The city beneath him spread out like a living scar. He could see the damage that had been wrought by his own hand as well as that of the invading army and the planet's defenders. His eyes traced the familiar sights and absorbed the repairs that had altered the battlespace since he had last seen it. Though the scene was devastating for the Midgardians who had been affected, it was not the worst that he had ever seen or wrought by his own hands.

Sightseeing, though, was not what he had come for. Thor turned from the sight that the city offered him and looked instead upon the domain of his comrade and marveled at the sheer height and glory that the tower offered. From where he stood upon the landing pad, the sun glinted off of the windows and cast back at him a shower of rainbows. Within the windows, beyond the door, there was movement that made him catch his breath.

Unlike the first time that he had seen them, they were not contained within a flying craft and Loki had been last seen far from the planet. The Captain, the Man of Iron, and the Hawk as well as the Lady Natasha watched his approach from where he had landed. Under normal circumstances, he would have been overjoyed to see them again, but times were far from normal and if Heimdall were correct then so much of what he had known was a lie.

Sigyn followed after the three with Anthony's chatter taking up her attention. She didn't understand half of what he was trying to explain about their 'technology', but she gathered enough that he was willing to show her how to use a thing called the 'kitchen' if she wished to make food for herself. It was impossible to not to smile when Jarvis interrupted his creator's speech long enough to point out that the last time Anthony had used a kitchen, he had nearly burned the stove down and set his hair on fire. Anthony had merely brushed that off and called it a drunken mishap and pointed out that the incident had been two years ago.

For herself, she was glad enough to let him distract her from the possibility of seeing her brother-in-law again. Her steps weren't always steady, but every time she wobbled Anthony or his brown-haired companion caught her before she fell. The dark haired male kept as far away from her as possible without actually leaving his companions to escort her around on their own and the other female seemed content to ignore her. There was something about the female and the way she moved that reminded her ever so subtly of Sif and the times that they had sparred.

With half an ear on Anthony's explanation of 'electricity', she examined his companions and admitted that they were, indeed, something that Midgard could be proud of. Lean, battle scarred, and lithe in movement, they were comparable to that of Asgard's warriors without the cloak of invulnerability and arrogance. The more she considered them against Asgard's finest, the more she found that she liked the idea of the human warriors.

Then, they were halting their steps before a great glass door and Anthony was standing before her, his body slightly angled so that her vision of the outside was obscured. Without knowing the why or how, she felt a rush of affection for the human that was still was casually taking it upon himself to try and prevent disaster from befalling her. What had happened to him to make him so-

"Sister?" asked a familiar, husky voice and she had to swallow against the sudden rise of panic.

Anthony was watching her and he still hadn't moved to allow Thor easy access to her. Even without looking, she was aware that Anthony's companions had moved to flank her and block the possibility of escape. Something in her face must have told Anthony what she was feeling, because he turned to Thor, whom she still could not quite see, and he said, "Right, Pointbreak, she's not going back to Asgard with you. I already claimed babysitting duty for this one."

There was a pause and she could hear the rustle of fabric brushing against itself as one of Anthony's companions shifted uncomfortably. If she allowed the human to continue to stand for her, he would be hurt and that was not something she wished upon one who had shown her nothing but kindness since she had woken. It was one thing to let him distract her and stand against other humans, quite another to try and stand against the Crown Prince of Asgard.

She took a breath and steeled herself before she stepped to the right and brought herself directly into Thor's line of sight. "Anthony, it is alright. If Thor is here to return me to Asgard, then I will go with him," she said even as she recoiled at the thought of the golden realm. "There is no need for you to be overly concerned on my behalf."

When she finally looked at him, she could see the differences that years had brought to him. He was a few inches taller than she remembered and he had certainly filled out in muscle mass subtly more than he had been and his shoulders were a little more broad and drawn back, like he carried a weight he no longer felt. The armor and the hammer that he carried in his right hand were still very much the same.

