Chapter Text
Despite having acted as fast as his stamina allowed, Loki saw the Time Portal close forever just as he was on the verge of reaching it. It was only then, panting as he frenetically glanced at his surroundings, that he took a look at where he had been sent. All of a sudden, he was overcome with a blinding headache that adrenaline must have been keeping at bay until then. Grunting between gritted teeth, the God of Mischief cradled his head in his hands, feeling as through his brain was being mercilessly electrocuted.
Little by little, inexplicably as it had formed, the ache began to dissipate and once he was able to open his eyes, Loki realized he had fallen to his knees. Everything he had seen flashing before his eyes as Sylvie succeeding in grabbing ahold of his mind was now settling down, and those mental pictures became memories— he remembered. Everything he had seen on his own file, everything he had seen in Sigyn's, a countless amount of others which he had never even heard of and yet vividly recalled, he remembered everything. The hint of Sigyn's temporal aura left in his timeline had been retrieved, and now Loki carried far more memories than his body had ever experienced, which might have explained while at first it had felt as if his central nervous system had caught fire.
He also remembered, he noticed as he turned his head towards the horizon, the very spot where he had appeared, wondering if Sylvie had teleported him there on purpose. The question remained— when exactly had she sent him? The Jotun slowly rose to his feet, eyes fixed on the rock upon which he remembered having sat with his brother, their father between them as he spoke his last words. Remember this place, he recalled Odin had told them, home. As the approached the top of that hill, towards the edge of the cliff, he caught sight of civilization, a town he knew for a fact hadn't been there then, or else he would have seen it. Looking around as he came to the realization there was little else he could do except for walking his way towards it, he wondered if perhaps he could have been too otherwise invested to have noticed it the last time he had stood there, unless he had happened to arrive much later to its foundation, or else much earlier than its disappearance. Perhaps, he thought after having remembered the multiple branches that had emerged from the timeline he knew, it was not the same hill at all, not really.
A significantly lengthy walk later, he came into a pavement road that went along the side of the cliff and far ahead towards the shore, he saw it lead into that small town, which was still a seemingly interminable distance away, at least for someone on foot. As he stood in the middle of that roadway contemplating his possibilities —Should he walk to that town? Where else could he possibly go? What would he even do if and when he reached that small village?— he heard scraping on the pavement and the creaking of metallic friction behind him.
Sigyn had slammed the brakes on her bicycle's handles after having sighted him from afar, a foot landing on the ground for balance, for she needed to stop and make sure it was indeed not who she imagined, mainly because it couldn't have been. When she had caught sight of him at first, a blurry speck in the distance, already Sigyn had felt a sudden shiver bolting down her spine; the clearer his figure became in the horizon, the more confused she became. All of a sudden, she found herself looking back at the last five years, trying to determine whether she remembered enough individual days in them or else if there was a chance it had only felt like five years but had never been real at all. Out of the two incompatible coexisting realities before her, she couldn't possibly differentiate which was true and which the illusion. Standing a fair distance from one another, the pair remained frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at each other, almost as though fearing that any other reaction, any remote gesture they performed would result in that mirage of the other to disappear.
"Sig," Loki said at last, now free to tap into countless memories of her that awakened within him sincere emotions he had for a while suspected had been there, buried deep down, from the moment he had laid eyes on a face identical to hers once more. Deciding he could not wait another second to ensure she knew who he was, to test whether this could indeed be his Sigyn, he was the first to take a step towards her.
The Asgardian climbed off her vehicle, carelessly letting it fall on the side of the road together with her belongings, all of a sudden lacking the clarity necessary to operate machinery of any kind, much less commander a means of transportation, however simple the technique behind it.
"Don't come near me," she warned him, walking back every step that brought him nearer.
"Sigyn—" implored the Prince, holding his hands in front of him as if advancing towards an easy-to-frighten deer.
"It's not you, it can't be—"
"I know..."
"No, I saw you! I actually saw you die, it was real!" Sigyn continued to protest and even though she was no longer retreating, she did promptly dismiss any attempt of his to make physical contact by shoving his hands aside whenever he tried to touch her.
