Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The situation, although far from ideal, should be salvageable. Loki can handle this. Neither of them are dead and that already points to a positive outcome.

Yes, fine, Thor did crack the observatory clean off the Bifrost as Loki tried to spear him in the back, but it’s hardly the first time they destroyed a valuable artefact during a tiff.

He will admit that the stakes are a touch higher than usual. His heart pounds in his throat as he dangles off the edge of Asgard.

The Bifrost’s fragments shred reality beneath him, creating a fresh and horrifically unstable wormhole. The yawning twist draws his seiðr downwards and into oblivion, undoubtedly leading to an empty void—assuming it leads anywhere at all and wouldn’t simply destroy all it consumes. His grip on Gungnir tightens in reflexive fear. One slip and he’ll fall. Get ripped to pieces, shunted between dimensions, or some hellish permutation of the two. A coin-flip where the only options that matter are a swift death or a long one.

Loki forces himself to breathe. He’s been slipping for weeks, now; he can hold on for just a few more moments while he fixes the problem. It’s how he’s lived his life—one problem at a time. One solution at a time. He can handle this. He strains against the wormhole’s gravity to look up at his father and brother.

They’re both grimacing with effort—Father from dragging himself out of Odinsleep and physically holding both his sons from death, Thor from the backlash of breaking the bridge—but Loki catches their despair. They want him alive.

He can use that, smother their fear of him with fear for him. First, he needs to assure them that he’s still their Loki, that he still loves them. Nothing too complex, seeing as it’s the truth.

"I could have done it, Father,” he calls up. And he could have. He still might manage it—there are a multiplicity of paths to Jotunheim and even more options for destroying it. He’s not a monster, he’s not like them. He’s Asgardian. He’s proven that, proven himself just as much a warrior as Thor, impulsive and destructive, with a mind for conquest. He did prove it, right? His voice cracks with panic. “I could have done it! For you. For all of us.”

He looks up, waiting. He nearly ended the war Thor started. Alright, he may have been a touch too aggressive but he can still fix this. His eyes burn with tears. He knows the array of responses Father gifts Thor with like the back of his hand—rage, pride, exasperation—and watches for any of them.

Loki has no idea what Father feels when he looks at him. Disappointment comes close. Horror, perhaps. But maybe that’s just the wormhole behind him. He can still—

"No, Loki,” Father says.

Quiet, exhausted, yet firm. Almost disbelieving. 

And that’s that.

Loki reads words better than faces, and he knows what Father—what Odin means. Whatever it was he wanted from him, Loki falls woefully short. Pitifully short.

He’s a Frost Giant runt. There is nothing he can do—nothing he could have ever done—to belong in Asgard. He was a fool to try and the only person who didn't know. What a joke. Forget king—Loki might as well be the jester.

The shock congeals into fury. It takes less than a second, really. Loki is efficient like that. His love turns to hate, he rearranges his priorities and casts out the useless ones, and he takes another look at his immediate options.

Option One: Wait to be rescued, putting himself in Odin’s hand again. Not likely.

Option Two: Save himself and regroup somewhere else. He could turn into a large bird and hope he can fly hard enough to escape the wormhole’s pull. With Gungnir, he could probably manage it. But what then?

Option Three: Let go. Stop playing the game. Nobody wins.

With every too-fast heartbeat, the weight of Odin’s pitying stare feeds the wrath sparking in his chest. He meets his brother’s gaze—he’s loved and hated Thor too much to be anything other than his brother—and finds he wants to hurt him, too. For his ignorance, for his privilege, for everything.

He knows in that instant that he will die before giving either of them what they want. He loosens his grip.

Thor must know him a little better than he gave him credit for, because his anger takes on a terrified edge. There’s a bit too much warning in his voice, as though he can threaten Loki into staying alive, when he says, “Loki, no!”

Damn him. Damn Asgard. Loki hopes he becomes a shade in the afterlife and plagues the house of Odin until Ragnarok. He’ll laugh as it all burns. They deserve it.

He lets go.

Wonder of wonders, he doesn’t die. Not physically. All he does is drown.

—You're my son—there will never be a wiser king than you—your birthright was to die—or a better father—I wanted only to protect you from the truth— 

( —I love you, my sons— )

 —the brutality, the sacrifice, it changes you—If it were easy, everyone would do it—Your bodies would crumble as your minds collapsed into madness—ever hear the tale of Jonah?—to challenge them is to court death— 

—he’s been dead before. But this time, I think it really might be— 

 —What did you do?— 

He never felt the water close over his head, only the all-consuming pressure weighing down against his breaking bones. 

Thanos is just the latest of a long line of bastards, and he’ll be the latest to feel my vengeance. Fate wills it so. 

At some point, he begs for Thor to save him.

He wastes his last bit of air on that. 

   _I
    Loki
      ^{Prince of Asgard}
                                    Odinson
                                                    _{The rightful King of Jotunheim}
                                                                  God of Mischief

            do hereby pledge to you
                               ^my undying _fealty

Loki watches his death enough times to grow bored. The thud of his corpse being dropped at Thor’s feet barely registers.

Urðarbrunnr—Loki assumes that’s where he is; the Well of Fate beneath Yggdrasil’s roots by which the Norns spin men’s lives—churns around him as he sinks through its crushing darkness, echoes of his own final words simmering at his ears: You will never be a god.

His last gasps for breath loop back, taunting him. He isn’t dying, but he can’t breathe. He hasn’t breathed in too long—the Waters having long since filled his lungs. It burns.

Other, familiar voices hound him, Thor most of all— You really are the worst, brother —but Odin makes several appearances. We will fight! Until the last Asgardian breath, until the last drop of Asgardian blood.

Even that mortal Jane Foster plays a role in this nightmarish theatre. It's all my fault. If I hadn't found the Aether, your mother and brother would still—

The vast majority are strangers. Mortals. That guy’s head is a bag full of cats—_{I was having twelve percent of a moment}—Sir, please put down the spear—

He pours every bit of his magic into keeping the accompanying visions at bay, fighting the Waters as they show him the same events with the same people over and over again. They overwhelm his defenses less often now that he’s learned to shield himself. His magic grows stronger with the constant pressure, feeding off the same Waters that fuel Yggdrasil—but still not quite strong enough to defeat them.

The voices are inescapable. Though the asinine conversations he overhears do bear the occasional fruit.

If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn’t on this end.

He’s heard Clint Barton utter those words a thousand times over, repeating his obvious deduction until it means little more than the throb of Loki’s slow pulse in his ears. This iteration just happens to coincide with Loki’s seiðr brushing against something.

Yeah, the cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right? Doors open from both sides.

Beneath the chaos, an opening.

It’s faint, but he soon drifts close enough to feel it out. A bated breath in the ceaseless howling. There's no light—Loki scarcely remembers what light is—but he senses a Realm mere inches out of reach. A way out. Swimming is unworkable, his body won't respond with any measure of strength or speed, but Loki never relies on his body for anything.

His seiðr, the bulk of it compressed into a shell against Urðarbrunnr's inexorable press, grabs hold of the edge and yanks him towards it. The pressure on his chest—he hasn’t breathed in what feels like years—sharpens.

The visions bear down on his distraction.

^{The Other snarls in his face. You will long for something as sweet as pain.}

^{Hela slaughters Asgard’s army in a hail of black knives.} The Valkyries fall from their winged steeds like snow.

^Loki’s bones _break in ^Thanos’ grip.

A single hand breaches the surface, emerging into cool air. The shock of gravity and solid stone beneath his hand brings tears to his eyes.

No resurrections this time.

Loki's hand slides against rock, and for a terrifying moment he thinks he's going to fall back into the Waters. He can’t. They haven’t broken him yet and he refuses to offer them another chance. His fingers catch on a small ridge, little more than a dimple in the stone, and he digs in with all his strength. His nails break and bleed.

Her violent appetites grew beyond my control. I couldn't stop her, so I imprisoned her. Locked her away. 

One last push. His seiðr stops trying to protect him, lets the visions eat their fill, abandoning defense to give strength to his arms.

^{You’ve never been a very good liar}—to make the sacrifice play—_{What were you the god of, again?}

Loki hauls himself out.

_Trust   my   ^rage.

The Waters pour off his clothes as he drags his legs onto the black stone, spilling from his mouth and nose, voices lingering in his ears, but dulled. Fading fast.

Loki chokes and vomits, his body both expelling the Waters and trying to drag in air—precious, sweet air—for the first time since he fell from the Bifrost. He doesn’t have the energy to spare on dignity, crawling on his belly like a worm from a bird, too relieved at his escape to worry about appearances. His lungs rip as he churns breath into the half-dead organs. Tears and blood join the Waters as he hacks up the rest.

His lungs and belly now mostly cleared, he drops his head to the stone floor. He wants to sink in. Claim that stability and cling to it until the end of days.

His wet, raspy breaths echo strangely around him. That and the Water’s gentle splashing fill the silence left in Urðarbrunnr’s wake. He pries his eyes open. He’s in a cave. The only light is a thin sliver of white reflecting from a crack somewhere above them.

Loki swallows roughly and lifts his head from the stone, turning to look over his shoulder at the pool he just escaped. It’s definitely the Water of Sights—one of Urðarbrunnr’s manifestations in the Nine Realms. At least he was right about that. Having fallen through all the known Realms and several of the unknown, he can recognize the unique thrum of each. He’s more familiar with this one than he’d like. Midgard.

His body nearly collapses under him when he stands. His seiðr, on the other hand, expands to fill the cave.

Drowned by the Waters that feed the Tree of Life. Of course it wouldn’t kill him. Loki wants to laugh. It makes for a fantastic training ground, though, if one manages to hold onto their sanity.

He bolsters his muscles with his gorged magic, enough that he can hold his head high and walk without pain. His fingernails mend themselves with a thought, shortly followed by the ribs that never truly healed from Mjolnir’s crush. His seiðr feels lighter than ever before. Indomitable. Free. Hungry. Too much. He sways beneath the current of it all, keeping his feet by sheer will. Echoes of the Waters' visions spin around his skull.

Loki stares at the Water of Sights, hoping—or perhaps fearing—that something would follow him out. That someone would give him a reason for his suffering and a target upon which to unleash his newfound power.

“Come on out, you miserable cow.” Loki’s voice makes a haggard, bloodthirsty mockery of his usual silver tongue. “Come to me. Face me.”

He has no idea if he means to fight the Norms themselves or something else. Either way, he’s prepared.

"What was that meant to do, then? Humble me? Drive me mad? Make me see the error in my ways?" Loki's seiðr writhes around him in search of a target. "That is but one path forward, and it's one I now know to avoid. You've changed nothing."

The Water remains still, rippling serenely. It reminds him of Odin waiting for his death, knowing he was unleashing Hela on his sons as he did. The thought only serves to infuriate him further.

"This changes nothing," he says again, mostly to himself. He spits pink-tinged water onto the rock. "I am not a puppet nor a saviour. If you planned on either, you'll be sorely disappointed."

The Water of Sights gives no indication it hears, or that it can hear at all.

He growls and turns away. Very well. If Urðarbrunnr won't provide Loki with an outlet, he’ll have to go and find one himself.

He has no intention of making the mistakes he did in the vision. No, he fully intends to survive this. That means he'll need to get the Infinity Stones.

Fortunately, thanks to Urðarbrunnr, he now knows the location of all six.

