Second Chances

'Your power is increasing, we will have to work on your control.' Loki said as he brought Maia a hot chocolate on the couch. He had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and removed her shoes, her hands and feet still painfully cold. She felt drained, emotionally and physically, and he was right; she had felt out of control and she had seen enough kids overwhelmed by their powers to know it could be a problem.
'That would be good.' She said quietly as he sat beside her. 'Maybe Charles can offer some advice.'
'Perhaps, but as it is sorcery it may not respond as a mutation does.'
She nodded. 'I remember how I used to do it, how it felt as Sigyn, but it's different.'
'Can you describe how it differs?'
She thought for a moment. 'The sorcery, the tricks, that was like a hum I could feel, just waiting for me to instruct it. My power on its own before, I had it locked down in a mental box, but it always pushed, trying to make me lose the control over it, and when I did free it, it was like an explosion. Now I feel like I'm stuck somewhere in between. I can feel the power humming but I don't know how to connect to it, and it knows how to unlock the box instead of me. It, it's going to sound weird.'
'We all need weird sometimes, beloved.' He pressed the back of his fingers to her nose and she knew he was seeing if she was warming any. It was still chill to the touch.
She sighed. 'It's like the sorcery can control it and it's using my emotions as a guide.'
'That is less weird than you would imagine. Drink up, sweet, you are still like ice.' He wrapped his arm around her, rubbing her to help her warm up. 'If you hold Asgardian sorcery yet you are, genetically speaking, a human, it may be a conflict between the two. I believe we should, for now, think less on your mutation and more on the inability of your body to understand what it needs to when utilising sorcery. It is no wonder you cannot make sense of it, if your mind cannot fathom what it contains.'
'How do we get it to understand?'
'Practice, dear heart.' He kissed her temple. 'You have something of an advantage that you have the memory of when you were my fair Sigyn to call upon to aid you. We can use that.'
'You always make things sound so easy.'
'You always worried too much.'
'I worried the perfect amount for the wife of the God of Mischief.'
'And you will again, no doubt.'
She stared into her mug for a moment, needing to say something that was a little off topic but she felt the need to get it off her chest. 'Loki, what are we doing?'
'I'm trying to warm you, love.'
She turned and looked at him. 'Apart from that. I mean, is this something you want? I know who I am and who I was,' she put her mug on the table, 'and being together again, it means the world to me, because you do, but I'm human and you're virtually immortal. If it will save you hurting again in the long run I don't hold you to anything. I don't hold you to our vows.'
Loki watched and listened as she gave him the opportunity to step away, to stop him from losing her again, even though that was exactly what she was offering. His Sigyn, his Maia, she was always so selfless.
'Beloved, worry not. I would trade nothing in these nine realms for what we have. I would burn worlds for just one more day, one more hour with you. You have made me realise there may be hope for me, that my frozen heart can love and be loved, and that happiness, my happiness, lays within my grasp once more. The way you rekindle emotions I thought long dead with the simplest of gestures astounds me, and I would have you as my wife in a million lifetimes.'
Maia swallowed the lump in her throat at the raw affection in his words. 'A simple "No, you're stuck with me." would have done.' She said quietly.
'But it would not have raised the colour to your cheek, or the softness to your gaze.' He stroked her skin with his knuckles. 'I would wed you again, with your permission, and make the life we lost, to have all the things we missed the opportunity for.'
'Like children?' She asked, knowing he had already mentioned the possibility.
'To see you swollen with our child would fulfil the final desire I hold.' He kissed her. 'But I shall rush you neither to marriage or a family. You have had many changes in the last week, a new life to adjust to, but I do have one request.'
'What?'
'Stay with me. Think not on returning to Xavier's, your place is beside me, as mine is beside you. If not on the team, if not as my guide, then as my wife.'
She leant in and kissed him. She knew she didn't want to leave him, and she had wanted a new challenge, she just got more than she bargained for. 'Yes.'
'Yes?' He checked.
'Yes, I'll marry you again. Yes, I'll stay with you.'
Relief flooded him and he pulled her to him for a slow, deep kiss, and when they parted he left next to no space between them. 'Precious girl, you have made me the happiest man in all the nine realms. And worry not for your mortality. I have a plan.'
'That isn't always a good thing. I remember some of your simple plans going very awry, let alone the tricky ones.'
'This is virtually foolproof.'
'It's the virtually part that worries me. What are you going to do?'
'I will send word to Idunn.'
'The Golden Apples?' Maia leaned back in surprise. 'Odin won't agree to giving an apple to a mortal and you know it.'
'This doesn't concern the Allfather. Idunn owes me a debt and for you I shall claim it.'
Maia, or rather Sigyn, remembered Idunn, the Goddess of Mortality. Her orchard housed the tree that grew the Golden Apples that granted Asgardians their vigour, youth and near immortality, and only Idunn could pick them. The daughter of Freya she was tall, beautiful and skilled with many weapons, taking her job of tending the tree very seriously. 'You've really thought this through.'
'I shan't lose you again, my heart, no more missions without me by your side.' He raised her hands and peppered kisses over her knuckles.
Maia smiled softly, thinking of the supposedly straightforward mission she had been on as Sigyn. The ambush that had gone catastrophically wrong. 'I don't think I'd be trusted with another mission, after the last one.'
'Good. You are still cold, sweet. Finish your chocolate and I shall set up a movie. You deserve to relax, until we must dress for our date.'
'You're changing the subject.' She said as he got up and collected the multi remote.
'Am I?' He smiled at her with exaggerated innocence in his eyes.
'You are. How will you get word to Idunn, first off?'
'I shall ask Thor.'
'He'll get sick of being your messenger boy.'
'Then I shall suggest it coincide with one of his return visits. He supports us, dove, he always has.'
Maia nodded. Thor had noticed his brother's feelings for Sigyn had changed almost before Loki did, and had encouraged them together, arranging for the three of them to socialise then backing out with some excuse, or simply arriving so late it was not worth him being there. 'Okay, we know Thor will do it. What about how Idunn owes you? What exactly did you do for her?' She narrowed her eyes at him.
'Such scepticism, petal. Do I taste jealousy in the air?'
'More suspicion than jealousy. I remember only too well what some would ask for in return of a favour at a later date.' She shuddered as she remembered some of the offers she had had from various court members. It was clandestine and underhanded and while some were easy to fulfil, some ran into the personal and perverted.
'My sweet, Maia, worried for my virtue.' He smiled as he turned on the TV.
'You haven't been virtuous for a long time.' She side eyed him before picking her cup up again.
'Not in most respects, but my dignity remains intact however, where Idunn is concerned. Some time back storm giants stole her supply of apples. Thor and I retrieved them.'
'Okay, that's not so bad.'
'You and your rampant imagination.' He chuckled.
'You always liked that.'
'And I cannot wait to see what else you can come up with, but for now you need to rest before tonight, and I would like to see what Mr McFly got up to in the future.'
They settled in and after a very short while Maia moved to lay with her head in Loki's lap, the blanket spread over her. Loki played with her hair, watching her eyes grow heavier instead of the movie, until she drifted off into a light doze. He was content, perhaps for the first time in years, and it was all because fate had returned her to him.

Notes