"Sister," Thor said and it was more of a croak than a word. "You're alive. Father said-"

And with that her surprise snapped. She restrained the ire that she felt towards the Allfather as she said, "That's where you first went wrong, Thor, believing what Odin says about me or Loki. I'm not dead, as you can see. Loki found me in the Void." Thor blinked at that and she had to sigh. "If you ever held affection for myself or Loki, then listen to what I have to say before you attempt to drag me back to Asgard."

Thor was silent for a long moment, studying her, before he nodded. "I am not here to bring you back, but I will listen nonetheless. Heimdall believes that Loki is up to mischief again and asked me to look into the matter."

A faint smile touched her lips. "When is my husband not up to mischief?" she asked and Thor smiled a little in response. She held her hand out to him and he stepped forward to engulf her fingers in his own. "Brother. It is good to see you again, no matter the circumstances."

Without taking his eyes off her, said, "Friend Stark, if you would permit us to use your dining hall, it would be most appreciated. I think it is time Sigyn knew of what transpired in her absence."

While the party followed the two Asgardians into the dining room, Jarvis put in a discreet call to a local restaurant and ordered several dozen kind of meals as his creator had, once again, forgotten the small detail of remembering to eat. It sometimes amused and amazed him to no end what humans forgot in their excitement over a new distraction. As Jarvis tracked the group's movements through the tower, he privately admitted that he could excuse his creator for forgetting to eat and feed his guest, this time.

By the time that the food arrived, Thor had finished his tale of Loki's supposed betrayal and his attempt at genocide against the Frost Giants. Steve had just slipped away with Tony to retrieve the food from the deliverers and, when they returned, Thor had finished his tale of Loki's thwarted attempt to take over Midgard. Sigyn appeared to be tranquil and taking the news that her husband was a monster and a murderer well, Tony noted with a little apprehension.

It wasn't something that Tony would normally do, but as dishing the food out onto plates-wait, he had actual plates? Score one for Pepper-put a little distance between himself and the two Asgardians, he was all for it this once. He had just finished dishing the spaghetti onto six different plates and been handed the container of leafy green vegetables he made a face at when Steve asked, "Do you think it is a good idea to house her here? SHIELD seems to be of the mind that she could be in on Loki's next scheme."

His eyes flicked once more to Loki's wife and he remembered dark and water and pain and screams. The few times he had checked on her, there had been fresh tracks of tears and sweat clinging to her hair and glistening against her skin. Jarvis had reported every time she screamed and he couldn't bring himself to believe that anyone, even a mythological Norse god, could be quite that good of an actor even in their sleep. If it was a ploy, then it was a damn good one and not something he wanted to consider the consequences of.

"No, Cap," Tony said finally, eyes returning to his task as he divided the vegetables out five different ways. "Everything I've observed in her actions and what Jarvis has reported tells me that she's just been through one hell of an experience and is only now beginning to deal with it. That isn't something you go through around people you don't trust. If Loki does have another scheme up and running, I don't think she has anything to do with it."

Steve glanced at him and caught his eye. Afghanistan and Cold Sleep hung between them like a physical weight. Then, Steve switched his gaze away and collected the empty cartons.

Sigyn raked her hands through her hair as she absorbed Thor's story. It swirled around in her head and beat itself against everything she knew. Attempted genocide against the very race he apparently was? She could accept the failed takeover of Midgard without much difficulty, but wrapping her hear around the idea that Loki had tried and nearly succeeded in slaughtering an entire planet's populace to get her back was almost a little much to handle.

Yet…Yet…

As she stared at Thor and settled her hands into her lap again, she almost smiled. "He didn't activate the bi-frost until you had returned," she murmured and they all turned their eyes upon her. "Loki timed it. He had to have known how long the Casket of Ancient Winters would render Heimdall immobilized and he used that to ensure you would be back in time to stop him." The more she thought about that particular flaw in Loki's plan, the more she understood. "What better way for you to regain full honor than to save the very race you had sought to destroy?"

