Sigyn could hear a lot of talking in the cockpit, but she chose to ignore it, instead she reached out her mind to find where the four people went. She felt nothing, though she was unsurprised. Sigyn was sure they were still hundreds of feet above the ground. Her range was good, but she still had limits. It seemed like time passed slowly as Sigyn continued to search and upon finding nothing, started listening to the conversation in the cockpit.
She couldn't quite make out every word, but it sounded like they were circling the area in which everyone had jumped out of the plane, searching for a sign that they were there. It seemed like hours in which Sigyn cast her mind out, searching and waiting for someone to come within her range.
Sigyn was confused. The man had obviously targeted the aircraft because Loki was there. He had hardly looked at the other people, just paying enough attention to prevent Stark from immediately stopping the other man from taking Loki. There were things in Loki's past that she didn't understand, things that she would never know and this may just be one of those.
She thought back to everything that Loki had told of his past, mostly his family, about Asgard, about his education in magic. And then she remembered that brief memory that she had seen when Loki had saved her from death. Two boys, walking down a street, then fighting each other. Loki had a brother and from what she remembered of his visions, Loki's brother was fair-haired, muscular, very much like the man who had just stolen Loki off the aircraft was. It all made sense to Sigyn, that that man was Loki's brother. And she pulled his name from Loki's memory. Thor, god of thunder.
And then she felt their minds, Loki's standing out prominently, Thor's just as strange as it had been before, Stark's churning with thoughts and emotions, and Captain America's unusual mind as well. They were approaching quickly, and then the jolt of the aircraft landing. The hatch opened, and Sigyn was happy to see Loki step onto the deck once more, his arm gripped tightly by Thor's hand. Loki's emotions were a mix of amusement, satisfaction that the plan was moving forward, and annoyance directed towards his brother. Thor pushed Loki back into his seat, giving Sigyn a curious look, before turning back to Stark and Steve Rogers.
The silence, broken only by the sound of the radio and the man and woman speaking in the cockpit and the sound of the engines, was tense. Each man looked at the others with distrust, their eyes moving from each person, then back again. Sigyn rolled her eyes in annoyance and turned her head away to look through the windows in the roof of the aircraft.
The churning emotions of everyone on the aircraft caused Sigyn to become uneasy. Her hands clenched in her lap, her fingers wiggling and wringing the others. Her feet, which inconveniently did not reach the floor, bounced out a nervous rhythm, and her whole body shifted uncomfortably. But despite the emotions she felt from each person, she did what she had to do. Her part of the plan was important to how the next two days would play out. She needed to make sure that it worked.
By the time Sigyn felt the aircraft land with a jolt once more, her head was leaning against the wall behind her, her mind drifting into the place of almost sleep. She looked just in time to see the hatch open as the engines started to slow. A dozen men dressed in black rush forward, surrounding Loki and Sigyn immediately. In a blur of emotions and movement, Sigyn was standing with her hands cuffed behind her back, a group of four guards practically pushing her from the aircraft and onto the surface of a large airstrip. Looking around her, Sigyn could only see the sky. She was on a very large aircraft.
She glanced behind her to Loki, seeing him in the same position as she was. He gave her a small smile before their two groups went separate directions.
They walked Loki towards the center of the giant airship, passing room after room. As he passed one room, windows lining its walls, Loki couldn't help but smile as he saw the man that would be the key to the plan. He knew his smile would unnerve the man, just like he wanted it to.
But group of guards didn't stop until Loki was safely shut inside a circular room with walls of glass. Loki stood in the middle, watching as a dozen men walked back out of the room, and a new man walked in.
"In case it's unclear," the new man said, approaching a control panel and hitting a few buttons. "If you try to escape, if you so much as scratch that glass, it's 30,000 feet straight down in a steel trap." Below the glass walls holding Loki, the metal retracted, showing a tunnel straight down through the bottom of the ship. Loki stepped forward, looking down at the hole now on the floor. "You get how that works?" The man hit a few buttons on the control panel again, closing a glasses door that covered a large red button and gestured towards Loki, then the control counsel. "Ant, boot."
Loki chuckled, backing to stand in the middle of his glass room once more. "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me."
"Built for something a lot stronger than you."
