The first sign that Tony had that anything was out of sorts was when Jarvis switched off the power to his computer and said, "Sir, Sigyn requires aid."
He looked up stupidly as the screen blinked out on him, his mind still whirling with equations and how various parts would fit together. "What?" he asked.
"Sigyn requires aid and does not wish Thor to see her," Jarvis said and he was on his feet, headed out the door.
"What happened?"
"I am unsure. I requested assistance from Ms. Darcy first, but she has been unable to move our guest from the bathroom," he said.
A few years ago the question wouldn't have occurred to him, nor would the possibility of the situation have bothered him, but the weight of the engagement ring on his finger was a subtle reminder of the promises he had made. "Is she…decent?" he asked.
"I am unsure," Jarvis said, a note of apology creeping into his voice. There was a pause before he added, "Ms. Darcy has indicated that Sigyn is decent."
Tony released a sigh of relief and continued on his way. "Tell me what happened."
In Sigyn's bathroom, Darcy had managed to roll the smaller woman onto her side so she didn't choke on the vomit, but it was hardly better. Sigyn was curled around herself, her hands around her stomach as she labored to draw breath and control the shaking of her limbs. The smell of vomit made her recoil and shrink in on herself a little more.
When a cool rag was pressed to her forehead, she flinched away and moaned. "Too cold," she whispered.
"Can you walk? Do you want to move to the bed?" Darcy asked, running the rag under warm water before swiping it across Sigyn's skin. That was when she heard Jarvis's low voice in the next room directing Tony into the bathroom. "I don't know what happened," she said as he walked in. "Jarvis just called me in and asked me to take care of her when she didn't come out for an hour and he registered that no water had passed the facets and-"
"I know, Darcy," Tony said gently, kneeling next to them and taking the rag from her. "Jarvis already told me everything he suspects. First, lets get her into bed and this place cleaned up. Before that, go to her closet and get a clean shirt. This one can't smell too good."
Darcy was on her feet and into the bedroom before he had finished speaking. Laying his fingers against her forehead, he noted that her skin was heated and flushed. Fever, then. What had happened at the hospital before they left echoed through his mind as Loki's parting words echoed through his mind, "Don't overextend yourself."
"Is it your magic?" he asked and her eyes flickered open before she squeezed them shut again. "Too much… too…soon," she answered between labored breaths.
"You can hear me fine, so that's good. I'm going to treat this like you're ill, because that's what it looks like. If you need anything in particular, you'll have to talk us through it. Can you do that?" he asked, carefully working her body into his arms and lifting her.
She still groaned at the sudden movement and hooked an arm around Tony's shoulders to turn her head into the fabric of his shirt. It was a shorter walk than the last two times he had carried her, but the thirteen steps felt longer than before. Darcy had the shirt in her hands and was hovering, a pained look crossing her features as Tony settled Sigyn onto the bed and unhooked her arm.
"I could-" she began.
"Would you-" he began and they looked at each other.
They didn't quite share a smile as Tony drew back from Sigyn and nodded. "I'll clean up the mess in the bathroom. You get her out of the soiled clothes and let me know when she's decent," he said, turning towards the door he had just come through.
"Don't you have…uh…servants that do this sort of thing for you?" Darcy asked.
"Call them servants these days and they sue the crap out of you," Tony called back from the bathroom. "No, they're employees and, no, I don't trust them with things like cleaning my personal residences. The last time I had anyone but me or Pepper or my 'bots do something like that, my underwear wound up on E-bay being sold for close to three million to an old widow. What do you think people like that would do with someone like Sigyn?"
Darcy wrinkled her nose and looked at the small woman curled around herself on the bed and shuddered at the thought. "Good point."
Heimdall watched Sigyn with some concern, noting the different ways in which her magic appeared to be reacting to the spell that she had cast the previous day. Taking the girl's pain and giving her peace in her final hours had been an act worth of the risk, but she was paying dearly for the kindness she had given. Sweating and vomiting was the least of the reactions. What had him concerned was the way that her magic pulsed around the points where the human's weapon had touched her and reached into the connection she bore with her son.
Odin's voice echoed through him mind at the moment of the binding when Sigyn had been beside herself with rage and grief, her fingers threading through her son's new white pelt, "What you know, he shall know. What he knows, you shall know."
At the time, he had thought it a boon, a way for Fenrir to keep some form of sentience should Odin ever decide to undo the punishment. Sigyn's mind, her consciousness had been connected to that of her son's and he had thought his king wise for "gift." He turned his gaze to the far-reaching realm of shadow and light that had been created for her son alone, to be locked away where he could harm no one. Seeing the white wolf curled into himself, like his mother, and keening softly to the moon gave him no pleasure. Cruelty was the word that echoed through his mind as he surveyed them and it left a sour taste in his mouth.
