In theory, Sigyn knew she should have left the planet, should have let the spell carry her as far away as possible, but...she found herself standing in the pouring rain staring at The Salty Stevedore Ale House. Really, she could almost blame Thor for introducing her to their honey mead and getting her blind drunk off it so long ago. Her lips curved slightly at the memory and the fondness it carried. Then, she studied the old man that was watching her through the window. His brow was creased in thought with his arms crossed over his apron and she knew she looked a mess. She cocked her head and his eyes narrowed, not with suspicion but with interest.
The mortal beckoned her in and her feet carried her forward. She remembered at the last second to temper her strength and push the door gently before she stepped inside and cast a look over the other, startled patrons that took in her soaked, bloodied appearance. The owner was still eyeing her curiously when he vanished behind the bar to have a low conversation with blonde, lanky barkeep, who gave her a startled look and then scurried away into the back.
He didn't need to beckon her again for her to follow him to the bar and retrieve a cloth bag that clinked. She dropped it on the counter, took a seat on one of the stools, and said, "What I require is enough of your honey mead to forget…someone." She knew it wasn't possible, but it wouldn't stop her from trying. It took her half a barrel, six rounds of bellowing foreign lyrics with other drunken patrons, and an odd "country" dance that had her swinging in circles until the room spun to laugh and smile with the others that had joined her in the drinking.
After, as the stars were winking out to daylight and the barkeep-Shaun, she had discovered-tidied up around her, she sat in the relative silence of the alehouse and nursed a coffee in the company of the old owner, trading old stories of mischief and war. The buzz and drunken hours were long gone, but she found herself oddly reluctant to leave the company of the old man. She sipped at the bitter liquid again as she watched Shaun finish mopping and wring out the last of the water from the mop with a sidelong glance at her.
"So," he began hesitantly and she raised her eyebrows. "That gold..."
"...is as real as any you will find in the veins of Midgard," she murmured and his eyes almost popped out of his skull. Grinning just a little and feeling a tiny flutter of mischief, she let power creep through her body and shift the cloth of her robes into something relatively normal by Midgardian standards-black slacks and a blue, silk blouse.
The owner just chuckled at Shaun's gaping stare and gulped down the last of his own mug of coffee. "I won't take that gold," he said and she looked sidelong at him. "Your company was well worth that half barrel you had and your stories worth more than I can say. Let me-"
"No," she said, rising and pushing the coffee away. "Your company was appreciated. Consider it an advance for when Thor shows up. You know he'll drink two or three of those barrels and inevitably break something. Its the least I can do." She paused and smiled with only a touch of sadness as she said, "Thank you." Maybe she would never forget, never fully heal from the loss, but life moved forward in its own way and there would be joy again for her.
She slid away from the table and stepped towards the door with one last smile at the owner and an amused glance towards Shaun's still stunned expression. Then, she was out the door and turning into the early New York crowd straming through the streets.
Tony sat in his lab, trying studiously to wait for Jarvis to complete his analysis of the apple, but it was harder to do than he had thought it would be. He was staring at the latest repulsor upgrade and he couldn't quite focus on it. After another five minutes of looking over the diagrams, he gave up and flicked to the progress that Jarvis was making and felt his stomach curl in on itself. There was nothing he hadn't expected, (basic composition of an apple) and trace elements of a compound that Jarvis couldn't identify, yet...
"What bargains did you make?"
It wasn't free. Whatever magical juice this apple broke down into to make someone a quasi-immortal, Sigyn had made made some form of a deal for Loki so he didn't have to live a mortal lifespan or struggle to get it themselves. Somehow, it felt like cheating and that made it ring false. He glanced sidelone at the apple in question. Was this something he was could accept?
