Many thanks to my new beta reader, Lufthexe! Everyone should go check her out stuff, especially if you want to read more Loki things.

The queen took them all aside one by one and got heard their individual stories. She began with Sif, then moved on to Thor, then Loki. Sigyn was last. She was scared, twisting her fingers together and shifting from one foot to another. In her mind, she thought of everything she might possibly say.

"Sigyn?" the queen asked.

Sigyn walked away from the others in the group, feeling as though she went to her doom. When she reached the queen, she tried to curtsy, but she didn't think she did it right. "Yes?"

"I hear that you began the fight," the queen said. Her voice was very calm; Sigyn couldn't tell what Loki's mother thought of the whole thing.

"That's true, ma'am." Was that the right thing to call the queen? "I slapped Sif." Sigyn's face screwed up in a frown. "But she was being mean!"

"If Sif was being ignoble," the queen replied (Sigyn didn't know what ignoble meant, but it probably wasn't nice), "violence is not the way to solve the problem."

Sigyn glanced up at Queen Frigga in surprise. "What? But… but that doesn't make any sense!"

"Hurting Sif will not stop her from saying things you disagree with, Sigyn. You must instead use words and respect to show her she is wrong." The queen smiled kindly at her. "Come now, I'll take you back to your mother."

"Can I say goodbye to Loki first?" Sigyn asked.

"Loki is being punished for misuse of magic," Frigga said. For the first time, her voice sounded strained. "You can see him tomorrow." The queen began walking in the direction of the little house Sigyn shared with her mother.

"Am I going to get punished too?" Sigyn asked.

"That is for your mother to decide."

"I am going to get punished too," the little girl said, pouting. She walked along a little behind the queen. "Ma'am?" she asked, confused about the idea of using words and how that fit into the stories of Odin and his mighty wars.

"Yes, Sigyn?" the queen asked over her shoulder.

Sigyn frowned and worried her lower lip. She couldn't figure out how to ask the question she wanted to ask, so she just shook her head. They walked rest of the way through the orchard to Sigyn's house in silence.

Mother was working in the garden. "Your Majesty," she said, dropping into a far more graceful curtsey than Sigyn could ever manage. "What's my daughter done now?"

"She protected my son against the hurtful words of another child," the queen said. Sigyn's mother looked at her little daughter in confusion for several moments. Sigyn bit her bottom lip some more, and watched the thoughts flicker across her mother's face. Her mother thought it was Thor and was wondering who would make fun of the golden prince.

Sigyn saw the exact moment her mother realized the truth. The queen saw it too. "We should talk," Frigga said, an icy seriousness in her voice that made Sigyn glance up at the woman in fear.

"Sigyn, go to your room," her mother said.

"Perhaps your daughter should stay," the queen suggested.

To Sigyn's utter surprise, her mother's face contorted in a stubborn frown. "With all due respect your Majesty, I'll decide what to do with my own daughter. Now. Sigyn. Go to your room."

Sigyn went. She didn't want to be anywhere near her mother when the woman used that tone of voice.

She hurried into the house and sat on her bed for a few moments. Then she crept to the window and looked out at the two women in the garden. She couldn't distinguish the words they were saying through the glass, but she could see them clearly. They were arguing, that much wasis clear. Her mother had completely lost her temper and was gesticulating wildly. The queen, in response, seemed to have grown several inches taller, and, though her expressions were icy, her face was getting very red.

Sigyn watched as the argument raged on. It felt like it went on for hours and the girl had never been so frightened in her life. She was in awe of her mother. The meek gardener had somehow found the courage to stand up to the All-Mother! But what in the Nine Realms could they arguing about? The proper way to weed a garden? And what did any of that have to do with her?

The queen spotted the little blonde in the window, and she ducked quickly. Maybe the queen would be so busy arguing she wouldn't mention Sigyn spying on them. She hurried back to her bed and sat on it as innocently as she could manage.

For several long moments, nothing happened. Then the front door slammed shut with such force Sigyn was sure it must have broken something. "Young lady!" her mother shouted, as she had been shouting in the garden. Sigyn winced away from her mother. "I cannot believe your stupidity! Do you make it your life's pursuit to vex me?" she demanded, so angry spittle flecked from her lips and onto Sigyn's coverlet.

Too frightened to speak, Sigyn only shook her head, drawing her legs tight to her chest. She peered at her mother over her knees. The normally mild mannered woman was seething with anger, and Sigyn didn't understand why.

"You will never see Loki again! Do you hear! I will make sure of it!" Sigyn's mother said.

This shocked the girl. She stood on the bed. "But you can't-"

"He is evil! Mark my words girl, that boy is evil and no good will come of him!"

Sigyn's temper flared. "How can you say that!" she yelled at her mother with equal savagery. "He's royalty! A prince of Asgard! And he's just a kid!"

"He came back with Odin from Jotunheim! He's jotunn filth and no good will come of him! Make no mistake, that boy's sired by monsters!"

Sigyn stared at her mother, taken back. Loki, a frost giant? That wasn't true. It couldn't be. Why would Odin raise a frost giant? "That's not true," she said quietly.

Her mother took several deep breaths and finally managed to calm herself down. "I'm afraid it is dear. We all know it, those of us that lived through the war. It's not spoken of, but we all know. You're not to come out of your room until I say you can. And you get no supper either, as punishment for your antics." She took quite a few more deep breaths, and finally seemed to return to that mild mannered gardener Sigyn remembered. "I'm only trying to protect you." Then her mother turned around and walked out, locking the door shut behind her.