When he does, he'll make things right. He'll show them—

Loki falters there. Show who? Odin, who scarcely notices when Loki enacts his revenge? Thor, who will think him mad? The Avengers? Thanos?

And show them what? Urðarbrunnr told him all he needs to know of them, and that they will always see themselves as victims and he the villain no matter what he does.

( He wants to beat us and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience. )

What is it that Stark calls him? A 'full-tilt diva'? How considerate of him to identify Loki's weaknesses in such a fixable way.

( He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered— )

No, he will not seek any of that. He can take his enemies' dreams before they even know he's there, before they themselves know what they want.  

True, victory won't taste as sweet, but he can lose out on satisfaction in the name of survival.

Thanos cannot pursue him if he doesn't even know Loki exists. Thor won't get in his way if he believes him dead. Loki won't lose sight of his goals to arrogance if none of his acts carry his name. 

Once Loki arranges events to his liking, he will disappear. No more God of Mischief, no more Prince of Asgard; he will stop playing the game. 

( Who controls the would-be king? )

No one. Not the Norns, not Odin, and certainly not Thanos. Not this time around.

Anyone sufficiently attuned to the flow of cosmic energy can sense the Infinity Stones. They cry out across the universe, begging to be used. The activated Tesseract might as well be a magnet for beings such as Loki, and the visions informed him of its location for the next decade or so.

Therefore, he ignores it in favor of seeking that which he knows little about: Director Fury. It’s a simple matter to visit and infiltrate SHIELD’s headquarters, locate the most feared office in the building, and follow an agent inside. Midgardian security measures are nothing compared to evading Heimdall while walking the World Tree’s branches.

The agent’s hands shake as he closes the office door behind him. Loki slips in beneath his arm.

Curiously, the office is empty. After all the fuss the agent—Woo, according to his badge—went through over going inside or not, Loki expected Director Fury himself to be glowering from behind the desk.

“Hey Goose? You here, girl?” Agent Woo says in a strange, high-pitched voice. He looks around the floor with something akin to terror in his eyes. “It’s your old pal Jimmy.”

Whoever this ‘Goose’ is, they do not respond.

Agent Woo gulps audibly and shuffles towards Fury’s desk. Loki wonders if he is attempting some form of sabotage against the Director and, if so, finds himself both delighted and appalled by the turn of events. Agent Woo makes for a poor double agent. Multiple agents saw him enter Fury’s office.

Woo passes the desk, nixing that train of thought, and pulls a small tin out of his pocket. He looks around before breaking the tin’s seal.

“Meow.”

Startled—but not nearly as startled as Woo, who screams—Loki drops his gaze to the floor.

An orange and white cat sits in front of a shallow dish labelled ‘Goose.’ Loki supposes he could have simply looked down and solved the mystery himself, but is already on the new mystery of how Fury manages to keep the cat fur off his black turtlenecks.

Woo sighs and laughs at the same time, sounding far too shaky for a spy feeding his superior’s cat. He presses a hand to his chest. “Holy shit. I thought you were—”

“Meow,” Goose says. Allspeak loosely translates it to, I don’t care.

“Fury's out. Got called away for, uh, something. I know you don’t like me, but May is on vacation and literally everyone else on the list is somewhere classified, so you’ll have to deal with me for the next couple days, okay? You’ll like my new apartment. Much less breakable than the old one.”

“Meow.” Fuck you.

“Okay, hold your horses, just gimme a second.” Woo peels the lid off the can. “God, evil should not look as cute as you.”

He upends the opened tin over Goose's bowl with a grimace. A cake of some meat-like origin flops into the metal dish, coated in a fluid strongly reminiscent of mucus. The cat makes no move to eat, understandably. It glares up at Woo with incredible malice for one so small.

Woo holds the empty tin to his chest and backs out of the room, eyes never leaving Goose. “I’ll come get you at six. Demon.”

The office door closes.

Loki shares a commiserating look with Goose. Once he realizes that’s what’s happening, he tilts his head. “You are not a cat.”

Goose stares, which it really shouldn’t be capable of considering Loki’s glamor is strong enough to blind even Heimdall’s eye. Come to think of it, space-time bends oddly around the not-cat, especially the mouth. A Flerken. His heart twists in his throat, instinctive fear urging him to flee the room. He forces himself to still. The Flerken won't blow its cover any more than he would his own. “Meow.” What do you think, bitch?

“Lovely. Would you mind terribly if I stole some things from your,” he blanks on the appropriate term for the Director, “Fury?”

Goose stares some more. The trouble with Allspeak is that mistranslations never feel like mistranslations, so he can’t tell if Goose’s lack of response is due to incomprehension, refusal, or simply Goose being an asshole. Either way, Loki knows what to do when words fail.

He conjures a far superior breakfast for his new ally.

Goose rumbles an approval and trots over to the food bowl now full of Vanaheim rooster hearts. “Mrrp.” Knock yourself out.

“Many thanks,” Loki says.

He knows better than to open anything—Fury likely has sensors on his drawers. Instead, he projects his seiðr through the metal and into the paper files, reading them without laying eyes on them. He used to do this as a child, speeding through forbidden books merely by touching their spines. He stopped once it became clear Frigga could tell what he’d read and warded the collection against it. It was also a massive drain on his magic.

He has magic enough to spare now, and flies through the filing cabinets with ease.

Loki hesitates before he reads through the New Mexico Incident’s folder. He laughs when he sees the dates, first out of shock that it had been less than a year since he fell from the Bifrost and then out of genuine amusement at his brother’s antics.

( In my youth, I courted war ) as though it didn’t happen literally eight months ago. Thor, you lying oaf.

Loki has a delightful time breezing through Fury's files, stowing information like a squirrel stashing nuts for winter. He comes to the Tesseract’s file, only to be disappointed when he finds it mostly covered in black bars. He can’t see beneath them. He withdraws his seiðr and leans back on his heels.

“Mrrp?” Got a problem? Goose asks, bowl polished off and in the midst of cleaning its paws.

Loki props his chin on his palm. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the Tesseract, would you?”

“Meow.” The Space Stone? Sure. I ate it once.

Loki has never encountered a Flerken in person before, but all the warnings about them from his textbooks on extra-dimensional threats come crashing down on his head at once. He forces himself to remember that he is equally as dangerous. And that he could probably figure a way out of whatever fell dimension Goose sends him to should this go poorly. Probably. He's done harder things. So long as it doesn't rip him apart first. “Oh? How did it taste?”

Goose looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Mrow.” The essential aspects of existence have no flavor. All Flerkens know this. Fucked up my stomach though. I could only keep it down for thirteen years.

The word ‘stomach’ vaguely refers to the many worlds accessible through the Flerken’s body. For something to physically affect Goose through its pocket universe, it has to be unthinkably powerful. Which the Tesseract is.

Loki nods. He frowns. “Why keep it down at all?”

“Meow,” Goose says. It can’t make problems when it’s in my stomach.

His hands twitch. His cache can hide some energy signatures, but it's no more than a section of space held slightly out of phase with the rest of reality. Nowhere near capable of fully hiding an Infinity Stone—as his vision-self discovered—but Flerken space has different rules. Instantly, he calculates the amount of power needed to rend space into a separate universe. Technically, he's capable of it, but he has no clue where he'd begin or how to do it frequently without destroying some part of reality. “Do you mean to say that you’re capable of fully insulating an Infinity Stone?”

“Prr.” Once it’s eaten, it’s eaten until I decide it’s not.

An overly simplistic view of the relation between dimensions, but entirely accurate to a Flerken’s perception of events. “You may have solved a great many problems, my friend.”

Goose's ears flick back. “Awr.” I’m not doing it again.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I respect you too much for that. I’ll eat it myself." Loki stands, already shaking his ǫ́ss skin loose in anticipation.

He hasn't built a new form in a while—shapeshifting is far too uncommon among ásar sorcerers. Not such for jötnar, apparently. It's also incredibly draining and the inferior option in most scenarios.

Besides, he's never done something like this before. Would it even be possible? The pocket universe is a species characteristic, so it could be more like imitating a snake's venom rather than copying Thor's thunder. He can't wait to get started.

“To that end I will, however, need to ask you a single favor that you may find unpalatable. A simple spell to analyse your abilities and biology—I need it if I am to replicate your abilities.”

“Mow.” Goose licks its chops and sits primly, little paws close together. Get me more of that stuff and you can replicate whatever the fuck you want, little god.

Loki smiles. For once, he has the time to actually make a plan, and he knows exactly what to do.

He's going to steal the Tesseract.

He circles the machinery that the mortals made to contain the Infinity Stone. The contraption appears no more capable of restraining the power of space itself than it did in the vision. It’s also ugly, a more severe infraction in Loki’s opinion.

Use me. Come witness the universe. The Tesseract’s whispers linger at the edge of his consciousness, easily dismissed. SHIELD agents and scientists flutter obliviously about the room, fiddling with their little computers and sensors in a desperate attempt at quantifying the unfathomable. None can see through his glamor and he doubts their technology could detect his presence any better than their eyes. He smirks. Stretching out a single thought, he brushes his seiðr against the Tesseract.

Alarms blare from every computer. Loki smiles as the humans scurry about their contraptions like terrified ants.

( Ant, Fury points at Loki, then the cage controls, boot. )

He wonders how far he has to go before they evacuate the campus and call Fury in. Probably too far to escape Thanos’ notice. Such a pity. He would have loved to see the look on the Director’s face as his prize saunters off without him.

Sadly, Loki has no intention of drawing Thanos’ attention to Midgard yet. Perhaps in a few years. He looks up to the Hawk’s nest, waving at Barton. Barton doesn’t notice. 

Selvig putters about his computer next to a scientist Loki doesn’t recognize, both of them pointing out readings and repeating how impressive it is. He’s sure they’re using some sort of esoteric vernacular with each other, but all Loki hears through Allspeak is their intent: they’re thrilled and confused in equal measure.

Loki half-listens as he wanders to a nearby desk where someone abandoned the lunch orders in favor of scrambling to their computer. It's a large plastic bag, full of smaller paper-wrapped packages. Sandwiches. The amount of waste going into a single meal is baffling. He should relieve them of it as punishment.

He vanishes the bag. Although Loki technically doesn't require food and Urðarbrunnr sustained him well through his seiðr, an empty stomach is an empty stomach.

"What the—" Ah, Barton. So dubbed Hawkeye for a reason. The spy straightens in his nest.

There’s Loki’s cue. He darts over and plucks the Tesseract from the machine, not dropping his glamor, and portals to the basement.

He stumbles when his feet hit concrete—the rush of power and twist of space-time sucking the breath out of him before his seiðr whips it back—and abruptly stills when he spots Agent Phil Coulson. Less than three feet separate them in an otherwise empty room of tall metal shelves and plastic storage boxes. Those boxes look familiar. The Phase 2 weapons. 

Agent Coulson whips his gun out, turning away from the plastic box open in front of him. He scans the room, eyes skipping over Loki’s presence.

Coulson creeps silently to his blind spots, walking so close to Loki that he holds his breath. Loki looks him up and down. Not an intimidating man by any means, but rather impressively bland-faced. His crush on Captain Rogers is the only thing Loki truly knows about him—that and the cellist—and he doesn’t care to know more. The Avengers may yet need someone to avenge.

