Chapter Text
The throne room of the Queen of the Dead was not dark, nor cold. No, it was so much more than that. It was shadow and bone and power, and it frightened Sif in a way nothing ever had.
The horse had dropped her there, claimed a hug from the queen, a nuzzle from her pet, and then departed without looking back. And now, here Sif stood, in front of Hel's throne, under the watchful eye of the massive wolf that acted as her guardian.
"Do you know, Lady Sif, that Life and Death are fundamentally different?" Hel pressed her hands—one flesh, one bone—together, as if to illustrate the difference. "They are the two forces that control the cosmos, but they are not direct opposites."
Sif struggled to gather her courage. She was a warrior of Asgard. She would not falter, even in front of the Queen of the Dead.
"I am not sure I understand."
"Indeed." Hel's smile was crooked and gruesome, and yet, somehow familiar. "Let me explain it this way. The living worlds, starting with Golden Asgard, to the mortal Midgard... They have countless mirrors. Many worlds, within the same one. Worlds with different Lady Sifs, different Thors, different Anthony Starks. But not so with Helheim. There is one Helheim. The dead are all equal. In death, everything is simple."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Hel smiled again, petting the massive dog with her flesh hand. "Because I wanted you to understand and perhaps, answer the question you have yet to ask. You see, my dear Lady Sif, in one of these mirror worlds, I had the honor of being Loki's daughter."
The shadows in the room grew, as if Hel's presence was magnified, a thousand times greater than anything Sif had ever seen, more powerful and terrible than the All-Father himself. Sif felt like an ant.
"Fenrir here is my brother. I retrieved him from the enclosure the All-Father had prepared for him. Jor was free, in his own way, in Midgard's oceans. But Sleipnir and my own father... Them, I could never save."
Hel left her throne of bone, gliding on the steps, shadows underneath her feet. "And now, here you are. You, who laugh at his pain. What should I do to you, I wonder?"
She walked around Sif, and the air her shifted and grew colder. Even if it meant losing sight of the Queen of the Dead, Sif stubbornly kept her eyes forward. That wasn't necessarily wise, since it meant she had to focus on the massive wolf.
But as Fenrir licked his chops and growled, it was almost comforting to know that she would die in a way that she could understand.
Or so Sif hoped, but Hel was already circling back to face her and shaking her head. "No, Fen. That would be too easy." Hel hummed. "I believe instead, I will give the Lady Sif a choice."
"A choice?" Sif stammered.
"Indeed. You see, dear Lady Sif, you are the one whose resentment led for my father's lips to be sewn. You and those foolish dwarves, but well... They've already learned the error of their ways. And even so, after all this time, you still resent him, for what was nothing more than a childish prank. You who pride yourself to be above all women of Asgard cling so foolishly to empty vanity. And now, you find amusement in learning of my father's tragedy. And so, here are your options."
"I can give you to Fenrir, make you the mother of monsters as my father was called in the past. You can carry many young, and I would make good use of them for my army."
Despite herself, Sif took a horrified step back. "What? You cannot..."
"Cannot have an animal violate you? Actually, Fen is far more than an animal, far more than my father had. But that's irrelevant. I assure you, despite the differences in your bodies, my power could make the two of you compatible, at least... sexually. So, I absolutely can do it."
"I would rather die," Sif blurted out.
"Oh, I know that. But as much as this is the realm of the dead, that is not the second option." She waved a hand, and a black box appeared in front of Sif. "Go ahead. Open it."
Sif did and froze, understanding.
She didn't know long she stared at the black needle and thread, but she was snapped out of her trance when Hel's flesh hand landed on her arm. "Well? Have you made your choice?"
There was no choice, not really. "The needle," Sif said.
"So be it. Brokk. Come. I have a task for you."
Sif blinked, and the dwarf was there—the same one who had sewn Loki's mouth shut. "I believe you know what to do from here, Brokk," Hel said, sitting back on her throne.
There was no Thor to hold her down, but Sif still could not move. She could only scream—until at last her screams were silenced by the thread, and the only sound Sif could hear was that of Brokk's breathing.
When it was done, Hel started to laugh.
"You should have gone with the other choice, Lady Sif. I would have never inflicted you upon Fenrir. I am not Odin."
Sif had not thought her situation could get any worse until that moment, but there it was. Pain was something she could handle, even this unbelievable, throbbing agony, but this? She felt... stupid. Defeated.
Hel had practically told her beforehand. She had said that she was Loki's daughter, the daughter of the Liesmith. But Sif had been too stupid and blind to see.
She was still standing there, frozen in shock and horror when Thor came in. Hel still lounged on her throne, petting her brother's dark fur. Brokk's ghost hovered over her shoulder, blank-faced.
Thor took one look at Sif and choked. "Queen Hel... What is this?"
