Note: Sigyn as portrayed in this story is a mixture of mythological and Marvel influences and my own interpretation of her character. Please be aware that her backstory may deviate somewhat from traditional mythological or Marvel depictions. Thank you for reading!

Loki of Asgard was alive.

Sigyn stared at her reflection, repeating the words over and over in her head. It didn't help to make them more believable, even when she had seen him with her own eyes. Her head felt foggy, as though she had not quite woken from a dream. The only thing keeping her certain that she was not asleep was the dull pain of her fingernails digging into her palm as she tried to keep her hands from shaking.

It had been three years since she'd landed on Sakkar. In that time, she had gotten used to many things. Her confinement to that planet for the remainder of her lifetime was a given; she had long stopped waiting for an Asgardian search party to come and rescue her. Her new role as a servant was easy enough to bear, as it had kept her so busy in those first few months that she barely had time to consider the futility of her circumstances.

Sigyn had also learned to accept the fact that her husband was well and truly dead. There had been some glimmer of hope in her still, when she had been on Asgard, that all was not as it seemed. After all, Loki had cheated death before, when he had fallen from the Bifrost only to be returned years later in chains. It was that hope that had sent her to Svartalfheim. If she found his body, which hadn't been recovered, then she could resign herself to mourning him with the rest of Asgard like the dutiful wife she had always been. But if it wasn't there, then perhaps there was still a chance…

That little light of wishful thinking had long since died. It was on Svartalfheim that she had fallen through the portal that took her to Sakkar, where she had come to see her hope for the childish dream that it was. How Loki would have mocked her, she had reasoned, if he had known what she'd been thinking. She knew he would have laughed to know she had gotten herself stuck on Sakkar merely for the thought of seeing him again.

Or so she'd thought. He hadn't laughed, earlier, when he had first seen her plainly in the Grandmaster's box. It had taken every ounce of strength she'd possessed to keep her face passive, expressionless, as he'd looked right into her eyes. Sigyn didn't know what he had told the Grandmaster, but she didn't think it would benefit either of them to allow her shock to be made evident. Especially given the Grandmaster's penchant for melting people at his slightest displeasure.

Loki hadn't laughed at her at all, and that fact nearly made her want to cry as she sat in the silence of her room. That in itself was surprising to her; she hadn't cried since her early days in the Arena, when she had realised all that was lost to her. After that, there had been no tears left to give.

Sigyn looked at her face in the mirror, scrutinising every detail. She wondered what Loki had thought, to gaze on it after so long. If she was honest, Sigyn barely recognised herself any more. The shadows under her eyes had deepened and the corners of her mouth sank down in a permanent frown. With a sigh, she allowed the façade that had begun to sap at her strength finally fade away. The dull ashen blonde of her hair suddenly became streaked with silver; her hands, folded neatly in her lap, turned chapped and sore where she had taken to biting them.

Loki of Asgard was alive. That much she knew. It didn't make sense, didn't seem to have sunk into her mind fully just yet, but it couldn't be denied. He'd stood barely an arm's length away from her not hours ago.

Why, then, didn't she feel happy?

Something in the room suddenly changed. It was almost imperceptible, the lightest ripple of the air, but Sigyn had felt it so many times before that it could no longer take her by surprise. She didn't even need to look up from her hands to know who was standing behind her.

It didn't stop her head from spinning dangerously.

"Why are you here?" Her voice sounded hoarse, weak. The figure behind her let out a soft breath.

"So you do recognise me." Loki's voice was light, as though he was smiling. Sigyn glanced up into the mirror. Sure enough, his reflection was smirking right at her. It made something in her chest tighten. "Good. I thought you'd completely lost your wits."

Sigyn let her eyes roam over her husband's reflection. Or, if she was being precise, the reflection of an image of her husband. She had no doubt that he was not truly here in her room. She knew his tricks too well to be fooled on that count.

Realising she wasn't going to offer him a reply, Loki continued, the smile fading somewhat from his mouth. "You look a little different from earlier."

His eyes had flickered to the streaks of silver running through her hair. Sigyn tried to smile; all she managed was a weak curl of her mouth, corners twitching at the effort. "You're not the only one who knows tricks."

"How do you manage it, so far from Asgard?" Loki asked her, a familiar interest flickering to life in his blue-green eyes. "The magical energy here is very low."

Sigyn would have laughed, if she'd had the energy. She suddenly felt exhausted; she supposed the total confusion her mind was experiencing had something to do with it. You were dead, she wanted to shout at him. You were dead, and now you're not, and all you want to ask me about is some damn parlour trick.

"There's enough energy for me to alter my appearance a little, to suit the Grandmaster's standards" Sigyn answered instead, unsure of how she was managing to speak normally when her mind was swirling chaotically. "It comes at the price of my own strength, however."

Loki watched her for a moment, head tilted slightly. "Interesting."

Whatever thread of patience she had managed to cling on to suddenly snapped. "Why are you here?" Sigyn asked again, voice raised in barely suppressed frustration. She was angry, she realised with some surprise. Angry that he could send his image into her room so casually, as though things were the same as they'd ever been, the way they were all those years ago on Asgard. Angry that he could smirk at her in the mirror when she had lost everything.