He breathes once Coulson passes him, then turns to his true prize: the Destroyer rifle. Codenamed Bambino according to Fury's files. While not nearly as powerful as the true thing, any weapon that can send an Asgardian through a wall is one to keep an eye on. Also one to use. Conveniently, it’s the one Coulson has out.

The lights turn red and a deep siren blares through the building. 

"Sir," Barton calls from the little electromagnetic wave communicator at Coulson's hip. "The cube's gone. Along with our lunch."

Coulson grabs at the communicator's control. "What?"

Loki lifts the rifle from its box, powers it up as he saw Coulson do in the vision, and lets the Tesseract carry him out. It fights him a bit—or maybe he fights himself—but he finds the connection between stones easily enough and pulls.

He envisions Sanctuary, or a small corner of the asteroid field he can hide in until he has the chance to attack.

He lands on a barren rock. 

The wrong barren rock.

For one, it's too big. A black horizon stretches around him, the permanent eclipse in the sky only just illuminating the old carnage of warships in the distance.

Svartalfheim. The Tesseract urges him in the other direction, towards a cluster of caves and ruined buildings where Jane Foster might one day stick her hand where she shouldn't and get a great many people killed. Including Frigga. That won't happen this time around.

"Wrong Stone," Loki tells the Tesseract. He shoulders his massive rifle, glaring into the Stone's knowing depths. "You know which one I'm after."

The Stone hums in what feels like exasperation. Or annoyance. Selvig was right. Vision-Selvig, that is. The Tesseract is definitely a she and she has an attitude. "We'll come back for her later, when I'm good and ready for it."

She jolts his hand with enough power to sting—

—and then he's somewhere else.

Sanctuary's purple-blue lights form around him, the asteroid field snapping into focus against a backdrop of open space just over the asteroid's edge, which is far, far too close to his feet. He takes a quick step back and turns around.

His nose brushes the Other's mask. 

The Other, being connected to the Mind Stone, immediately senses something wrong. His head twists to find the disturbance. Conveniently, he holds the scepter out to scan for—or maybe stab—the threat, well within Loki's grabbing distance. How thoughtful of him.

"Who dares disturb our work?" The Other calls out to the shadows. Loki half expected the foul reek coming off Thanos' toady, but he never planned to experience it so close. He redoubles his shielding with a grimace. The first whiff is so noxious he barely notices Thanos' back over the Other's shoulder. 

He does notice Thanos eventually. He's eight vertical feet of purple muscle and gold armor and will likely feature in all Loki's nightmares until the end of time, of course Loki notices Thanos.

When he does, he makes an undignified squawking noise that seeps through his glamor. Luckily, a lifetime of training with (and against) Thor means that his panic response typically manifests in extreme violence.

He has the presence of mind to vanish the scepter from the Other's hand before pulling the trigger. The Other's scream is lost as fire strikes him square in the chest.

He flies backwards, away from Loki, and then breaks the artificial atmosphere surrounding the asteroid with an electric sizzle before the emergency barrier snaps in place with a net of flickering hexagons.

The Other's form, locked in empty space, gets smaller in the distance. An orange ember marks where the rifle's blast struck his chest.

( So that's what it does. )

The lights turn white and an alarm thrums. Signals crackle through speakers in a variety of languages that Allspeak only half-translates. Loki hardly notes the chaos through the fear shooting through his body shouting run, run, run as Thanos' hulking figure rises from his golden throne, his purple skin almost grey in the emergency lights.

The Tesseract drags him out of there before Thanos can even turn around. 

Loki stumbles onto the black sands of Svartalfheim, dropping the sandwich bag and the scepter from his cache as he falls to his knees beside them, hands frozen around the rifle and the Tesseract .

His head spins. His gut roils. Cool, thin sand covers his legs almost immediately but the black line of the horizon blurs and wobbles. His lungs ache. They ache a lot, actually. Was he poisoned? Have the Stones done something to him? He shudders and opens his mouth, then realizes it's none of that. He's forgotten to breathe. What an idiot.

Loki gasps in a deep breath of Svartalfheim's toxic atmosphere, the world sharpening around him in a split second as he settles back to himself. The nausea remains. He stares dumbly at the Mind Stone while his thoughts catch up to what he's just done.

He just stole an Infinity Stone from the Mad Titan while he was in the room.

Literally from beneath the Other's nose.

The Tesseract hums smugly in his hand.

A single, manic ha! escapes him before he drops Bambino—it killed the Other, it deserves to be called by its name—to slap a hand over his mouth.

Then he remembers he's alone on this wasted planet—the only Dark Elves remaining are on Malekith's ship, which isn't due to reactivate, let alone arrive, for two years. Or until Loki goes down and picks up the Aether. Whichever comes first. Point being there's no-one to hear him.

Loki doubles over and laughs. Not only for the theft, but out of relief, delight, and terror at the road ahead. He laughs until the stabbing pain in his chest returns and tears roll down his cheeks. Beyond that, something restless crawls under his skin, buzzing for motion and begging him to move, move, move or at least do something violent. It's dizzying. Addictive.

He's still giggling when he brings the Tesseract to eye level. "Naughty girl."

She glows at him.

"Is that what you want? A bit of trouble? If that is your desire, you've come to the right god." 

The Tesseract nudges him toward the Aether again.

"Not yet, I'm afraid. I need a container for her," he tilts his head, "unless you want your new playmate to wind up a puddle. Say, why don't we take a few more trips? There are quite a few items in the Allfather's vault that could use some liberating." 

How he would love to see the Allfather's face when he realizes he's been outplayed. Loki all but bounces in excitement at the thought of Odin realizing his dead son knows all his filthy little secrets.

But.

Odin won't know. He can't know. That might taste even sweeter, the old man suffering twice over for not knowing his enemy.

Unless Loki has him alone, at the very end, in which case he will do everything in his power to twist the knife. 

Chapter Text

A sweet breeze slides through a window just as a maid closes it for the evening, carrying with it an unseen passenger. Loki steps past her and into the darkened palace hall. It’s the passage outside his mother’s study. Near enough to the place his magic remembers best. He learned his first spells here, at his mother’s knee. One of the wall panels, built of warm wood rather than cold metal or stone, still bears the scratch where he planted a knife and attempted to mend it on his own. 

A hush falls over his soul as he takes physical form beneath his cloaking spell, almost expecting Odin or Thor to come rushing at him with weapons raised. Nothing happens. The air remains still and the maid goes to close the drapes.

Loki eyes the heavy black fabric framing the window he just passed through. Last he checked, those curtains were white gossamer. He glances over his shoulder—all the drapes are black. Curious. The last time Asgard clothed herself in such a way was when Uncle Baldr died, almost a century past. The two of them had never been close, Baldr only venturing from his home in the outer provinces of Asgard to sit as regent during the Odinsleep, or when Odin required an ambassador for a situation more delicate than his sons could handle. The latter ended up killing him. Loki snorts. Clearly, Odin had never been the best judge of skill.

The woman looks up, brow furrowed, her hands pausing where they fiddle with the curtain ties. Her gaze slides through where Loki stands.

Can she see him? Hear him? He reinforced his invisibility glamor after Goose saw through him so easily, even drawing from the Tesseract herself to add layers of protection. Apparently, it was his scent that gave him away. He fixed that issue—it should be impossible to sense him. Nonetheless, her keen eyes search the hall. 

“My lady?” An Einherjar standing guard breaks form to take a half-step closer to the maid. It’s then that Loki recognizes her—Brigid, one of his mother’s ladies. A distant cousin from Vanaheim and quite adept at seiðrmancy. She is several centuries his elder, taciturn and overly-formal to the point that he hardly knows her despite having seen her every day since he learned to walk. He doesn’t believe he’s ever seen her smile.

Brigid purses her lips. 

The Einherjar looks to his partner, who shrugs. The golden armor clicks slightly with the motion. “My lady—“

“I thought I heard something.” Her voice, though lowered, sounds crisp and firm. Like a command. “But there is nothing.”

She turns to the window, grasping the curtains with both hands. Her knuckles whiten.

“There is nothing,” Brigid repeats. She pulls them closed, pauses for a moment, then walks away.

Loki considers following her before cutting that thought short. That isn’t why he’s here. With some effort, he takes off in the opposite direction, taking care to avoid his family’s usual haunts.

It takes him the long way around, down the decorative halls made to fill guests with awe and fear. How naïve he was only a year ago, to believe in the Realm Eternal and all her false tales. Loki passes the Tesseract from hand to hand as he wanders down once-familiar halls. They’re quiet, most of the city asleep at this hour. His eyes slide over tapestries and frescoes—look at these lies—over the gilt archways and vibrant courtyards he called home not so long ago. They now seem entirely alien. Unreal, as though the place itself were a ghost of gold and stone. Or perhaps he is the ghost, invisible and inaudible to the palace workers who still wear black for him. In any case, someone is being haunted. 

Someone screams in the far distance. He ignores it. The acoustics are all wrong—he knows what cries sound like in these halls, and that isn’t it. He cannot tell for certain which part of the vision it came from, but he knows it hasn’t happened here. Not breaking stride, he tightens his jaw and focuses on the torchlit staircase ahead of him. Gilt and narrow, leading down to the Forbidden Archive. He walked it thousands of times before. All he needs to do is keep walking. The rest will follow.

The walls crumble at the edges of his awareness, flames reaching up through the cracks. Hela’s translucent figure flits from the shadows. The rhythmic thud of soldiers’ boots echoes in his skull. 

Not real, he thinks.

Focus, he needs focus. He tightens his grip on the Tesseract, hard edges cutting into his skin. Her power rushes through his veins, his bones, perfect and bright and purifying, snapping the world back into its proper shape. Walls right themselves and the shadows still. Whispers fade to silence.

For now, the Tesseract whispers.

“Thank you, my dear,” Loki says. His heart beats a frantic stacco against his skull. He brushes his lips over the Tesseract’s shell as he speaks, a mockery of a kiss that she answers with a happy trill. He eyes the golden door through her gentle light. “Now, shall we begin?”

She warbles an affirmative.

Loki hums and allows her grip to tighten over his form, feeling her magic settle into his skin. He steps forward.

He passes through the wards as easily as he does the door itself, fading back into existence seamlessly and with his glamor intact. The other side is completely dark. No torches, no windows, only the Tesseract beaming blue through the black. She brightens until he can see the dusty shelves and crates where forbidden knowledge is left to rot. He once spent days fiddling with the enchantments to free scraps of paper at a time, drawing the archivists’ attention half the time. Apparently, nobody has disturbed the Archive since; dust coats everything, the only clean surface being—

Loki freezes. 

A familiar trunk sits near the door. Black and red leather, covered in protective runes to discourage snooping. He lifts the lid with the tip of his boot. The enchantments recognize him and open easily, revealing piles of scrolls and notebooks. 

His notebooks.

“Really?” Loki pulls out one of the topmost books and opens it to a treatise on various portal types that he never got around to completing. He distinctly remembers putting it in his desk. Another book was one he actually published, on the inverse correlation between magic and genetic evolution, taken from the Royal Library. The maps he made of the Paths, formerly hidden under his bed, he finds crushed beneath his musings on various curses. 

This is his legacy. The parts he took pride in, at least. The theories that set him apart, painstakingly gathered up and shut away in a lone box. He tosses it all back into the trunk with a lump in his throat. 