"Darling," he pleaded, managing to take ahold of her by cupping her face in his hands once he had caught her with her guard down for a mere instant that allowed him to actually come in contact with her. "It's me, it really is me."
As Sigyn at last found it in her to look him in the eyes and hold his gaze; bringing her hands up to his on her face, she realized it all felt far too real for it to be a dream or else a sheer delusion. Even though she began to well up, she was still far from convinced, for despite the fact that the last five years had challenged the boundaries of what was possible, she believed that Loki's death had been the one resolute, unchangeable outcome, the one event that was unequivocally irreversible.
"Is it really you?" she whispered, momentarily suspending her common sense and instead succumbing to the overwhelming comfort of his palm against her cheek, a feeling she never thought she'd be able to recognize so pin-pointedly.
"I promised you'd see me again," he whispered back with a gentle smile.
That being something that only Loki would know, the Asgardian allowed herself to be persuaded that this was no trick or deception, immediately leaping to throw her arms around the other's neck as she gasp loudly in stupefaction. The other, in turn, felt his own eyes begin to cloud with tears he tried his hardest to withhold, which was proving to be significantly more challenging than usual; then again, in his defense, he had just experienced a very trying series of events.
Nothing assured him that this was indeed a timeline in which Sigyn was exactly as he remembered her, sharing with him the exact same background in common —although, at the same time, there was nothing that denied it, either—, save the sense of absolute solace that overcame him as he hugged her. It could have been wishful thinking, or perhaps the sudden desperation he was experiencing to receive some affection, but something within him was downright convinced she was every last bit the person he remembered. For good measure, the way in which she suddenly took his face carefully in her hands, inspecting the several yet by that point superficial injuries upon him, only confirmed that suspicion.
"Are you all right?" she asked, to which Loki could only nod his head, too busy inspecting her back, in his case not because he feared she might be injured but because he still couldn't quite believe they were at last reunited. "What are you wearing?" she asked with a hint of amusement now that she'd had a moment to look upon his button-up and tie, certainly not attire she would have expected him to have on, however suitable.
The other exhaled a faint chuckle in response but did not utter a word. One by one Sigyn assessed his injuries, every cut, every scrape, every trace of his blood staining his shirt, and Loki responded only by dismissing them, for recent events had rendered him inside out; his feelings were right at the surface, vulnerable to the slightest emotional stimuli; his memories, still settling, continued to flash before his eyes each time he closed them— so distracted was he by all of that, he felt as though he could have a blazing blade pressed against his skin and feel close to nothing. He was no longer in pain, no longer exhausted, at least not physically.
Sigyn said something —he had no idea what— while her hand travelled from his shoulder to his chest, a glimmer he had caught out of the corner of his eye suddenly drew his attention. Immediately, he grabbed her hand and turned it towards him, realizing his eyes hadn't deceived him: she still wore his mother's ring. To no one's surprise, she had remained faithful to the memory of her husband, though that had not been what the God of Mischief wanted to confirm when he searched her hand for that ring; he was, in fact, looking for any comforting confirmation that after everything he had been through, he had at last come into something reliable, something familiar, something he could count on.
Positively overcome with affection and despair alike, he inched his way towards her, at times faintly flinching when he believed she was on the verge of pulling away herself, until their lips met. When she kissed him back, he felt safer and more at home than he could ever remember feeling, a relieving, heartwarming sensation he was not entirely sure he deserved to be feeling but welcomed nonetheless.
"No!" Sigyn complained all of a sudden, pushing away from him.
"I'm sorry," said he, realizing he had crossed a line.
"You can't just keep trying to charm your way out of things like this!"
"I know, I'm sorry..." She must have tried to say something else, but all Loki heard were muffled unintelligible murmurs after she had brought her hands up to her face. A deep breath later, after which she hoped to have somewhat composed herself, she pushed her hair away from her face and simply held her head in her hands a little longer while she tried to make some sense out of that vision.
"Was it all a lie?"
"No—"
"I saw you die, how can you be here?"
"I realize this doesn't make much sense-"
"Much sense?" she echoed vexedly. "You're supposed to be dead!"
