ℂ𝕠𝕕𝕖𝕩𝕥𝕠𝕓𝕖𝕣 𝔻𝕒𝕪 𝟙𝟟 𝕄𝕠𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕟 - 𝕄𝕠𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕟 𝔹𝕒𝕤𝕚𝕞 𝕩 𝕗.𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕣
Rated: PG (all my works are +18)
Summary: Basim is trying to help reader regain her memories in the modern world of her past life as Sigyn. This takes place after the events of Valhalla. There also might be hints of havi and reader.
~
{ A/N: I suck at dialogue rip}
Inside the remote New England cabin, the air was thick with the scent of pine smoke and the low hum of cooling servers. In the corner of the main room, Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane were hunched over their monitors, their faces illuminated by the pale blue glow of encrypted data streams. William Miles sat further back in the shadows, hunched over a table, his eyes fixed on a map of the world that looked increasingly like a chessboard. Basim sat with his back against the rough-hewn log wall, feeling the vibration of the generator humming somewhere beneath the floorboards. Outside, the wet winds of the New England winter howled against the old window shutters, but inside, the fireplace cast it’s heat, the flames creating dancing shadows that made the small living room feel like a hall of old to him.
(Y/n) was warmly pressed against his side. Her head fell tiredly against his strong shoulder somewhere between his description of Yggdrasil and the binding of Fenrir, her head finding the hollow of his shoulder like it had in the past, as if her body remembered what her mind refused to acknowledge in the present day.
The pair were off in their own little world as clicking sounds filled in as background noise as Shaun Hastings tapped aggressively at his laptop across the room. Rebecca Crane went back to sorting ammunition at the dining table, the metallic clink of brass on wood rhythmic and precise. They were planning something—an insertion into an Abstergo facility, a data heist, the endless, honorable war of the Brotherhood.
Basim should have been paying attention to the others. But he did not care for them.
And they still did not fully see the fox lurking behind his eyes. They did not see the old god.
Basim did not care for their brotherhood.
He only cared about the woman breathing softly against him. He cared about the way her fingers had unconsciously curled into the fabric of his shirt whenever he spoke of Loki. He cared about the fracture in her psyche where Sigyn slept, buried beneath a lifetime of (y/n)’s new memories—her childhood, her family and friends, her initiation into the Creed, even her first kill.
The Sigyn he had once known would never have been able to cause harm to another, let alone kill.
But (y/n) was not Sigyn. Not anymore. She was now reborn an Assassin, a woman of the modern day who believed in free will and the Brotherhood's cause. And Basim... well Basim was only helping the cause because she was there. He would follow her into any war, wear any mantle, play the part of ally to these earnest, doomed humans until the stars burned out, if only she would eventually remember who she had been to him in their past lives. She had been his wife in a different life. Before the catastrophe, before the encoding of his memories into the human gene pool.
Basim was feeling like a man out of time, a ghost inhabiting a body that felt both like a masterpiece and a prison. He found his focus on her sharpened, a hunter’s instinct honed over lifetimes. This was it. Another chance.
“Sigyn,” he said, his voice a low, melodic hum. He shifted slightly, allowing her to settle more comfortably against him.
"The stories say," Basim continued, his voice lower now, intimate, "that when the Asguardians bound Loki with the entrails of his own son, Sigyn stayed. She stood beside him in that cave, holding a bowl to catch the venom dripping from the serpent Skadi hung above his face. When the bowl filled, she would turn to empty it, and the poison would strike him. He would thrash, and the earth would shake."
She shifted, her cheek warm against him.
"She stayed," she murmured, "Even then."
"Even then," Basim repeated firmly.
The fire popped, sending sparks up the chimney.
"She loved him, and he loved her." He continued, as he picked up the fireplace poker, and stoked the fire half haphazardly. They both stared into the fire, both deep in thought.
He watched her face out of the corner of his eye, searching for any sign of recognition, any flicker of the Isu consciousness he knew was dormant somewhere within her.
