Sigyn felt the arms around her, how tightly they were holding her to a chest. It was a man's chest, and she took a moment to soak in the feeling of her body resting comfortably against the man's. His smell was both familiar and strange. He smelled of winter, the brisk cold air that always seemed to hover after freshly fallen snow. But there was another part of his scent, intermingled in a way that was seamless yet very different. She didn't have words to describe it. Sigyn only knew that he smelled wonderful.
The arms that held her tightened, pulling her up closer against his chest. She let her eyes flutter open, curious, and found herself staring at some black and green clothing. She had never seen the style of dress this man was wearing and it looked different, not American, or British, or anything else she knew. The fabric was soft, yet it looked strong enough to stop anything that tried to pierce it.
She closed her eyes again, her brain overwhelmed by some of the things she saw but just simply couldn't understand. It was so bright, her eyes throbbing as if the lights had just been flicked on. There were shapes, blurs of other people, but she couldn't understand them as her body threw so much information at her. She just focused on what she could feel, not what she had seen when she opened her eyes.
She was moving. She could feel each step the man took, the slight jolt as his foot made contact with the ground. As she listened she could several other sets of footsteps as well, at least three, if not more. There were loud cracks, as if something was breaking apart, rock maybe? It was loud, whatever it was.
Sigyn cracker her eyes open again, looking a little farther than the shoulder her head was against. She saw a woman walking alongside the man carrying her, and when she looked up at the man's face she saw he was both familiar and comforting.
It was Loki.
Her eyes slammed shut, her emotions happier than she had been in a long, long time. Without thinking Sigyn brought her arms up and wrapped them around his neck. Her reason for living had found her. She let that thought guide her back into sleep.
A voice pulled her from the light sleep she had just entered.
"I need these vehicles."
Sigyn didn't open her eyes or bother to try to figure out which of the other three people had spoken.
"Who's that? And why are you taking her?"
That was a woman, though Sigyn didn't think it had been the one walking beside Loki as he carried her. She felt Loki descend a few steps as the first man answered.
"They didn't tell me," a man with a crossbow said.
Sigyn felt herself being laid down gently, in the back of a car if she had to guess. She held onto his neck, but he gently loosened her weak grip before moving away from her.
"You two, take her and protect her. Get her out of here."
Her head and shoulders were gently raised and then settled onto a lap. Three car doors slammed shut and then the vehicle was moving.
Words came over a radio somewhere in the car.
"Hill! Do you copy?" The man's voice was strained, as if in pain or physical strain. A moment later he spoke again. "Barton has turned!"
From a distance, Sigyn could hear the distinct sound of gunshots. She jumped, started at the sound and at the memories that suddenly pushed to the front of her mind.
Her father pointing a gun to her head. "I was aiming to kill you quickly."
And another memory, one that hadn't come forward for decades.
"No! Please don't!"
It was a woman who screamed, shielding a young boy from a group of men pointing guns at the three of them. Sigyn, who had been walking down the street late that night, stepped in between the mother and the men holding the guns.
"There's no reason for this," she said calmly, holding her hands out in front of her. "There's no reason for you to be pointing a gun at a little boy!"
But the group of men only laughed. She noticed then that all but one of the men wore matching bandanas. These men were part of a gang, and the one who stood closest to her, his hand shaking as he held the gun, was young. He didn't wear a bandana, and Sigyn knew what that meant.
It was an initiation. This young man had to kill someone.
"If you have to shoot someone, shoot me. Leave the woman and her child alone!" Sigyn shook despite her brave words, but her voice remained steady.
The men only laughed again. A voice from the back, gruff and deep said, "Just shoot them all and let's go."
Sigyn shielded the mother and child as she watched the young man's face harden. Then, he pulled the trigger. There was a few seconds filled with gunshots, and then a deafening silence.
After the men had left, Sigyn turned her face towards the spot where mother and son now lay. The mother's eyes, wide and lifeless, stared at her, a bullet above her left eye. But the boy, no older than the age of 7, stared right back at her. He was crying, still laying with his mother's arms around him.
Sigyn crawled forward, dragging herself through the disgusting ally street, reaching for the boy. She saw the blood once she was close enough to touch him. There was already a pool of it pouring out of his stomach. There was no way this boy would live.
Sigyn did what she had to do. She took the little boy's hands in hers, reached into his mind and pulled every strand of pain from him and into herself. She replaced it with love, courage, and peace. She said, "I'm here with you." The child only lasted a minute longer.
Sigyn, with the child's pain and her own building inside her, finally let her tears fall. She was thankful when the darkness claimed her.
But the darkness didn't come for her outside of her memory. Instead, she felt tears slide down her face as she sobbed with what she had just remembered.
That little boy, so young, so full of life, dead because of a gang's violent crime. But, the death of the little boy wasn't the only thing she blamed on the gang's actions. That had been the major event that had led to her uncovering.