The Tesseract’s presence, reassuring and constant, hums in his hand. Her light glares off glass-covered cabinets, muted by a layer of grime and the impenetrable shields set in place by the Allfather’s magic. Rows upon rows of documents written by mages, scholars, and politicians who somehow earned the king’s ire. Ten thousand years of dreams silenced. He looks at it all with fresh eyes, a resigned horror taking hold. 

“Is this to be my fate? A cancer excised from the house of Odin, locked in the dark to gather dust, forgotten by all save as a cautionary tale?”

The Tesseract has no answers for him, only illuminating the archives and singing her eternal song. She speaks nothing of the destiny vision-Loki tried so hard to fight using her. A mad scramble for power with death breathing down his neck. The way he turned out monstrous betrayals over and over again, if only to be remembered as he was. 

How Odin didn’t give a damn. Never took him seriously. Even as a villain, Loki wasn’t enough for the great Allfather. A roar rises up around him and he clutches the Tesseract as a wave pulls him under—Odin smiles fondly, as if Loki’s usurping and bewitching him were a child’s prank, Took me quite a while to break free from your spell—

—families can be tough—

—the king mocking from above; all this because Loki desires a throne—

No. 

No, he’s not doing this again. 

Loki wrenches himself back to the present. The Tesseract burns in his hands but he can’t bring himself to let go of her for fear of being washed away entirely. There is air in his lungs and solid ground beneath his feet. The only magic on his skin is his own. His chest seizes against him when he tries to steady his breathing. 

A new path solidifies before him. 

Loki swallows thickly and blinks. The Tesseract softens, easing the light so it doesn’t sting his eyes. He peels his fingers off her, wincing at the blood smeared over her surface where her edges cut into his flesh. He mutters an apology before spelling her clean.

With a curt wave of his hand and a nudge from the Tesseract, Loki vanishes every last item in the Archive into his cache. 

“Slight change of plan,” Loki announces. His voice rasps. “We’re destroying the Nine Realms.”

The Tesseract only has a moment to express her turmoil before he wills himself to his next destination: the armory.

This time, he doesn’t look around. He doesn’t offer the visions the chance to catch him off his guard again. Loki swans invisibly past the Einherjar, their bright gold torches, and through the locked door. He has eyes only for his target.

Unlike the Archive, this space is well-kept and well-used. Even the ceremonial weapons, the famed relics from past wars placed only for display and safekeeping, are polished to a shine. Loki runs his hands over the racks of Berserker staffs, feeling the dormant seiðr within. sweeps its contents into his cache. Enchanted swords, staffs, daggers, guns, and more—even some rather dangerous relics Loki had always been forbidden from touching. All of it disappears in a flicker of green seiðr. He lingers over a pair of armored green boots, walking his fingers up the glass case. The Seven-League Boots. Elven-made. Enchanted so the wearer can walk on any surface. Thor called them useless and unforgivably gaudy.

Since he intends to spend most of his time invisible or not wearing any clothes at all, Loki vanishes his own boots and puts on the Seven League Boots. They fit perfectly, snug and cool against his skin. He catches sight of himself in the glass of a now-empty case and twists this way and that. Glossy enchanted leather catches the light, poison-green and reinforced with gold accents. His calves look amazing.

“What do you think?” Loki asks the Tesseract, adjusting her so she can see.

She has no opinion. Either that or she declines to express it. Does she even care about aesthetics? A question to explore at a later date, Loki decides, once he’s done robbing the Golden Realm for all it’s worth.

He contemplates his boots as he trails behind a pair of Einherjar on their way to survey the Weapons Vault. They do not speak, so consumed by duty that they seem to lack opinions and periphery vision. Or their helmets block their view. If Loki were on Odin’s council, this is the kind of thing he would bring up—it’s a massive security issue. They have to turn their heads completely to check on each relic in their respective alcoves. 

Loki zig-zags behind the Einherjar and plucks the relics up from their pedestals, folding them into his cache the moment they are out of view. 

Odin feared these artefacts. He instilled a deep respect for their strength into both princes, ever since they were children. And here Loki is, stuffing them in his pockets like stolen candy. The Tablet of Life and Time is large enough to give him some trouble and the Casket of Ancient Winters exudes such power that the Tesseract adds her power to his as to keep it contained. The rest vanish easily enough. He snorts and tosses the fake Infinity Gauntlet in his hand before folding that up as well. 

He considers taking the Eternal Flame for a moment. Just a moment. Logistics aside, he feels no need to carry the key to Ragnarok in his dimensional pocket all the time. 

Loki, still cloaked, grins when the Einherjar turn and find an empty vault. 

Space blips him out of there before he can do anything fun. 

"So it just," Doctor Banner mimics a small explosion with his hands, "poofed?"

"Yep," Tony says, at the same time that Barton answers, "Nah."

The two men glare at each other. Steve takes a deep breath to center himself. He made his date—said goodbye—to Peggy only five weeks ago, fully prepared to die as he drove the plane into snow. The helicarrier's engines are higher-pitched and much quieter, paired with the constant buzz of electricity which fills every building he's been in since he woke up. Even the air smells different. It seems like everything in the world joined forces to remind him of what he lost. How he's been left behind. As if he could forget. In a heartbeat, he skipped past his friends' lives, decades of history, technology, change, and into the new world he died to create. The SHIELD agents he's met so far call him a hero. He's never felt less like one. He's lost. Tongue-tied in a strange land with no idea what his next move is—let alone leading a team again.

Familiar voices urge him to fall into well-worn patterns when Stark's kid walks in, older than Howard was when Steve left. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were just here to shoot people."

Tony isn't his father. Steve shouldn't have expected him to be. He's cruder (but that might be a generational difference), funnier, and not at all interested in being friends with anyone. 

"Stark, don't," Romanoff says. "What do you mean, Clint?"

Barton, sitting with his arms crossed at the edge of the table, shifts uncomfortably at the attention. "The bag 'poofed.' Not the cube. I had my eye on that thing when it disappeared, it moved like someone was picking it up."

Honestly, not the weirdest thing Steve's heard this week. 

Tony scratches his neck and pulls the surveillance footage up on his hologram screen... thing. God, how can Fury expect Steve to be useful here if he's not sure what's normal now and what's still science fiction. Steve squints at the zoomed-in video. The Tesseract might slide a little before disappearing, it might not. It's hard to tell among the glitching. "You sure? You were pretty far away."

"They don't call me Hawkeye because I hear well, Stark." Barton does a good job of not strangling Howard's son, which Steve appreciates. "And I was already looking at it."

"Right, because they took the Subway order, too." 

Director Fury braces his hands on the backrest of his chair. "Our prime suspect's the Invisible Man. That’s fine, we can work with that. Got anything more concrete? Because we don't want to know what kind of damage this thing can do in the wrong hands."

Stave would argue that SHIELD isn't exactly the best hand for the Tesseract to be in, but what does he know? He's just the guy who's seen what kind of damage it's capable of. 

He flicks to the next page in his briefing package for the nth time. The gun nicknamed 'Bambino' is another story. The picture of the device alone is terrifying, let alone the reconstructed alien armor it's built from. What is it with people and making weapons out of alien artefacts? Haven't they learned? 

"The Helicarrier's invisible," Bruce says. "Maybe our thief stole that tech, too. Might be something to look at until we get a hit on the gamma radiation."

Tony's eyes are off somewhere in the distance when he says, "Or maybe it's a different kind of invisible. A very, very, very small thief. A miniature maniac. Ant-sized, I'd say."

"Okay," Steve has to interrupt there, "let's not get too far off-base. We still need to find this guy."

Tony pulls an affronted face and Steve knows he's going to hate what comes after. "Geez, I know you're old but misogynist much? It could be a woman, Steve—women can steal WMDs, too. Just ask Natalie. Natasha. Whatever."

Yep. He hates it. He hopes Howard will forgive him for punching his son in the face because it will happen.

"Shut up, Stark." Romanoff clenches her jaw like her next words physically pain her. "But he's got a point. Pym has motive and means. Unclear on how he'd find out about the project in the first place, though."

Pym? Who the hell is Pym?

Tony grins. "You kidding? He's as much a techie as I am and cares a hell of a lot more about SHIELD, I'd be shocked if he isn't spying on your every move."

Doctor Banner lifts his pen, looking as confused as Steve feels. "I'm sorry, but are we talking about the Henry Pym? As in, Pym Particle Pym?"

Okay, maybe not as confused.

"Also Ant-Man. Ant-sized man who talks to ants." Tony points directly at Steve, who doesn't care for that at all. "And another vintage superhero. We should start a collection—no, start a band!"

Still lost. Glancing to Romanoff is unhelpful and Coulson mouths 'I'll explain later' except Steve would like it explained now.

"Alright." Director Fury straightens as if they've cleared anything up. "Let's go give Dr. Pym a visit."

Steve sighs and follows Coulson.

This next part gets tricky. Loki pulls one of the paper-wrapped food things from his cache while he plots—he’ll need the sustenance. The bread is too sweet, but the thick red sauce and meat spheres are decent enough. He eats slowly, allowing his empty stomach time to get used to food again. He sits atop a building in New York, unhelpfully labelled Pym Technologies as though it means anything to him, and lists his immediate goals on the wrapper using a ballpoint pen he stole from Director Fury’s office.

First: get Thor off Asgard.

Second: stop the Dark Elves from killing Frigga.

Third: stop the Infinity Stones from killing him.

Loki glances down at the Tesseract, who blinks innocently at him. “Yes, I know what you’re doing to me, you little menace.”

After a moment’s consideration and some thoughtful chewing, he adds several more points, each of them generally having to do with vengeance and chaos. They overlap with his long-term goals of ‘destroying Odin’ and ‘avoiding Thanos’ but this is only a general outline. His week’s agenda, if you will. 

He frowns and draws a little arrow, bumping his third goal up to second priority. No need to be selfless about things. 

His first priority holds firm. If the vision holds any semblance of truth, Thor is integral to his future. Loki consciously avoids any analysis of what this means or his feelings about it. Far simpler to complete the task without examining his rationale. Thor’s friendship with the Avengers, his annoying propensity to gather allies wherever he goes, will be the key to defeating Thanos. If all goes well, Loki can simply build up the Avengers from afar and pit his enemies against each other. They came close in the vision, close enough that Loki’s anonymous guidance and Thanos’ lack of Infinity Stones would result in a pitched battle.

But the Avengers don’t yet exist. They hardly know of each other. Nothing more than a list of names—How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?—who cannot function independently, let alone as a team. 

Loki twirls his pen and mentally sorts through the items in his cache. He could start a thousand wars with what he carries on his person. Twirl. He could rule galaxies. Twirl. He could destroy realms. Stop.

The vision indicated that Odin only sent Thor down because he saw Loki and the Tesseract. He obviously cannot allow himself to be seen, but Thor is pledged to Midgard’s defense. He also loves Jane Foster. Would involving the woman work for or against Odin sending him? Trying to understand the old man’s thought process makes Loki’s head throb. 

No, far simpler to stick as near to the vision’s events as he can. Perhaps hint at his own presence in such a way that Heimdall or Odin would recognize it, yet not confirm his anything. Something from his writings, perhaps? An item? A weapon? He’ll think of something.

Loki nods. “Alright, I’ve got it,” he tells the Tesseract. “It’s terribly immoral, but I believe your sister might enjoy it.”