"I came to see why you pretended to not know me earlier," Loki answered, as though it were simple. "Not very polite, really, Sigyn, seeing as we haven't seen each other in so long. But I'm guessing your little charade was for the Grandmaster's benefit. Clever."

Clever. The way he said it made the strange anger rear its head again, and she stood up from her chair, turning around to face the image full-on.

"No." The word shook dangerously on its way out of her mouth. Don't you dare cry, her mind shouted at her, not after all this time. "I meant, why are you here? On Sakkar? For all I know, you've been dead these last three years. All of Asgard went into mourning for you, a brave hero who died protecting us from the Dark Elves. And yet, here you are." Sigyn took a deep breath. "I want to know why."

The image looked her in the eye. "Well, I'm clearly not dead," Loki answered, the smirk not quite gone from his face. "I spent the last three years very much alive and well. You might as well know; I disguised myself as Odin, sent that old fool to Midgard short of most of his memory, and ruled Asgard in his stead. Odin… Odin is dead." He paused for a moment. "His daughter, Hela, returned from her imprisonment to take over Asgard. Thor and I fell through the Bifrost trying to escape her. Hence how I arrived here."

It took a few moments for Sigyn to absorb what was being said. When it sank in fully, she managed to find her words again.

"I see."

She could think of nothing else to say. What could make the reality any better? She had no love for Odin Allfather, so couldn't feel any sorrow at his loss. Sigyn had never even heard of anyone called Hela; the prospect of her ruling Asgard didn't seem promising, but she was not on Asgard anymore. It was pointless dwelling on that for the time being.

Loki's role in his admission was easier for her to process. He'd pretended to be dead those three years. It had been that charade that had led her to this fate, to be trapped alone on Sakkar. It felt like a knife to her abdomen to learn the source of all her misery was the man she called her husband.

But, then again, had it ever been any other way?

"I could ask the same question of you," Loki continued, not allowing the silence to stretch between them again. "How did you come to be here? The last I'd heard, you married some nobleman or other."

The words were a blow to the chest. Sigyn had done all she could to forget that unfortunate chain of events. She grit her teeth.

"That was years ago," she managed, "after you… after you'd fallen from the Bifrost. But it's good to know that no one noticed I was gone for three long years." The words came out more bitterly than she'd anticipated. "Tell me, did you not once wonder what had become of your wife?"

Loki shrugged one shoulder, eyes leaving her face for the first time since his image had entered her room. "I supposed you were happy with your new life. I didn't wish to intrude on that. Besides, what interest would Odin have in you? It would have raised questions."

She supposed it made sense, somewhere in the more rational part of her mind. The less rational part, the part that knew him better than that, could hear the omissions in the explanation. You were happy in your new life, too, Sigyn wanted to say. She held her tongue. You didn't need me anymore.

It might have hurt, if she hadn't come to that conclusion many years before.

"I see." Those two words again, hiding everything she wished to tell him. "Well, to answer your question, I came to Sakkar through a portal on Svartalfheim."

Loki's image raised one dark brow, looking at her carefully again. "Why were you on… Oh." He trailed off, realising the meaning behind her words as quickly as ever. It was strange, Sigyn thought, to be so familiar with him even when she had thought him dead for three years. It made her light-headedness all the worse.

There was a silence, during which the two of them merely looked at each other. Not for the first time in her life, Sigyn wished that she could know what he was thinking. There was a barrier between what he said and all that went through his mind; she had never been able to glimpse through it, try as she might.

So much else had changed about him. His hair was longer than she had last seen it, when he had been named King of Asgard while Odin slept. He was older, too- not visibly so, for Asgardians aged too slowly for a handful of years to be evident on his face. But there was something different about his eyes. Sigyn wondered what he had seen that had allowed such sadness to creep into them.

"You searched for me," Loki finally said, in an unreadable voice. "And here I am. Yet you aren't happy."

His openness caught her off guard for a moment. Her husband had never been one to get to the point so quickly. She looked at him again, at the pale marble-like skin of his face, the way it crinkled next to his eyes. He was right, she knew. She wasn't happy. The acute ache where her heart should have been told her what she had already expected; despite everything, the years of distance between them and all of her mourning, she still loved him as dearly as she ever had.

She was glad that he was alive, there was no mistaking that either. Just seeing him smirk at her had made her realise that much.

But happy? She hadn't been that in a long time.

"I'm not," Sigyn conceded quietly.

"Why?"

The word was barely more than a whisper. It was the first time he had spoken to her so softly in many years. She found that the words came easily after that.

"Because I lost you long ago, Loki."

The God of Mischief looked at her for what felt like a long time. It could have only been moments, however, before he reached out and took her hand.

Sigyn's head spun as he lifted it to his lips, pressing a soft kiss on her knuckles. He's really here. The realisation confused her almost as much as his sudden appearance in the Grandmaster's box had. It isn't an image. She recalled what he had said about the weak magical energy on Sakkar, and wondered how it had taken her so long to realise that he wouldn't have been able to sustain such an illusion for so long. She knew as well as anyone how much of his energy that took.

He was gone before Sigyn could ask him anything else. She didn't feel equal to trying to stop him anyway, shocked as she was. The ache in her chest had worsened as she watched the door close behind Loki.

It occurred to her, vaguely, that she'd never asked him if he was happy to see her.