I'm SO sorry for how long this took. All I can say is that college is crazy.
That being said, please read, review, and enjoy!
Stone
Sigyn stews in her house, despondent and miserable, for a week after Loki dies. The first three days, she dares not to leave the comfort of her room.
On the first day of her self-imposed house arrest, she limps home as the sun peers over the horizon, less than enthused for the new day and laden with a heavy stone of grief in the pit of her stomach. Upon arriving at her house and making it to her room, she chances a look in the mirror, finding something hauntingly familiar, an uneven mane of short, haphazardly-cut hair, a bruised nose from a hit not quite hard enough to break the bone there, and a face covered in drying blood. She looks exactly as she had the day she met him. It is nothing short of poetic, which only adds insult to injury.
There are no plans for an extravagant public funeral befitting of a prince's demise, given the circumstances. If there is any sort of private memorial, Sigyn is not invited. She had been fired, too. Well, not fired, per se. Rather, she had been removed from her esteemed post on the Queen's Guard and reassigned to her former unit. She had received a promotion to major, on which—according to Colborn—the Queen Frigga had insisted so as to not completely ruin Sigyn's military career. Sigyn finds it difficult to be anything close to grateful for this, considering it had also been Frigga who had both torched Sigyn's brain and had Sigyn removed from her detail because she did not want to be constantly reminded of her late son.
Sigyn does not quite know how to feel about all that. She does not quite know how to feel about anything right now, and for good reason. For decades, she had been terrified over what might have happened if she let Loki talk her into any form of romantic relationship. Against what she had thought was her better judgment, she had finally relented in her refusals last week, and her fears had come to fruition almost immediately. Not only had her desperate struggle for a better social standing—centuries in the making—and her career been done in, but Loki had committed treason and died.
She can't even be mad at him. She is too busy mourning. Incapable of getting closure, she does not know how long her grief will last, or if it will ever go away.
In an agonizing, desperate act of abortive fury, she trashes her room until the floor is littered with shards of glass, torn fabric, and splintered wood. Once she has tired herself out, she collapses onto her disheveled bed, her tear-streaked face wetting the pillow. She falls asleep to the feeling of the damp sham chafing the skin of her cheek.
Upon waking up halfway into the next day, she drags herself into the bathroom, stringently avoiding looking into the mirror. Afterward, she heads straight back to bed, resolutely disregarding the sound of her mother knocking at her locked door. She bites her lip as she sinks her face back into her pillow, ashamed that she is ignoring a loved one so clearly worried about her in favor of wallowing.
The day after that, Quimby manages to pick her lock and strides into her room in spite of her protesting groans. Standing at the foot of her bed, he tries to rip the sheets from her body, and her groans grow in volume.
"Sigyn, you have to get up," he insists sometime later, having given up on physically trying to rouse her.
Fuck off, she grouses.
Face still resolutely smashed into her pillow, she cannot see him, though she hears him take a step back. "Okay, firstly," he says, "You know I hate that mind-talky shit."
She moves enough for her mouth to detach itself from her pillow, a line of drool spilling out. "Did you just refer to telepathy as 'mind-talky shit?'"
"Did you just spit onto your bedding like a newborn," he bites back.
Just to spite him, she musters up enough saliva to purposefully spit. "Secondly," she prompts.
"Secondly," he goes on, looking both concerned and like he wants to pull out his own hair. "From what I can tell, you've not eaten in at least three days. Moreover, I know you've not bathed in just as long."
"Rude," she grumbles, glaring at him from over her shoulder.
He shifts on his feet, holding out his arms in a beseeching gesture. "I am serious, Sigyn," he implores. "It is time to get out of bed."
Fed up, she throws off her covers and launches herself off the mattress. "It is time for you to get off my dick," she dictates, stomping right up to him and shoving him out of the room. Before falling back into bed, she slams the door in his face and magically removes the keyhole from the knob to ensure subsequent privacy.
On the fourth day after Loki's death, she finally ventures past her bedroom door, hunger ultimately having won out. Heading toward the kitchen, she stops when she hears her mother's voice drifting up the stairs.
"She is devastated," Walentyna says, sounding completely at a loss for what to do.
