Archive of Our Own ^beta

She makes her way to Loki’s bed chambers as soon as the vertigo from traversing the realms fades, a bit unsteady on her feet but sure of her destination. Her family will have complaints about her disappearances becoming more and more frequent, but she will deal with the scolding when it comes.

She is still shocked when his door opens easily for her. She has heard many gripes from Thor about how Loki wards his doors shut, and she always thinks to brace herself, but each time she walks through unharmed. It is almost flattering, really, that Loki wards his doors from all but her. Or perhaps Frigga. She cannot imagine Loki doing that to his mother.

Her eyes widen when she actually manages to survey the surroundings. The once meticulously organized space looks as if a tornado ran through it. Loki’s desk is usually the only somewhat disordered thing in a usually ordered and neat bedroom. His bed is a tangled mess of rumpled sheets and tossed pillows. Loki is nowhere to be seen.

“Love?” She steps inside and the door abruptly slams closed behind her, making her jump. She carefully walks further in, her sense of unease growing. “Loki?” Her ears pick up on a shuffling noise and she snaps her attention to the bathroom door. It’s shut. “Loki?” She still gets no answer. For a second, she thinks about getting Thor. But if the wards work how she has heard, chances are that Thor would not be able to enter anyway. Maybe Frigga…

First, she needs to know that he’s okay. Before she goes and draws even more attention to him.

Swallowing hard, Sigyn approaches the door, reaching for the doorknob. Before her fingers even make contact, she feels a searing heat emanating from the metal. She just barely manages to recoil in time. That he has enchanted this door to prevent her entry… Sigyn’s unease ratchets up to panic, fear creeping up her spine. “Loki…” She hesitantly presses her hand against the door but it does not hurt her. “Love, I know you are in there.” She is met with nothing but silence again and her heart flutters with anxiety. “Loki, what should I do? You are worrying me.” Her fingers twitch with the need to mess with her hair and she tugs nervously at the ends of her curls. “Should I get Frigga?” Sigyn asks, chest tightening with panic, “Or Thor-”

“No.” She stops at the sound of Loki’s voice, ragged and strained. “I am fine. Leave.” Sigyn’s heart is still racing and she steps a bit closer.

“Surely you understand why I will not be doing that.” Still, her anxiety lessens by a small fraction. He is speaking, at least. Guilt pulls at her. She should have come sooner, the very second she felt something was wrong, she should have… “You are very clearly not fine.” He’s quiet again. “Could you open the door, please?”

“No,” he repeats, and this time she hears a waver in his voice, “I warded it for a reason. Get out.”

“What happened?” She asks more urgently this time. She should not have waited, she should have come immediately, she should have made sure… “Love… Listen to me,” she rests her forehead against the door, hearing the pleading tone in her voice, “whatever is going on, whatever happened, I am here. We can handle it together. Is that not what we have always done?”

It scares her a bit that Loki has started hiding himself in his room again rather than their garden as he has been doing. He’s gotten better with coming to her, with trusting her. She remembers the time when Loki came down with a mysterious illness that turned out to be a curse from a quest he ventured with Thor. He nearly died from it and after that, she had him promise that he would at the very least tell her if something, that he would come to her instead of trying to handle it on his own. He had been coming to her. Perhaps not with everything, but with small things, and that was progress. He trusted her.

What in the Nine could be so bad?

“Please do not push me away. I’m sure it- Whatever has happened, it can’t be so bad that we cannot-”

“Is that so?” Loki’s voice sounds strange when he speaks and it takes her a second to understand that the creeping sound she hears is a laugh. It didn’t sound like one. “Not so bad. Is that what you think?” She hears movement, hurried and shuffled on the other side of the door, footsteps stalking toward it, and she takes a step back just in time for the door to fly open.

Sigyn’s eyes widen and she barely manages to suppress the shout that wanted to escape.

A Jotun- there is a Jotun in Asgard, is her first thought, accompanied by a brief thrum of alarm. Her next thought is Loki?

There is a Jotun standing in front of her. And that Jotun is also Loki. His hair is disheveled as if he has been pulling at it, cobalt skin stained with tear tracks. There are ridges on his face, his forehead, going down his neck and under his shirt. Crimson eyes, red all the way through the sclera. And his features…

This is her Loki.

