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The Bifrost “return” had been its own special kind of hell. Sigyn had been waiting with Heimdall for his arrival, her expression stoic and hands clasped before her in a mockery of calm. Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three had needed to be summoned upon the receipt of his return to Asgard. They’d been thundering up to the Bi-frost when Sigyn had tossed two of his dwarven guards into a, regrettably, imitated hellscape of their worst fears when she teleported them to their rooms.
It was worse than he had thought.
He didn’t know how to do this. Loki knew how to bear pain and still smile. He knew lies and mischief and tricks in the name of the greater good. He knew what it was to love and grieve. But this? Bound by shackles that prevented the flow of his magic and kneeling at the side of his wife, coated in his own blood and struggling not to acknowledge the consequences of his actions, it was hard to imagine a more difficult position than this.
He didn’t know enough, but Sigyn had looked at him with silent tears streaming before she had vanished into his old bedroom to gather what supplies were there. There had been no words of comfort or negation for what the dwarves had said. And gods, what they had said.
She reappeared a minute later, her eyes still damp with tears. He could only hold his hands out to her for her to remove the shackles. She took his gesture and shattered the metal that remained on his bindings. Sigyn fell to her knees beside him as the metal shattered and she fell into his arms sobbing.
“Your family is better off without you.”
“Odin will give us your sons for your wrongs.”
“Your boys screamed beautifully at the end.”
The dwarves had cut into him, torn flesh from bone, silenced his words, and Sigyn had screamed for his wrongs. Narvi and Vali were dead. He needed no more confirmation that Sigyn’s tears, wretched and heartbroken as they were.
Eventually, finally, her tears were quiet and she worked her way through the multitude of wounds that had been bequeathed him. It wasn’t pleasant, but he held himself quiet for the pain she had endured. She told him in her quiet words of their execution, of the spell that had bound them into mad ravaging beasts and how Odin had sliced Narvi’s head off at the end and called it mercy. Thor had been the one to send lightning bolt after lightning bolt into her during the execution.
He wept his own tears as she worked steadily through the stitches that had been carved into his flesh to prolong the torture, as she removed them from his mouth and the pain that it caused the tender flesh just to be healed.
Finally, the last of the healing spells were settled into place and they held each other. There were no words, because what words were there to say? He had succeeded for Asgard’s sake and lost his family and, by the sounds of it, received no thanks for it.