, Lookshy, Mauday, John, Roman, Warren, and Jess for sponsoring me on P-treon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.
Having once against cunningly given Kacchan and his friends the slip - his friend was in a bad mood for some reason and he really didn't want to get caught up in it - Izuku waited at the corner as he bounced from one foot to the other excitedly. Amora wanted to go back to (a)home again today after her shift ended, and he was really looking forward to picking Inazuma-chan's head about her chosen character more. Just like each of the other maids at the cafe, she knew an incredible amount of information about Thor and sometimes even knew things that brought Amora up short. She was fascinating to talk to and Izuku was pretty sure that he had a crush at this point... but he couldn't help it! She was just so interesting!
And given that the maids were professionally disinterested in their customers' conversations, sometimes Amora let her guard down and shared more sensitive information with him. Last time they'd gone, the blonde had mentioned an encounter with the 'Thor Corps', which had led to a very brief overview of 'variants' and the multiverse.
Just thinking about the subject made Izuku's head spin. Countless other realities, all existing side by side with the reality that he knew, just with changes ranging from the subtle to the extraordinary. Maybe there was a reality where he had a fire quirk like his dad. Or a telekinetic quirk like his mom. Or perhaps there was a reality where he was just plain less pathetic than he was in this one and had managed to become the first quirkless hero.
Maybe there was a reality where he had a girlfriend.
Curling his fingers in the straps of his yellow backpack, Izuku looked both ways before crossing the street and making his way back into Endurfæðing Park. Knowing that Amora had a bit of time before she got out for the day, he skirted around the perimeter of the park for a bit, really exploring the space for the first time that he could remember before making his way to where Stormbreaker resided. Much to his surprise and excitement, not only was Amora at the podium today but so was Loki... and a third Asgardian for good measure! Racing over, Izuku waved excitedly. "Sylvie-chan! Koli-sama! You're back!"
Narrowing her eyes, Loki turned to Amora in disbelief. "You're letting him call you Sylvie-chan now?"
Amora waved dismissively before offering Izuku a smile. "This isn't the first time he's called me that in front of you. You need to pay better attention." Arching an eyebrow, she held her hand out toward Izuku. "Did you bring it?"
"I figured that you'd keep asking until I did, so I finally decided to just humor you." Swinging his backpack off one shoulder, Izuku went into the main compartment and pulled out a shiny red Akane apple. "Akane is the best for early season fruit, at least according to my mom... who was very confused about why I was suddenly interested in apples. Why am I suddenly interested in apples, by the way?"
Loki reached out and plucked the apple out of Izuku's hand, bringing it up to her face and sniffing it curiously be passing it off to Amora. "Apples are a sacred fruit to Asgardians. A particular cultivar that grows in Asgard is the source of our immortality. Nothing on this miserable planet can possibly compare but I can understand why Amora would request you bring her one."
Rubbing the apple against her dress, Amora took a bite of the fruit with a thoughtful expression on her face. "Definitely better than a Fuji apple. A nice blend of sweet and sharp. Very nice. Thank you, Izu-kun." Taking another bite out of her prize, Amora nodded in the direction of the other blonde Asgardian standing nearby quietly. "Oh, and you can introduce yourself if you want. I'm certainly not going to."
The paler blonde rolled her eyes before sighing in resignation. "Sometimes I wonder why I consider you a friend, and then I remember that I'm essentially stuck with you because of my husband and that it's less effort than being at odds with you." Forcing a smile onto her face, she turned to Izuku. "My name is Sigyn. Sigyn-san will suffice; I don't often use a family name. It's nice to meet you..."
"Midoriya Izuku. Nice to meet you too, Sigyn-san." Izuku lets his eyes bounce from one Asgardian to another as he tried to figure out how they all went together. Wait. Sigyn had mentioned a husband. Loki was generally a male, despite his current form. So Sigyn was Loki's wife, then, and spent time around Amora because Amora and Loki were friends. Pleased with himself for his deductions, Izuku reached into his backpack again and pulled out his notebook and a pencil. After considering his options, he decided to focus on the blue-clad newcomer over Loki and Amora. She seemed much more approachable, for some reason. Less physically intimidating as well. She was still taller than him, as all Asgardians seemed to be, but she was only a scant few centimeters taller than him instead of the twenty or so centimeters that Loki and Amora towered over him. "Can you tell me more about yourself? And Koli, I have so many questions after what Amora told me the other day. I actually split most of what Amora's told me out of Volume 13 into a dedicated Volume 14 that's going to be my new Asgardian notebook and then I'll finish Volume 13 with normal quirked heroes."
As Sigyn stared at him with wide eyes, Amora let out a burble of laughter. "I probably should have warned you about Izuku. He has an insatiable thirst for knowledge, particularly heroes. You and I - and Koli - aren't quite heroes but being Asgardians makes us close enough in his eyes. I actually occupy a good five or six pages in his notebook already, not counting all the times he's drawn me."
Izuku blushed faintly but didn't try to deny it. He'd even managed a halfway decent sketch of Loki from memory but if she stuck around long enough this afternoon, he was definitely going to erase it and replace it with a better quality one. Given that Sigyn seemed a bit taken aback at his enthusiasm? Maybe he'd better take advantage of Loki being unable to easily retreat for the moment. "Koli-sama! Amora told me that you're a variant the other day. The multiverse seems so fascinating but I'm still having problems wrapping my head around the concept of just... traveling through it like you have. And you've met other variants of yourself? What's that like? What were they like? How different were they? Was one of them a woman? Is that where you got the idea for Koli from? Do you think there's a universe where I'm a woman?"