But he eventually continued on, telling another one of his tales of Loki and Sigyn’s love, and that’s when he finally saw it. A flicker in her eyes, a subtle shift in her breathing. It was there and gone in an instant, but he had already spent a past lifetime learning to read the subtle tells of her soul. It was the same look Sigyn would get when he’d return from a long journey, the quiet, profound relief that he was home. His heart ached with a fierce, possessive longing.
“She had held that bowl above his face,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper, “as an act of eternal, unwavering devotion. A love that endured torment. Her love for Loki was unconditional.”
The story hung in the air between them, a memory disguised as mythology. He leaned down, his lips brushing the top of her head in a gesture that was both chaste and deeply intimate. For a moment, he allowed himself to believe it was enough, that the stories alone would eventually be enough to bridge the chasm of time and trauma that separated her from her former self.
But then she shifted slightly, tilting her head up just enough to see his face clearly. The sleepy contentment in her eyes was replaced by a sharp, analytical glint of her inner assassin.
“Basim,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “You’re leaving out the rest of the story.”
He stiffened. “The rest?”
She then sat fully upright, and leaned back to create space between them. The distance she created was minimal—merely the space needed to look at him—but he felt it like a physical blow. Her eyes were clear now, the soft haze of contentment, replaced by the sharp intelligence that had made her one of the Brotherhood's most promising operatives.
“Where he used her loyalty like a weapon. Emotional neglect. Infidelity. He expected her to just... wait. Forever. While he did whatever he wanted."
"Those sagas," he said cautiously, "were written by small minded men who needed someone to villainize, they needed Loki to be the villain. He was a complicated man, too complex for their simple mindsets, they exploited his wrongdoings into their tales.”
"Maybe," she mused. Her voice was gentle, but the blade was there.
"But the patterns are consistent. She was loyal to a fault, and he exploited it. He was selfish, Basim. He was devious, cunning, and selfish. She was nurturing, faithful, and compassionate. He didn't deserve her in my opinion. He simply wasn’t a good husband, Basim,” she stated, not as an accusation, but as a simple fact. “He was a serial adulterer. He fathered monstrous children with other beings, with the giantess Angrboða, with the stallion Svaðilfari. He brought ruin and chaos upon the Aesir, and Sigyn was the one left to clean up the mess, to stand by him while he was despised by all.”
Basim’s carefully constructed narrative began to crumble. He wanted to argue, to defend the man he once was, but the words caught in his throat. She was right. He remembered it all with perfect, agonizing clarity.
“He neglected her,” she continued on, her voice gaining a quiet intensity.
“He humiliated her with his affairs. He was emotionally absent, wrapped up in his own ego and schemes. And yet, she stayed. Her loyalty wasn’t noble, Basim. It was tragic. It was the loyalty of a prisoner to her cell. In the myths, Loki treated her terribly. You keep telling me these beautiful stories about their love, but you've skipped the parts where he abandoned her for years. Where he had children with other women—other goddesses, giants, everyone and anyone. Where he used her loyalty like a weapon. Emotional neglect. Infidelity. He expected her to just...wait. Forever. While he did whatever he wanted."she spoke carefully.
The words fell into the space between them like stones into still water.
The fire popped casually, a sharp report in the suffocating silence that followed. Shaun glanced up from his laptop, sensing the shift in the room’s atmosphere, but a subtle shake of Rebecca’s head told him to stay out of it.
Basim remained silent, and felt a wave of shame so profound it was physically painful. He had been so focused on the romanticized image of their love, that he had willfully ignored the centuries of pain he had inflicted upon her. He had once been Loki, the god of chaos, mischief, and deception, and Sigyn had been his biggest victim.
Basim was realizing, with a slow, dawning horror that crept up his spine like frost, that she was right. He had been curating the mythology, selecting the verses that painted Loki as the tragic romantic, the misunderstood genius. But the truth—the raw, historical truth of his own behaviour or as Loki—was uglier. He had taken Sigyn’s devotion for granted, a constant he could ignore until he needed comfort. He had betrayed her trust not once, but repeatedly, each affair a small death delivered to the woman who had given him her eternal allegiance.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he managed, his voice strained. He avoided eye contact with her and stared distantly into the fireplace.
