Archive of Our Own

If he drifts off just long enough, he can almost feel her hand in his.

It isn’t, of course. She’s several feet away, smelling little mesh satchels of lavender one of the merchants is hawking. She wears her hair down-- black, thick, and curling against her dark neck. 

He aches for her.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulls out the half-empty box of cigarettes and slides one out, drawing it to his lips. It lights of its own accord. No one notices. They never do.

He takes a long, shaky drag, arching his neck to release the smoke as he replaces the box in his pocket. He blinks slowly. There are faces in the fumes, liquid and howling--

“Sir.” 

He quirks a brow and peers over his shoulder. 

Ah. Security.

“Sir, you can’t smoke in here,” the man says. He’s of medium height, sturdily-built. Forearms the size of hams. Boar-bristle mustache. He wears mirrored, bottle-green sunglasses despite the cloudy weather and the covered market.

Once, Loki would have loved to dig his claws in, pry inch by inch with little needling provocations.

“My apologies,” Loki says instead, but he can taste the oil in his smile. He hadn’t meant it, this low, mocking derision, but it comes automatically, so he rolls with it, blowing one last puff of smoke gently in the man’s face before extinguishing the cigarette.

On his own palm.

It burns only for an instant and then quickly sets to work healing, but the officer doesn’t know that. To the man’s credit, he betrays only a faint ripple of a grimace as he watches Loki drop the cigarette and grind it into the pavement.

The guard’s lips thin, he offers a sharp nod and then turns on his heel, muttering something into the little black device clipped to his collar.

He’d given Loki the benefit of the doubt.

Disappointing.

Rustling sounds to his right. He spins around. Sigyn glares up at him, one dark brow raised, a bag of lavender dangling in one hand. She jerks her head towards the departing officer.

“Care to explain?” she asks.

“Not really, no,” he says.

Both of her brows go up now, eyelids heavy, skeptical. So familiar, that expression, so dearly missed. 

She is still beautiful, so wonderfully beautiful, and it almost sends him to his knees. He would have returned even if her beauty had fled; he knows that now. He needs her; he wouldn’t have cared if she’d dried to a husk like he had.

But that face, that face is just as timelessly perfect as ever. Large, liquid brown eyes, full lips, dark, warm skin. He wants her to smile as she used to--gleaming and untethered as it plumps her rose-dusted cheeks. He wants her to laugh.

Instead, she is lukewarm, stiff with caution. Her jaw clenches. 

“We’re okay, then?” she asks.

Are we?

“Yes,” he says firmly, willing her to believe him with every bit of conviction he has left. “We’re okay.”

She studies him skeptically for a few seconds, eyes narrowing, and then she nods and turns to meander through the rest of the market. His strides are long, loping, and he catches up to her quickly. 

“This is an interesting choice for an outing,” he remarks. It’s Saturday; the outdoor market is filled to the brim with couples, families, fishermen, and merchants selling everything from clothing to produce.

“Is it?” she asks, mouth twitching.

He sniffs, shoves his hands into his pockets. 

“No, it isn’t,” he says upon further consideration.

“I like people-watching,” she reminds him. “You did once, didn’t you?”

“Still do,” he says, winking at a little girl who is staring up at him, open-mouthed.

He flicks his fingers almost imperceptibly, and out springs an electric blue hibiscus flower. While Sigyn cranes her neck to peer at a jewelry display, he bends down and hands the girl the flower. She gawks at it, then back up at him, her round chin illuminated by the little veins that glow dimly within the petals. 

He brings a finger to his lip and she nods, eyes as wide as saucers. At that moment, as is the case with most children, he senses that she knows.

Silently, with only a hint of the old grace, he straightens up and saunters across the aisle, feigning interest in a rack of ceramic cups. The little girl’s stare burns into his back.

Worlds ago, before the fire and the flood, children had welcomed his company, as had their parents. It had been innocent fun, twinkling laughter, his fingers clasped over small, dimpled ones as he showed them how to fashion pipes or tiny play swords or elaborate headdresses made of twigs and leaves and summer blossoms. They had tumbled from their thatched huts, arms outspread, little legs toddling, and he’d embraced them all.

He likes kids, particularly the ones on Midgard--a boisterous, curious lot with no end to their questions and thirst for innovation. They are slow to judge and quick to love and rarely object to a bit of mischief.

That, at least, hasn’t changed over the millennia.   

