A/N: I started this fic with the intention of exploring the Loki/Stark snark arena and then Sigyn introduced herself and hijacked everthing. Gotta say, I kinda like her more than I thought I would. Also, if there are any similarities between one of my OCs in the chapter and someone in RL, they are complete accidents. I have no idea who the current senators are.
Dinner that night was a quiet affair made from the ham that Sigyn had almost forgotten about, fish, and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Darcy was eyeing Sigyn with interest while the woman watched Jane and Thor with a slightly wistful air. For their part, the pair were mostly oblivious to the scrutiny of Thor's sister and engaged in quiet conversation. Steve seemed engaged in a philosophical discussion concerning differences in biology with Dr. Selvig. Pepper, Tony, and Bruce were talking about quantum physics which seemed to be mostly Tony breaking down the complicated processes into smaller words for Pepper to better understand the topic.
The easy chatter was interrupted when Darcy asked, "Can I taser you?" Every eye turned to her and more than a few looked horrified that the question had been asked. Darcy, noting the odd looks, said, "Hey! It's not like I'm suggesting we run her over with Jane's van like when Thor first arrived."
"What does 'taser' mean?" Sigyn asked.
"It is her weapon of choice that mimics, to a degree, Mjnlor's power over lightning," Thor answered gravely. "It was quite effective in subduing me." Darcy pulled the object from her pocket and slid it across the table to the other woman.
Sigyn burst out laughing as she examined it and everyone relaxed a little. "You, the golden prince of Asgard, were taken down by such a small device," she said, turning it over in her hand.
Thor's face flushed a little. "I was human at the time. Father had just banished me to Midgard," he muttered and Jane patted his hand fondly.
His sister just grinned wolfishly at him, an odd expression on one who appeared so small. "That would hardly have mattered to your strength and endurance," she pointed out. "I, myself, was stripped of all power for a time and felt no difference in the agility that I possessed nor the strength and endurance that had been mine before…ah…I was stripped of longevity and magic."
Tony blinked at her, finally drawn out of his own conversation. "They can do that? Remove what you were born with?" he asked. Nonplussed at Steve's slowly tingeing face, he added, "Pun intended."
Her glance turned from amused to closed. "I will not answer that, Anthony, as you will not answer for your Arc Reactor," she said.
He flushed a slow, steady pink while Pepper favored the female sorcerer with a contemplative look. Tony ran his fingers through his hair and shrugged. "Fair is fair. I won't press," he said and returned to his conversation.
Sigyn set the taser onto the table and slid it back to its owner. She smiled and told her, "To answer your question, yes. However, I must go on patrol with Tony in a few hours. Perhaps tomorrow?"
Darcy, for her part, seemed to have ignored the exchange and bypassed it completely when she brightened and said, "Awesome. Thanks!"
"You are most welcome," Sigyn chuckled.
"You will not be quite so gracious tomorrow, sister," Thor warned her and that only served to make her grin a little wider.
The fresh air was exhilarating as she landed lightly on the ceiling of another building in a crouch. She balanced on balls of her feet and looked out over the city at a height from which she had never observed anything. The lights below her spread out like an Earth bound star-lit sky that twinkled in bright oranges, yellows, and blues. Some moved and others did not. So unlike Asgard that it was heartening.
From the device in her ear Tony's voice issued like she was standing next to him as he asked, "How's it look, princess?"
Sigyn laughed, free and careless for the first time in a long time. "Utterly gorgeous," she breathed. "Earth, this city, is beautiful."
"That's excellent, but we need to stay focused. Tell me if you sense or see anything resembling Amora's magic," he said and she was uncoiling herself and preparing to spring for the next building when she saw the burst of fire from his suit.
"There are only so many spells in a day that I can cast, Tony," she said. "If she shows, and I do not think she will, then most of the fighting will be left to you."
There was a silence across the com until, "You used one or two of those spells on Fury, huh? Well, in that case, it is completely worth it."
It was not the answer she had expected, nor was it the one she had dreaded. Before making the next leap, she snorted with laughter until she had herself under control. "You, Tony Stark, are one of a kind," she murmured as she made the next leap between buildings.
He had only just finished giving his report when the heavy weight of silence settled over the room. "You just…left her there in the care of you little ragtag band of misfits? And your little Russian says that she isn't dangerous?"
Fury stood before the Council in their shadowed frames and frowning lips with his own features carefully blank. "My agent did not report that the women was not dangerous, only that she is a better asset than an enemy. That is the assessment of one of my most capable agents, who I might remind you is trained in psychological manipulation. Not only that, the Avengers have rallied around the second Asgardian and Thor has made it plain that he means to stand with her."