"Nope! I am absolutely not doing this." Loki raised her hands as if to ward off Izuku's barrage of questions, going so far as to actually take two steps back and away from the group to put some distance between them. "You already know too much as it is, telling you more is just inviting disaster."
Clucking her tongue, Amora reached out to grab Loki by the bicep and pull her back towards where Izuku was standing. "What's the worst that can happen? There's really no harm in Izu-kun knowing about these sorts of things, is there? Especially a quirkless one? What's he going to do if a Kang shows up, throw his notebook at him?"
Loki regarded Izuku skeptically. "He seems like the type who would do exactly that, to be honest." She stared down at Izuku for a few more seconds before sighing in defeat and crossing her arms over her chest. "Fine. But if your head explodes or something, I'm absolutely not responsible. To answer the last question first, I would wager that in at least one universe you are indeed a female. At least when it comes to local timeline variations, I've found that things tend to involve the same players acting out different plots but I can't imagine given the sheer variety of the multiverse that we couldn't meet a Midoriya Izumi in at least one of them."
"I wonder if I'm pretty?" Izuku pondered that for a few seconds before shaking his head. Even if he could meet a 'Midoriya Izumi', wouldn't finding her attractive be the height of narcissism? What kind of person would be attracted to their own variant? Well, he could always find her objectively beautiful without being personally attracted to her, right? That wouldn't be weird, would it? Wait, why was he still pondering the dynamics of self-attraction when he could be asking Loki more questions? "So, was there a Lady Loki or something? Am I right?"
The question brought a surprisingly wistful look to Koli's face... and a bit of a sour one to Sigyn's. "She called herself Sylvie Laufeydottir. It's where our Sylvie gets her name from, actually. She was actually kidnapped from her timeline by the TVA... did Sylvie tell you about the TVA?" When he shook his head, Loki waved dismissively. "They're not really relevant to you or this story since the odds of you ever encountering them are beyond slim. Anyways, Sylvie escaped from the TVA and went on the run through time itself as she tried to figure out how to bring them down in revenge for pruning her timeline."
Izuku lowered his notebook as he tried to process that. "Assuming pruning means to this story something similar to what it means to normal people... they removed her entire timeline? How? Why?"
"The TVA was obsessed with protecting a singular 'Sacred Timeline'. I violated their grand design and that's how I ended up becoming a variant myself." Loki paused for a few seconds as she considered her words before continuing on. "That's a good place for our story to continue. From my perspective, I escaped from the Avengers' custody in 2012 by seizing the Tesseract and teleporting away. As best I can tell, that never happened in this reality - or most realities - and I went on to Asgard to stand trial. Escaping caused a branch in the Sacred Timeline and the TVA showed up to arrest me and prune the branch. Long story short, I ended up working for them briefly, then threw in my lot with Sylvie after our paths crossed, and... well, it's a long and complicated series of events involving several other variants of me, the void at the end of time, and the reemergence of the multiverse. And a variant of me that happened to be an alligator. He was one of the more memorable individuals that I met on my journey."
Eyes widening, Izuku scribbled down some more notes onto the same messy page as his previous conversation with Amora. "There wasn't a multiverse at one point? And now there is? And you were there when it came back?"
Loki nodded smugly. "While I disagree with Sylvie's actions and we parted was because of them, I ultimately understood why she did what she did. She killed He Who Remains, the man who founded the TVA and set in motion the events that led to her being named a variant and her timeline being erased. That caused the timeline to fracture and reemerge into a proper multiverse. That's when I subtly slipped away from the TVA's custody and traveled to this particular timeline in 2023. Combining bits of a plan that an older version of myself enacted with the nature of Sylvie's existence, I turned into a female version of myself to keep people from noticing that I had returned and almost immediately stumbled upon, erm, Sylvie. She convinced me that we'd have more luck blending into the chaos as two orphaned children, and thus this Sylvie and Koli were born. Two hundred years later, we're old enough to be here in Musutafu and that brings us to today."
"And while Asgardians are generally like mortals in that we are 'til death do us part', I decided to make an exception because it was infinitely preferable to being a single mother." Sigyn let out a put upon sigh before wrapping one arm around Loki's waist. "Deciding to deage myself to match Koli was seen as a bit of narcissism on my part and has gotten me many strange looks here in Japan when I'm out with my daughter, but the alternative was to present as a couple with a significant age gap and I wasn't ready to be looked at as a cradle robber by you mortals."
For a moment, Izuku found himself wondering if he'd finally manifested a quirk and it was one that made his eyes supernaturally wide. Because they definitely felt wider at all of these revelations than they'd ever been before in the past. But for some reason, he found himself fixating on the strangest bit of information. "You met a version of you that was an alligator?"
Loki let out a soft chuckle at the question. "Also clearly adopted by Odin. He bit the hand off of a variant of me who had run for president of the United States and won. I assume that's what got him pruned. Didn't really have time to ask. Now that I think about it, I have no idea what became of my alligator alter ego or the child variant of me after Sylvie and I defeated Alioth. I lost track of them after we entered the Citadel at the End of Time. I do hope they made it out okay."
If humanly possible, Izuku's eyes got even wider. "There's an actual end to time? And there's a citadel there? And you've been there?"
"So many questions, and I have so little reason to care enough to answer." Counter to her words, though, Loki waved her hand and conjured a gold and green throne from thin air before plopping down in it. Unlike Amora's magical constructs, it was actually fully colored and tangible, making Izuku wonder if she'd teleported a chair from somewhere rather than creating one out of magic as Amora tended to. "Well, I've already come this far. Might as well keep answering questions until I grow well and truly bored enough to take Sigyn and leave. Yes, I've been to the end of time..."