But... after... they no longer welcomed him as they had before. He hadn’t blamed them, really. He doesn't now; he paints a rather poor picture these days. 

But still, those little smiles had drifted past him as the centuries unwound; bell-like giggles and high-pitched squeals that reminded him of--

“If you want me to buy you the Seahawks mug, all you have to do is ask.”

He jumps. Rare, that--very few people are capable of startling him.

Sigyn, of course, was always one of them.

“Didn’t really peg you for a sports fan,” she’s saying, “But at least your interests are less destructive now.”

With a shaky laugh, he realizes that he has been absently staring at one of the mugs for several minutes. The plump woman behind the display looks nervous; in another time, perhaps, she would have been charmed.

“Sorry,” he tells the woman, “Zoned out.” And then, turning to Sigyn, he says, “No, I’m good.”

“You sure? You don’t want a commemorative baseball cap, at least?”

Is that a smirk playing about her lips? Warmth blooms in his chest.

“I think I’ll manage without one, thanks.” He offers a small grin and then points to the bag in her hand. “More lavender?" 

“I like it,” she says, almost defensively. “It calms me down.”

“Always did,” he says fondly, more to himself than to her. He feels... quiet, somehow, snug and at ease as they move among the throngs of people, drifting aimlessly from vendor to vendor. She takes a keen interest in the bits and baubles on display, but he can’t remember a thing he sees. She enraptures him. Time spills out and then contracts into the low, perfumed sound of her voice, her soft mouth and her slow, steady, walk, hips swaying, back straight like a dancer’s. He loves the crook of her wrist and the curve of her neck and the swell and fall of her rounded shoulders. Soft and strong and steady.

Lavender fills his nostrils.

“What were you thinking about?” she asks suddenly as they pass by a  dried fruit stand. 

“Hmm?” Never stop talking; never stop looking at me.

“At the mug place,” she says, picking up a bag of apricots. “You were thinking about something; I remember that look.”

I remember. 

It had existed, then--he hadn’t imagined it. Somehow those two words do more to soothe him than anything else in his long existence.

He hesitates for a moment before answering truthfully, because he is too tired for deception.

“The boys,” he says quietly, something hot tearing through him as her expression shifts. “I was thinking about the boys.”

She swallows and jerkily replaces the bag of apricots she’d been examining. Studies the scuffed toes of her boots.

When her eyes find his, they are enormous, thickly-lashed. Byzantine. He does not look away.

“Do you,” she begins, and then swallows again. “Do you think about them often?”

That stings deeply. As if he was capable of anything else. But of course, she doesn’t know. They’d grown so far apart, irreparably far--how could she possibly know? Had he given her any reason to think otherwise? 

And suddenly, he is suffocating, drowning. He cannot go on like this. He cannot think of them, of what he’s done, but there is no way out, not now, not ever- 

“Hey.”

He blinks, and she looks concerned, as if not a minute has passed, as if they still stood beneath the ash tree, breath mingling, hands entwined, their bodies as one. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood…

Papa, show me--!

“Sorry,” he manages with a watery laugh that he once would have thought traitorous.

She bites the inside of her cheek but her gaze does not leave his. Relentless. He deserves this, he knows. He owes her this.

Do you think about them often?

“Yes,” he says in a near whisper, swallowing against the pain in his throat. “I think about them every day.”

She blinks, her eyes glistening. She wipes them jerkily and, shoulders suddenly stiff, heads a few paces ahead of him, glancing at a candle display that he knows she isn’t really seeing at all.

He gives her the space, his throat burning, the salt in the air stinging his skin.The cold is never far off here. Seaside cold--crisp and salted. He can taste it on his tongue as he licks his lips. He doesn’t want to trail behind her, always seeking, always reaching; he wants to bury his face in the crook of her neck again. He wants to rage, to weep with her. He wants to apologize but knows it will never be enough. He owes her more than that, but she will never accept it.

He regrets only one thing.

He would tempt fate itself to bring them back (he has tried); would flay himself open again and again to hear their voices (he has tried); would die a thousand times over for their laughter, their soft hands folded in his, their lashes curling on their dark, rounded cheeks as they slept. He has long since turned his desperation on himself-- take me--if anyone is listening, if anything remains, please, take me, devour me, destroy me, but bring them back, bring them back.

He hasn’t felt them once since the end.