A man grunts in response. "She can hardly be blamed," he says, and Sigyn realizes Quimby is the one speaking. Fleetingly, a part of her is scorned that Pontus has not yet made an appearance. "However, I don't know what can be done, at least on our part," he goes on. "She won't even speak to me unless it is to argue."
Sigyn slinks silently down the stairs until she can see Walentyna shrugging, Quimby just out of sight. "She is heartbroken. I am still not entirely clear on what transpired between the two of them, but I do know that he betrayed her trust and promptly," she pauses, grasping for the right words, "dropped off."
When Sigyn had arrived home on that first day, Walentyna had been sitting at the very table she currently occupies, working out their finances for the month. She had smiled to greet Sigyn, who had tearfully screeched something akin to an explanation as to what had happened to her late the day before. Despite the minimal amount of information Sigyn had given her with the outburst, Walentyna had managed to understand the gravity of the situation and has tread carefully around Sigyn ever since.
Now, Sigyn's stomach churns, guilt and grief swirling there together. Slapping against the slate floor, her feet land at the bottom of the steps, drawing the attention of the other occupants of the kitchen. Walentyna stands abruptly from the table, leaving her chair open for Sigyn to sit. Her brow is pinched in overt worry, eyes wide. "How are you feeling, dear?"
Having left her room solely because she could no longer ignore the grumbling of her gut, Sigyn replies, "Hungry," as she shuffles into the proffered seat.
Walentyna rushes over to the pantry. Her movements are taut with disquiet, stiff, and somewhat frantic. Doubtlessly, she is anxious at the opportunity to help the daughter that has been refusing her comfort for days. "I'll make you whatever you'd like. What do you want?"
Loki, her heart calls.
"Bread pudding," she says instead, sniffling pitifully. While her mother gets to work in the kitchen, she turns her attention to Quimby. "Why are you still here," she grunts, voice watery.
His nose scrunches up, mock-offended. "I happen to give a shit about you, you know," he says, and she once again notes Pontus's absence.
"Don't you have children," she snidely reminds him.
He shrugs, and the sympathetic tilt to his lips only serves to piss her off. "You need me more right now."
"You're a terrible father," she sneers. The ugliness in her tone brings tears to her eyes. She should not be lashing out at her friend, she knows, but the one person who actually deserves her wrath is distinctly unavailable.
Quimby does not seem to notice her rapidly worsening mood. "Worse than yours?"
Sigyn feels her bottom lip and chin begin to quiver as a short, belated warning of her impending collapse into a bawling, hiccupping mess. She tucks her chin into her chest, surprised that an errant comment concerning something about which she does not currently find herself upset would set her off in such a manner.
Promptly, Walentyna rushes over, hands settling around Sigyn's shoulders and rubbing in soothing circles. "What did you do," she bites at Quimby over the sound of Sigyn's wailing.
He fumbles for a response. "I only made a joke."
"Get out," Walentyna orders, apparently uninterested in any further explanation.
Sigyn sobs into her mother's chest until her eyes are dry. She doesn't remember getting up from the table thereafter.
Elshe drops by the day after that. Sigyn's sitting at the same dining table at which her mother had dismissed Quimby the day before, and she can only imagine the angry grimace on Elshe's face has something to do with that. Nonetheless, she does not address the issue, choosing instead to continue steeping her morning tea with a haughty, holier-than-thou attitude as though Elshe is not there at all.
However uninvited, Elshe takes the seat beside her. "Hello, Sigyn."
"Hello, Elshe," she returns.
"Nice eye-bags," Elshe comments.
Tea sloshes from the cup in Sigyn's hands as she slams it onto the tabletop. Distantly, she registers the feeling of it burning her hands, but she does not snatch them away. Her eyes—which yes, she is aware are currently adorned with dark circles—snap to Elshe's in a resentful glare.
Without further preamble, Elshe goes on, "I do not appreciate the manner in which you have been treating my husband as of late."
"He needs to mind his own business," she snarls, face hot with anger.
"You need to lighten up," Elshe rebuts.
Sigyn's lip curls in outrage. "'Lighten up,'" she repeats, incredulous. "How would you feel if Quimby suddenly betrayed you and then fucking killed himself?"
