As the light from the Tesseract faded and they found themselves again on the shattered edge of the Bi-frost, he couldn't have said that he was surprised she was there waiting for them, silhouetted by the golden light of Asgard's brilliance. She was wearing a gold and green gown that fit her like a second skin and flowed off her hips to flutter around her ankles and trail behind her. Her dark hair had grown since he had last seen her and there was a thin, new scar that traced a path from her jawline to her collarbone and vanish beneath the neckline of her drew.

Her dark eyes found his first and he could only look away. For once, he was almost grateful for the gag Thor had forced on him. It, at least, spared him from having to say something. There were so many things that had been left unsaid, so many things he had wanted to tell her, things he wanted to explain, but he couldn't-for once-find the words in himself to even begin to phrase them. In the distance, he could see the guards riding hard and fast approaching. Realizing he was still holding the…thing…he released it and let the weight of the Tesseract fall into Thor's hand.

Thor was frowning at her even before she unclasped her hands and started closing the distance between the three of them. "Sigyn-" he started.

"No, Thor," she said sharply. "I'll not hear you lie again. You told me he was dead and yet here we stand, on the Bi-frost that both of you shattered with both of you present. I'll not hear what you have to say, not with my husband alive where said he was not. I mourned when I could have been searching." When she turned her hard gaze on him, the color of her irises had shifted to a dark brown that did nothing to soften the look she fixed him with.

"I-" Thor started again, but stopped when she turned her gaze from him and stood before Loki. This was, he realized, not something that he wanted to witness. It was too much a reminder of what had been lost, what could never be again.

Loki fixed his eyes on the guards that were still approaching, but it didn't discourage her. Her fingers were cooler against his skin than he remembered and, for all that he didn't want to show weakness in front of Thor, he still flinched from the touch. When her hands slipped to the back of his head, he tried to jerk back but her fingers were too quick. The gag came away in one hand with the movement while she caught the back of his neck with the other and dragged him into a kiss.

For a moment, he could almost believe that everything would be alright, that she wouldn't hate him for what he had done, for the genocides he had almost committed. Then she drew back a fraction and he could see the hard glint reflected in her eyes and in the lines of her face. She tugged on a lock of his hair and, her breath warm against his lips, said, "Do not make this worse, husband mine. Please do not make this worse."

"Define worse," he said before he could stop himself.

The sad smile that touched her lips was not something he had expected. "The dwarves. Narvi. Vali. Fenrir," she whispered.

His hands clenched into fists around his chains even as he leaned his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. Two sons dead for an attempt to protect Asgard from the schemes of the dwarves and another that had been imprisoned for no more reason than what he might have done in some distant path of a future that would never happen now. All things that had happened because Odin was trying to keep the peace. "Alright," he said softly, for her ears only.

"Thank you," she returned just as softly and then stepped back as the hooves of the horses rang clear against the remnants of the bridge. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her throw the gag into the Void and scowl at Thor. It wasn't much, not by a long shot, but it made him smile a little despite what was waiting for them.

Before everyone, before Sigyn, Odin greeted Thor with praise for returning the Tessaract and saving another realm. The suspicious, spiteful, hateful looks that Loki received from his once comrades and the other Asgardians he could bear, he could even enjoy. The looks of suspicion, spite, and hate directed at Sigyn, he was gritting his teeth over.

As Thor tugged at the chains and led them closer to their father, he asked, "Tell me, brother, with hundreds of mortals dead, Earth nearly destroyed, and you solely to blame for it all, what will you say for yourself when you face justice?"

Did you miss me? The words were on the tip of his tongue, so easy to toss at them, but please rang through his mind, holding his temper and staying his rage. She was still at his back, a steady presence that had refused the guards and Thor's directives to leave. Instead, he replied, "Nothing. I have nothing to say to you or anyone else." He didn't miss the way that Thor's gaze darted to Sigyn before he turned to his father and knelt.

He locked gazes with Odin and glared at the one that had brought him to this point until Thor yanked the chains and one of the guards kicked his knees out and made him kneel. As his knees hit the stone floor, there was a curse, a thud, and a yelp that had everyone staring and turning their heads to look at Sigyn and the guard whom was now on flat on his back and staring up at the Healer. Loki felt his lips twitch as he realized she must have caught the male off guard and thrown him.

She smoothed her hands down the front of her gown as she straightened and came back to his side, but she made no move to kneel. As the seconds ticked by and stretched into minutes and the court began to fidget nervously, Odin continued to look down at them from his throne until, "Sigyn," Thor hissed. "Kneel."

