Author's Note: Yes, I am super late with this chapter. So sorry! I had a bit of a medical crisis in October, which knocked me off my feet for a solid four weeks. Thank you for your patience! Updates should be regular from now on.
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of the characters and storylines associated with Marvel's "The Avengers" comics and film.
Chapter Two
Sigyn forced her hand into a fist, the tips of her fingers numbed by a forbidding cold that seeped into her blood, her bones. A crust of ice had formed over the barrel of water she kept in the kitchen of the lodge. The room was a small, dark cave hollowed out from the stony hillside, the floor slick with tallow dripping from the candles balanced on the rafters overhead. Sigyn's breath came in a fog. Drawing back, she struck the layer of ice with one satisfying punch, the frigid water flying free and drenching her arm up to the elbow.
There was blood on her knuckles, when she pulled her hand away.
And then Thor was standing behind her, the weight of his palm pressing against her shoulder, pulling, pulling her down…
Sigyn felt her soul drop from her body into the lifeless stone beneath her feet. What remained was a void, with the cold rushing to fill it.
"Sister Sigyn," Thor said. "Sit with me and we will talk."
She jerked her shoulders to displace his hand. "You have traveled far," she said. "I can offer you very little."
Pulling a wooden cup down from the shelf above the barrel, she filled it to the brim with water and ice. After a moment's hesitation, Sigyn remembered something of the bare courtesies her mother had taught her, and held the cup out to her brother-in-law.
Thor shook his head, his lion's mane of yellow hair dusting the breadth of his shoulders. In this small, dark room that stank of tallow and old stone, the God of Thunder looked out of place, oddly diminished. There was a strange erectness to his shoulders and spine that did not suggest pride, but something more unsettling.
Fear?
No. It was pity.
Sigyn tried once more to press the cup into his hand, but Thor would not take it from her. In the back of her mind, she felt the stir of acute annoyance. Her brother-in-law was treating her with unexpected tenderness. It made her feel fragile. Damaged.
But she was not broken. Not now. Not yet.
She swallowed the icy water in a single gulp. Her fingers were still numb, a sharp contrast to the quiet ache that nipped at her scraped knuckles. Overhead, in a lantern strung from the low rafters, a candle dripped wax onto the front of her tunic, hardening into a pale globule the size of a rain droplet.
Sigyn tightened her fingers over the cup until the blood ran down her wrist.
Thor's face tensed when he noticed the stream. "Sigyn," he muttered. "You must stop…please."
His desperation made her cringe, but she allowed him to pry her fingers from around the cup. Heat lifted from Thor's skin, a vein pulsing in his temple. But for all his strength, for all his otherworldly grace and prowess that made him the champion of Asgard and Odin's heir, the God of Thunder could not meet her gaze.
Sigyn understood suddenly, sharply, that she was now a widow.
Loki…
No. Not now. Not yet…
Somehow, she pushed passed Thor, crossing the flagged floor until she reached the table where she took her meals. There was only one chair set by the table and Sigyn was not gracious enough to offer it to her guest. She sat, hard, and clutched at the arms' of the chair, where the primitive smear of red against the wood caused her heartbeat to quicken.
It was a long while, it seemed, until she could speak. "How?"
Thor's shoulders lifted in a sigh. "The details are-"
"Necessary," she insisted.
He looked askance. "I tried to stop him. I tried…Sigyn, you must believe me."
She heard the jagged edge in his voice, the raw desperation that made her stomach and bowels squirm with pain. Her eyes were hot and wet and she had to clamp down on her lip, gnaw at the chapped flesh to keep a scream locked behind her teeth.
No. Not now. Not yet.
Sigyn's jaw tightened, but she managed to part to her lips, the words escaping from her mouth in a violent rush. "Tell me how my husband died," she insisted.
Again, Thor would not meet her gaze.
It occurred to Sigyn that her brother-in-law could be lying and she was filled with a sweet, sick flash of hope. She would know if Loki was dead, wouldn't she? She would feel the loss in the pit of her stomach, in the very marrow of her bones, in the chambers of her soul, which kept her secret self, that place she had allowed Loki to touch, to see, but only once.
"I need not tell you the full of it now," Thor was saying. He was still standing by the water barrel, his large hands framing the empty cup he had taken from her. "Rest tonight. We will speak in the morning after…"
But Sigyn was tired of waiting. She had spent years, so many long years, waiting.
"Why would you come so far and tell me nothing?" she asked, a fierce bite to her tone.
Yet when she looked at him, he would not meet her gaze. The mighty Thor, Prince of Asgard, stricken by pity and something deeper, something she recognized, because she had long seen it in herself.
Shame.
Her eyes widened, her mind struck by a truth so vivid and harsh that it took her breath away.
"You," she muttered. "You were the one who-"
"He was my brother!" Thor interrupted, the heat rising in him once more. "No matter his birth, we were kin."
"Birth?" Sigyn latched onto the word like a viper.
But still, Thor would not meet her gaze.
The air was thickened by silence. Thor frowned at the wooden cup he held before returning it to its place on the shelf. Although there was only a single chair pulled up to the table, he found himself a seat on a bench between a sack of grain and an old leather bridle Sigyn had been attempting to mend. The Prince sat still and quiet, moving only to press the flat pad of his thumb to the bridge of his nose. "It began in Jotunheim," Thor said. He paused, and then added, "The fault of that misadventure, I suppose, was indeed mine."