He didn't add that Natasha had been reluctant or that Clint was still wary of her connection to Loki. Nor did he add that he had forced the issue in doing the one thing that Stark would never have forgiven. What had happened had been for the best and free of the scrutiny of the Council, they would only excel and grow as a team.
One shifted in his portrait and leaned forward until the shadows covered only his eyes and even then, Fury could still make out the maniacal gleam of his irises out. Senator Wallochet. A third term politician comfortable in his seat of power. Of the Council, he was the one to watch.
"Director Fury," he began, oozing charm. "Your service to us has been exemplary, but I think it time to even the playing field a little. You have under your eye two Asgardians with ties to the war criminal Loki, but what we need is one with no ties at all."
There was only one angle from which this could go and it didn't look good at all, not to him anyways. Already, a plan was unfolding itself in his mind as he studied the Senator. "Let me guess, it is the Enchantress," he said.
Wallochet's smile was more of a sneer. "Of course it is. And do you know what she asked for the aid we required of her?"
"Obviously, I have no idea," Fury said and the smile widened.
"Thor."
There was nothing to say to that as the discussion turned to how they could better use the Enchantress in aiding them. Already, he was glad that he had charged Hill to listen at the other end of the line he always wore. She would already know his mind and be ready to enact his plan.
Tony pursed his lips over the news that his tablet was flashing at him. Three senators had died of heart attacks in the last few days. Two had been diagnosed with a flesh eating disease and one more had committed suicide. "And they say drinking is bad for your health," he muttered, letting his eyes rove over the pictures. Under that story flashed the headline of "A Avenger to Join the Team?" with a picture of him an Sigyn on patrol from the night before. He smirked a little at that. The press were running wild with the story just like he had intended. All the while, he steadily ignored the paper the Pepper had given him that morning.
A charity fund raiser for a children's hospital.
Really. Children?
He didn't want to think about what the implication might be regarding the invitation that Pepper had handed him. Memories were stirring in the back of his mind as he pushed the tablet away and stood from his work table. Darcy had claimed the lab she shared with Selvig and Jane for the demonstration of using a taser on an Asgardian. Thor, surprisingly, had volunteered to also be a subject to "Better test the effects of your device on an Asgardian whose powers have not been stripped." Sound logic, but Tony suspected that he hadn't wanted the smaller woman to prove she was better at something than him that didn't involve cooking or magic.
The elevator ride to their floor was spent not thinking about certain events that made him think he would make a horrible father. Standing in the doorway of their lab, he felt his eyebrows creeping slowly up into his hairline. Thor was unconscious and sprawled on the floor. Jane was tutting over him and making sure he hadn't hurt himself in the fall. Sigyn, however, was what truly made him stop and look at her again.
She was a full head shorter than anyone in the room, yet she still managed hold herself with quiet confidence even dressed down into jeans and a t-shirt whose sleeves had been rolled up to her shoulders. The curve of her spine was straight and her shoulders set, an unconscious thing he was sure. Her head was bent towards Dr. Selvig as they exchanged a short conversation, but her lips were curled faintly in amusement every time that she glanced in Thor's direction. Darcy said something to her and she stepped lightly from Selvig's side to stand in the middle of the room, just slightly left of Thor so she wouldn't crush Jane if she, too, fainted out.
"You're sure about this?" Jane asked.
"Not really, no," she chuckled, eyes flicking to Tony's. "But the little weapon is mechanized with electromagnetic bolts so the reaction to me should be different than with Thor."
Understatement, of the century, Tony would later realize.
But before that, Darcy said, "I'll fire it on three. Just remember not to land on Thor if you pass out." That earned a light smile. "One, two, three." She fired it and the wires connected with Sigyn's skin.
For a split second, Tony thought that the taser was a dud. Then, electricity fizzled across the space between Darcy and Sigyn and Sigyn screamed. It was a scream that would echo through his nightmares and color the worst of his night terrors as her back arched, her eyes bulged, and her muscles seized. She collapsed and continued twitching while a high moan broke through her lips. Darcy had dropped the little gun and scrambled forward, hands out when Selvig caught her and hauled her back.
By that moment, Tony had already started moving and grabbed the taser and yanked back on the wires. They snapped and the charge went dead. Sigyn was still curled into herself, twitching, and keening when Jane tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder. Tony almost couldn't bring himself to come closer, to look at the damage that had been wrought with such a small device, but move forward he did when Sigyn flinched from Jane's touch.