Elshe comes back louder in an attempt to match her volume, a feat she has never before attempted with Sigyn. "I did not realize you and Loki were married with children."
Further incensed, she yells, "Well, I did not realize that only bored housewives were allowed to grieve!"
Elshe reels back, offense written all over her face. "Grief is no excuse to treat your friends poorly."
Sigyn falls silent at that, without argument and ashamed. She had taken notice of her abrasive behavior days ago but had not made any moves to correct it. Rather, she has kept on her path of sneering at her friends and shooting down their consolations with prejudice. Even her mother she ignores when she passes her in the hall or the kitchen.
They sit in silence for a short time, Sigyn trying to think of a way to make amends, and Elshe probably wishing she had not been so harsh.
Sigyn's eyes remain fixed on her hands, which are still wet and faintly warm from her tea. Faintly, she whispers, "He did propose to me, you know."
"What," Elshe gasps. Sigyn is not surprised at her shock. She had never told anyone, after all.
She nods. "It was after the radical attack twenty years ago. I—" She smiles ruefully. "I did not even let him finish, too afraid of the consequences."
Elshe pulls Sigyn's hands into her own, unconcerned with the drying tea's stickiness. Patiently, she waits for Sigyn to continue, her brow drawn up in attentive consideration. When she does, it's with a regretful tone. "I wasted all our time."
"No," Elshe protests, finally drawing Sigyn's gaze up to hers again.
"We could have been together all that time," she maintains, her eyes glossing over for the umpteenth time this week.
Quietly, Elshe asks, "Do you really think that?"
She's quiet for a minute before admitting, "No." If she had let him finish and proceeded to agree to his proposal then, it would not have changed the circumstances of the time. The world had been against them. Now, the nature of the universe is, and there is still nothing she can do to change it.
Besides, after everything that has happened, she is beginning to think that she had narrowly avoided disaster. If she had been with him, whether in an official capacity or otherwise, she very well might have been signing onto her own ruin. It could have been only a matter of time before she had paid the price of one of his schemes for power.
The silence returns for a time, though it dissipates when Sigyn tightens her grip on Elshe's hands and makes to apologize. "I apologize for earlier. I know not what possessed me to say such things."
Elshe indulges her with a smile. "I, too, regret my choice of words. I hope you will forgive me as I do you."
She nods. "Of course."
Elshe rises from her seat, helping her clean up the mess she had made with the tea and muttering about having to get back to the boys. Once at the door, she says, "I shall pass the sentiment onto Quimby, as well."
"No," Sigyn objects. "I shall apologize myself when next I see him."
Fondly, Elshe nods her approval. "There she is."
At long last, Pontus comes to visit on the sixth day.
Sigyn resides in the small living room adjacent to the kitchen at the time of his arrival. She is at the perfect vantage to see him as he walks through the front door of the house, though he does not yet notice her. He is decked out in his armor, likely having just come from work. He asks Walentyna where she is, and after a few mumbled words from her mother, his eyes snaps to hers as his gaze travels past the doors leading from the dining area.
She waits until he is stands beside the couch on which she lies before asking, "Why haven't you been by to see me?"
He stands awkwardly in front of her, clearly wanting to sit, but she offers him no room to do so. "I thought you would be angry with me," he answers.
"Why," she asks sardonically, head quirking to the left, "because you ruined what turned out to be my one and only chance to kiss him?"
Swallowing uncomfortably, he says, "Yeah."
She turns her head to regard the wall, blowing a strand of her stupidly-short hair out of her face. "Well, I'm not. I should thank you, really."
"Really," he asks, voice heavy with surprise.
She sighs. "It would be harder if I had such a moment to cherish, surely."
Pontus takes a few seconds before questioning her further. "Harder to stop him when the time came, or harder to avoid implication in the aftermath?"
"Both," she responds, turning to once more regard him.
Harder to get over him now, she adds to herself, the forlorn feeling in her chest lighting slightly, as it has been steadily doing for days. With the way things have been going, she imagines her grief and disappointment will drizzle out of her at an exponential rate: quickly and in big chunks at first, then slowly and with smaller bits of reminiscent fondness as the centuries go by. It is almost a relief when she thinks about it like that, she finds.