Buried somewhere beneath all he gathered, still exuding massive waves of power, the Mind Stone stirs. 

Hope van Dyne is expecting the head of R&D for a lunch meeting at the office cafeteria.

She is not expecting Captain America.

Nothing ever goes according to plan these days, especially not when super-soldiers get involved. 

Captain America asks before sitting and calls her ma’am with the boy-scout smile and the actual stars and stripes costume, but she looks over his shoulder and sees plain suits with guns at their hips taking control of the cafeteria. The shadow on the roof across the street is probably a sniper. Captain America’s biceps are distracting. Not that distracting. 

“Miss van Dyne—”

“Okay, let me stop you right there.” Hope abandons her salad and puts her elbows on the table. “I have not been in contact with Doctor Pym in almost two years. He has not reached out to me in any way, I have no idea what he’s doing now, and I don’t want anything to do with him or his work. Are we done?”

Captain America nods slowly. “Right. We've actually spoken with your father already, and he's not involved. We’re just covering our bases.”

Hope eyes the SHIELD agents clearing out the employees. “They look pretty covered.”

“It’s just that we got some concerning energy readings in this vicinity.” He looks like a kicked puppy and sounds like he’s reading lines off a script. It’s both adorable and patronizing. “The signature matches a stolen SHIELD weapon that might have been taken using your father’s tech.”

“And you think I stole it? Wow—yes, obviously I would steal something from a military intelligence organization using extremely identifiable means and hide it at my office. How stupid do you think I am?” Hope grabs her purse. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

A clunk and the whirr of machinery behind her precede the most annoying voice in the world. “Whoa, hands in the air, Hope.” 

“Fuck you, Stark.”

Tony Stark opens his faceplate to flash her a smile. “Been a while, huh?”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Not long enough.”

“Cool. So just hand over the Tesseract and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Hope looks up at him—she’s not stupid enough to make a move with all these weapons on her, but she’d love to punch him in the face—and clenches her jaw. “You really think I stole a weapon from SHIELD?”

Tony shrugs, his suit moving with him. A total waste of power. Both him and the suit design. “You’re absolutely heartless and would do anything to get ahead, including ruin your old man—”

“He’s fine.”

“—so, yeah, Ice Queen. I wouldn’t put it past you to steal some alien weapons and a bunch of spies’ sandwiches.”

When the fuck did sandwiches enter the conversation? 

She glares at him, then at Captain America. “You’re all idiots, you know that?”

“Hey, what’s going down there?” a man’s voice buzzes out from Stark’s armor. 

“We’re just chatting with Hope,” Tony says, tone light but his eyes hard. “What’s up, Bruce? Got something for us?”

“We’re, uh. We’re picking up some massive gamma surges in the area.” 

Captain America stands up carefully, his eyes square on Hope even as he activates what she assumes is a comm. “Where?”

“The whole block.” 

A shockwave knocks Hope’s salad right off the table, accompanied by a blue flash and a wave of hot, stinking air.

Her hair flies into her eyes along with a heavy cloud of dust. 

She swears, moves to hide under the table, only for a solid hand to clamp around her arm. 

Hope hardly has to think about it before spinning into the man’s body—wow, way heavier than it should be—and using his own momentum to knock him off his feet. The ground-shaking clang of metal cracking the tiles tells her exactly who she took down.

Surprisingly, she doesn’t get sniped immediately. They're probably as blind as she is.

She coughs and tries to peer through the haze of yellowish dust. Tony’s swearing up a storm at her feet as he struggles to get his suit off its back like an overturned turtle, his arc reactor making a shaky pillar of white light. Captain America’s distinctive Dorito-shaped silhouette cuts a shadow through the fog.

Another light appears, this one blue and moving at chest level.

Many more silhouettes emerge—so many it’s basically a wall of... she hesitates to call the variety of horned and bulbous figures people.  

The one carrying the light is well over seven feet tall, with weird folds on his face and four ram’s horns curling out from his head. He looks at them one by one, wrinkling his nose when he sees the SHIELD agents with their guns up. 

Captain America lowers his shield slightly as the light guy steps forward. 

The light looks like a cube. A glowing cube within another cube. Or, geometrically speaking, a tesseract. Motherfucker. 

The air around it ripples with power, raising the hair on Hope's arms the longer she looks at it.

“Who speaks for this world?” Horns asks. 

Tony actually goes silent, then. Hope glances into his helmet, noting that the lights under his visor flicker strangely. His arc reactor, at least, seems unaffected. 

The SHIELD agents exchange nervous glances. One of them inches forward. “Who’s asking?”

Horns takes one look at the balding, plain-faced agent and lifts the glowing blue Tesseract over his head.

He howls, “Your death!”

The aliens behind him roar as well, shaking her bones with the strength of their calls.

A spear launches from the crowd and slams into the agent’s chest. 

The other agents open fire at the wave of screaming aliens charging them down. It does nothing. Hope gets the hell out of the way and scrambles under a table.

A flare of white heat and Tony's on his feet again, grappling with a massive bug-like alien in spiked armor.

Hope spots the first dead agent between blurring alien legs. The spear sticks out the other side of his chest in a gory mess, blood smearing under everyone's feet as they fight around him. Tony yells as his alien gets the upper hand and busts one of his knee hydraulics with a hit from his silver staff, sending Tony to the ground. Fuck. She can't stay here. She's going to die.

Something knocks against her shitty shelter. She really can't stay here.

Captain America decapitates an alien with his shield and Hope figures that’s her cue to make nice with Tony.

Hope grabs a solid steel barstools on her way out from under the table and swings at the alien with all her strength. The impact jars her entire body and she almost drops the heavy stool.

The alien stumbles back far enough that two black arrows fly out of the haze and plant themselves in its head. She really doesn't have the bandwidth to wonder where the fuck those came from. It screeches, pawing at the arrows and falling over onto its back, and Hope yells as she raises the stool high above her head and brings it down with the seat on the alien's throat. Something crunches and gives. It releases a hissing gurgle as it sways, then falls over, dead.

No time to freak out over what she just did, she leaves the stool planted in the alien's throat and turns to Tony, who hasn't gotten up yet. His face is still exposed, ashen, eyes locked on the dead agent right next to him. Blood sticks to the gold of Tony's armor.

“Coulson,” he chokes out. And fuck, this isn’t the time for shock or whatever hellscape of PTSD Tony has cooking in his brain after all the shit she read about him.

She grabs his face. “Tony, I need you to—”

There’s another alien right in front of her, insectoid and poised to slice her head off with his massive sword. 

Hope dodges the swing and scrambles for the nearest weapon. Any weapon. Her hand hits her salad fork and she has time to think good enough before pouncing on her alien attacker. It swings wide, clearly unused to the weapon, giving her ample time to slip within its guard and leap into its face. Her leg hooks around its shoulder, the other foot—bare, she realizes, having lost her high heels in the confusion—clings to the chunky armor at its hip. It’s stronger than any sparring partner she’s ever had, but then again, she’s always fought stronger opponents. She stabs her fork in what looks like a cluster of eyes. It feels like eyes. Definitely oozes like eyes. Five stabs in rapid succession. Six. Ten. Something hot scrapes down the outside of her thighs and back.

The alien wails and falls back, holding its face. Hope falls to the ground and lands hard on her hip. She ignores the pain, abandons her fork in favor of the giant golden sword it just dropped. Longer than her arm, her hands too small for the wire-wrapped hilt, she heft it up with surprising ease. 

She doesn't have time to cut the alien down before it gets floored by a blast of white light.

"Hope, you good?" Tony asks. He gets to his feet, face set in the darkest look she's ever seen on him. 

"Oh, yeah," she smiles at her new sword. What looks like Nordic runes are engraved on the blade.

"Great. Cube dude's mine." His mask slams down and lights up, and in a rush of heat he's gone.

The sword is lighter than she expected. Sharper, too, since it cuts through another alien without her really meaning to. Her blood sings with the fight, an exultant laugh bubbling from her lips.

Most of the aliens broke through the wall of windows and pour out into the street, going straight through the wall of agents trying to stop them. Some competent-looking agents in black spandex leap after Tony and into the core of the alien army. One of them has a goddamn quiver and bow. 

That leaves her and Captain America with the stragglers.

The second alien left shallow gouges on her legs and back when it tried to claw her off, blood oozing down her sides, but her blood runs so hot that she can ignore it. She’s on her third alien in as many minutes by the time the Captain slams a rock-creature down and calls for her to finish it off.

Panting and covered in blood, both hers and the aliens' she can't help but snark, “Still think I stole your weapon?”

Captain America, also covered in blood but less winded, smiles.

Not the poster boy smile he gave her earlier. A scrappy, devil-may-care smirk that makes her want to fight him just to see what he’s capable of.

“You’re on the team," he says, then yanks his shield out of an alien's flesh and turns to face another.

She didn't even know there was a team. If it involves fighting alien invasions, though, she's totally in. Hope follows Captain America with a smile.

Thor approaches Heimdall with caution, considering how he destroyed the observatory and forced Heimdall to spend his time in Asgard proper instead of his station. He finds the Watcher standing at one of the palace’s balconies with Hofund clenched tight.

“My prince,” Heimdall says blandly. He wears his full armor and helmet.

“Heimdall. It is good to see you.” Thor tries to be as warm as he can, slouching onto the railing next to him. The balcony has a perfect view of the Asgardian sunset and the ruined bridge. “Father is furious.”

At Heimdall’s raised eyebrow, Thor winces. “Not with you specifically, but in general. This year has been cruel to us all.”

“He has every right to his anger. And to his worry.”

“Yes, but it is difficult to be in his presence at the moment.” Thor looks down at his hands. He himself avoided his friends after meeting with his father, the agitation rubbing off on him. He plays with his nails and attempts nonchalance. “Have you seen anything?”

Heimdall blinks slowly, statuesque as ever. “I see most things,” his lips twitch, “but not our thief, however unsubtle they are.”

Thor straightens. “What does that mean?”

“I have located four of the artefacts from the Weapons Vault. The Warlock’s Eye is on Vanaheim, the Tablet of Life and Time on Xandar, the Tuning Fork on Midgard, and the Casket of Ancient Winters returned to Jotunheim.” His words clip short, as he always does, leaving Thor to wonder what exactly he leaves out and why.

“Tell me.” Thor’s hand aches for Mjolnir.

Heimdall sighs and adjusts his grip on Hofund. His golden eyes turn to Thor. “Vanaheim has divided in civil war. Scholars on Xandar are already attempting to decode the Tablet; it is only a matter of time before someone attempts to use it and brings damnation upon the planet. The Tuning Fork has fallen into the hands of a troubled young man by the name of Victor von Doom, and I sense yet more danger coming to Midgard.”

More danger. He closes his eyes. There’s always more danger.

Ever since he lost his brother, a sense of helplessness sits at his bones. The gnawing void tells him he failed so miserably as an older brother that he drove Loki to his death, and his incompetence as a protector will only bring ruin to the rest of what he loves. He cannot escape it. No matter how hard he fights, how far he buries himself in paperwork and preparing for the throne, it never leaves him. 

He needs to be out there. He needs to be protecting the innocent. Thanks to him, the only way off Asgard is through the flow of dark magic, an arduous task that would fling Father back into Odinsleep and make Heimdall ill. His throat almost closes, yet he finds the strength to croak out, “And what of Jotunheim?”