Sigyn found she was shaking. She collapsed in a ball on her bed and hugged herself tight. "What was is wrong with the world?" she whispered to the air. And then she started to cry, though she couldn't quite explain why.

She must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing she knew her mother was shaking her awake and it was night outside. "Hurry up and put this on," her mother said, thrusting a black cloak in her arms. Sigyn did as she was told, bewildered. Her mother had in her arms a large basket covered with cloth and similar black cloak around her shoulders.

"What's going on?" she asked, but she was shushed instead of answered.

Her mother hurried her daughter out of the castle and down to the Bifrost as fast as she could. Sigyn had never been on the rainbow bridge before and couldn't tear her eyes away from her feet as all the colors rushed ahead of her.

Abruptly, her mother pulled them to a stop.

Sigyn looked up to see the legendary Heimdall standing before her, even bigger than she thought he would be. She stared at him with an open mouth.

"My daughter and I are leaving Asgard, and you have no right to hinder our journey, Gatekeeper," her mother said. Sigyn looked up at her mother. Leaving Asgard? Leaving Asgard and going where?

"And where are you going?" Heimdall asked.

"Midgard."

Sigyn looked between her mother and the Gatekeeper in bewilderment. Midgard. "When are we coming back?" Sigyn asked as Heimdall led them into the big globe thing.

Her mother's face was hard. "We're not."

"What?"Sigyn gasped and started. "No. No! NO!" She tried to struggle out of her mother's grasp but it was as hard as iron. "But I didn't even tell anybody goodbye! Mother! Mother please!" Sigyn began to cry, reaching and reaching back behind her toward the castle, toward home. "Please! Please! NO! Please!" Sigyn went from crying to screaming. "PLEASE!"

She continued screaming when Heimdall activated the Bifrost. When they found themselves on Midgard, Sigyn screamed still. She did not stop until her throat was raw and no sound could come out of it at all. Then she wept silently.

It took Sigyn quite a long time to ever smile again, and her relationship with her mother was never the same.

Sigyn's mother did not linger long where Heimdall had placed them. Midgardians there (they called themselves Geats), thought her kind were gods, and Sigyn's mother wanted to avoid all notice. They sailed across a stormy sea to a wet and rainy island.

They were followed. Barbaric Germanic tribes the natives called Angles and Saxons invaded the land and drove it's people, including Sigyn and her mother, to a small corner of the island that became known as Wales.

In the year 1065, some fanatic Welshmen of some religion or another killed her mother. Up to that point, Sigyn never paid much attention to whatever myths and legends Midgardians were constantly making up. The death of her mother taught her the practicalities of learning such foolishness.

For several months after her mother's death, Sigyn prepared to travel to the spot where Heimdall had put them all those years ago, and attempt to ask for passage back into Asgard. She did not get very far. An invading army of Normans impeded her voyage slightly.

She made it back to the country of the Geats in the year 1083. Though time had erased the mark of the Bifrost, Sigyn knew she was in the right place. It was burned painfully into her memory. "Heimdall," she said. "Return me to Asgard."

Nothing happened.

"Heimdall!" she shouted. "I need to go back to Asgard!" Heimdall did not answer her. The Bifrost was closed. "Please," she begged, tears threatening to spill out the corners of her eyes. "Please Heimdall. I just want to go home."

She stayed in that clearing for a fortnight, but Heimdall never answered her calls.

Sigyn spent the next several thousand years traveling Midgard. She made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, explored the new things in Renaissance Italy, and traveled back to England to see the coronation of Queen Mary. She stayed in England to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and, in the process saw the very first performance of Shakespeare's Henry IV.

She left England to live in France in 1599, just before the death of Henry II. She stayed there until 1715, just after the death of Louis XIV. Bored with Europe, she sailed to the New World.

As Sigyn explored the exciting new continent, and she finally came to terms with the idea she would never be going back to Asgard. In 1814, she met and fell in love with a silversmith in New York. He proposed, but Sigyn could not accept. She knew that he would age and die so quickly, compared to her. As he got old and she stayed young, he would begin to view her with fear and contempt. They were both better off without that life. With her heart broken for the second time in her life, she left the States and moved to Belgium.

War had always been a part of her life. Even in Asgard, they were always ready for battle. Here on Midgard, humans fought with each other constantly. But in 1914, everything changed. Sigyn, sometimes feeling like she was in the middle of everything, saw more and more dead boys, killed so senselessly. And then it happened all again, within one century. On VE day, Sigyn was so sick of Europe she moved once again, and ended up in Buenos Aries. But even after these great wars, Midgard didn't stop fighting with itself.

Sigyn viewed this constant warring with abhorrence. She immersed herself in novels and poetry, and developed a rigid morality based on the value of life and the individual. Under several pseudonyms, she collected literature degrees from several different colleges and universities and somehow eked out a comfortable life for herself on this alien planet. For the first time since she had arrived here, she was beginning to feel content.

And then… then Asgard came to Midgard. Sigyn stared with horror at the news feeds from Germany and New York as her old friend destroyed the lives of innocent people with a horrifying lust for power. Loki had become the monster her mother had thought him to be. Sigyn's heart quivered with sorrow, but at this point Sigyn couldn't even tell if it was broken or not.

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