When she told him as much, he could have howled himself into oblivion. Because if she hasn't felt them---because if they are lost to her, they are lost irrevocably. They had dissolved; wherever they lingered, if indeed they lingered at all, they were unknown to him, abandoned, adrift. He had sought them with a single-minded madness for centuries. Others had brushed against him along the way--wisps of consciousness that nonetheless remained recognizable, mournful, furious. His fault.

He cared little. 

They were gone.

Something soft on his forearm--a hand.

The market looks hazy, smeared and swimming in a whirl of gray. He furrows his brow, puzzled; blinks and feels heat trickle down his cheek.

Sigyn’s grip tightens gently and he draws in a shaky breath. Lets out a brittle chuckle, running his hand through his wild hair. Once he never, never would have--

“Want to go?” she asks.

He studies her, caught off guard. For a moment, not a trace of her bitterness remains, and it is as it was an epoch ago, her face kind, her voice inviting, her eyes brimming with--

Not love. She cannot love him now. He doesn’t know if he wants her to. (But he does, she must, please--)

“Hmm?” She nudges him and he looks down at her.

Her hair is bedewed with beads of fog, delicate curls framing her face. Gingerly, he brushes one damp strand off of her forehead. It coils back into place, and he is momentarily unmade, disoriented, his pale hand scratched and scarred against the richness of her unmarred skin, perfection as it ever was. But he is so markedly changed. Ruined.

Her hand seeks his. Squeezes. She jerks her head to the right.

“Come on, I want to show you something,” she says. “Okay?”

His answering smile is tight, but sincere. For once. 

He lets her tug him forward, the mist cool against his eyelids, her fingers laced in his.

The car ride is quiet at first.

He fiddles with the radio, lingering on a rock station simply because it’s as obnoxious as possible. Turns up the volume and risks a glance her way. She quirks an eyebrow and he chuckles softly, switching it to a subdued classical station that, if he’s being honest with himself (he rarely is), he actually prefers.

Still, several minutes later, she shuts it off and rolls down the windows. They’re deep into a heavily-wooded area now, lush green and crisp with mist, the ferns feathering the mossy earth in thick fronds. The road winds snake-like through the pines, the tree bark darkened and heavy with rain, the smell crisp and full in his nostrils. He sticks his head out, slides his eyes closed, and breathes.

Yes, he remembers this: gliding, absolute liberation...it’s been years--

“You’re going to smack your head on a tree,” she calls.

“Count on it!" he calls back.

She laughs softly and he feels his face split into a grin. He has always loved this, the wind whipping at his face, his stomach in his throat...then, of course, the entire world had spread beneath him, cresting and falling in green cliffs and crystalline fjords. He doesn’t know if he’s even capable of it anymore--the fatigue is too leaden and won’t release him--but for now, this is enough. More than enough. 

Sigyn says nothing as they drive on, the light drizzle beyond the windows sharpening to droplets that sting his skin like needles. If he could die, he would do it now, the nearest to bliss that he’s felt in eons: the wind in his throat, she at his side; above, a granite sky.

When the car slows, he reluctantly pulls his head back inside, inhaling slowly, deeply, then exhaling a contented little “oh.” She looks over, something dangerously close to fondness playing about her expression.

She pulls the car into a wooded copse of pine.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to park here,” she says, shutting the vehicle off and unfastening her seatbelt. “But no one’s around.”

He’s dizzy with contentment and can offer only a low, “Mmm” in response.

The seat belt around his hips clicks as she undoes it and once again, her hand finds his.

“Come on,” she says. “I have something to show you.” 

Loki unfurls from the seat, his muscles liquid as she locks the car and heads towards a trail a few feet away. Wood chips crunch beneath his boots. It’s a damp cold, this, unhealthy if he bothered to let a little thing like pneumonia get the better of him. ( Ha.) But here’s absolution in this weather--it feels impossibly clean, newly-made. He’s almost giddy with the smell of pine, its richness coating his tongue, searing his lungs.

“Are you coming?” 

He blinks. She’s several paces away, brows raised expectantly, her breath coming in ghostly puffs that dissolve gently into the slate gray air. The cold has reddened her nose, brought a blush to her cheeks.

He says nothing but follows her immediately, and he doesn’t know what it is in his expression that makes her own soften like that, a mix of distant fondness and pity. It’s a strange commingling, a rarity. She never would have looked at him like that before. It's as if she doesn’t recognize him.

