Chapter Text
When it came, the Mad Titan's punishment was merciless.
It had mattered not that Loki turned the Tesseract over to him now when he had not done so then. Loki had been told that no barren moon would hide him from Thanos’ wrath, and a barren moon was where he was stranded.
Sigyn had followed her blood in him like a beacon until she heard his screams.
When she sprinted into the cave, she found him bound in the obsidian coils of a slain serpent – its giant body constricted with rigormortis. Sabre-sized fangs hung above him, drooling oily venom onto his chest that mauled his flesh faster than he could heal himself. Each burning drip hit him like a bullet. He was weak, haggard, with strength enough only to try to scream louder than the pain.
It was worse than death. A luxury Thanos had taken the time to tell him he did not deserve, before he’d riven their family. He’d rended their innocent half. The half of his soul Loki didn’t expect to lose.
Her fidelity was undying.
Sigyn skidded to her knees beside him in a cloud of ash. She reached out to the contorted figure on the slab of rock that was her husband; a gaunt creature panting hoarsely, convulsing with each sickening drop until another harrowing howl tore through his grinding teeth. Loki's dwindling seiðr was eating into Odin's illusion, devouring its power. His Aesir snakeskin flickered and frayed as the blue ridges beneath cut through the ivory guise like shards of ice.
His name broke in her throat.
When he caught sight of her with bloodshot eyes – one green and one red, searing from a rift down the pale shroud on his face – his split lips wheezed out a moan. She pressed glowing poppy-red hands over his eroded ribs and hurriedly worked to heal the hissing bite the venom had taken out of his chest.
It was no use. The venom ripped open every shred of flesh she stitched.
Helpless, Sigyn glanced around the cave. Her panicked gaze snagged on a skull. Probably the remnant of another one of Thanos’ discarded pawns. She snatched it up and punched out the bone at the base, her knuckles skinning as it crumbled under her fist. She raised the makeshift bowl under the flow of venom with one bleeding hand, the other sending a torrent of seiðr into Loki’s wounds from her palm.
With the venom stayed for the time being, Sigyn’s healing began to make progress on his ravaged chest. Eventually Loki’s voice returned to him, faint and frail.
‘I’m sorry –’
‘I know.’
Brittle words tremored on his tongue. ‘You always – brought out – the hero in me, Sigyn.’
The lump in her throat choked her voice to a whisper. ‘And you me.’
The skull was almost full. She would have to tip it out.
‘I couldn’t protect them –’
A drop of venom leaked through a crack in the bone, singeing her fingers, and she gasped. ‘He’s your brother, I’d have done the same for any of my sisters.’
Without warning she pitched forward, laying across his chest, and shielded him from the venom’s fall.
'Sig- no!'
Black acid scorched down her back, bleaching her mind with pain that blinded her memory of the sight of their son limp in her arms as his twin wailed. It lanced through her, pinning her to Loki with paralysing agony.
Her muscles spasmed and she dragged herself out of the toxic stream, reeling the empty skull back into place.
'Don't do that again,' she dimly heard Loki bark in warning as she began to heal herself, dazed and shaking and her throat burning with a shriek.
She complied the next time the skull needed emptying, letting him take the pain. But hearing his holler did not hurt any less. Before long venom rose to the cracking teeth of the skull again, and she made her decision.
Her stiff fingers shook.
'Don't – don't!'
She removed the skull.
Sigyn leant over and shared in his torture once more. Her screams barely eclipsed his.
After Loki’s next turn, he knew what Sigyn would do next. ‘I don’t deserve it, darling,’ he began to bargain as the relentless droplets counted down until the skull overflowed. 'You've suffered enough.'
‘So have you.’
'You don't have to save me this time,' he crooned in a croak.
‘That’s what we do,’ maintained Sigyn. The skull was starting to wear thin. She was wondering what to do when the toxin burned through the bone.
As venom seeped between the skull’s teeth, trickling into its eye sockets, Loki grew frantic. She'd never heard his voice like this, ragged and feral.
'I forgive you,’ he rasped then. Tears slipped from his two-toned eyes. ‘I forgive you, Sigyn. You don't have to do this. Your debt is paid, a thousand times over, hundreds of days ago. I forgive you.'
The ghost of a smile twitched on Sigyn’s lips, even as a sob ached in her chest. ‘If it ends my service, I’ll never have it from you.’
Her words punctuated with a screech.
Her heart was a howling void of loss beyond measure. Remorse beyond shame. It could only be requited by retribution beyond reckoning. Their vengeance would be apocalyptic.
Sigyn recovered with a groan, tasting copper on her tongue as she retreated from the venom.
'I can never leave you. I'm in your blood,’ she vowed, and carefully balanced the skull on his blackened chest. Ripping the hem from her tattered skirts with fingers trembling with terror and rage, her voice frayed to a savage snarl. ‘And I can't end this universe without you. Ragnarok isn’t done.'
Her bloodied back seared and as she reached up to knot the strip of fabric around the serpent's fangs. Venom soaked into the steaming cloth, draining down to the end she pinned under a rock. Then she unsheathed her dagger from her thigh.
‘I’ll get you out -’ Sigyn clawed at the serpent’s coils until they sliced open with a spray of blood that fanned across her ashen face, releasing a limp Loki into her arms. ‘I’ve got you.’
As he clung to her, gasping into her soot-streaked hair, a villainous whisper stirred from Sigyn’s lips against her husband’s ear.
‘Let’s make him regret leaving us alive.’