Idunn was tending the tree and pruning the rotting apples away from the heavily laden branches when she heard the soft footsteps over the soft rustling of the leaves. It wasn't the hurried tread of one approaching her domain in anticipation of the rewards they thought they so richly deserved, nor was it the slapping rhythm of an angry individual she had turned away only return under the false assumption they could take her apples by force. She held the shriveled, blackening fruit in her hand as she considered the height from which she was sitting above the dropped fruits and decided she was better off continuing her chore.
Even if the interloper did snatch one of the apples she had already dropped, there had been no bargains made and the cores were already rotten. A few thieves over the years had managed to snatch an apple or two while she was lightening the weight of the branches. They had learned the hard way that the rotten cores gave not immortality, but their greatest nightmares in return for the treachery. Rising carefully onto the branch she had been seated on, she dropped her current prize, and moved carefully to the next cluster.
Despite what most thought, her apples did have a lifespan and the tree required careful attention every few years in order to keep producing the apples that helped the Aseir to occasionally maintain their immortality and extended youth. Minutes passed and the footsteps had long ago paused in their approach. Despite that, she knew they were aware of her position by the shifting of the tree's branches and the apples that she was still dropping.
"You may as well state your intentions," she called down after another few minutes of further silence. Almost as an afterthought she added, "Don't take the rotten ones, they won't give you what you seek."
"That they will not," came the murmured reply of a voice that was both familiar and not. It was one that she had heard from afar, but never had the experience of meeting firsthand. She stood and parted the leaves until she could clearly see the individual below her. "For what I have are questions for the desire that has been granted to me."
For a long moment, Trickster and Guardian studied each other. "You venture far from your Soulmate so early in the bond. What questions are worth the risks you take for such a precious thing?" Idunn asked, already knowing the answer. She knew what he wanted to ask, knew the knowledge he had come to her for.
Even with the distance between them she could see the flash of muted anger that crossed Loki's features and she could only grin fiercely when he snapped, "Play not your games, little Guardian, and tell me what bargains you have dragged from Sigyn in exchange for the apple you gave her."
"If thine little Healer doth not wish to impart upon thine that knowledge, then not from I will thine gain that knowledge," she returned, her voice lilting up in with the mocking phrases she was borrowing from some of their older language. Dropping the pretense of the old speech, she said, "My bargains are not gained lightly when one seeks an apple for the immortality of another. Their mettle is tested against my Firebrand and then asked to strike the bargains necessary to gain the apple itself. Very few can withstand the fire of the marks and those that do are rarely ever willing to see the bargains through."
"So there have been others to withstand your brandings," Loki said, his eyes sparking.
She didn't bother trying to keep up the appearance that she was like other Aseir when she stepped from the branches and plummeted a distance that would have shattered bones in another of their kind. Rising fluidly from her crouched landing, she turned to Loki and snarled, "Leave it be, Trickster. Those who withstood those brandings were no more worthy of these apples than the other Asgardians who believe themselves entitled to them for a bargain struck long before their forms were conceived of. Sigyn is the first to be worthy of them for the sake of worth."
"She has given the apple to Tony Stark, who is my Soulmate. Sigyn was once my betrothed and is still one whom I would see no harm come to," he persisted. "If you deny me the knowledge of what the bargain was, then allow me to seek the apple for my Soulmate in my own right or else allow him to seek it for himself."
"No," she said flatly, already turning away.
He was struck speechless for a moment as she disregarded him so completely as to start climbing the base of the tree with a practiced ease that made him think she had done this many times. "I am Loki of-" he started, power swirling to his command. Before he could finish, however, Idunn had dropped from the tree's base and streaked toward him in a flash movement that he could barely track. The tip of her dagger rested at the base of his throat, an expression of rage settling over her own features.