Sigyn looked at Thor sidelong and then slowly sank down until she sat on her heels at Loki's side. Her fingers brushed his wrist and then she looked at Odin expectantly. Loki bowed his head to hide a smirk. Mischief and chaos made flesh he might be, but when the embodiment of fidelity passively refused to obey the proper rules of court then it unsettled most everyone in a way that he never could.

"You have been brought before me today with two attempted genocides and an attempt to kill Thor, heir to the throne of Asgard. What have you to say for yourself?" Odin asked.

"I really don't see what all the fuss is about," he bit back. "It's what Asgardians have done for eons, isn't it? Ruling the lesser races as gods."

"We are not gods," Odin returned. "We are born. We live. We bleed. We die."

He laughed. "Give or take five-thousand years."

There was a moment of silence in which Odin seemed to consider something. "The boy I knew is dead. What remains is a creature I do not recognize," he said heavily. "For your crimes, you will spend the rest of your wicked days in the dungeons, Loki Laufeyson." The last brought a stirring of surprise and outrage from the court except for Thor, Sigyn, and the ones he might have once called friends. Sigyn's hand found his and by the grip she took, he could feel the way she was holding onto her temper.

Odin was looking at her and she at him. She rose to her feet and stepped before him. Loki tried to rise, to push her from his side, to keep her from being drawn into this…this, but Thor's hold on his bonds had only tightened at the way Odin tossed the truth out in front of everyone. "I wish to be heard, All-Father," she said, clearly enough to cut through the din of renewed shifting and murmuring.

"Sigyn," Odin acknowledged. "It is always a welcome sight to see you, but you need not defend this…creature…that you married. You are no longer bound to show loyalty to one such as him after everything he has done." He wasn't watching Thor or Odin in that moment. They didn't matter, not the way she did. If she turned…if she had decided…

Her shoulders stiffened and he could see the rage in the way that she held herself. "I have given Asgard everything. You took from me my throne, my sisters, my parents. You took from me the memories I had of my childhood. You, All-Father, sacrificed my twins, Narvi and Vali, to thwart a war that happened anyways. You sealed Hela into the realm of the dead when she proved a natural with the tricks and powers of her sire," Sigyn said, voice steady and quiet yet seeming to fill the entire hall. "You took Fenrir and Sleipnir's sentient minds and locked them into beast form for a prophecy that might havetaken place thousands of years from now. I have given of my magic, my body, and my mind to keep your people whole of heart and body. I say no more. You will not take from me my future! You will not take from me my husband!"

There was a collective silence as the court digested the overload of facts that she had given them. They had, after all, each seen the children that she had spoken of and heard stories, rumors, tales of what fates had befallen each of them. Some snuck quick looks at the Warriors Three, Sif, and even Thor. That the five of them, their proudest warriors, could not meet the Healer's hard gaze when she turned her eyes to them was almost enough for them to , they had only to remember what Odin had protected them from in the past and their worries were smoothed over. No. Odin would not have done those things she accused him of, but so too was she their Healer. For her to believe such things…the Liesmith had to have bespelled her. Yes. That was it. Odin would see through the lie and set right the wrongs and she would continue to use her healing to look after them. It was, after all, her place to do so as a Healer.

"You are set on this, then?" Odin asked. "Would that I choose another sentence, you would join him in it?"

"Yes," she answered. "Choose another and so long as it leaves us sane and alive and together, I will join him in it. You can do no worse than what you have already done."

"Sig-" Thor and Loki began together, rising even as she tiled her head.

"One more thing, All-Father," she said, ignoring them. "Do not think to strip us of our magic. It would only hasten the coming of Ragnarok."

Odin met his son's gaze briefly and what Thor saw there-a deep weariness that went beyond age-made him stop and bite back the protests that had been building, but it did nothing for Loki as he staggered to his feet and stepped towards her. He was white with rage and terror. "You cannot think to include her in this. She is innocent of my misdeeds. Do not bring her into this. I refuse-"

"Be silent, Laufeyson!" Odin said and Loki could only clutch at his throat as his voice died. "The decision is made, for the lives that you cut short and the crimes you have wrought, she shall live through each of the deaths that your hand inflicted. During that time, the both of you will be placed in adjoining cells where you can only see her. Once the sentence has been served, you and she shall never again darken Asgard's realm. So let it be." And thus said, they were taken by the guards and escorted from the throne room.

