Havoc and Retribution

More Than We Were

Loki and Verdandi communicate to each other, but the words were never said out loud. He needed to confirm his theory and the Norn of Life seemed the best goddess to ask.

"But what if I didn't want to rejoin Sigyn and Hel?" Loki had asked her. "What if I wanted to extract a soul instead?"

Verdandi's verdant gaze had considered him shrewdly, Jace in the way that she calculates possibilities, Sigyn in the thoughtfulness with which she rapidly comes to conclusions.

"It's possible," she had said finally. "There is a small chance that plan may work. Although it may unbalance her even further."

"I don't think it will," Loki had said with his mischievous smile and Verdandi had seen the hidden meaning. Her lips had parted slightly and a smile made its way across her features.

"Intriguing," she said. "Even I had not considered that possibility. Well played, Storyteller."

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When the after effect of the light clear, there are two goddesses outlined against the stars.

Loki can see Hel, her darkness a black hole, pulling rainbow light into her event horizon. Her face is a malicious snarl of disbelief as she squares off against the goddess standing across from her, the goddess holding the second dragon fang blade.

It takes Loki a moment to realize that Hel is half flesh and half bone again, the way she was when she first engaged them on Vanaheim. Her malevolent green eye glitters from only one side of her face, the other rolling and deadened in a slack-skinned face grey with decay. One half of her is whole, the dark twin of Sigyn, but the other half is dead.

She is not the conglomerate of bones and skin that she has been in each battle they have fought with her since she slammed down on the Bifrost on Asgard. Her hair is solid black on one side, straggling straw on the other, not the photo negative it was with its ghostly white on top. There is no flicker of grey in that green eye, it stays solid, verdant hate.

Loki tries not to hope because it was a foolish plan to start with, but he can't help the way his head whips around to look at the other woman.

She is outlined by starfire, a long waterfall of auburn hair coiling down her back, the sword held firmly in one hand, the chain connecting it to Hel gone. She is holding the sword steady, her gaze on Hel, the face resolute, the strong jaw a line across the black of space.

Then they turn and gives Loki a determined grin. "Thank you," Jay/Sigyn says. The grey-eyed queen of Vanaheim turns their gaze to Hel. "My turn," they says. The goddess looks down at themself. "Looks like I brought my ass-kicking boots," they laugh with Jaycee's joyful giggle.

Across the stars, still battling her sister's Darkness, Verdandi smiles for the first time in a long time, a very, very long time.

Aesir, Vanir, and Avenger watch Jay/Sigyn rush forward to meet Hel head on.

Frigga looks to her son with pride shining in her unshed tears, all of them together now, watching the unreal become reality. "Ever the trickster, never content with the predictable storyline," she says to Loki. She looks like she wants to embrace him and for a moment he looks like he will let her. "You found a way give her a chance."

As Jay/Sigyn engages Hel, their waltz of blades to fast to follow, Clint grudgingly gives Loki a chagrined smile as well. "You didn't reunite the three souls like we planned," he says but there is no accusation, just a statement of fact. "And you took that detour to Verdandi to make sure it was possible. You didn't reunite Sigyn with Jay and Hel. You pulled Jaycee out of Hel and remade the second half of the goddess as she was."