Then again, he no longer recognizes himself. It’s something of a thrill, that realization. Troubling, yes, but he has always delighted in the unexpected. What will he do next, this hollow fellow with the sunken face and the mile-long stare?

Follow the witch into the woods, he thinks as he trails after her. (Perhaps he isn’t so changed, after all. 

She does not look back at him as they wind their way deeper into the trees. There must be some poeticism in that, he thinks. Or perhaps she doesn’t need to look back--the leaves and wood crackle and crunch beneath his shoes, so she can probably hear him.

Or maybe she just knows that inevitably, he will always follow her.

Once, the very idea would have incensed him. He was beholden to no one, and he’d told her so frequently, cruelly. How dare she insinuate otherwise?

She’d been right, of course. She usually was. The difference is that now he doesn’t have energy or the desire to fight against the pull she exerts. He needs her; it's that simple.

They walk for half an hour, birds twittering overhead, the rain occasionally intensifying but never beyond a light shower. Loki wonders where he would end up if he simply kept walking. Over a cliff? Into another state, another forest? 

A cave?

He picks up his pace, his skin suddenly pricking. At least he has enough decency left to keep his distance. She wants to be alone now, he can tell; she wants to be alone yet wants him to follow.

That’s the core of it all, isn’t it?

His joints ache as he walks along the uneven earth. When he rolls his shoulders, his neck cracks. He feels unfinished, rickety.

A twig snaps beneath his boot and he bends to retrieve it, twirling it between his fingers if only for something to do with his restless hands. The sound stops her and she turns, questioning.

He flicks the stick with a flourish in her direction. “Expelliarmus." 

“You have to swish and flick," she says, shaking her head, but she is grinning. Something swells in his chest. 

“No,” he says, strolling to match her stride. “That’s the other one. Isn’t it? Wingard. ..something...I never finished the books, if I’m honest. What was it? Wingard... ”

“Some sorcerer you are.” 

“I’m rusty, give me a break,” he sighs, beating the twig against his thigh as they walk. “Can’t remember the last time I did anything substantial.”

“What about in the market earlier?” 

He turns to look at her; her smile has not yet fled.

“The little girl?” She nudges his side. “I saw you.”

“Of course you did.”

“Nice work.”

“Hardly,” he says.

“She seemed to like it.”

“She doesn’t know any better. Probably for the best. I never stick around long enough to watch them explain it to their parents. ‘Where’d the puppy come from, honey?’ ‘The man in the tree gave it to me, Mum--’” 

“You still do that?”

“Hand out free puppies or--?”

“The tree thing.”

He tosses the twig over his shoulder and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Sure. I've found it's a nice, timeless way to beguile unsuspecting passersby. More of a classic than, I dunno…disembodied voices. That’s so overdone these days. Nobody believes it when they hear disembodied voices--not like they used to. But people still go for fairies in trees.”

“And you’re the fairy in this scenario?”

“Not much of one. Used to be a bang-up fairy,” he says emphatically. “But maybe that was just because I had the hair for it.”

“Probably."

“And anyway, ‘fairy’ was always the easier explanation. Safer, when your reputation precedes you. ‘The fae folk did it’ sounds nicer than ‘Mother, Father, You-Know-Who is in the garden--’”

“Voldemort?”

He quirks his head to the side, his mouth tilting upwards. “On a Potter kick, I see."

“I like the books,” she says simply, and then risks a glance his way. “You know, there’s a Fenrir in it.”

Loki lets out a bark of laughter. “Really?”

“He’s a werewolf. A really nasty one.”

“Lies and slander." 

“I think it’s fitting.” 

“You would.” 

“Do you ever see them?” she asks abruptly.

They’ve stopped again, this time in a thick copse of trees. Fallen needles nearly obscure the trail. Her easy grin has gone. 

“Who?” he asks quietly, though he knows exactly who.

“You know exactly who, ” she says.

The base of his skull suddenly itches; he scratches it absentmindedly. Once again, he opts to tell the truth. 

He’s just too exhausted for anything else.

“Some of them,” he answers. “Yes.” 

“Who? Fenrir?”

A wispy, stuttering sort of laugh escapes him and he shakes his head. “No. Not--at least, not that I’m aware of. He couldn’t exactly fly under the radar, could he?”

“What about the--you know...your...others.”

Loki dislikes the sour note in her voice, the undisguised bitterness there. She’d always made it quite clear how she felt about the rest of them, and he’d always made it quite clear that her hatred was justified. He understood. He did.