His own hands found the little wires and detached them from her skin, flicking them neatly to the side. With deft fingers, he rolled her onto her back and sucked down a remark when he saw the blackened skin flaking off. "Jarvis, is the medical wing functioning again?"
"Already at your disposal, sir," Jarvis replied.
"Good. Let Thor know as soon as he wakes that that is where I've taken her," he said, slipping his arms under her neck and knees. Her weight against his chest made him remember, forcefully, how he had carried her that first night. So different, the circumstance, yet still so much the same. Each step was painstaking because she was heavier than Pepper and every other female he had even lifted off the ground.
Darcy followed at his heels, worry written into the crease of her eyebrows and the flutter of her hands. "Just tell me what to do," she said quietly.
The slow slide of power beneath his hands stuttering to a halt and the fast reversal to its source was what brought the situation to his attention. That the power, her magic, was fleeing back to her body told him that the spell had either been broken or, or, it was needed for her defense. Plans and spells were unraveling around him without the support of her power, but that was small in comparison to the fear he felt wash through him as he stepped from one plane and into the shadows of another until a room revolved around him, distorted in shapes and figures but clear in her image.
Loki held that place in his mind as he slid through the darkness to be at Sigyn's side. His fingers brushed lightly over her temple as she appeared to sleep. The damage that had been done to her spread itself in spiderwebs across her body, in the shimmering network that was her magic. Here and there, corresponding to the charred flesh, there were breaks in the smooth flow of power through her body. Something of a similar nature had ripped through her body and overloaded her system.
He finally finished materializing and the two shapes that had been moving in his peripheral froze. Stark and a human girl. A softly uttered spell and the damage to her body was healed, but the damage to her magic remained, swirling around itself and creeping back through the spaces that had been hurt. "You remember what I told you, Stark? Yes?" he asked and his voice was soft.
"Kinda hard to forget, Dancer. So, I suppose it's a good thing we didn't do anything to her," Stark said, coming around his side with a device in her. He appeared to be studying it intently and glancing between it and Sigyn. "Her vitals appear to be going back to normal. Whatever you just did was good for her."
"Of course it was," Loki shot back and he felt ice gathering and breaking around him, invisible to all but his own blood. "She was injured under your watch and you say that you had nothing to do with it, when she is in your facilities and her magic rebounded to protect her."
Stark, he noticed, was wearing the bracelets. Not a total fool then, to have expected him to show. The human tucked the square device under his arm and turned his body subtly to face him. Tilting his head back a little, Stark said, "You left her here, not knowing if we would try anything, and now you care? Good job, Reindeer Games, good job. Since you left her here, she's been threatened with torture, attacked, and manipulated and what it takes for her to get your attention is for her to be physically and magically hurt."
Loki blinked at the amount of venom in the human's voice. He would have thought that eleven days wouldn't be long enough to get attached in the way that Stark seemed to have become. Disregarding his own safety to berate him on how to care for someone that loved him. Foolish, or very much innocent in his part of his wife's injury.
"If you-" he started, but Stark was already turning away and handing the device to the human girl that seemed frozen in her shock as she stared at him.
Stark snapped his fingers in front of the girl's eyes and told her something, but Sigyn's head had shifted closer into the palm of his hand and he felt the warmth of her breath against his wrist. Her fingers traced a path up his arm and he looked back at her, her own eyes open and holding fast to his form. "Lok'," she slurred, her voice thick with sleep. "S'alright. Sorta my fault." Her gaze flicked to Stark and the corners of her mouth kicked up in a slight smile. "Let's not do that again."
"Agreed, princess," Stark said, idly glancing at her from across the room. "Next time Darcy asks to test out her taser on someone, steer clear of the room."
Sigyn just hummed at him, the sounds an incoherent tangle as she tugged Loki closer. With his free hand, he threaded his fingers through her hair and leaned a little closer. "Don't attack them, Lok'. S'not what you think happened," she sighed. "Stay?"
A thousand thoughts whirled through his mind. Thor here and don't want reunion, not yet and spells needing to be recast and maybe Stark is right and don't want to leave her, not yet and Odin's crimes yet to be paid for. "For now, there is nothing pressing," he relented. "Some of the spells will need to be renewed or recast all together since your power returned to you, but progress has not been reversed."
"What're you…making?" she asked, on the edge of sleep. "Projects don't normally take…so…long."
He leaned down to her level, brushed his lips against her ear, and, for her ears only said, "A prison for one."