Thor, for all that he didn't want to let go, gave his brother's chains to the guards with only the slightest of hesitations. No drink that night was strong enough to make him forget the despair he had seen in Loki's eyes. No battle to defend and reclaim the realms in those passing months drove from his mind the knowledge that Loki and Sigyn were in the dungeons living through a very special kind of repentance. Every time Odin called upon her after that to heal those warriors the other Healers and their Soul Forges could not, he saw just a little more of her mind slipping away, fleeing the terror and horror and heartache and pain that living through so many deaths could do to someone like her.

For all that he paced and watched and paused at where their cells touched, he could never reach across the divide and smooth the hair from her face or hold her when the screams caught in her throat or the tears dried on her cheek. Regret was not an emotion he was accustomed to, but it tightened around him as he learned to count the terrors she was put through and pace through the deaths she lived. By his best estimate she would have to live through a grand total of almost five-thousand deaths.

Where some of the prisoners counted the days they had spent in that prison and carved their days into the stone, he counted the hours that she lived through, waited for the terrified scream to catch in her throat and took another off the count for her to endure. For every time that she screamed, he was there, as close as he could get, even if to the other prisoners and the guards it looked like he was reading the books that Frigga had arranged for him to have. Unable to affect the world outside, he could at least keep the gawkers from laughing and sniggering at him while Sigyn suffered a punishment that-by rights-should have been his.

The first time that she was called upon, pulled from the induced dream state, she had surfaced screaming and clawing and terrified. It had taken six guards to restrain her until she was coherent enough to understand that this wasn't another death to live through, another terror to tick off from their count. That had been when she had lived through five-hundred deaths. She did whatever healing that Odin required of her and was returned to the dream state, but not before she had caught his eye and smiled a sad kind of smile that made the regret worse.

Every subsequent time after that the guards paused outside her cell for longer than necessary, he was watching them, waiting with half-dread, half-hope that she would be called upon again. The time between her scream and when the cycle began again were getting longer, she wasn't going through them quite so fast anymore. At the one-thousand mark, she was called upon again and though there were a dozen guards waiting to restrain her, they weren't needed this time. She woke with a sigh and dashed at the tears that had been gathering. This time, this time, she kept her head bowed and walked past him without acknowledging he was present.

They never told him why she was being called upon, but sometimes Sif would find him, seek him out, and talk about the battles and the hard won peace. She would talk about those injured and how the things that existed in shadows had been creeping out in the absence of the Bi-frost. He read between her words that Thor was not quite as well as she would have hoped him to be. He heard the things she wasn't telling him in her avoidance to touch upon how the injured were handled and what kinds of weapons that their enemies were using. The Soul Forges and limited abilities of the other Healers could not keep up. That was why Odin pulled Sigyn from the dream state. That was why the rate at which she lived through the deaths had dropped.

At the two-thousand mark, she was called upon again and kept away for an extended period. The guards murmured amongst themselves, worry creased their brows. Thor. He heard it in the shifting of their armor, the nervous grip they kept on their weapons and saw it in the dark glances they threw him, but it was Sif who confirmed it for him when she returned Sigyn to her own cell.

This time, this time, Sigyn met his gaze and nodded fractionally. There were lines around her eyes like she hadn't slept in weeks. She was thinner than he liked, but she was in command of herself and her eyes were clear as she took the potion to place her back into the dream state. When she was asleep again and well into another dream, Sif finally left her side and came to stand before him. For once, he hadn't bothered with the illusion and peered intently into Sigyn's cell while the dreams and death gathered once more.

"You don't deserve her, you know," Sif bit out.

"She loves too well to be chained to the likes of me," he acknowledged. "But Theoric would have simply continued on his downward spiral and taken her with him."

"And you're not?" she asked, but he already knew this argument and could see that it was just a ruse to hide her own pain and grief at what had already happened. She was here, venting, now because she could and because there was no one else that would listen to it.

"Try convincing Volstagg to stop eating. You'll have better luck with that than in trying to convince her to love another," Loki returned.

She looked at the guards that were superstitiously watching them from the end of the hall, trying to look like they weren't listening. "Half of Asgard thinks you have her enchanted to have agreed to take this from you," Sif said. "The other half thinks she's insane. You aren't worth this, you know."

To that he only smiled. "Tell me, how is winning over my brother going? Have you found a human to be very difficult in displacing?" She flushed a dark crimson and stepped away from the cell. "Tell me this, then, Lady Sif. Did Thor come through his…ordeal…intact?" At the shock that flickered across her face, he laughed. "It is not as if Odin would wake her for nothing. She is the best Healer that Asgard had, the very best and among the only ones that can heal without a Soul Forge."