But he loves them, too. That is all there is to it. He loves them still. She cannot understand.

Sigyn is no monster. 

“No,” he says, tampering the sharpness of his response with difficulty. “No, I haven’t seen any of them.” It physically pains him. 

Sigyn lets out a non committal hum.

“Did see Angie, though,” he adds absently. 

She abruptly turns to look at him, and where he expects to find hostility in her expression, instead, he finds only a bemused sort of hope.

“No shit?” she says. 

“No shit.”

“When? Recently?”

“Not too recently.” He blows out a breath. “First time must have been, what? Four...five hundred years back? During some plague. She was having a ball.”

“I’ll bet she was,” Sigyn mutters.

“Ran into her a few times after that. Nothing happened,” he adds, as if it matters. “We just...we thought we were the only ones left, so it was...good to talk once in a while.” 

“...Where is she now?”

“Berlin? Maybe Frankfurt. Somewhere in Germany. Runs a bar. Pretty popular in the metal scene now, I think. She started it sometime in the eighties and it got big, from what she was telling me. You know Siouxsie played there once?”

“And the Banshees?”

“Yeah. Didn’t see the concert myself, but...anyway. It’s the real deal. Rolling Stone ran an article about it.”

“What’s it called?”

“Hmm?”

“The bar. What’s it called?”

“Named it after herself.”

“Of course. I’ll be sure to avoid Angrboða’s next time I’m in Berlin or Frankfurt." 

Loki wants to add that Angie never talks about them. Her-- their- -children. Ever. Over the centuries, he’d tried in vain to broach the topic, and she’d done what she could in her brusque, craggy way to console him, but she couldn’t linger on the subject for long. It was too much, she’d said.

She’d gotten their names tattooed on her arm, though. That was something. Her silent way, he supposed, of dealing with the loss.

Loki isn’t really one for silence.

Still, he does hold his peace now--he may be heartless, but even he knows better than to bring up the grieving habits of his...mistress? Ex? What the hell even is Angie?

Not Siggy.

He clears his throat and rolls his shoulders as they set off again, needles crunching beneath their feet.

“Any others?” she asks. “Besides your metalhead girlfriend, that is.”

He laughs, then considers. "Thought I saw Bragi once in the Bronx, but it was just some bum playing an electric harp for cash on the sidewalk. Looked like him, though. Smelled like him, too.”

“Ouch.”

“Tell me I’m wrong.” 

“You’re not wrong,” she concedes. “Poor Iðunn…” 

“ Poor Iðunn , my ass. She was so full of shit.”

“I know she was, but still...the Byronic types always seem so appealing until you actually marry one.” 

“Don’t tell me I was the Byronic type.”

“No. You’re your own breed.”

“Thanks.” He pauses and considers for a moment before saying, rather too quickly, “Saw Baldr.”

She blows out a low whistle. “Yikes.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you...I mean, did the two of you...talk? At all?” 

“No. He didn’t...I’m pretty sure he had no idea I was there.”

“What, were you spying on him?” 

“Yes.”

She snorts.

“Not on purpose,” he adds hastily, and then a second later realizes how ridiculous that sounds. “I mean, the whole thing was an accident. I haven’t seen him since...you know. He looked the same, though. He was wearing khakis, which, honestly, I should have expected--”

“I saw him last year.”

Loki stops dead in his tracks, balking.

“You’re shitting me.” 

She shakes her head, hands in her pockets. “Nope. Ran into him in Amsterdam. Literally--I’d rented a bike, and he was on his, and I wasn’t looking. We must have talked for eight hours after that.”

“Riveting conversation, was it?”

“It was,” she says simply, and leaves it at that. It’s none of his business, and she owes him absolutely nothing.

Still…

“The rumors were true, then.” It isn’t a question.

She actually laughs. “Yes.”

“Baldr?” He scoffs. “Ugh, for fuck’s sake, Siggy.”

“If you’re planning to lecture me on monogamy--”

He holds up his hands. “No, no--I would have been surprised if you hadn’t... ventured elsewhere at some point. But Baldr? Come on. ”

“Is that why you did it?” she asks bluntly. 

He swallows the cold lump in his throat. He’d known she’d ask, but it doesn’t make answering any easier.

“No,” he says. “I suspected. But I told myself I didn’t care. It was over by then, anyway, wasn’t it? You two?”

“It was.”