Someone had found the three of them once morning came. She didn't remember any of that, but she knew that when she woke in the hospital three days had passed. The doctors were baffled by her state. Most of her wounds had healed, sealing many of the bullets inside her body. They had been taken out, examined, and then she was stitched up. Of course, when the nurses came by to check her bandages they realized she was almost completely healed.
Word must have gotten around to the right people, or someone who had been on the lookout of strange things must have found her because the next thing she knew she was discharged, escorted out, and shoved into a windowless van.
She tried to open the doors and punch her way through the wall of the vehicle. Once they realized she was doing damage they sedated her. It took several men to hold her down, and several injections until she was asleep.
And when she woke again, she was in a cold room, tied to a chair, and tortured for answers she didn't have.
A loud sound brought her out of her memories, and Sigyn opened her eyes in time to see a helicopter go right over the car, heading towards the ground. The impact was loud, and so were the blades turning as they broke off after the helicopter landed on its side. Amid the noise, she could hear sounds of more gunshots and two vehicle's engines as they sped up, racing away from the destruction.
"You're safe," murmured a female voice from above her. "The danger is gone for now. Sleep. You're safe."
And Sigyn, not being left much choice by the woman and her body, followed her orders to sleep.
It was warm when Sigyn woke. There was a blanket, soft and cozy covering her. And the bed beneath her body was also warm, comfortable. And there was a pillow under her head.
It had been a long time since she felt this warm, this safe. Her awareness suddenly shot to the walls protecting her mind and found them still there, weak, but still keeping out unwanted thoughts. She built them stronger, then threw her mind out to see who was around. There were a lot of people in the surrounding rooms, twenty, give or take a few people. She didn't have the energy to get a true count.
Most minds were normal, some subtlety projecting emotions, and some broadcasting as loud as they could. But there were a handful of minds that were not normal. They were infested with a sickly yellow power, one that she was familiar with. She wish her interaction with that power had been a dream, but here it was, more minds infected by it.
Despite the infection, the minds remained unharmed. They still had thoughts, just like the others around did. She couldn't explain it. Never had she seen anything like it before. But none of them held any hostility, not towards her, not towards anyone.
And he was there, Loki. She felt safer in his presence, despite the parts of his mind that were infected as well. But a small portion of it, the part she had protected, remained untainted. That part was purely him.
But she was still tired, and she was safe. Sigyn closed her eyes, drifting off into sleep once again.
When something suddenly touched her hand, she jerked awake, her entire body jumping and pushing itself out of the bed. She felt a sharp tug on her left hand, but she didn't look to see what it was, her eyes instead focused on the corner her body was moving towards.
She huddled in that corner, half-hidden by an armchair, shivering with the sudden cold against the stone walls. She was lost, so lost in her mind, her memories rushing forward from when she had been ambushed before.
A sliver of light at the bottom of a door, shadows passing back and forth in front of it. Hands attached to arms, and arms attached to nothing reaching for her out of the darkness, grabbing her and pulling, tugging her frame the place she felt safest.
A man, one she had thought of as her friend, watching her with a face that only showed fear and hate. He had betrayed her, led her to believe them still to be friends so that he could get information from her, so that he could turn her in. She never knew when he realized she was different. He had just asked her one day.
The touch of a hand on hers pulled her away from that memory and back to the walls she curled against. She turned her head, looking to see who it was. It was a woman, the one who had been walking beside Loki as he carried her.
"Hey," the woman whispered. Sigyn recognized her voice as the one that had told her she was safe. Loki had told this woman to protect her. It was then that Sigyn finally realized where she was. She wasn't in a cell, she wasn't chained to a bed. Peering around the armchair, Sigyn could see that there was a door, open, on the wall across from where the bed sat. There was no lock. There were no guards outside.
Sigyn stood, squeezing past the other woman on her quest towards the door. She was surprised to feel an odd pulling sensation in her hand, not pain, but it was an uncomfortable feeling. She looked down, finding a tube taped to her arm. She followed a tube to the metal stand lying on the floor the wheels hanging down, the bag still hooked onto it. Sigyn sat the stand straight and dragged it with her as she quickly walked through the open door.
It was a long hallway going in both directions, bricked and damp. "He's this way," the woman told her, walking down the right side of the hallway. Sigyn followed, holding onto the metal stand on wheels.
She was surprised and relieved to realize that the room she had been sleeping in was far from the buzz of the other minds that seemed to be working hard. Her walls held strong, though she knew she would need to work on strengthening them. They would do for now.
The woman finally led Sigyn into the large room that held the twenty-six people she had sensed earlier. They were all moving rather quickly, putting pieces of something together, putting up a frame for what looked to be a room made of plastic. Others were at computer stations, talking to their neighbor, calling out things to the man who seemed to be in charge of the crazy commotion.