"You are not entitled here, little fallen princeling," she snarled at him, amber eyes bleeding into a rich gold and her features losing a little of their Aseir qualities. "There are no bargains for you to make, no knowledge for you to gain when the apple has already been given. Know this, princeling, were it not for Sigyn, I would slice you and feed your blood to the roots until your death returned you to your lovely little Hela." She held him there for a moment longer before she stepped back and let the mask of civility slide back into place, leaving Loki with the feeling that he had glimpsed something old and terrible beyond even their worst legends. "Know this, too, princeling," she said, calmer now. "Sigyn made her choices knowing full well the price she would pay. It is more than any of those before her had knowledge of. Leave this place before you overwhelm any affection I might have for her and cause me to kill you."
And that was a more terrifying sentiment expressed by a Sentinel than he had ever witnessed from Odin. It had him making a controlled retreat-not fleeing, that wasn't something he did-but even he could admit to defeat when faced with something he suspected was out of the forgotten age of the Titans.
Far above and away from the incident, Heimdal observed the calm manner in which Idunn returned to her work despite the confrontation she had just had. He filed away the new information regarding his fellow Sentinel and Guardian and resolved to keep a closer eye on her with regards to her treatment of less welcome guests. It would not do, after all, to upset the keeper of their longevity.
The spell released him into the living and the sight that greeted him had him blinking twice to ensure it was real. For once, since Sigyn had given them the apple, Tony wasn't locked away in his lab running every imaginable test on it. Instead, he was in the kitchen with arms crossed over his chest and one hip leaned against the counter while he stared at the apple with a considering look. At Loki's first move towards Tony, the scientist glanced his way.
"How's this work?"
Loki felt his heartbeat pick up a pace as he closed the distance to the kitchen and paused just before he entered that space. "It is an apple. You eat it as any other of its kind. There are…unpleasant…side effects at the beginning, but they are short lived and-once done-you will be as close to an immortal as those of Asgard."
"Immortal, stronger, faster, harder to kill, so on and so forth," Tony listed off, glancing again at the apple. "She do this often? Give immortality out like it's…easy?"
There was a pause that had Tony looking up at his Soulmate again. "No, but we have discussed this before." Fought, if he was truthful, but that was beside the point. Tony knew there was no easy way to get the apple, knew there had been a bargain of sorts.
"And you trust her? Really trust her?" Tony asked, just wanting to hear the words again.
"As you trust Virginia 'Pepper' Potts."
Tony looked up and met Loki's gaze. There was no point in pursuing that line of questioning. He knew where it would lead. There was, as ever, the one question to answer: Did he want this? And yet he knew the answer to that, had known since he'd declared a truce and they had started over. "Then you-" Tony broke off to study the way the Trickster was studying him. When he continued, his voice was softer and held more inflection than it had. "We're really going to give this a go of it, then? Not just talk about it and plan for the eventuality. No going back."
"No going back," Loki agreed.
He didn't know if they would survive the long years together or destroy each other, but he knew he wanted that future and that it was within his reach. His fingers closed around the apple.
Central Park was quieter in the evening than in the afternoon as people hurried from work to dinner and the next crush of citizens took their place. It was peaceful, too, with only the wind and a few souls for company among the paths and the trees. It was there that Sigyn was walking backwards and talking animatedly with Pepper about some component of a spell that Pepper had wanted to know about. There were a couple of guards that had come with the human woman, but the Healer had paid them no mind as dinner had turned into the invitation to go on a walk and see the city. Certainly the city had been interesting, but Pepper's conversation had been more so.
It was in the middle of that conversation that had carried them into hours that the first stab of pain struck. The feeling was akin to the Firebrand searing its fire into her skin, but this stabbed her heart and spread from there. She broke off mid-sentence with a gasp and a hand clutching at the shirt over her heart. It had been thirteen days since she had won the apple from Idunn. Thirteen days of waiting and wondering and now, right now, it was working its way through her blood and magic, stripping her of the things she had bargained away.
The ground reached up to swallow her, but she impacted something else, something warm. A scream was trapped in her throat as she struggled to get enough air into her lungs. Words blended together as her vision darkened and her magic turned inward to fight the drain of life from her body.
"…immortality equal to my own Aseir status…"
Immortality wasn't something freely granted. It was a balanced thing that held so many lives suspended and to give it to one was to lose it for another and not everyone survived that process.