“There you are.”

“Why, then? Tell me why.” Her demand is not loud, but it is firm. Uncompromising in its frankness. He appreciates it despite its sting, and once again attempts honesty 

“I couldn’t fucking stand him,” he says passionately. The sentiment has dulled with age, but hasn’t disappeared.

“That’s it? You couldn’t stand him?”

“You know if you’re looking for some deep-rooted philosophical cause, you’re not going to find it. You know that.”

“Maybe I’m just stupid, then,” she says acridly. “Sue me for trying….so it was just a whim.”

“Almost,” he confesses. “It wasn’t...boredom , if that’s what you think--” 

“So good to know--” 

“--but it was sudden. In a sense. I hadn’t planned to do it that day --”

“But you had planned it.”

“I planned everything. ” 

Her mouth narrowed into a tight, thin line. In this, he felt some modicum of shame, but only for her sake. Not for his own.

“So what’s he doing in Amsterdam?” Loki asks, not-so-deftly steering the conversation away from murder. “Frolicking in the tulips?” 

“When I saw him he was a tour guide.” She pushes out exhale. “He’s still sweet. Wiser and quieter. But still sweet...I meet his mother for coffee every few months.”

Loki can’t quite hide his relief when he hears this. Frigg had made it. He’d always liked Frigg. Well, not always --when they’d first met, he’d found her dull, assumed she was happy to play the role of the silent, dutiful wife, and immediately dismissed her.

In truth, she was an observer--as all adept Seers were. She chose her words carefully, and her discernment was, Loki had thought, of a more sophisticated order than her husband’s. She did not boast; she did not preen. She perhaps more than anyone understood the value of gray areas--she never worked in absolutes. At one point, the two of them had even forged something of a friendship. He respected her (at least, as much as he was then able to respect anyone), and she simply let him be. More than could be said for...literally anyone else.

Of course, he couldn’t find her at fault for reacting the way she did after he...well.

After all, Loki had been a parent, too. 

You selfish fuck.  

“--pottery class in Helsinki,” Sigyn was saying. “At least, I think it was there--she’s in Sedona now. Owns a shop on the main drag.”

“Sedona, huh? What, the cold got to her?” 

“Dunno,” she says, although Loki suspects she does know and would rather keep it to herself. 

She hesitates for only a moment before adding, “She asked about you once.”

He’s not sure how to respond to that and settles for a non-committal, “Oh?” 

“I told her you were dead.” She clicks her tongue. “To be fair, I thought you were.”

Would have been better off that way, he thinks.

He only says, “I guess I was, in a way.” 

“You know...I don’t think she hates you,” Sigyn says, then studies the pine needles below her feet contemplatively. “I really don’t. I think she...I mean, I don’t know if she’d want to invite you to tea--” 

“I hate tea.” 

“--but I really don’t think she hates you. I can’t say if she forgives you, but she wasn’t...hostile. It’s bizarre.”

“She always was a little unconventional,” Loki says fondly, rubbing the back of his neck.. “Remember Svartalfheim?”

“Which time?”

“The--”

“Ah. Yes.”

“Right. She was the one who covered it all up. Just showed up out of nowhere and...fixed it.” 

“Frigg fixed it?” Sigyn looks baffled. “I thought you did.” 

“No. I caused it--and took credit for the cleanup.”

“You fucking asshole. That was a diplomatic disaster. You know it almost started a war?”

He chuckles. “It didn’t, though--that was all her doing. And they called me Silvertongue." He frowns and bites his lip. "Weirdest part was, she never said anything about it. Not once. I mean, I fucking took credit in front of her face just to--just to see if she would bite, and she didn’t say a word. And then later--when I got back, and I was--” 

“You were banged up pretty badly.”

“Yeah. She fixed that, too.”

“That was her?” Sigyn looks dumbstruck. “She...God. God, after everything, I thought--”

“So did I. But that was Frigg for you. I never understood her.” He considers for a moment, one corner of his mouth twitching. “Probably why I liked her.”

Quiet settles between them for several minutes, and Loki tactfully neglects to tell Sigyn the rest of the story: how, in the velvet darkness, the All-Father’s wife had crept into his chambers, sat beside him, and healed his wounds, and listened, and finally held him when he could no longer stem his weeping.

“It has to be me, doesn’t it?” he’d said dully, throat raw, phantom pains from his newly-healed injuries still smarting. Her hand rubbed circles into his back, but there was no seiðr in her touch--just gentleness.