Then she saw a man, one who was looking at her with a confused and peculiar look. He stepped away from the crowd of people and walk to the other side of the room, toward Sigyn. As he did, he said, "Sir, she's awake. She's here."
And then she saw him, Loki. He had stepped away from the crowds at the other end of the room at the man's words, and his eyes snapped to her before the man had even finished speaking. Sigyn, using the metal IV stand as a support, stumbled over to the stone-faced man, until she stood in front of him.
He didn't say anything, just continued to stare at her as she stared at him. She reached up with the hand that was not attached to a tube and gently touched his cheek with her fingertips. The tingle that flowed from her brain, to her heart, and finally to her fingertips caused her to shutter.
Loki raised his own hand, bringing it to rest against hers, a soft smile forming on his lips. If Sigyn hadn't been standing so close she wouldn't have seen it.
"You're awake," was all he said, and Sigyn nodded. "Have someone bring us food," Loki demanded, his eyes flickering to Liz.
"Right away," the woman said before turning, yelling for someone to help her.
Sigyn's compassion for the woman flared and she swore there was a flicker of something in Loki's eyes in acknowledgment. He didn't say another word, just took her hand from his face, gripped it in his, and lead her down a short hallway and into a well-furnished room.
A couch and comfortable looking chairs were in the room, a coffee table in front of them all, a large rug covering the stone floor. There was also a small table with two hairs pressed up against a side wall, a table cloth covering it. It was warm, like the room she had woken in.
"I didn't want you so close to everyone's emotions while you were recovering. The mind is a delicate thing, even while protected. But here, we can eat and talk."
But Sigyn wasn't listening to his words. Instead, through the touch of their hands, she had gently squeezed through the cracks in his mind, feeling gently past the yellow sickness to the part that was protected by the walls she had thrown around his mind while she had been in Between. It was there, in that tiny spot, that Loki's mind shined it's natural green color. Sigyn nurtured it, helping it grow and slowly dissolve the yellow thing that had taken his mind.
Sigyn knew the process would take a long time, but those tiny pieces she had protected had saved the both of them. He had rescued her from the hell she had endured, had given her a reason to keep living. It was her honor, and her duty, to make sure that the man who had saved her had a way back. But, as she was helping that piece of his mind fight the yellow parts, thoughts and brief snippets of memory floated around her, showing her that Loki was involved in something big, something very not good. Something that had the potential to destroy the world if she didn't try to stop it.
Sigyn instinctively jerked away from him as one thought pierced through his mind and into hers. Destroy.
Sigyn stared at Loki's face for a long moment, watching for that one word to take his mind over, for him to do as ordered and destroy everything in his path. But, as he looked at her, all thoughts of that word, of the things he had been told to do, disappeared.
Sigyn reached forward, gently taking his hand again, not risking going into his mind a second time.
"You are something completely new," Loki said. He studied her, just as she had him.
A knock on the door interrupted the two watching each other, and Liz entered the room once Loki called for her too. She was holding a tray of steaming food, just as the man who entered behind her did.
Sigyn, recognizing his mind immediately, stood from the couch and was as far from the man as she could before for the man had even taken a second step into the room. His mind, like the doctor who had tortured her so happily, was bathed in red. Her instinct to run had come first, after fifty years of fear. But, her will to fight, her anger, and the rage that had been pushed back for just as many years came closer to the front of her mind as she looked at the man that watched her from the doorway.
She felt the power build from within herself, gathering just as it had when she had killed the last man that had that same disgusting red on his mind. She focused on gathering that power, not noticing when the man and Liz sat their trays down on the coffee table in front of the couch and left.
Loki, having felt the power gathering around Sigyn, stood and took her hand gently. "No harm will come to you while I am here."
And suddenly, the rage Sigyn felt was gone. It took several moments for her breathing to calm, for her body to stop shaking, but eventually, the two sat back on the couch and at the food that was waiting for them.
Sigyn ate slowly, old habits of chewing each bite of food twenty times coming back to her, just so she could savor the taste of the food.
Loki didn't say another words as they ate, or after they finished eating. He just sat there with her, letting Sigyn rest her head against his shoulder as she grew tired once more. He gently pushed away the dreams that started to distress her.
They had sat like that for some time before there was another knock on the door. Loki, using his power to open the door from where he sat, invited Liz inside.
Softly, she said, "I think it's time to remove the IV." Liz walked to the pair, lifted Sigyn's tubed hand in hers and started to remove the needle. When she was done, Liz left the room without another word.
As gently as he could, Loki lifted Sigyn, cradling her to his chest as he walked back to the room she had been in only two hours before. He laid her on the bed gently, pulling the sheet than the blanket, tucking her in. He gently ran his fingers down his face before he left the room, closing the door gently behind him.