So many things click into place at once and Sigyn is not sure that she likes the picture that is forming.

The two of them stand there for a minute, saying nothing. She can see him shaking, red eyes wild and pupils wide, breathing as if on the verge of a panic. Everything suddenly feels so fragile. If she says the wrong thing right now… She can feel herself being scrutinized, Loki analyzing every breath she takes to find something that tells him that she thinks he is a monster. If she takes even the slightest misstep… It is too easy to ruin everything right now. Continuing to say nothing at all may be just as damaging as saying the wrong thing. Sigyn draws in a breath, trying to search for the words, the right words, when she catches a glimpse of the room behind him.

There is a thin coat of frost on the floor, which is likely where he was sitting. The mirror is broken, glass shattered into pieces. There is blood on some of the shards, blood on the floor, and Sigyn’s heart rate picks up again. Her concern shifts. She looks him in his eyes, pools of red, keeping her breathing calm and steady. “Are you hurt?”

“What?” He bares his teeth at her and they look- sharper in this form. Fangs. She’d forgotten that the Jotnar have them. “Do not be foolish, Sigyn-”

“Are you hurt?” She repeats, reaching out to examine his hands. “The glass…” In the split second before he jerks away, she can see that there are ridges there too.

“Do not touch me!” He says, voice almost a roar, and Sigyn tenses so she does not flinch. It is more his tone than the volume that frightens her. She has heard Loki speak about himself with hate before, she has heard what that disgust sounds like in his voice. But this is… This is a loathing of a level that she has never heard from him before. Her heart aches as she imagines what must be going through Loki’s head. Hatred against the Jotnar is not as common on Vanaheim but she is no stranger to it. She has heard the many things that are said about their race. She has always thought it foolish to vilify an entire species in such a way. And now…

Sigyn shakes her head and reaches again, seizing Loki’s wrist. He stiffens when she grabs him, and his skin is cool under her fingers. His breathing staggers and he stares at where they are joined. “Loki,” she says, voice quiet and gentle over the part of herself that still finds it hard to breathe, “please talk to me. What happened?” He doesn’t look at her, still staring at her hand holding his wrist as if mesmerized.

“I am not hurting you,” he observes, and Sigyn can’t decide if it was a question or not. She shakes her head in response anyway.

“You would never hurt me.” She knows of frostbite, the blackening and death of tissue that can come with touching one of the Jotnar. She took a chance by grabbing him in a state of panic like this, and she’s grateful that it did not burn her. She doesn’t know that she would have been able to deescalate that.

His eyes finally find hers again and he rips his wrist away from her, taking several steps back as his breathing picks up again. This close, she can feel the chill of the bathroom, goosebumps on her skin. She wants to step closer, but she stays where she is, glancing down at her hand. There is blood on her fingers from where she grabbed his wrist and her stomach churns uneasily. She looks at the shards on the floor again. At the blood that accompanies them. Norns, what would have happened if she did not get here when she did?

“This is the truth,” Loki’s voice brings her back, and it sounds rough, like a snarl. “This monstrous flesh, all these years, this is what you have been-”

“You’re not a what,” Sigyn says, completely forgoing her decision to stay put, stepping closer. Loki looks every bit like a cornered animal, hackles raised and terrified. She wonders what he thinks she might do. “You’re not a thing, Loki-”

“Look at me!” He snaps, and he sounds on the verge of tears, entire body shaking.

“I am,” Sigyn says, closing the space between them with a few strides. “Loki, I am.” He tries to glower at her again, but the threat is dampened by the blatant fear on his face. The temperature in the room drops by some measure and she can feel a chill race down her spine.

“You needn’t hide your disgust. I know I am- I know you must be fighting it. I could not even look upon myself without sickness.” He says, voice cracking with emotion. “This disgusting, vile creature, this is what I am, do you not see-” Sigyn reaches out, her hands feeling the roughness of his ridges as she cups his face, refusing to let him retreat into the darkness of his thoughts.