Heimdall risked a glance towards the palace and saw only that Odin was dining in the comfort of his halls with his high nobles and laughing at some unheard jest. He returned his gaze to the realms beyond the shattered Bi-Frost before his realized he had been Gazed upon. Instead, he gazed upon the youngest of his siblings and the companion she had elected to take with her on the patrols.
Sif was bored. It had not been a month since Thor's departure and she was bored. Walking patrols had taken up her free time, but Hogun was a silent companion even at the best of times. Frandarel had gone back to his charming of the female population into his bed and had even begun to look twice at some of the males. Volstagg was becoming an annoyance to the palace cooks and they were beginning to threaten bodily harm every time her showed up to pillage the kitchen stock. All in all, they were all bored and without someone to grant them permission to cross realms and get into their usual .
The patrols took place at the edge of the forests, their goal to ensure that none of its inhabitants were impinging on Asgard's rightful territory and enforce the restrictions. Personally, she rather thought that the fairies and the dwarves had long since given up on peaceful relations and she couldn't blame them. They did, after all, share a realm with a warrior people who were often forbidden to travel outside the realm looking for the battles that would set their blood afire. Sparring could ease the violent desires only so much.
With Hogun as her silent shadow, she had plenty of time to think as she surveryed the greenery and watch for forms that would not come. The last time that Thor had been gone this long with no escort, he had been banished and Loki had tried to steal the throne. That had been short lived, but at least it had been exciting enough to allow Asgard's inhabitants to forget, for a time, that they were at peace with all nine realms.
Attempting to destroy an entire race? A little extreme, yes, but better than remaining idle as they were for an undetermined amount of time.
There was talk among the warriors that Odin was beginning to lose his grip on his throne, that he was becoming soft and losing the edge he had once held in battle. Peace, they said, was for the weak to be enforced with the strength of the strong. She did not, for a moment, agree entirely with them, but she could see the merits of their arguments. At least with Thor, she, Volstagg, Frandarel, and Hogun had had the option of following him into the messes and adventures that he used to drag Loki into. With Thor, they had never been bored.
Later, she would regret that she had let her attention wander. She would remonstrate that she should have been more aware. As it was, she missed the first flitting, lithe form that moved between the shadows. Hogun, however, had seen it and she saw the blade only a moment before Hogun crashed into her side and sent them sprawling into the bushes behind her. Wheezing and trying to draw a deep breath, she looked up a shining blade into the fierce, angled face of a Vanir glaring down at her.
The blade rested at the base of her throat as the Vanir hissed, "You are one of the Odinson's companions."
Hogun turned his head to look sidelong at the enemy. He was silent, assessing, and tense. Sprawled across her as he was, she could feel every muscle twitch in him and knew he was about to do something, but he couldn't see past the first Vanir. Beyond the first form, she could see at least a dozen more. "Hogun, no," she said sharply and then hissed when the blade bit into her skin.
"Stay silent."
The Vanir's eyes flickered up towards the palace. "Bind them, gag them. We will use them as hostages against the Golden Son if he chooses to fight. Fenrir will be released to us, one way or another."
In the realm of shadow and light where the only company the white wolf had was the moon, Fenrir lay as still as he could manage. The only sound he made was the occasional keening when the pain washed fresh over him. Dreams overtook him, showed him a life of love, of soft touches and gentle words free of fur on two legs.
Dame and foster sire, siblings had been part of that life, before the fur and the flickering images from Dame's mind. Now, there was only silence and howling, lonlieness and wandering before the dreams. She knew what he knew and heknew what she knew, but he understood nothing of what she showed him. All he gleaned from Dame that he knew was regret and love and hope. In the silence and the howling, she was with him night after night and in the light of the moon she ran with him. It was the coming of the dawn that tore them apart, severed the link they shared and threw back into the animal he had been made into.
Now, tonight, in the here and now, she held him in dreams of what had been. The warmth of her arms as she held him, the weight of her chin resting on his head as he sobbed, the threading of fingers through fur at change, and rage. She drew him back, back to the smell of grass and water and the song of soft, wordless voices blending and floating to greet the moon. In dream and in memory, she held him through the pain, whispered the words that had taken him through the naming and the pain and the agony of becoming Vanir.
"I am here, be strong, I am here, be strong, I am here, be strong, I am here, Fenrir."
The pain subsided and he knew his mind once more, knew beyond a shadow who he was and felt the wolf twine its nature through his. He opened silver-blue eyes and howled to his dame and felt her pride swell through him. Broken, but not unbound, the spell held them together and she taught him through the night the words that he had lost.
Her breathing was easier, her fever broken, and her hair no longer plastered to her face with dried sweat. Darcy sat beside her and dabbed the cloth against her skin every so often, unaware that Jarvis watched them and remained their silent guardian against the other curious Tower inhabitants. It was, after all, only fair to let her sleep in peace after all that had been done that day.