Havoc and Retribution

Sisters Brawl

Loki and Senna end up in Senna's car. She's at the wheel, plowing along like she's a Formula One racer, weaving in between cars on the highway. Loki gives up all pretense of being slick and composed and holds on to the "oh shit" door handle for all he's worth. He's not quite sure where they are going yet, but Jaycee's Strong's grandmother drives like Jace, all raw energy and ferocious grace.

When traffic forces Senna to drive more reasonably, Loki finds enough breath to start to ask his questions but then stumbles, unsure which to ask first. Senna lets him mull, too busy cussing out Jersey drivers to care. He instinctively trusts this spitfire woman, least of all because she is as brash and lively as Sigyn ever was on Vanaheim in the early days that they knew each other. He fought opposite Sigyn the first time he ever saw her and can vividly remember how she looked that day. Senna may have white hair and wrinkles, but she is every inch her mother's daughter.

Loki starts with an easy question. "Where are you driving me like a bat out of Hel?"

Senna gives him a sideways look. "Long Island. Private airport."

"And where exactly will I be flying to?" Loki asks, grabbing for the door as Senna hits the gas and slips into the third lane.

Senna is quiet for long moments and Loki watches her. She's watching the road but her eyes aren't on the pavement markings. Her fingers idly drum on the steering wheel.

"You're looking for any part of Mom, that may have been left behind, right?" she asks Loki. He nods. He finds it strange to hear anyone call Sigyn "Mom". Senna must have caught the look on his face because she smiles.

"Yeah, Mom," Senna says. "Believe it or not, we were really close." Her voice is far away. "I only knew right before the end how much she sacrificed for me, for Helen and ultimately for Jaycee who wasn't even born yet."

She looks out to the road as she tells Loki about Sigyn. It feels strange to finally fill in this last puzzle piece. Sigyn disappeared from his life about a hundred years ago and yet in all that time, he never found out what happened to her. At first, he believed she was alive, mustering an army even, the reclaim Vanaheim. But then months turned into years and years into decades, and he was beginning to resign himself to the truth everyone believed: Sigyn was either gone, as good as a ghost, or dead.

"She fell from the stars...," Lokasenna starts, her words transporting him back in time.

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Jaycee falls to her knees in her subconscious.

She suspected, postulated for so long what Sigyn and Hel had been but now she knows for sure. She is... was... could be... isn't... a Norn, one of the fates from Norse mythology.

But there are only three Norns, she thinks, her brain in some kind of overheated overdrive. The powerful feeling from destroying Alfheim is gone, as if it was never there. Hel wrenched back control the minute Athronei showed up and the slam of her psyche back deep into her own mind has Jaycee bruised and battered. She is staggering, seeing the Norns, destroying Alfheim, hating the worlds and hating herself, knowing she is doomed, but suddenly feeling a surge of hope that the Norns can free her from Hel, all of it toppling her over. She is completely unmoored, battered about by emotions and thoughts as she tries to understand how to stand again.

Part of what staggers her is not that she is a Norn but that she is not one of the three principle Norns. Confusion creates a fog in her mind she cannot swim through. She always thought that she was the Norn of Death, being part Hel. But Athronei is the Norn of Death.

So then, which Norn is she?

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Tony, Steve, Bjern and Syvlk arrive on Vanaheim to find Hel/Jay in battle with three goddesses the Avengers have never seen before.