"It is many things," Hel replied, "depending on how you look at it. Justice, perhaps. Perhaps petty vengeance, or a whim. But it was the Lady Sif's choice."
"Sif's choice?"
"Indeed."
Thor stared. "You must undo this at once."
"Must I?" Hel's expression turned into something ugly and frightful. In that moment, she truly looked like the face of Death."You cannot order me, King Thor. I am Queen in Helheim, and you are here on my sufferance. Now go, before I choose to take more from your warrior than just her speaking voice, and before my patience with the throne of Asgard grows thinner than it already is."
Sif didn't want to go back to Asgard in this state, but she wanted to stay here even less. And no one, not even Thor, had power over Hel. She set her hand on Thor's shoulder.
Thor nodded jerkily at the Queen of the Dead. "We will take our leave then."
As tense as a bowstring, he supported Sif with one massive arm, a half-embrace made even more bitter by the fact that it was the closest she and Thor had been in a while. She focused on him, on Thor's familiar heat, all the while wondering if the chill of Helheim would ever leave her bones.
****
As the massive doors of Hel's throne room closed behind the Thunderer and his warrior, Loki let the illusion fall. "Thank you for that, my queen. I needed it, I think."
Brokk's figure cracked, morphing into that of the true queen of Helheim. "You were more merciful than I thought you would be. But... It was not as satisfying as you hoped."
Loki smiled bitterly."Is it foolish that it still hurts that he never held me like that, not when it happened to me?"
"It is not foolish," Hel replied quietly. "He is your brother."
"He is not." Loki stared at his arm, the same one the Jotnar warrior had grabbed in the disastrous jaunt on the frozen planet. Even now, it was still blue. "He never was."
He got up, freeing the throne for its rightful owner. It was almost funny that even after acknowledging her disdain for his tricks, Sif had never realized he and Hel had changed places right next to her, when she'd been stubbornly staring forward and trying to seem brave.
Then again, Sif couldn't have possibly guessed what was happening, especially since Helheim wasn't exactly conducive to maintaining illusions. Even Loki had trouble with them, and had only managed this time around through heavy usage of seidr and Hel's own power.
Loki sighed. Sif didn't matter anymore. "I think... This is the best I could expect," he said. "I should have never given Sleipnir up, not for them, not for an illusion."
In a different world, Frigga had come to her son. It had been an astral projection, nothing more, but it had provided the anchor Loki had needed.
He had set the colt at the All-Father's feet.
He had never known what Sleipnir could become, not until it was much too late.
Centuries later, he had led the Jotnar into Asgard to stop Thor's coronation. He had followed Thor into Jotunheim and disaster.
He had destroyed a planet in the vain attempt to pretend it had not been all for nothing, that he had not sacrificed his child for a lie. After 'No, Loki', he had let go.
Hel had caught him. And now, here he was, meeting a Thor and a Sif different from the ones he knew—different, and yet, so very similar.
"I am glad," he said, "that at least one version of me made the right choice. That he and Sleipnir will be happy with the Man of Iron."
"They will be. My merchant is a good man."
"He's not actually your merchant, you know," Loki teased her.
Hel snorted. "Mistress Death won't mind my claim on him, I think. There's plenty of him to go around."
Her words referred to more than just Mistress Death. Loki thought of what Hel had shown him of the Man of Iron. He could have had that too, but his Anthony already belonged to his chatelaine.
"It is not too late, Loki. It is never too late."
"Yes, it is," Loki replied. "He is a hero. I am a killer, a Destroyer of Worlds. But thank you for your words nevertheless."
It was only much later, as he sat in Sleipnir's Helheim stables, painstakingly attempting to teach his son to shift, that Loki realized Hel could not lie.
And maybe he would have asked her about it, would have asked her if she truly believed there was some hope left for him, but he did not.
She came to him herself, a whisper of a dark cloak and a bone hand in Sleipnir's mane. "I need you to do something for me," she said simply. "I require an envoy."
"Say no more." Loki grinned. "I know exactly what you mean."
****
That night, a figure cloaked in black haunted the sleep of the rulers of two realms.
King Thor never could remember what the figure said. He just remembered the warning, and the fact that Loki and his consort were under Helheim's protection.
As for Earth's rulers... None of them spoke of what they saw. But the next morning, Tony Stark's status miraculously changed into that of a possible consultant for the Avengers Initiative. All operations to counter Stark's cyber attack ceased.
The WSC could do many things, but at the end of the day, they were also aware of their own mortality. They did not want the Queen of the Dead as their enemy.
As for Alexander Pierce... Well, he wondered how he could use this. He stared at the frozen face of the Asset and considered the progress on Phase Two.
One thing was certain—the entity that had been once known as Loptr would be a game changer for Hydra's plan of world domination.