He told her, weaving together the fragments of a tale that Sigyn thought would destroy her, as it had her husband. Thor told her of his quarrel with Odin after breaching the peace in Jotunheim. He told her of his banishment to Midgard and his time spent amongst the humans of Earth. He told her of his own debasement and shame, which was erased only by his confrontation with the Destroyer and his return to Asgard as the favored son, the only true son of the Allfather, who was worthy of Odin's throne.
And he told her, quietly, in a dry, rasping whisper of Loki, as he was in Jotunheim, revealed as Laufey's son, and in Asgard, as Odin's regent, and on the bridge, before the lingering Bifrost claimed him.
A sudden warmth touched Sigyn's cheek as she listened to Thor speak. Tears, she thought with a jolt of fear. But when she touched her face, she felt only a thin streak of cooling wax that had fallen from the lantern above.
"I…I had his scepter in my grasp," Thor insisted.
"You let go," Sigyn accused.
"He fell."
"Loki would not-"
"Yes." Thor stood, his height seeming to swell and fill the cramped room. His shadow spilled onto the floor and closed the space between them. "He has left you, Sigyn."
She was stung by the insinuation, her head jerking to the side as if she had been slapped. "Liar!" She wanted to stand and confront her brother-in-law, but could not trust the strength of her legs, the muscles in her calves twitching and bunching painfully.
"Liar," she repeated, even though she knew Loki was very capable of abandoning her. He had once before, and now, now…
No. Not now. Not yet.
But her hope was a vague, delirious dream, as if her mind were stricken with fever. Sigyn knew enough of fools to know that she was not one. And only a fool would place her trust in hope now. Only a fool would take comfort in a familiar, self-created delusion.
When they had first been married and Sigyn was still young, her husband had taught her the exquisite art of deception. He had taught her how to lie and how to see through falsehoods and how to handle truth, which was precious, like gold, and like gold, of finite amount.
It would be a disservice to Loki, of course, if she confused the truth with a lie.
Even if he was…gone.
Thor moved his booted feet aimlessly. "Itwas my mother's wish that she should be the one to tell you…to explain, I suppose, but Father forbid her to accompany me here."
"Am I the last to know, then?" Sigyn rejoined. Somehow, she found the strength to stand.
Thor raised his hand in a gesture meant to pacify. "No one meant to dishonor you."
"Quite impossible," she threw back at him, "since I have long been denied the privilege of honor. Do not pretend you came here as a courtesy." Without thinking, she began to move forward.
"I came here-"
Another step. "How long has your father made you wait to tell me? What pointless cruelty!" And then, suddenly, Sigyn was standing toe-to-toe with her brother-in-law, so close she could feel the subtle thrum and vibration of the God of Thunder's inherent power, which dominated her meager cell in the wastes of Vanaheim.
"I came here," Thor suddenly bellowed, "on Odin's command! My father has rescinded your exile that you may return to Asgard and mourn your husband properly, with our family."
"Your family," she replied, though her voice quavered and then broke. Again, something warm touched her cheek, a drop of water that curved around her nose and settled in the little well of flesh above her mouth. She was crying…no, oh no, not now, not yet.
It was only then, of course, that Thor met her gaze.
"Come with me, Sigyn," he said, his anger subdued by what might have been tenderness, though she saw it as pity. "You will be welcomed, and yes, you will be loved again."
"Again?"
"And always," Thor continued. He touched her shoulder, lightly, and made to draw her closer. Sigyn supposed she was meant to weep then, to have her wounded heart soothed by this superficial balm, this thin scab disguising a festering wound.
But the pestilence was in her, the wildness of fever and rage and she thought of her husband, as he might have been in his last moments and Thor, who had been there, but unable to save him. Unable…or unwilling.
"Leave," she told him.
"What…Sigyn?"
"Leave now," she repeated. "Leave and return to Asgard and tell your father that his clemency is too little too late. He has no true claim over Loki, if my husband was not his son, and he has even less claim to me. Leave now, Thor or I will fight you until you shall be forced to slay me and double the blood on your hands. Leave now, leave now and never come back." And with that, she pushed him from her, until he was thrown back against the barrel, water sloshing, spilling on the floor, the God of Thunder cowed, for a moment, a moment that Sigyn would cherish in her broken, bleeding heart.
He looked at her, angered, but not provoked. It was pity, she realized, that stayed his hand then. Sigyn almost wished that she wasn't so fortunate. The taste of blood was in her mouth and on her lips, searing her skin like molten wax, like poison fallen from a viper's tongue.
"Leave," she said again. "Leave now and-"
He was gone. A spark in the shadows, a glimmer of hot lightening behind the clouds. Sigyn stood in her kitchen shivering, savoring her solitude and the ringing silence that lay like a shroud over the wintering wastelands of Vanaheim.
Yes, she told herself, her hands creeping over her face, clawing at the long, twisted braids of her dark hair. Yes now. Yes!
And in the dark, in the night, in her small cell hidden in the stony side of the hill, she began to scream.
Author's Note: In case you were wondering, what with Thor's extreme patience and understanding, there is absolutely no romantic connection between Sigyn and her brother-in-law. After all, she is the Goddess of Fidelity. ;)