Her gaze flicked to Sigyn and then back to him. "She saw him through it, drew the poison right out and kept up a continuous chain of casting until he could breathe on his own. It was…an arrow right through the shoulder."

"And the fool kept right on fighting," he muttered and shared a look with Sif. For a moment, they almost smiled, caught up in the thousand years of history that had been between them. Then, she looked down and really did take a step back. "Do try and keep him in one piece. Sigyn wouldn't be pleased to wake and find her healing had been undone in a fit of temper."

At that, she frowned. "Why is it that you suddenly care if he lives or not? You tried twice to kill him on Midgard?"

He shrugged and looked at Sigyn again. "She cares. Is that not enough."

"It wasn't before."

He looked at her sidelong and grinned. "Yes, it was, actually. And now his continued existence will keep her sane through her foolish endeavor to shield me." He walked away from Sif then to stand at the barrier between the cells. The ticking seconds and sweat glistening on Sigyn's skin told him enough. "You should go. There is no further entertainment to be had here, no more reason to linger without raising their suspicion." Sif watched him for a moment and then stepped away and left him to his brooding and his counting.

When Sigyn had lived through just over half of the deaths from the attempted genocide and invasion, the Dark Elves returned. The Ether found its way to Asgard and Sigyn was woken to tend to the wounded. While she was gone, Thor enlisted his help to save the woman, Jane-whose first reaction to him (in his opinion) was priceless beyond words. When it was over, when the Dark Elves were defeated and Malekith returned to Hela's custody, Sigyn was brought to Odin rather than back to her cell.

Instead of being chained as she had expected, the guards were dismissed. She looked after the guards, almost wishing that she could go with them. His gaze, when she glanced at him, was on her and bore more sadness than she cared to associate with him. Thor, she had heard, had refused the throne again. Frigga's death had been hard on them all, Loki most of all. Her heart twisted at the thought of what he had gone through, what kinds of ways he had thought up to blame himself.

"There is no easy way to say this, so I will make this as brief as possible for you. Loki is dead," he said, quieter than the first time he had uttered the words.

They fell flat between them and she merely raised her eyebrows at him. "You've tried this already, remember?" she said. "If this is some twisted joke to…to…" she couldn't form the words, couldn't throw Frigga's death in his face. Frigga had been as much a mother to her as to Loki and had been more than kind. To use her death in such a manner dishonored the kindness of Asgard's queen. She looked away and said, "The last time you tried this, he appeared on Midgard."

"That time, there was no body. This time, my warriors…" Time bled into itself from that moment. She would never be able to recall exactly what Odin told her, only that after…after…Sif was the one to escort her to Loki…to the body…the corpse. The skin was grey and threaded through with blue veins, his hands folded over his chest, and pieces of his armor still barely preserving his modesty. A single spell and the gapping tear in his chest told her he was dead.

It was Sif who followed her from the room, Sif who caught her when her knees gave out in the gardens, Sif whose shoulder she muffled her sobs into, Sif who bore the strikes of her fists and let her grieve. Rage, pain, despair whispered in her ears and settled into her stomach, but madness stayed its hand when it would have been welcomed.

The funeral was a thing to behold…again. The flaming arrow that set fire to the little boat wasn't enough so she made the flame into a fireball that consumed the wood, the princely clothes, the staff, everything as it flared brightly and then guttered out and released the orbs of light. The feast was one fit for a prince as they feasted and toasted and remembered…again. She couldn't stand to see their false grief, the little smiles they wore, the quick glances they shot her, the smug twitch of their lips as they offered condolences. At least Fandral meant it when he when he touched her shoulder and expressed regret.

That was the last night that anyone would her wandering among them. In the morning, when they came searching for her, when Odin would try and summon her to talk about duty, they would only discover an empty room with a bed that had not been slept in.

Free. It was a word more bitter than the taste of ash, she reflected as she stood on the edge of the building overlooking the mortal city of New York. If she concentrated, she could almost see the city as he had left it and even knowing it had been done by his hand, some of the ache eased. Violent or not, this was one area of the universe that Loki had walked into without Odin's insistence. It was a place where he had fought his own battle and lost. It was as close to free as he had ever come.

It wasn't enough, not by far, but it would do, this human city through which he had walked.

A/N: If you've read my works before you'll notice some similar themes, but these aren't the same stories. So...Enjoy. :)