“It doesn’t have to be anything,” she’d said, and he knew that, unlike Odin, her answer wasn’t cryptic for the sake of being cryptic; it was cryptic because the paths she Saw were unclear.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked quietly, so quietly he suspected she hadn’t heard him. He pressed the heels of his palms into his burning eyes.  

“I can’t tell you that,” Frigg answered. “That’s up to you. I don’t weave fate. You know that. And fate isn’t immutable. You know that, too.”

He groaned.

“But I can tell you what I’d advise as a friend,” she’d offered.

He looked up, heedless of the tear tracks that wound down his dirt-streaked face, and smiled wryly.  

“Is that what we are? Friends?”

“I think so,” she said--far too pleasantly for the situation at hand.

“My, my.” He let out a low, derisive whistle. “What would your husband think?”  

“I don’t particularly care for what he thinks,” she said briskly. “And regardless, he thought highly of you, too, once.”

“No, he didn’t,” Loki said plainly. “And if he did, it was only as a means to an end. I’d know--I felt the same way.”

“But you don’t think of me as a means to an end.”  

He sighed. Shook his head. " No.”  

“Then listen to what I tell you. As a friend. Look at me.”

He did. Her gaze was golden and glittering in the firelight, intense. Not for the first time, Loki was struck by the rather unnerving sensation that she could see right through him, See everything he had ever done, or ever would do.  

He wasn’t sure if he admired her or feared her for it.  

“Leave us,” she said in her low, soft lilt. “All of us. Take Sigyn with you--take your boys--and go.”

He bristled, but his heart wasn’t in it. Almost by rote, he muttered, “Eager to be rid of me, are you?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

He’d grimaced, stung.

But Frigg was shaking her head. “Don’t play your games with me--they won’t work. I want you to go because you’ll only survive if you leave. And despite my better judgement, I’d rather like it if you survived.”  

“You know that? For a fact? That I’ll--what? Die if I stay in Asgard?”

“I know very few things for a fact,” she said, arching one fine brow. “But I do know you should wait. Live, my friend. And run.”

“Run,” he scoffed. “You think I’m a coward.”  

“You know better than anyone that running doesn’t make you a coward.”

He studied his bare feet on the floor for a moment, the fur rug beneath them, the play of warm shadows around his toes.

“Run,” he said after a moment, and then looked back up at her, feeling at once defiant and terribly, terribly vulnerable. “What happens if I don’t?” 

“You decide that,” Frigg said and her pale eyes were electric. “Not me.”

Several minutes passed in silence, but her hand did not leave his back. Her touch was rhythmic, soothing, and a small part of him--a very young part of him--wanted her to stay there. He didn’t care if she didn’t say a word--her companionship was enough; her willingness to listen was enough.

Very few ever listened.  

“What if..?” he murmured suddenly, and then swallowed when his voice cracked. “What if I don’t have a choice? In...any of it? What if you’re...wrong?”

 She smiled softly, as if he hadn’t just questioned the revered abilities of one of the most gifted Seers in the Nine.

 “Do you want to know what I think?” Frigg said.

 “No, I don’t. That’s why I asked you,” he snapped.

 “I think,” she said, ignoring the biting response with regal ease, “that there is nothing sadder than someone who doesn’t know that life is theirs to forge.”

 He swallowed again, feeling oddly stripped, a stranger in his own skin. He wanted to run, but he wanted to stay there, with her. He wanted Sigyn, but he never wanted to look her in the eye again; he wanted to hold his boys close, but wanted to leave them forever and nurse the loss until it ate him alive.

 He wanted to run.

 He wanted to stay and burn everything.

 He wanted--

 What?

 “You are what you make yourself, Loki,” Frigg said simply. “That’s all there is to it.”

 “But what if…?” He inhaled, something slick and poisonous sliding out of him, and he hated that he savored it. “What if I want to end it? And I don’t mean in theory--I mean, what if I really want The End of All Things? What if I really, truly--?”

 “Ragnarok,” Frigg interrupted, “is not the End of All Things.”

 He studied her for a moment; she met his gaze, unflinching.

 “One of your riddles?” he asked.

 “No.”

 “Then what--?”

 “You’re smarter than that,” Frigg said dismissively. “You know precisely what I mean. But evidently, you want me to say it out loud, so I will: nothing ever really ends. A life, a season, a soul. Ragnarok is a beginning. A new one. A chaotic one, but a beginning, nonetheless. And you know it.”