“The jötnar are using the Casket to repair the damage done by the Bifrost,” Heimdall says simply.

Thor stares. “Truly?”

“Truly. King Helblindi is a fine ruler.”

Thor nods firmly. “At least that’s one matter resolved.”

“For now.”

It's all Thor can do not to sigh. “Heimdall, I say this not as your prince but as your friend: you need to lighten up.”

He thinks he sees Heimdall smirk.

A companionable silence settles over them. Thor used to hate it. He used to want noise, conversation, or at the very least a good spar, but recent months have taught him he missed much by doing so. 

He also found himself less inclined to indulge in happiness. 

What kind of king could he be? He destroyed the Bifrost, stranding the protectors of the Nine on their home while the rest of the realms fall to chaos. He disappointed his father. He failed his own brother, leaving him alone when he discovered his true origin as one of the so-called monsters that Thor vowed to slaughter.

Not as monstrous as they appeared. Thor knew this from the moment Mother told him why Loki fell apart—the jötnar couldn’t possibly be evil if his brother was one.

“I see the irony.” He rubs at his beard. “The one race we always condemned as beasts being the ones to hold it together.”

Heimdall lowers his eyes. “Perhaps. If the thief’s pattern holds true, I expect to see more chaos and destruction across the cosmos.”

“You think they purposefully put the weapons where they would cause trouble?”

“It seems unlikely that this is random, and I can find no other reasoning behind their placement. The thief is powerful indeed to travel across realms and planets so swiftly, out of my sight, and never leave a trace.”

Thor exhales slowly. An enemy. He can understand an enemy—an individual that he can strike and destroy to protect innocent lives—it shakes away part of the helpless feeling with a sense of direction. He twists his fingers together rather than summon Mjolnir. 

Even with the Bifrost, he wouldn’t be able to meet the thief head-on. Not even Heimdall knows their location. “What could give a person that sort of power?”

“Many paths exist through the cosmos, some even I am not aware of.” Heimdall’s brow furrows. “Although there is one...”

His hands strangle Hofund’s hilt and his face goes slack with shock. Thor straightens. “Heimdall? What are you seeing?”

“Marauders.”

“Aye, what have they—”

“They have the Tesseract,” Heimdall says. “Their army holds a number of weapons from our vaults, and they march on Midgard.”

Thor’s breath catches, and without thinking of it, Mjolnir flies from his chamber window, out over the towers of Asgard’s palace and into his hand. Lightning flashes over the Eternal Sea. “You think the thief leads the charge?” 

“The Tesseract would account for their speed and ability to hide themselves from me.” Heimdall purses his lips, his eyes flick to the side, tracking something only he can see. “Your father will not approve sending you, and I only have the strength to send you alone.”

The decision is made before Heimdall finishes speaking. Thor summons his armor with a crack of thunder, red cape flowing down behind him. Those who threaten the security of Asgard and her realms will meet his wrath, and through it, their end. 

“You have aided me without Father’s knowledge or permission in the past.”

“Yes. It ended poorly for all.” 

Chapter Text

Swathed in the scarce shadows of Nidavellir, Loki watches King Eitri walk among his people. Steam and fire rise among the massive sweat-covered bodies. Eitri knocks shoulders with his smiths as he passes, hurling friendly jibes and criticisms at their creations, none of them bothering to peek at what their ruler carries.  They fail to notice his sudden change in eye color as well.

Loki takes another bite out of his sandwich. Some sort of fish, ground and drenched in flavorless sauce as seems the mortals' preferred method of food preparation. Are the mortals so weak as to be incapable of chewing their own food? He takes another bite. Doubtful. Worth investigating, though.

Eitri takes his time returning to the worktable. He never looks towards Loki's hiding place—hasn't seen his face or recognized his voice, as per Loki's command—as he puts down a crate of freshly forged Uru parts and begins arranging them according to Loki's designs. The overall shape is already complete: a box, inspired in both form and function by the Casket of Ancient Winters. Not a gauntlet or a weapon, but a safe. 

The universe flinches.

Tinged with Heimdall's familiar signature, the swell of dark magic whispers across the universe. Loki lets out a breath. The dwarves don't seem to have noticed, but Eitri glances at Loki's feet.

Whatever relief he has over the success of his plan, the slight difference disconcerts him. Odin was meant to be the one sending Thor to Midgard. Loki had no hand in this particular alteration, but something changed. Was it simply because Thor couldn’t convince his father without Loki’s presence? Perhaps he could put it down as a result of his plundering the Vaults. 

Either way, he wonders at the flow of events, how he can alter so much in so little time. He wonders if this will plunge the galaxies into chaos. He hopes it does.

Kalxor once had small dreams. Petty ambitions of thieving and raiding magnificent empires where even the Ravagers dared not travel. That purpose is over, and it only brought him to his new master. 
His master, who showed him the real potential in his armada of Marauders. 

“Kings,” his master’s voice cuts through the blue fog, “of your own realm. You’ve earned it, haven’t you? All your long years of toil, hiding and running, thieving from the shadows. But you could be more. And I can help.”

Kalxor believes him. His master knows everything. 

Blue, then white, then green. A tiny planet in the darkness. Tiny people on the planet. They bleed red. Terra. Midgard. Earth.

Some small voice beneath Kalxor’s consciousness quails. What of Asgard? The Watcher? The Thunderer?

His master’s pale hand curls over Kalxor’s shoulder. “Trapped. Helpless. They can only watch as you take what you want and burn the rest. You have an army. Loyal to the end and determined to follow you to greatness. You can cut down all who stand against you.”

His master, fleeting and shadowy as ever, slides away to toy with a piece of glass. Before Kalxor’s very eyes, it expands, transforms into a perfect cube. In his other hand, his master holds the cube’s twin, lit from the inside as though holding a star. He taps them together with a chime, and the starlight fills the darkened cube. The air vibrates with power. The blue light—always blue, why blue?—softens the sharp panes of his master’s face. His lips hardly move as he says, “And with this, not even Asgard could stop you.”

He holds the newly-lit block out to Kalxor.

“This is the Tesseract. The Space Stone.” Kalxor holds his breath as his master deposits the priceless gem in his hands. “Use her well.”

Kalxor vows to. He summons all the Marauders together, hundreds of them in their ships, and he calls them to arms. With his master and his glowing spear in the shadows, they listen to all he has to say.

He nearly drops the Kurse Stone he’s examining—which would be a disaster seeing as he is surrounded by hibernating Dark Elves. 

Loki clenches the stone in his fist and stares at the slumbering bodies of the two Dark Elves he most despises, although he doesn’t technically have reason to yet. For all their tedium, the visions left out quite a bit of detail, such as what allowed Malekith’s mastery of the Aether.

( The noble armies of Asgard, led by my father King Bor, waged a mighty war against these creatures. )

Knowing what he does now, Loki wonders how much of what Odin told him is truth. Did Bor have an executioner of his own as Odin did Hela? They shape the past to their liking, casting aside all that does not suit their current fancy. It hardly matters in the long run, only serving to remind him of how much he hates Asgard and Odin. Perhaps Malekith was right to try and destroy the universe—after all, it seems as though that is what Bor did to the Dark Elves. 

Loki rummages around their ancient computers, his Allspeak failing him so severely that he waves off the spell and muddles his way through the system on half-forgotten lessons and deductions. At least he fares better than Thor.

( I said 'how hard could it be.' )

That entire invasion was a mess, but one of the more vivid sequences from the vision. 

Loki gives up on finding Malekith’s secrets. He wouldn’t understand them anyway. Hopefully Laevateinn will be up to the task on her own. 

While he’s here, he might as well put his foreknowledge to use before it expires completely thanks to all the changes he's made. He puts the Kurse Stone down so he can brace himself against the monitors, his hand resting next to a sleeping Elf’s face. Visions of the vision—ha!—flow freely now.

( You might want to take the stairs to your left. )

He told the Kurse where to find the shield generators. He let the Dark Elves in.

( Frigga strides, powerful, with a dagger in hand. Stand down, creature, and you may still survive this. )

Loki flinches as the scene plays out. Seeing Frigga’s death again and again, watching Kurse stab her in the back while he sits unaware in his cell, ranks highly among the worst moments the Waters forced him through. He never got used to it, not like he grew accustomed to his own death.

For all her lies, he did love her. Does love her. 

He won’t let it happen again. He can save her. Now, how should he go about it? There are so many ways to try, so much he can do with the time he has and his enemies sleeping helplessly around him. He tries to relax and let the stream continue, picking through it for relevant details.

( When Malekith pulls the Aether from Jane, it will be exposed, vulnerable, and I will destroy it and him. )

Not relevant. Thor and his damned ego. It would be impressive if Loki hadn’t spent much of his life trying to keep it from killing them both. He failed in the vision. 

Thor’s immediate response to anything is to smash it with Mjolnir—honestly, its destruction might be the best thing for Thor—and Loki despises the thought of following his brother’s mode of operation. 

Then again—

( Malekith stares in horror and fury of what has become of his home. I will restore our world. And I will put an end to this poisoned universe. )

Malekith would not be stopped by anything less than death.

( See you in Hel, monster. )

The black hole grenades would work. He could activate all of them at once with the Tesseract and leave the ship to devour itself. Or he could simply set a course for the nearest star and allow their vessel to do the job for him.

Loki trails back to Algrim. 

The worst—but most useful—part of the visions is how they show him scenes from his enemies’ lives. Algrim’s handsome face and white hair clash with the horrific creature that killed Frigga and enabled Loki’s false death. 

He still has no idea if the vision-him actually got stabbed. It won’t matter soon enough.

Or perhaps it will.

Loki leans in close to Algrim’s face.

( Our survival will be your legacy, Algrim says, so full of hope for a villain. )

Malekith had been the one to want revenge. The only one. He dragged his people to their deaths and they followed out of loyalty. 

Now there’s an idea. 

Loki returns to the computer and locates the escape pods.

Malekith is the one with the connection to the Aether. He woke up first. How betrayed will the other Elves feel when they find the leader that they sacrificed their entire planet for has abandoned them? How far can Loki push that hate with the scepter?

Malekith is marked for death. Loki will ensure he does not receive it until he knows what it is to be hunted and hated by his own people, by the people who should have loved him. 

Loki summons the scepter to one hand and the Tesseract to the other. 

Thor expected a raiding party or ten, not an entire army infesting the streets of the unprepared Midgardian city, many of them wielding weapons from Asgard's vaults. The Berserker staffs concern him in particular—he thinks one of the Marauders actually broke his rib thanks to the enhanced strength the staffs offer.

He breaks his way through the fighters, attempting to make his way to the center of the fray. To the thief. He spotted the Tesseract's wielder from above, but failed to get close enough before the spearmen tried taking him down.

“Oh, hey!” The flying metal man speeds over and stops near where Thor fights. “You’re that guy from New Mexico, right? Yeah, Fury told us about you. Guys, Thor’s here! You on our side?”

Thor bats away a Sakaarian raider with Mjolnir, sending the armored Marauder into a building. “Aye. The Marauders are well known as thieves and brigands throughout the realms.”

“Sweet.” A beam of fire shoots from the metal man’s hand and destroys one of the Marauder’s skiffs. “Alright, you’re the expert—what can you tell us about these guys?”

“They—” A familiar screech cuts him off. The flying man whips his head around to find the source.