He pulled his arm away from her, not in rejection, but because he suddenly felt unworthy of her touch. “The old stories are… complicated. They are not always what they seem.”
He continued staring into the flames, but the fire offered no comfort. It only illuminated the ghosts of his past. The image of (y/n)’s thoughtful face dissolved, replaced by the memory of Sigyn’s, her expression one of quiet, soul-crushing devastation.
~
The memory shifted, twisting into a new, more painful scene. He was imprisoned now, bound by magical chains that dug into his flesh. The poison of the serpent dripped relentlessly onto his face, a torment of fire and ice. And above him, Sigyn held the bowl. But her eyes were not on him. They were fixed on the great hall of Valhalla, on the figure of Odin—Havi—standing at the high table.
Loki’s rage, even in his bound state, was a living thing. He saw the way Havi looked at her. It was not the look of a king for a subject. It was the look of a man for a woman he cherished. Sigyn’s gaze was returned, a silent conversation passing between them across the celestial divide.
She had eventually left him. After discovering his ultimate betrayal with Aletheia, she had not simply withdrawn; she had actively sought another. And she had chosen the one being in all the realms who was his equal and his opposite. His own father, for all intents and purposes. His own jailer.
The injustice of it burned hotter than the serpent’s venom. Havi, the All-Father, the great lawgiver, who had fathered countless demigods and taken multiple consorts, had the audacity to take Loki’s own wife as his prize. He had punished Loki for his transgressions against the order of the Aesir, only to then build a new life and family with the very symbol of Loki’s domestic failure. Sigyn, who had once been his, now belonged to Odin. She had started a new life, a new family, with the man who had condemned him to an eternity of torment.
The rage was a black tide, threatening to drown him. It was the fury of a spurned husband, the wrath of a betrayed god, the bitterness of a man watching his own legacy be rewritten by his enemy.
~
“Basim?”
(Y/n)’s concerned voice cut through the memory like a shard of glass. The fire was just a fire again. The cabin was just a cabin. The chains were gone, but the phantom ache of them remained.
He blinked, his eyes refocusing on her concerned face. She had sat up, her hand resting lightly on his knee. The others were watching them now, their pretense of ignoring the pair abandoned.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her brow furrowed. “Basim, you did thing again. You went somewhere else for a minute. Your hands are clenched into fists.”
Basim looked down, surprised to see his knuckles were white. He consciously uncurled his fingers, taking a slow, deep breath to steady the tempest raging within him. The ghosts of Asgard receded, leaving only the quiet reality of the cabin and the woman before him.
He forced a small, wry smile. It felt brittle on his lips. “I was just thinking,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended.
“Thinking what?”
He met her gaze, his eyes holding a depth of emotion she could not possibly understand.
He saw her—this new assassin, she was brave, intelligent, and fiercely loyal to her own cause. And beneath her, he saw the faint, shimmering outline of Sigyn, the woman he had once failed so spectacularly.
“How much of a fool Loki must have been.”
Her expression softened with confusion. “A fool? Why?”
“Because he had a goddess who would hold a bowl of poison above his head for eternity out of her sheer loyalty,” he explained, his voice low and intense. “A woman whose love was a fortress, and he was too busy trying to break out of it to ever appreciate that it was also his only sanctuary. He was a fool not to see her value. A blind, arrogant fool. To have Sigyn—to have all of that loyalty, that love—and to squander it. To not appreciate the weight of what she gave him."
The silence that now followed was different. It was no longer comfortable, but charged with a new understanding. She stared at him, her eyes searching his, as if trying to place a familiar face in a crowd of strangers. For a fleeting second, he thought he saw it again—that flicker of recognition, a spark of ancient memory ignited by the raw sincerity in his voice.