"Oh, I've heard." Loki turned, looking directly at a camera to his left. "A mindless beast. Makes play he's still a man. How desperate are you that you call on such lost creatures to defend you? That you imprison a woman for half a century because you're scared?"
"How desperate am I?" The man looks a Loki with aggressive body language, walking close to the glass wall. "You threaten my world with war. You release a dangerous prisoner and steal a weapon you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill because its fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad you did."
"It burns you to have come so close. To have the Tesseract and a woman who can touch it. To have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share. And then to be reminded what real power is."
"Well let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something." And then the man turned and left the room
Loki didn't seem concerned the other man had walked away, he just simply turned back towards the camera and looked straight into, knowing they were watching.
Sigyn wasn't overly impressed by the guards that escorted her through the long hallways and into an elevator. If she had to label them they would fall directly into the 'stupid but strong' category. She knew it was a stereotype, and it was something she tried not to assume about people, but there was no helping this. Being here, around people she knew must have been in that place, by people who had allowed her to remain a prisoner for so long, grated on her nerves. Her feelings, the resentment, anger, fear, caused her to throw up defenses and judge everyone she came into contact with. She wasn't ashamed of it, she just wished she never had to be surrounded by these people again.
They finally stopped in front of a door, white, unremarkable. One of the guards tapped on the touchpad next to the door and a distinct click before the same guard reached forward and opened the door.
All she could see was a short hallway leading to what looked like an open space, a desk resting against the left wall, on which sat a pile of clothes, and a door to her right.
Sign stepped forward, knowing that she wouldn't have much of a choice, and was unsurprised to hear the door shut and the lock click into place. Sigyn opened the door to her right, finding a bathroom. She closed the door, stepping forward to the space beyond the hallway. It wasn't a large area, just enough room for a bed shoved against the right wall and the chair to the desk to sit in the middle of the room.
Sigyn stepped up to the desk, reaching out to feel the fabric of the clothing that lay folded. It didn't seem like a particularly comfortable fabric, but it would be much better than laying around in her dress, no matter how pretty it was.
Sigyn undressed then redressed in the supplied clothing, happy to find that they weren't uncomfortable or itchy, but they were an unpleasing grey color. They weren't white at least, not like the ones she had worn before. She looked around the room again, unsurprised to find nothing more, not even a spec of dust.
She was surprised at the accommodations she had been given. She knew her escape, or rescue from her viewpoint, must have really annoyed some people. She had been expecting something a lot less comfortable.
Sigyn sighed, sitting on the edge of her bed. She sat there for a few moments, preparing for the next steps, the part that was going to be imperative so save thousands of lives. When she was ready, she laid back on the bed, her head resting gently on the pillow as she focused her energy on the people surrounding her, on everyone within the scope of her mental ability.
It was an extremely long and straining process, but it was important and needed to be done. This plan, saving Loki, saving the world, the universe even, all depended on how convincing she and Loki could be.
After a time, she stopped. By no means had she completed what she had wanted, but the strain on her mind was becoming too much to handle. She released her hold, keeping her eyes closed as her mind relaxed. She had started it and building on top of something that was already created would be much easier.
Sigyn drifted off to sleep, her body and mind needing the rest to gain energy. When she woke, she sat up, moving to the desk chair, before deciding to test something. She reached out with her mind once more, but instead of looking into their mind or building on what she had created earlier, she pulled the energy from the space around her. She had known that she could pull energy from her surroundings, had felt the power grow as Loki tossed his magic at her, but testing it now, surrounded by thousands of people, machines that had taken time and energy to create, was more than she expected.
When she pulled all that energy in on herself, she was nearly overwhelmed by the amount that came barreling back at her. She balked, losing her concentration, and the energy dissipated.
Sigyn took a deep breath, laughing softly as she realized what had happened, that she had pulled all that energy out of the space around her. She knew she should probably save her mental energy, that she needed to make sure her part of the plan went as it should, but the fact that she could pull the energy and power from the space around her was something that could help her in the long run.
She stopped using that energy, digging, instead, deep into her mind where her bond with Loki stood out starkly. The small golden thread that had connected their minds had grown, now appearing as a strong rope. She was pleased to see how strong it had become.
She had only really started to get to know Loki these past couple of weeks, learning about a small part of his past and the personality he hid so deeply. Sigyn knew that the rough exterior was just a shield of protection. He had felt betrayed by his brother, his father. That had led him on a dark path, a path, Sigyn knew from experience, that was hard to step off of.