There was a long moment of silence before the dark haired male snorted and rose fluidly from his chair. "That's all very well and good, but that seems a little far-fetched to me," he said, sliding around the counter to peer at the food that Jarvis had ordered for them.

Her grin was crooked when the dark haired male looked at her. "My husband loves endlessly complicated and absurd plans. Still, even if Thor had not succeeded, the destruction of an entire realm would have suited his purpose. In either case, it gave him the freedom he would have needed to search for the Tesseract without having to hide from do-gooders searching for him."

"He still led the assault on Earth," the dark haired male said heatedly. He came back around the counter, his hands balled into fists and eyes snapping dangerously. Though Thor stood to intercept him, it was the other female that halted his progress and whispered something into his ear.

Sigyn studied the man's tense frame and wondered for a moment if he had suffered personally at the hands of her husband. Glancing at Thor, she saw the tense set of his shoulders and felt her stomach curl at the confirmation she could see in the lines of his body. She dug the heel of her palm into her forehead and tried to scrub the apprehension and exhaust out of her face, but it was impossible. "Let me say this," she sighed, "A single point of attack using the Tesseract to cut the dimensional divide open makes no sense unless he was trying to funnel the invasion and give you a chance to fight."

The brown haired male beside Anthony leaned against the counter and said, "That doesn't excuse his actions, ma'am. Point is, he killed a lot of people and did a lot of damage."

And that was when she saw it, in the grim set of their faces and the hard lines their mouths formed. They weren't going to be persuaded that Loki hadn't actually been their enemy. The Chitauri, as Thor had described them, had sounded like an unexpected snag to Loki's plan and the way in which the invasion had unfolded had seemed to her like her husband was doing his damnedest to prevent a slaughter by a force intent on invading no matter the consequences. Black and white was the hardest to overcome when individuals had no desire to see anything but what their own eyes had shown them.

"Alright," she said. "You have your way of seeing how it happened and I have mine." Anthony's companions frowned, but let the matter slide. She made a note to ask Jarvis about their names later as she had no desire to keep differentiating between them based on their physical characteristics.

Thor turned towards her, a different kind of frown tugging at his lips. "But…sister, how did you come to be within the Void?"

"Your father cast me into the endless nothing when I would not allow him to implicate Loki in a scheme he had no hand in."

"But what-"

"When the Álfar were being turned into beasts and sacrificed for their life energies, Odin sought to lay the blame at Loki's feet even when I provided alibi for him during most of the times the sacrifices were suspected to have taken place," Sigyn reminded him.

"Big surprise, there," the dark haired male muttered and she turned a sharp eye on him. He refused to look abashed and held her gaze.

"I…recall the events. After your disappearance, they stopped and…" Thor hesitated, but when she looked at him, he continued, "…and the unkind speculated that it had actually been you behind them."

There was no surprise, only a deep seated resignation that the whisperers had continued their aspersions upon her character even so long after they had all grown past childhood. "It was not me," she said calmly. "Amora had the most to gain by those actions."

Thor was nodding before she had even finished. "I thought as much."

Anthony took that moment to slide around the counter and the table to set a plate of food before her. "Foods ready. Do at least try and eat before Jarvis gives us another hint that some of us need to eat," he said.

"I have only your best interests at heart, sir," Jarvis replied dryly.

"Of course you do, J, of course you do," Anthony said, eyeing a section of the wall.

With Thor thoroughly distracted by the idea of new Midgardian food, the others drifted away from them and Anthony took the empty seat beside her. As she picked at the food, she let Anthony's chatter slide into her ears and soothe the nerves that had been pricked over the course of the conversation. It was, she reflected, so like the times that her husband would talk endlessly about the higher forms of magic she barely understood and that, in itself, was comfort enough.