They are both quiet for a moment, Sigyn thinking of how tired she has grown of these tense, poignant silences of which she has been a part these past few days.
When next he speaks, it is in a lower, more serious tone. "Speaking of implication, you need to get out of this house. The more you appear to mourn him, the more suspicion you will attract."
Her eyes fall to the ground. "I know," she whispers.
Pontus goes on, "Kettil told me that you are expected to assume control of the squadron in two days. Were I you, I'd be there."
The final day of her self-imposed seclusion is a quiet day she spends with her mother, devoted to trying to get out all her feelings on the matter. Admittedly, she does not divulge all of her emotions, a good many of them clouded in secrets she dares not say aloud, afraid of the truth in them.
She did not love him, she privately insists throughout the day. It will be too hard for her to move on if anything else is true.
Walentyna helps her clean her room, ignoring Sigyn's protests that it had been her mess and she alone is responsible. They sweep up all the debris of her earlier rage, right anything that had been overturned, and properly make her bed.
Her mother is finishing dusting off the top of her dresser when she remarks on how only the music box had been spared, not knowing whence Sigyn had gotten it.
Sigyn picks up the music box, admiring it for the last time. "He gave it to me." She opens it up, letting the music spill out. "A long time ago," she adds, closing her eyes so as to not have to watch the happy little fae couple and to better ingrain the tune in her memory. Once the melody warbles to its end, she closes the box. It clicks shut, and she wills it into the pocket dimension into which everything she makes disappear goes. She does not think about it again.
On the eighth day of post-Loki life, Sigyn goes to work.
Her new cape is a cheerful, royal blue, much like the Queen's Guard kerchief that no longer adorns the armor around her bicep. Hair hanging freely just under her chin, she strides down the steps of the army arena in which she had instructed Kettil to have the squadron gather.
Aside from Kettil and Arvid, the men and Tove stand in straight rows in the middle of the arena, shoulders back and chins up as she makes her approach. She stops with Kettil on her right and Arvid on her left, and gives the troops a reassuring smile. "Hello, everyone," she greets. "Thank you for gathering here today."
She pauses a moment before continuing, letting her eyes travel briefly over each and every person under her command. "I would like to start out by saying welcome to anyone that has joined the division in the past twenty years. I look forward to getting to know you all." Focusing on more familiar faces, she goes on, "As for everyone else, I am happy to be working with you all again. Those of you who treated me with respect in the past, I shall remember your kindness. As for those of you who did not," she pauses, mostly for dramatic effect. She lets her eyes land on Yvor, who nervously shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and pastes a placid smile onto her face. "Consider it forgotten."
After a few seconds of silence, she asks, "Are there any questions?"
Langley, who has always been a little shit, pipes up. "Be there any conflict of interest between you an' the king about which we should be worried?" A few people snicker, bringing an even broader smile to Langley's face. Sigyn resists the urge to grimace.
Arvid takes half a step forward as though to reprimand Langley, but Sigyn waves him off. "Even if there were any points of contention between myself and any member of the royal family, which there are not, they would not reflect poorly on anyone under my command. There is no one need worry about any misunderstandings."
"Even about the Prince Loki," someone says just loud enough to hear, though she cannot tell who.
Frustrated, Sigyn speaks without thinking. "Look, Loki is dead to me," she pauses, reconsidering her statement. "And to everyone else because he is dead." Her voice trails off a little awkwardly. "Is that clear?"
A mixture of affirmative responses rings out into the air of the arena, varying in the way in which she is addressed. One particular soldier, Kjeld, says, "Yes, sir."
"'Sir,'" she questions, stepping forward until she is directly in front of Kjeld, staring down her nose at him. "Do I look a man to you?"
His eyes dart to the side, clearly uncomfortable with the unwanted attention he has inadvertently won himself. "N-No."
"No," she agrees in her most approving tone. "You may call me Major or ma'am. Is that understood?"
Kjeld nods. "Yes, ma'am."
Sigyn nods her approval. "Good." She turns away, walking towards the garrison. "Lieutenant Arvid, your platoon is on prison duty. Captain Kettil, have your men do drills. I will be in my office. Dismissed."
End of Part Two
Next chapter will take place during the first Avengers movie! Sigyn finally makes it to Earth!