“I see you,” she whispers, thumbing away tears when they fall. He is trying to make her run. She will do no such thing. “I told you once that I thought you were beautiful. That I love you in any form you take. Those words were true. They are now.” She can feel her heart hammering against her chest. “Loki, I love you. I love you so much,” she says, and it was hardly a secret but oh, it feels good to finally say the words aloud. “I love you.” Loki stares at her in what looks like utter disbelief, and more tears spill over onto his cheeks. She can see the mask of anger cracking, fractured as he crumbles against her touch. She holds him together.

“Please- stop.” Loki makes a sound like a sob and sinks to the floor. Sigyn follows him down easily, never letting go.

“I will not stop. Because I need you to hear me.” She says, pressing their foreheads together. “I could live a thousand Aesir lifetimes and I can guarantee to you that I would be searching forever before I found someone I love even a fraction as much as I love you. I care not what form you take. You are still my love, my trickster, and I will not hear what others tell me. A thousand horror stories about the Jotnar could not sway me from loving you.” He shuts his eyes, shaking his head, but she keeps going. “And you could sit here and call yourself a monster, call yourself unworthy, unlovable, and whatever else, but those words are not the truth and if you expect me to sit quietly and agree with them at all, then you are going to be very disappointed.”

“I never wanted you to see me like this,” his voice is wet with tears as it fractures, breaking off into a thin sound that has Sigyn’s heart breaking in her chest. Loki squeezes his own arms, dark hair obscuring his face from her view. “I hate it, this wretched skin, I want to cut it out of me, I want it to die, I-I…” Sigyn feels that sense of creeping fear returning at his words, at the desperation in them. His breathing picks up again, uneven and panicked. She sees him begin to scratch at his arms, black nails digging into cobalt, the skin darkening with irritation. “I never wanted-”

“Loki,” she reaches out to take him by his wrists, pulling his hands away from his arms, “don’t do that.” She can feel the tension in him, his body shaking. He won’t look at her. How long has he been in here, like this? Why has no one said anything? Odin must know. But if Odin knew this whole time, why did he not tell Loki? Clearly, Loki wasn’t aware of this. Was Thor? Frigga? Who else…

She studies his arms and sees wounds there, cuts that are deep and healing still, irritated by his scratching. She thinks of the blood on the floor, on the glass, and she shuts her eyes. A command of her magic has the wounds closing completely within a few seconds. “You think I am the exception only because I was raised Asgardian,” Loki says, but he does not pull himself away this time. She is thankful for that. “If we met this way, you would think of me as a monster. You would not love me.” Sigyn shakes her head, her hands moving from his wrists down to lace their fingers together, and Loki makes a faint sound as her fingertips brush against the ridges along his forearm on the way.

“The Norns brought you to Asgard for a fated reason that I do not know, but I was able to find you here, and Jotnar or not, you are and continue to be one of the most beautiful and wonderful people I have ever met.” She squeezes his hands, finding his eyes beneath black curls and staring into them with an unwavering intensity. “I would be a Vanir shunned for falling in love with a Jotun before I could ever imagine not loving you at all.”

“You can’t,” Loki shakes his head vehemently, tears cascading freely down his cheeks. “You shouldn’t, I will ruin you, you can’t-”

“I do.” The declaration hangs in the air between them before Sigyn does what she has wanted so badly to do for the last five hundred years. His lips are cool against hers and she lets go of his hands to cradle his face again, firmly pulling him into a kiss. Loki tenses against her for a moment before melting, a soft sound escaping him when she pulls him closer. She gently takes her hand through his hair, running her fingers along his scalp and he whimpers in a way that makes her burn. The room suddenly doesn’t feel so cold.

“I love you,” Sigyn says, breathless when she pulls away. Loki sniffles and she kisses his tears away, lips brushing his ridges when she does. “I love you,” she repeats, again and again. Until Loki hears it, truly hears it, she will say it.

“You shouldn’t,” Loki whispers, still shaking in her arms. Sigyn hugs him against her, feeling the coolness of his body. “I will hurt you.”

“You are not hurting me, love,” she says, and she can feel him shaking his head.

“I will.” She turns her head and presses a kiss against one of the markings on his jaw. He shudders and she holds him tighter. He slumps against her, and she can feel him trembling with the force of his sobs.

“You will not.”