Pepper touched the photo again and studied it with relative calm. She had known from the first moment Jarvis had warned her of Loki's arrival that nothing would be entirely the same again. She had kept the media hounds at bay over Tony's retreat into seclusion and done her level best to not hunt Thor and Loki down and skin them when Jarvis was suddenly and totally taken off line for those few short hours only to be informed that Tony had been missing. The only thing that had kept her from acting on that impulse was the fact that Tony was carefully avoiding her phonecalls again. It was normal enough for them now that she was willing to give him the space he needed to do whatever he needed to do.
Now this.
She had lived through their fallout after the events with the Mandrin, could admit it was her fault as much as his, and understand-just barely-when Thor briefly explained to her about Soulmates. She had decided she could even adapt to Loki being the one that Tony was supposedly bound to. She had even been able to rebuff most of the concerns SHIELD threw at her when they found out and started making nuclear plans-granted, it had taken her and Steve threatening them to get them to back off, but it had worked.
Now this.
Jarvis had told her about the apple and the connection with Loki that the Healer had shared, but it was still somehow too much to absorb. An Asgardian Healer defying Odin and leaving her old life behind to offer Tony a chance at immortality...no strings attached. A week later and Tony was still suspicious and running every test imaginable on the apple. The thought of him staying up for a week straight doing those tests brought a slight smile to her lips, but it faded again as her fingertips traced the lines of Sigyn's face.
At her request, Jarvis had monitored-hacked-the security feeds of all cameras and motion detectors within a hundred miles and waited for the first sign of strange movement. It had come the morning after he had spotted Sigyn departing a bar. Since then, he had been tracking her movements since, reporting back to Pepper and compiling the information.
Pepper could have understood if the Healer had simply been spotted that once and then vanished off the face of the planet, but she...seemed...to be making a point to stay in their sights.
Every time Sigyn vanished from one location, she always appeared on a camera or some type of feed they could track seconds later. Jarvis had even traced her to one of the moderately cheap hotels in New York where she seemed to be...waiting. Just waiting. Sure, she was creeping out of the hotel and venturing into the city and other parts of the planet, but she always returned at the end of the day to New York and just stayed like any other guest.
It was only when Sigyn stopped to give one of the cameras a long, searching look that Pepper knew. The Healer was aware of the interest directed at her and she was waiting for them. That, realistically, should have been her clue to let SHIELD handle the situation, but-with Tony involved in this tangled web-she wasn't willing to do that, so she'd reached out and set a meeting and been surprised by the easy acceptance.
"Ms Potts," Jarvis' voice broke through to her.
She blinked and looked up and-yes-she really had been lost in thought enough that she hadn't realized how close to three it was. "Thank you, Jarvis," she replied softly. "Can you ask Happy to bring the car around?"
"Already done, Ms Potts," he replied crisply and she smiled at the familiarity of it. "He's awaiting you at the private entrance."
The restaurant was expensive, but well worth the privacy that it afforded its patrons. Sigyn idly thumbed through the menu before she set it aside with the way her stomach was curling in on itself. Another waiter passed her by with a quick glance before he hurried on. She had been seated more than fifteen minutes ago under the reservation "Hogan" as planned, but the woman she had meant to meet was still absent when everything about her suggested that Pepper Potts should have arrived first.
In truth, she could have left for any of the other realms once the apple was in their hands and waited out the rest of the process, but she hadn't been able to talk herself around to it. Instead, she had accepted an invitation to lunch from the CEO of Stark Industries in the midst of hunting through Midgard and seeing what had changed in the last several hundred years. She could admit, if only to herself, that she was nervous the longer this dragged out, the longer that it took the inventor to eat the damned apple and that didn't make for many pleasant and maybe-just maybe-this was one way to try and address that issue.
The time stretched further into a half an hour and a fourth glass of water that she had drained. She was rolling the empty cup between her fingers and watching the condensation drip onto the tablecloth when she felt heard the footsteps of two someones approaching-one staff and distinctly not staff. Resisting the urge to look up, she waited until the two forms entered her peripheral before she glanced up.