 “Yes,” he whispered.

 She hummed as if to say, “Well, there you go.”

 “Then there’s no real harm in it,” Loki said very clearly, as if trying to prove a point to a particularly obtuse infant. “That’s what I’ve been telling you--if it’s a way to--to start over--”

 “And lose everything you have?”

 “And start over! ”

 “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

 “It isn’t.” He huffed. “And it is. It’s more to--to see if I can. Everything is just to see if I can.”

 “Of course you can,” Frigg tutted. “You always can. The real question is if you should. ”

 “‘Should’ doesn’t fly with me, Frigg.”

 She chuckled, a low, warm sound that danced in time with the flames at their feet.

 “I know it doesn’t.”

 “Then why bother?”

 “Because you have more to give.” She squeezed his shoulder. “And it would be a sorry thing, indeed, to watch it end.”

 He swallowed the painful knot in his throat.

“Besides,” she continued, studying the hearth, “it’s dull as death here without you around. It’s why I stay, if I’m honest. Well, it’s one reason why--Njord and I have a running bet to see how many times you can make my husband lose his composure. I’m winning, if you’re curious. Njord places greater faith in Odin’s composure than I do.”

Loki let out a startled bark of laughter. Together, they laughed.

She embraced him, whispering words of reassurance. Of faith and kinship. 'I believe in you, my friend,' she had told him. Quietly, very quietly, he thanked her.

And only weeks later, slaughtered her son.

“—through here.”

He jerks himself out of the heavy, close warmth of his old chambers--burned now, not a trace of them left--and feels like a stone in a slingshot, ricocheted back to the lush green earth.

Ahead, Sigyn whistles.

“Hey! You still with me?”

He nods, and he can feel how pitiful his affected grin looks, but she either does not notice or affords him the mercy of her silence.

The trail has narrowed and the fog has thickened. He feels ill. Something foul festers and congeals in his stomach.

Frigg had been the only other person in the universe besides Sigyn who had seen him weep. She’d never told a soul.

And how he’d repaid her.

He picks up his pace, feeling unsettled and perverse with the knowledge that another soul who once cared for him yet lives, and she was perhaps the one he had wronged the most.

Well, besides Sigyn. 

And...literally everyone else.

He wonders if he can dissolve into the trees that tower above him. Once, he could have taken wing and spiraled upward until only the frigid air filled his thoughts, sank into the tree’s bark until he felt the roots at his feet and the determined scratching and scuttling of insects below them. He would almost cease to exist, part and particle of the earth itself.

It was quieter that way. Easier.

(Coward.)

“Watch for that root there--I always trip on it.”

Loki looks down, his boot poised to collide with a massive, moss-covered root.

He swiftly steps over it. “Thanks for the heads up.”

She is silent for a moment.

“I almost let you fall,” she says finally.

He laughs, but it sounds rather weak--that sick, curdling sensation in his stomach hasn’t abated. “Why didn’t you?”

Her expression is strange, unreadable. She swallows, a faint line of worry appearing between her thick, dark brows. 

“I don’t know,” she says quietly.

They stand there for a moment, studying each other. She looks like a nymph framed by the deep green fern and pine, her eyes impossibly large and impossibly dark, her hair a smudge of black smoke floating about her face. He doesn’t blink. Gradually, his vision swims until she wavers in the gloom, and he wonders if he has imagined it all yet again. Is he yet chained and burning? Or has he collapsed into a heap in some alleyway?

Either way, she is there.

Either way, she beckons and he follows. 

The path ends a few feet away, and they pass through a thick copse of trees draped with heavy, tattered moss. Deep green gives way to a wilderness of slate blue and gray, and he feels his breath dissipate with the fog. An endless stretch of gray ocean sloshes far, far below them, hurling itself against cliffs and crags of rock that erupt from the foam. Infinite it seems, distantly monstrous.

For a split second, he nearly jumps into its waiting jaws. Easy--so easy to dissolve. To run.

You know better than I do that running doesn’t make you a coward.

The salt stings his skin as if every inch of him has been flayed raw.

But beside him, with only the faintest hint of hesitation, her arm links with his. Together they watch the sea foam swirl far, far below. Above, the seagulls float across the colorless sky. 

He leans into her, feeling her grip tighten upon his own.

And this time, he stays.