It's a difficult thing to miss; the creature occupies the entire space between two buildings and seems to require more room than that to move.

Thor has no idea how a mortal managed to survive using the Tuning Fork, let alone summon the Lurking Unknown to Midgard. But it is, unfortunately, here. Quite unknown before he identifies it and not lurking so much as raging down the street with its many amorphous hands reaching for more victims.

“—are not the most pressing threat. The Lurking Unknown is.”

"I'm sorry," the flying man’s mask lifts, revealing a mortal with a short black beard, "did you just say Lurking Unknown ?" He squints at the creature. "That is not lurking. Or unknown."

"The Lurker is an extra-dimensional entity that feeds off fear. The only way to defeat it is by not fearing it, otherwise it will absorb your terror and grow stronger."

The Lurker flings a vehicle into a building, where it explodes in a plume of flame. The creature grows several feet. 

"Oh, wow, you mean that literally," the flying man says.

It throws its head back and unleashes an unholy shriek powerful enough to shake the ground.

"Odin used to summon it against us as trainees." Thor pauses to call down a lightning bolt and shatter a Kronan attacker. "There's a trick to it."

The flying man repeats his words, presumably through a communication device of some sort to his team. Thor starts slightly when a different voice comes from the flying man’s armor.

"Thor, get over there and take care of it before it kills someone. Iron Man, you're on damage control," the stranger commands.

“That’s Captain America. He’s good at the whole leadership and strategy thing, apparently,” the flying man says. “I’m Iron Man, in case you didn’t know.”

“Well met, Man of Iron.”

“No, that’s—”

“Worry not. I have bested this creature many times before, and I shall do so once again.” Or, he would, except a muscled green ogre flies off the ground and slams into the Unknown, all but toppling it. Its shoulder carves a divot in a building, prompting more screams from the mortals below as debris falls around them. The Lurker grows again.

"Be warned that I have never fought the Lurker with a frightened audience." Thor eyes the crowd of humans feeding the creature. "This may take some time."

Faced with the Aether, largely dormant as she is, Loki follows the same impulse as the mortals and tosses pebbles in the air to see what happens. Some float in place, others shoot back at him. A couple fall down normally. The Aether roils furiously in her prison within the pillar.

( I want to throw something, the little Midgardian woman says. Jane, give me your shoe. )

The cave is a good hiding spot. Loki can't fault Bor's decision on that. Were it not for divine acts beyond the knowledge of any physical being, the Aether may have remained hidden for millenia more. The lie may have been as good as truth.

Still, five thousand years is good work.

( Malekith was vanquished and the Aether was no more, or so we were led to believe. )

Odin’s rage at the Dark Elves, his drive to destroy them, was fascinating to watch, especially once Hela gave the appropriate context. Liars never like being lied to. Loki should know. 

The Mind Stone's last remaining tether fizzles and snaps as Kalxor dies, his last words echoing down their distant line, full of betrayal and disbelief. My lord?

Loki munches on a vegetable sandwich—the worst of the lot—and considers his next move. The gleaming Casket, fresh from Eitri's forge, sits in the black ash before him. The Tesseract and scepter lie on either side, illuminating the cave along with their third sister in a roiling multicolored show. The only other source of light is the sickly yellow glow streaming from the hole Loki blasted in the cave wall. The Casket's grey surface resembles Mjolnir, the runes covering every inch of its surface gleaming with golden Uru.

He spits an olive that barely tastes of olive at the Aether. 

She catches the organic material far sooner than she did the pebbles, turning it over in the air. Slowly. Pensively. 

She vaporizes it in a sizzle of red light.

"Are you trying to intimidate me?" Loki asks the Aether.

No answer. Unsurprising.

He looks down toward his right knee where the Tesseract lies. "Is she trying to intimidate me?"

Space holds her silence as well.

He crumples the paper wrapper and tosses it to its swift destruction in the Aether, glad that the disgusting thing is out of his sight. Perhaps he ought to try another one of the meat ones next. The preservation spell he cast on them might actually improve the flavor, if not the texture.

"Very well, consider me intimidated. Shall we get on with this?" He wipes his hands on his trousers. Frigga would be horrified.

He ought to test the Casket on one of the less dangerous Stones before sticking her right into the Aether. He designed the runes to attract and entangle powerful magic, venting excess energy into the barrier spell which keeps the energy from radiating out, a tight cycle designed to waste as much magic as possible. 

He pauses between his two options. Mind or Space? Tesseract or scepter? 

( You question him? He, who put the Scepter in your hand—)

It's hardly a choice.

The scepter's blue crystal breaks with a wave of his hand and a lazy telekinetic spell, releasing a surge of yellow. The freed Mind Stone immediately digs into his thoughts through barbs he hadn't even realized were there. 

Take it, she whispers. Take it all. You know better than anyone. The kingdoms should be yours, just take them.  

Not creative and certainly not appealing given what he saw in Urðarbrunnr. A throne seems like a dangerous place to be for the next decade or so.

Then, Loki does something stupid. He's distantly aware of that, but it doesn't occur to him to stop.

He picks her up, just to see if he can.

His seiðr unspools to protect him, coating his skin and warding against her overwhelming incursion. The Mind Stone blisters his fingers where he holds her, smoke rising from his flesh, but he waits a few seconds and is not incinerated so that's a win.

The Casket tugs her from his fingers before it goes further. The Stone flits from his grip and into the designated slot atop the Casket, vanishing into the machinery. Her power filters through the elaborate spells, sliding smoothly into the closed magical loop. Mind's voice silences abruptly. 

When he settles a hand around one of the Casket's handles, Mind's call returns as a subdued presence, quite like the Tesseract's. He gently extricates her influence from his mind.

"Hello, there," he purrs. He didn't let Mind close while she was in the scepter, but now that she's free he can get a read on her personality. Her bright spirit scalds like a candle flame when he gets too close. But he understands her. She knows what he wants and won't let him falter, even if it means his death. If he didn't know better, he might call her a brat.

A sting of magic, nowhere near what she'd given at his touch, lances through him. She also dislikes being insulted, even in the privacy of his thoughts.

Loki snorts. "Had I known the Stones were so easily offended, I'd have left you all where you were. Picking you up like that could have easily killed me."

You wished to know. I merely offered, she says.

His first instinct is to accept it, but the Stones are quite different from what he thought them to be. He might mistake the nudges and suggestions for his own thoughts were he not already so preoccupied with the sway they inflict on him.

( Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart, he presses the scepter to the agent's chest, you will know peace. )

That hardly sounds like him. Subjugating and mocking humans and their cattle-like behaviors, yes, he's thought it before, but many of his vision-self's lines rang false. They sound like what Thanos' minions say. He has no idea what Thanos would have done to him. What the Other did to rattle him so. He has theories, though.

He wonders if his vision-self was changed so by the Mind Stone. 

Urðarbrunnr tormented him, tortured him, but at least he remains himself. Mostly. 

He’ll have to keep an eye on the Stones. Mind in particular. He’s not clear on where she went after SHIELD took her, or where Thanos got a hold of her. The vision got hazy and disjointed after his death, most of the snippets being absolute nonsense with no connection to each other. 

The Mind Stone seems pleased by his newfound caution.

Turning his attention to the Aether, he quells the doubt rising at the back of his thoughts. They are all equally dangerous and always have been. The Mind Stone simply reminded him of that. 

The Reality Stone burbles as Loki steps nearer. He lifts the Casket it touches the edge of the pillar.

The Aether reaches back, a single finger-like tendril poking back at his blade. Friendly enough. At least she stopped the furious smoking thing she did when he first entered the cave.

He parts the magic keeping her contained with a cautious nudge. Hardly more than a prick. 

It bursts like a bubble and she streaks past the Casket—right for Loki's face. 

( It's more of a... an angry sludge sort of thing. )

For once in his life, Thor managed a more accurate description of a magical entity than Loki.

His seiðr slams a shield up, casting him to the ground in an effort to put some distance between himself and the threat. He lands flat on his back, gaping like a fish. Above him, the Aether rages in a thundercloud of red, barely kept at bay by the strongest shield he's ever cast. 

Loki has enough time to throw his hands over his head before the Aether dissolves the shield and dives into him.

Skuld’s tits, he hopes this doesn't kill him. That would be stupid.

He registers little. Only a surge of magic so great it nearly takes off his head, slipping between realities a smidge more than usual, and the echoes of something he dares not think of. And the floating. He floats like Jane did.

The floating would be fun if it weren't for his seiðr and the Aether having a small war beneath his skin. They tear at his muscles and veins, breaking everything in their way without thought or care to their poor host. His eyes are open, but seeing different, mind-breaking layers of existence and therefore unable to appreciate the spectacular lightshow that must be happening on his body.

The Aether burns through his flesh in a fury of hot needles, then goes deeper to tangle with his very being. The wrenching agony blinds him, paralyzing the breath in his lungs, and then twists deeper.

His bones peel off their marrow, stabbing up through his skin. Blood boils in his veins. Every nerve slides down and away from each other, blossoming outwards likes vines. His face slides off his skull.

The ordeal lasts less than five seconds. It feels like a lifetime. He’s making a bad habit of encountering forces that do that.

Something shatters nearby, muffled by the chaos of the Aether and his seiðr duelling in his body, before a wash of cool magic smothers it all.

Loki hits the ground.

Hard.

With a crunch.

He can’t breathe for a solid thirteen seconds, his ribs taking that long to push back into shape and begin mending themselves. He’s sure his skull goes through the same process.

Blinking spots from his eyes, he takes a few seconds to recalibrate. His fingers curl in the dirt. All ten accounted for. He shifts his legs, and lifts himself off the ground enough to see that yes, he still has them.

His seiðr pulses sharply, not weakened so much as wracked with deep injuries. He curls it delicately within his chest and leaves it to heal. 

His face feels intact when he grimaces at the bone-deep ache saturating his body. Excellent. He likes his face. It’s a good face.

Bright shards of something glint among the black. They shimmer, multicolored, by the Infinity Stones’ light.

Loki lifts his gaze to the source.

The Casket thunks to the ash-covered ground, clicking softly as the Stones settle within.

The shards littering the cave floor bear a familiar gleam, having been touching the crystal for days now. The Tesseract. The Space Stone broke her own vessel.

“Did you just,” Loki can’t help but stare, “save me?”

If Stones could wink, that’s what she does.

The Avengers get shawarma once all the Marauders are dead or captured. It isn’t a celebratory meal, it’s a necessity.

Hope washes the blood off her hands and prays she doesn't get a weird alien disease.

None of them speak once they place their order—”Just give us one of everything,” Tony says after slapping his credit card on the damaged counter—and eat in silence. 

Well, some of them eat. 

Captain America drifts off once he’s taken a few bites, Hawkeye and Black Widow are practically cuddling, and Tony has a concerning thousand-yard stare going on.

Seeing as they deprived her of lunch and forced her into a three-hour cardio workout, Hope has grease and yogurt sauce all over her fingers within moments. She isn’t ashamed. Not when the not-hostile and weirdly attractive alien called Thor is chowing down on his fourth wrap with a piece of lettuce in his beard. The deflated and partially dressed Hulk—Bruce Banner, she reminds herself—has the decency to keep his head down as he methodically puts food away.

Once Hope calms down enough to taste it, she has to admit it’s pretty good. Not good enough to distract her from the hastily bandaged claw marks all over her body or the gross feeling of blood in her borrowed sneakers, but still good.