"I know—"
"No, but you don't know," she denied, shaking her head. "You have no idea what these last five years have been like for me— what they've been like for Thor." Just imagining what would have happened if it had been his brother instead of her who had found him in the middle of that road was enough to shatter her heart. "So if you're telling me that was all an... illusion, then by all means, go back to wherever you've been this whole time because I will never forgive you."
"I would never do that to you..." All it took for him to see the fault in that defense was for Sigyn to raise her eyebrows. "—again," he promptly corrected himself. "I promise there is... a perfectly reasonable— a perfectly fine explanation to all of this, it's just... It's a very long story."
"I've been living with the very vivid memory of you being murdered for years, you will have to do a lot better than 'it's a long story'," she demanded, having come to her senses at last, deciding she had already let slide one too many lies.
This had been different; having witnessed the way in which Thanos literally squeezed the life out of him only to learn years later it had all been a sham would have been the one mischievous deed she wouldn't be able to overlook, never mind how much she still loved him or how many times she had wished, very deep down, she'd learn it had all been a fabrication. While exhaling an audible, heavy sigh, Loki nodded his head in reluctant acknowledgement.
While the only way in and out the small town of Tønsberg, where New Asgard now stood, that road was far from busy. Nonetheless, seeing as they had both agreed it would be imprudent to draw any more attention towards the fact that Loki of all people was in fact very much alive, Sigyn advised they left the side of that road lest they risked being sighted by the one of two vehicles a day that travelled along it.
They took a seat by the cliff, on a spot not that different from the one upon which Thor and Loki had witnessed Odin's last words. Sigyn's bike was now propped against a rock, her belongings stored safely in its front basket once more. On their right, the sun was beginning to set, yet neither one of them appeared to mind the growing darkness nor the increasing cold in the air. It was there that Loki proceeded to share all about his adventures— or misadventures was, in fact, more accurate a term; he told her all about the TVA, from his arrest to his attempt to dissolve it. He also told her all about his companions throughout that journey: Mobius, Sylvie, and even her Variant.
At first, Sigyn argued that he was not the Loki she'd known, not really, nor was she the Sigyn he'd known either, and it took the Jotun several attempts to convince her that Sylvie hadn't installed someone else's memories into his consciousness but rather unlocked the ones he had been forced to entrap when He Who Remains had erased Sigyn from existence altogether. While physically he hadn't yet gone through everything he remembered, in reality he had, time and time again until the TVA decided to change the course of the Sacred Timeline.
Even though she needed to be explained for a second —and sometimes even a third or fourth— time when it came to certain aspects of time travel, the Asgardian began to slowly but surely wrap her head around his story, or at least she had ceased to question it as fervently as she had from the very beginning, most likely still concerned that the God of Mischief was but lying his way out of yet another one of his staged deaths being uncovered.
"But if you're here," she realized as his story came to an end. "that means she's done it. She's created the multi-verse. She killed him."
After having swallowed in an attempt to rid himself of the sorrowful lump in his throat, Loki lowered his eyes and nodded solemnly. So upset was he about having failed to talk Sylvie off the ledge out of which he himself had leaped before, that he couldn't even bring himself to appreciate how quickly Sigyn had been able to draw that conclusion, evidently comprehending almost instantly concepts that he himself was only now officially understanding.
"There's a lot more to this, isn't there?" Sigyn acknowledged, noticing Loki had remained purposely objective in his tale, suspiciously avoiding any sentiment or emotional reactions any of it had caused him.
They stared ahead at the pitch black water in silence, the sun soon to have set completely, as it dawned on them that on top of all the personal implications that turn of events had brought upon them, there was the fact that the very fabric of reality had been manipulated, torn into infinite pieces, unleashing who-knew-how-many new threats upon each and every one of them.
"I don't know what to do next," he confessed. Needless to say he was not expecting Sigyn to tell him what to do, since she was barely familiar with his predicament. It was, rather, an admission of utter surrender. Fearing to hear the answer to his question before he had even posed it, he lowered his eyes. "Could I stay with you until I've figured it out?"
Her eyes still fixed upon the disappearing horizon, Sigyn responded by blindly taking his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together.