Pepper Potts was exactly the woman she appeared in the photos: imposing, a dangerous kind of beautiful, and immaculate. Sigyn lifted her chin and studied the woman as she was in turn studied. Fluidly, Sigyn rose and gave the human a slight bow without breaking her gaze.
"Ms Potts. I must say, I was surprised that it was you who reached out first," she said, straightening.
"Not half as surprised as I was when I heard what had happened, Ms...Lie-smith," Pepper returned, the last a question that she asked with the upwards flick of an eyebrow.
"No," Sigyn said softly, taking her seat again. "That has never been a name that was mine to claim." Pepper was seated only a moment after her as she continued, "I have ever been Healer, Fidelity, Sigyn of Asgard, or Sigyn of Vannaheim. Of late, I choose the first or the latter, but if it is your preference then just Sigyn."
A silence fell between them as they continued to regard each other. It wasn't a comfortable sort, but Sigyn couldn't find it in herself to broach the subject herself. She was under no illusion that she was an interloper in these matters and that her help might just be entirely unwanted. That didn't stop her from staying close, in case.
Finally, Pepper said, softly, "If this apple isn't what it appears. If this is a trick or something to try and win...him...back and you hurt Tony in any form or fashion, I will find a way to destroy you. Norse myth or not, I will find a way."
Sigyn blinked and then blinked again before a smile cracked her expression and she grinned. This, this, at least was something she understood, something she could deal with. Maybe it shouldn't have been so comfortingly familiar, but it was the same suspicion she had always met with her own brand of humor and wit. "If I wanted to bring him harm, I would have done so before now and in a manner that left none in doubt his demise was natural." She paused, considered Pepper's expression and shrugged. "I am a Healer by choice and nature, but that knowledge also means that I am well aquainted with the ways in which best to take someone apart and kill them as slowly or as quickly as I please. An apple with the promise of immortality? That is hardly the way I would go about doing something. Its dependent on far too many factors."
They both glanced at the waitor that almost seemingly materialized at Sigyn's elbow. They gave their orders before they returned to regarding each other. Pepper was no more relaxed, but her next words weren't quite as clipped and hostile, "I...thank you for your honest words, however barbed they were." Sigyn just smiled thinly at that. "I simply cannot understand what it is you hope to gain from this."
Sigyn blinked at that and tilted her head as she studied the other woman. She was quiet for a long moment, weighing her words and choosing how much to put into them. Finally, she shrugged, and admitted, "There is nothing to gain from this. I would lose any way that you look at it if I tried to hold onto my marriage. If Stark were to remain mortal and live a mortal lifespan, Loki would be crippled by that loss and nothing I did would be enough. If I tried to get between them, I might be sucessful, but the fact still remains that they are bonded and that would be...an uncomfortable situation in any way that you can think of. The only way that I can come out of this with some semblance of keeping myself intact is if I let go, if I step back. Giving Stark immortality equal to my own Aseir status is really the only insurance that I have to ensure we three can have some semblance of peace of mind." She was grinning again at her own barbed manners even as she pressed on, "So, Pepper Potts, I must confess some semblance of curiosity as to how it is you are involved in this. If others are to be believed, then you were the one to end your relationship with Stark more than a year prior."
It stung, she wouldn't deny that, but it had been in the media for far longer than she had wanted it to be and that meant archives and newspaper and video clippings that couldn't be entirely-legally-wiped out despite Tony's efforts. "I ended it, yes, but that doesn't mean I stopped caring what happened to him." And somehow, finally, that cleared Sigyn's expression and made her shoulders relax a little. The Healer leaned back into her chair and studied the human with something akin to understanding.
"I see," was the simple reply.
They regarded each other for a time longer as they absorbed the meaning and weight of the other's words and, suddenly, it was not such an uncomfortable silence. Sigyn was the first to turn her gaze away, but it was Pepper who invited a new conversation with quiet questions about Asgard and the other realms. Maybe their conversation wasn't done, but they had learned enough to be satisfied with their answers and to want to know the other if only a little better.