Thor has a two-pronged fork thing and the Tesseract on the table next to his plate, and that strikes her as a bad idea.

“Hey,” she says, then remembers she still has food in her mouth and holds up a finger while she finishes chewing. She swallows. “Is that the weapon you guys tried to arrest me for stealing?”

Captain America snaps out of his daze and blinks hard at the Tesseract. “Uh,” he turns to squint at Doctor Banner, “yes?”

Banner shakes his head, mouth full.

“It is but a convincing facsimile,” Thor says, apparently not caring that they all see what he’s chewing. “True enough to fool even Heimdall the All-Seeing. However, it has none of the Tesseract's capabilities, though it may have in the past." He swallows, thank god. "I have no doubt that whoever sent the Marauders here is in possession of the real Tesseract."

"Someone sent them?" Banner asks, turning to each of the Avengers in turn to see if any of them are surprised by the revelation. Captain America shrugs, eyes closed.

Honestly, Hope's still caught on 'Heimdall the All-Seeing'.

Thor nods grimly. "Aye. The vaults of Asgard were plundered not a day ago, emptied of some of the most dangerous weapons known to the Nine Realms, such as the Tuning Fork. The Watcher suspects that the thief used the Tesseract, then used it again to place those weapons in locations where they might cause chaos and death."

That's bad. Hope glances at the Tuning Fork. It doesn't look like a dangerous weapon. Then again, she was knee-deep in alien guts on the other side of Manhattan with Black Widow when it was active. 

All she saw was a traumatized university student with a stupid name on the phone with his lawyer.

"Cube's been on Earth for centuries, though," Hawkeye says. "You think this guy's human?"

Black Widow hums and shakes her head. "Timeline doesn't fit. We've barely made it to the moon and back, a human wouldn't be able to case and rob an off-world royal vault in less than a day, let alone know about enough planets to scatter the goods. Has to be another alien. They might have been here for years before grabbing the cube."

Hope doesn't much like the thought of that. Except, now that she's seen the kind of aliens there are, such as the disconcertingly humanoid one pouting at the table with them, it might be possible.

"I am uncertain." Thor slouches a little, which looks wrong with his massive shoulders. "All I truly believe is the thief, whoever they are, planned this well. The Bifrost Bridge my people use to travel between worlds is broken, leaving us stranded. I came out of hope that I could find the thief and make use of the Tesseract to restore the Bifrost. As you can see, it was for naught. Now, I have no way to return."

That was dumb. Hope won't say anything out loud, but way to put all his eggs in one basket.

Tony comes back to himself at the sound of someone even more miserable than he is. His smile looks fake and painful. "It's cool, man. You can stay with me."

Stark, no. Don't invite the weird alien into your home. 

"I couldn't impose."

"It's not an imposition. Bruce is gonna crash at my place, too, so I'm gonna be on the lookout for government abductions anyway."

Hope sincerely questions anyone who thinks Tony is a genius. The man's an idiot. 

"I'm what?" Banner's eyes are wide.

Tony leans back and folds his hands behind his head. "Where're you gonna go? SHIELD already knows where you are all the time so there's no reason to keep running. I'm rich as fuck. I've got room."

"I'm—are you sure?" Banner looks to Hope for guidance for some reason. He doesn't look away, so she just shrugs and shakes her head. 

"Yeah. One of those ship things crashed into the tower, so it's due for a remodel. Actually everyone's invited. I'll make you a floor each." Tony grins. God, he couldn't be more obvious if he were begging on his knees for some friends.

Captain America sighs. Hope didn't understand Tony's incessant old man comments until now. "That's very generous of you, Tony."

"I know. I'm awesome." Tony points at Hope. "Wasp, you in?"

Her blood freezes. 

Something must show on her face, because the rest of the team also freezes. Except for Tony, obviously.

"What? You shouldn't be the odd one out. It was your mom's codename, right? Or do you want your dad's? I mean, Ant-Woman's little clunky, but you could make it work."

"Tony." Captain America says, putting a hand up. "Enough."

Hope licks her lips. Her makeup is a total mess, and her ponytail came undone somewhere between leaving the Pym Industries cafeteria and dragging an injured SHIELD agent down two streets. Her pantsuit is covered in soot and alien blood and ripped in places. A sword—apparently a war relic stolen from Asgard—sits beside her chair.

She's never felt closer to her mother. 

"It's okay," she says. "Wasp works."

The team, now that the important matters are settled, lapse back into silence. Hope closes her eyes and puts a hand on her sword.

Loki trots through the broken streets of Manhattan, avoiding the drifts of dead Marauders and glass on his way. Sirens wail in the distance as night approaches. Stray mortals clump together in corners and doorways, reeking of fear and exhaustion and entirely oblivious to his role in their horror. They don't even glance his way. And why would they? After all, he's only a cat. The thought rolls his chest up in a feline chuckle.

He sculpted his form carefully; not too large, nor too small, with elegant limbs and short black fur. He's a handsome cat—Flerken, actually, but the aesthetics are the same—and it's only a shame none can properly appreciate the work he put into it. Nor can anyone appreciate the sheer impossibility of what he's done to himself, save perhaps Goose. 

Shapeshifting is a nasty business, more likely to drive the user to madness and trap them in an alien form when their minds inevitably adapt to their physical form. Loki can stretch himself further than the average sorcerer, and even then he hesitates to remain in a beastly form for more than a few hours. 

That was before he had control over Reality, Space, and Mind. 

The Casket does its job, the Infinity Stones' calls muffled and their power well-insulated within his own so Loki hardly feels them within his pocket universe. He definitely feels the active portal in his mouth, however. It twists like a second tongue, not painful, but certainly unusual. Goose hadn't warned him of that, though he can't blame her as she knows little of shapeshifting and comparative anatomy. He'll have to go back and tell her about this later, just to have someone know.

Three Infinity Stones sitting hidden in his belly, a fourth within reach, and knowledge of where the last two will be—and no-one even knows who he is. So far, so good.

A fly meanders towards his ear and he shakes his head violently. Gross. The rotting alien corpses he's already seen number in the low hundreds, and the mortals seem ill-equipped for the cleanup, so it will only get worse from here. Loki stalls when he turns a street and finds it empty. No bodies, no wreckage. Not even a broken window. He speeds up and passes several more streets, finding at least four of them similarly untouched. The carnage resumes after that, but that single clear radius piques his interest.

Loki sent over a thousand Marauders. 

He obviously whittled them down from the original force of four thousand by losing several groups in the 'Tesseract' portals, dropping them on other worlds or in the void of space, or simply leaving them behind with the Mind Stone suggesting their leader had a false Tesseract. 

So where are the bodies?

He gets the feeling he already knows.

Loki's already silent footsteps lighten as he doubles back towards the center of the disturbingly clean area. A little ping of satisfaction curls his tail when he sees the address: 177A Bleecker Street. 

( Destiny has dire plans for you, my friend. )

The mortal magician that trapped vision-Loki in a portal loop lives here. Most importantly, so does the gaudy amulet he wore so casually.

Don't fret, Time. Loki contemplates the tall black door. You'll soon reunite with your sisters.

A shudder runs through the fabric of this dimension—which, as a Flerken, takes hair-raising to a new level—and reality fractures before folding in on itself and spitting out three figures in complex uniforms. Two wear olive and brown tones, the palest among them sports bright yellow and orange robes. Their style seems similar to Strange's. Members of the same order, perhaps?

The pale, bald one twists her wrist and the shattered-glass portal behind them pours out a flailing mass of several dozen Marauders straight into a second portal of hot orange sparks. So that's what happened to the rest of the Marauders. Loki observes the waterfall of armor and flesh with something akin to trepidation. The kind of feeling he gets when he reads the table of contents on a new book. Distracted by the show, Loki almost misses one of the robed figures approaching him.

"Hello there," the magician says softly. Loki turns and blinks up.

The magician's brown skin hosts a spray of pale scars, streaked with sweat and Sakaaran blood, but his face gentles into a fond smile as he crouches slowly with a hand outstretched. Loki stares at the hand—clearly aimed at his face—and back at the magician. The third figure, a bald man with darker skin than the one attempting to coax a reaction from Loki, has ignored them all and gone straight to 177A Bleecker Street's door. The pale one finishes disposing of the Marauder bodies and heals the fracture in space with an exaggerated arm motion. This is as good an opening as he's going to get.

Loki shelves his dignity and sniffs the magician's fingers. 

They reek of magic, old books, metal, and blood. Achingly similar to Asgard, but completely different in every way that matters. Eldritch magic rather than seiðr, paper and amate instead of vellum, not Uru but iron, and mortal blood in the place of beasts and monsters. It's close enough to activate some instinct inherent in this skin. He butts his head up against the magician's warm hand. Fingers rub over his cheek and behind his ears, sending shivers down his spine and triggering a rumble in his chest. Purring. He's purring.

This is the first time someone's touched him since Thor. The first time someone's touched him in kindness since Frigga. That was eight months ago. He almost forgot what this felt like—the prickle of connection and the wash of warmth over his entire body, settling some animal part of him. What little pride he still has latches onto that. He'd probably purr even in ǫ́ss skin.

"Mordo. What are you doing?" The magician by the door asks, still there despite Loki's expectations.

Mordo stops petting Loki. Loki mrrps and headbutts the magician's wrist, already deciding he'll make the most of this form. That includes being pathetic in exchange for affection. Mordo doesn't look down but does stroke Loki's back, which is an acceptable response. "What? I like cats."

"That's not a—"

"Go on ahead, Daniel," the pale one cuts Daniel off quite rudely, her words too pointed to be anything but a command. Loki meets her bright eyes and oh, she knows something. This will either scrap his plans or make everything so much more entertaining. Daniel obeys immediately and steps into the building, closing the door behind him. The pale one must be a superior of some sort. She folds her hands in front of her and strides over carefully. He can't read her aura as well in this skin, but she has a certain sharpness the others don't have; an extra layer of magic that seethes the stillness of night and voids.

Mordo rubs his thumb over a good spot on Loki's back and he diverts that train of thought with a loud purr.

The pale one contemplates him in silence. The longer she remains statue-still, the tenser Mordo gets, his strokes turning mechanical as he watches the woman for a verdict. 

She smiles, too swift to be real, her eyes hard. "What a beautiful creature."

"He probably belongs to someone," Mordo says uncertainly.

"No, I don't believe he does." The pale one turns suddenly and strolls to the door. "Come along, then."

Mordo sighs and rubs Loki's head roughly, mussing the fur between his ears before standing and hurrying after the pale one. His olive robes disappear into the building. He'll come back, though, if only to ensure the adorable kitty doesn't get hurt or lost in the chaos of a post-invasion city. Eventually, he will bring Loki into the heart of their library, among their artefacts, and he'll take the Time Stone from them. Loki rubs a paw over his ear, smoothing some displaced fur. All in good time. Until then—

The pale one clears her throat loudly. 

She's still standing on the stoop, holding the door open and staring expectantly at him. 

He bats his big green eyes at her.

"Oh, don't give me that," the pale one smirks, "If you were going to eat us, you'd have done so already."

As much as he likes that spark of chaos in her eye, he doesn't trust it. He stretches leisurely, as though he were any other cat and has absolutely no idea what she's saying before he walks past her and into the Sanctum.

He can always eat them if he changes his mind.