Sigyn's Revenge

Chapter 3 - An apple a day

In Asgard stands a tree with a thousand branches, all with brilliantly, surreally, green leaves, and scattered with golden apples. The tree belongs to Idun, and its fruit restores youth. Sigyn might have embellished a little when she promised eternal youth, that would require regularly eating the apples, but right now, just getting the energy of a young body back will be enough for Sigyn.

A little way away from this tree, a fair bit actually, really, so far away in fact, that they can not even see it, stands the little party of four - Loki still hiding out in his wife's sleeve, and the other three walking on their own legs. So far, the fact that Heimdall would have heard Loki's screams as the venom dripped down on him has been their cover, but now, with the long journey to and from Helheim, time is running out. Soon, the bowl should be emptied again, but when Loki is no longer there to scream and shake the earth, the Asgardians will know something is up. Heimdall will start searching for them, and the fact alone that Sigyn is traveling with two men will not be enough to dissuade the gods that Loki isn't at least one of them. But though still strong, age is wearing on Sigyn, and she needs those apples before she can move on to the next step of the plan.

"Time to earn your keep," she whispers. "Before it is too late." Loki obediently slithers out and lands on the ground.

"Are you sure that is a good idea?" Max asks tentatively. "I mean, can we..." One could understand, after the spiel Hel received for speaking ill of Loki, that Max might be careful what he says, but one could also understand, giving his condition and the faint hope that now seemingly relies on a trickster god, that Ian holds no such reservations.

"Are you sure we can trust him?" he demands with no hesitation.

"He's done it before," Sigyn says simply. "And that time, he stole both Idun and her apples, this time he only needs four apples."

"So..." Max says, not too daringly. "You would have gone here even if you hadn't needed apples for us too? Like, you need the apples yourself? To survive?"

"To survive, no, but it is nice to have a young and healthy body." Both Max and Ian nod. To be young, healthy, and in love. What more could man ask for? Slowly, treacherously one might even say, the hope is creeping in. They might, after all, get to live a full life together. A hasty marriage and a quick, daring honeymoon, all pressed together to fit in before the surgery, a surgery which has only a 4 percent survival rate past one year... that had been their expectation. Now, well, now maybe there's a chance they can have something more. Something better. Granted, of course, now they have also risked it all on some mythological long shot. The surgery date has passed them by, and by now it may very well be too late to schedule a new one. Some types of cancer, they have been told, can spread very fast, and the symptoms can be near impossible to detect before it is too late. By now, an operation might no longer be a possibility.

And yet, a 4% chance, that wasn't much to begin with. 4% chance of survival past one year, or the trip of a lifetime, searching for an impossible miracle cure, allying with gods and goddesses to take down the Allfather - a rational couple might have taken more time to consider it, but Max and Ian were on board almost from the get go. Sure, a crazy woman asking them for help to release her husband, that was strange, and offering them eternal youth in return, that was the talk of a madwoman, but at the time they had felt sure they could take her, if she turned violent, and if there really was some sort of truth to her words, that there was a man chained up somewhere, they owed it to their own consciouses to check it out. Once they had done that, actually gone to the magically hidden cave with her, once they had traveled to Helheim, seen the dead for themselves, well, it was all looking real now. Now they were here, and all those hopes that had somehow snuck in and festered, they were all riding on the trickster god who no one but his wife had any trust in, if indeed you could claim that Sigyn trusts Loki.