But again to his disappointment, she shook herself out of the trance and it was then gone, replaced by a gentle, modern sympathy. She didn’t understand, not truly, but she felt the weight of his words. The suppressed memories of her past life were teetering on the edge of her mind.
“Well,” she said softly, giving his knee a gentle squeeze. “It’s just a story, Basim. A sad, old story.” She said as if trying to convince herself as well.
She studied his face for a long moment, her eyes searching for something—he did not know what. Then, slowly, she relaxed back against his side, tucking herself under his arm once more.
Her expression softened. She reached up, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, a gesture so tender it nearly broke him.
"Well," she said quietly. "He's just a myth, isn't he? Stories in books. We're here now."
"Yes," Basim whispered back. "We are here now."
She settled back down, her ear pressed over his heart, listening to the rhythm that had beat through three separate incarnations of flesh.
"Let's stop telling stories about them," she whispered. "It makes me sad. Let us focus on the present moment."
"Yes," Basim agreed. "Enough talks of Loki and Sigyn."
She settled back against him, her head finding its familiar place against his strong shoulder, her body a warm, solid presence against his side. She seemed to accept his strange mood as nothing more than a historian’s melancholy. They fell into comfortable silence. The fire became the only voice in the room—hissing, crackling, surviving. Basim wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer until he could feel her heartbeat against his ribs. She sighed, a sound of contentment, and closed her eyes.
But Basim could not sleep. He could not rest. The memories came unbidden, as they always did when he let his guard down. Basim swallowed his thoughts, and simply rested his cheek against the top of her head, closing his eyes. The rage and bitterness from his flashbacks still churned in his gut, a toxic residue of a life he was determined not to repeat.
He had been Loki, the betrayer, the neglectful husband, the selfish god. He had lost Sigyn not to Odin’s power, but to his own profound stupidity and cruelty. He had thrown away the greatest loyalty the universe had ever offered him.
But he was Basim now. A new man. And she was was a new woman. It was the universe giving him a second chance.
He would not make the same mistakes. He would not be the same man who took her for granted, who sought affection in other arms, who failed to see the treasure he held until it was gone. He would follow her to the ends of the earth, not just because her path aligned with the Assassins, but because his path was, and always would be, wherever she was.
He held her closer, a silent, desperate promise echoing in the quiet of his own mind.
I shall not hurt her.
Not this time.
I will not be the same fool this time.
Basim tilted his head back against the log wall and stared at the ceiling, staring at the old wooden beams, breathing in the scent of her mingling with the smell of the wood burning.
I will not mess up this time, my love.
The vows were silent, carved into the meat of his mind with the same violence he had once used to carve names into the world-tree. He would not be Loki—selfish, scattered, burning bridges behind him as he sprinted toward the next diversion. He would be better. He would be worthy. He was now Basim.
He did not need the Assassins and their war. He did not need their creed or their brotherhood. But he needed her. And if she needed them, then he would stand at their fire, he would aid their missions, he would smile at Shaun’s cynical jokes, and nod at William’s grim strategies. He would endure the modern world with all its noise and fragility, because it was the world where (y/n) now lived, and he would not lose her again to Odin’s memory, or to Aletheia’s ghost, or to his own stupidity.
He did not know if she remembered—if any part of Sigyn stirred in her dreams, recognizing the arms that held her as the same ones that had held her while the world ended. He did not know if, when she looked at him, she saw the man she had left or the man he was trying to become.
But as her breathing deepened into sleep, and her body became heavy and trusting against his, Basim allowed himself to hope. Not the chaotic, destructive hope of Loki, but something older, quieter. Something like fidelity.
The snow fell. The fire died to embers. And in the dark, Basim ibn Ishaq—who had been Loki, who had been a killer and a trickster and a god of chaos—kept watch over his future wife, and swore that this time, he would be more deserving of her.
~
{ a/n: i think I’ll eventually write something for Sigyn/reader character x havi/Eivor }
{ a/n: gonna eventually get through this list!!! I have so many ideas I want to write about, but I want to finish Codextober. I have no idea how y’all finish the list in a month. 🤷🏼♀️}