And that man, that terrible man she had caught sight of in Loki's mind, had done nothing but allow that hate to fester and turn into a wound that wouldn't heal. And it was through that wound that the infection had started.
But, upon following that golden rope, Sigyn could see that Loki's mind was now very close to being his own once again. He was still affected, as she expected he would be for a very long time, but that control on his mind had diminished enough that Loki no longer would fall under their thralls again. His thoughts were mostly his own, and when they weren't he could push them away. Just enough of that control remained for the other's to believe he was still on their side.
She was proud of him, truly. From what she remembered from the first time they met, he had been on the edge of insanity. He was great at acting, she had to admit. To let everyone think that he was doing those terrible things because he wanted to, allowing them to think and say terrible things about him, took a lot of strength. Sigyn knew that she would have a hard time succeeding at doing what he did, and she had almost 200 years' worth of practice on deceiving people. Loki truly knew what he was doing.
The connection they had, especially because it had grown stronger, allowed Sigyn to know Loki's true thoughts on a basic level. She had to concentrate, meditate, to be able to feel down that golden rope that connected them. Sigyn could tell, deep in his thoughts and heart, he truly did not wish to be something people feared. He had been tired of standing in his brother's shadow, of watching as each thing Thor did was revered. He felt guilt for wanting his brother gone, sadness that even as Loki held on with just his fingertips, Thor still could not understand.
But Loki was tired of all the fighting. He wanted his brother's attention, wanted to feel loved, like he belonged somewhere. He wanted this war, the war that hadn't even started, to end. And Sigyn couldn't agree more, though her reasons for stopping the war were much different.
Sigyn was angry, so angry at this entire facility, at life and the hand she had been dealt. Fifty years ago, she had been Sigyn, working, living. But she had also been dying inside. She had seen her friends, her family, wither away, die, and be forgotten. She remembered them, kept them alive in her memory, but that was nothing compared to the pain they left her with, especially when each death hit her harder than the last.
And then, then, she had been taken after trying to save that mother and child's life. She had been taken, tortured, thrown into cell after cell, starved to the point of losing basic functions and memory, and then experimented on with a power source that she didn't know would start a war.
For a quarter of her life, she had been at the mercy of this place, of S.H.I.E.L.D. and now she would make sure that they would hurt for what they did to her.
And those thoughts brought back every detail of being tortured, everything she had forgotten, suppressed. She could feel her power start to churn, fighting to escape her tight hold. She felt it pulse with each of heartbeats, pounding against her chest, her limbs, her brain, and her mind. The air around her was starting to become charged, power gathering in the small space of the room. She could feel the crackle as it lashed out, trying to destroy something, to be released.
The battle in Sigyn's mind that had been trying to cope with the memories that forced themselves upon her, now turned to a struggle to contain the most dangerous magic she had. She fought it with all her might, her mind a mess of thoughts, emotions, memories.
But there, so deep it was in her very soul, a soft voice spoke.
"It will all be okay. They can't hurt you anymore."
At that sound, at the presence that she knew so well now, she felt her anger start to ebb.
"I know it will be hard," he continued. "But this would not work out well for our plan. If we want to get what we want you need to calm down."
As the words flowed through her mind, so did his soothing presence. It took a few moments, but eventually, the spiral of her thoughts and memories slowed, allowing themselves to be put in a rightful place, somewhere Sigyn would be able to go through and deal with later.
She felt the power around her slowly relax, sinking back into her. Once it was all clear and her mind felt much better, Sigyn sent a gentle, "Thank you," back.
There were no more words, just an acknowledgment of the gratitude, before his presence disappeared once more.
Sigyn had suspected that the bond between herself and Loki would be strong enough to communicate through without touching or being near each other. She had no idea that it would progress that quickly. It made her happy to think that the both of them, should they need it, could talk to the other in a matter of seconds. It was an amazing feeling to be so connected to each other.
After several minutes of deep breaths, Sigyn sat on the edge of the bed, feet on the ground, hands resting on her legs and closed her eyes. She felt thousands of minds, all buzzing with emotions, but she locked onto two familiar ones. Stark and Captain Rogers.
And Sigyn started the second step of her plan.