Chapter Text
A long time ago, Asgard had cut a fiery path through the stars to forge an empire of blood and thrice-forged steel over the Nine Realms. A necessary evil for the betterment of all…for the greater good, or so the All-Father would have them believe. These were savage realms after all, worlds in need of a guiding hand. Or a fist. It was not to say that they were simpler times, for such workings came with their own complications, but it was easy to know ones place when the call of battle was ever-present.
Now the last Asgardians stood upon a grassy cliff in a distant realm, waterlogged and weary as they watched the place where last they’d seen their King. The last Valkyrie stood among them, her arms folded and brow furrowed as she waited and wondered how it was she had come to this point. A few months ago she had been comfortably carving her living out of the wastes of Sakaar, spending her credit on her ship and her vices. A few lifetimes ago she had ridden into battle with the glory of the Valkyrior, conquering armies in the name of the All-Father. And now…
“Alright,” she declared finally, turning resolutely away from where Thor had vanished through the portal. “Who do I have to fight to get a drink on this planet?”
A number of wide-eyed faces blinked back at her in return, many of the refugees still in shock over all that had happened. The Valkyrior and the Einherjar had faded with the dawn and their passing had shaken many of the survivors even more than their initial appearance. The wizard that Thor had accosted into building his portal had dropped like a stone the moment he released the portal, saved from the mud by his oddly prescient cape, which even now kept him cradled safely above the milling crowd.
Hearing her speak, Hulk came wandering across the field toward her, Asgardians quickly making way so as to not be caught underfoot. “Thor gone?” he asked her sullenly.
Smiling up at him, the Valkyrie reached up to rub his arm consolingly. “He’ll be back. Thank you for moving the Asgardians for me.”
Hulk grunted in acknowledgement, then squinted up at the sky unhappily. “This Earth… Earth hate Hulk.”
“Likely Earth is just jealous of you,” she assured him. Feeling eyes on her, she looked to see the oddly hued man who’d helped the wizard staring at them both. “Well? Aren’t you going to offer us a drink?”
He looked a bit worse for wear himself, but blinked and inclined his head questioningly. “I beg your pardon?” he asked politely.
“This is your planet, isn’t it? The least you could do is offer us a drink,” she told him critically, then looked up at Hulk. “Earth is terribly inhospitable, isn’t it?”
The strange man looked taken aback by this, though Hulk grunted again in agreement with her. “I…that is…” As though remembering himself, he drew himself up and nodded courteously. “Welcome to…Earth. I am called Vision. Mister Stark is currently en route with shelter and supplies, I have kept him abreast of the situation since the portals opened. I have been preparing for some time at Loki’s behest, but I will admit that I was not expecting quite this many survivors.”
“Loki,” she growled under her breath and her fists tightened with the need to exact brutal and immediate punishment upon his person for keeping her in the dark. “And this ‘Mister Stark’ is someone important, I presume?”
“Anthony Stark is a man found wanting in nearly every regard,” Heimdall said grimly as he joined them. “I have no doubt that he will appeal to your nature.”
Glad to have a familiar face at her back, the Valkyrie grinned fiercely up at him. “Sweet-talker, you. Glad to see you survi-“ Her words cut off abruptly as she stared into the startling crimson of his eyes. “What happened?”
“Where is Thor?” Heimdall asked in answer, looking around for him.
“He…left. He’s gone back for Loki.” Her breath caught at the abrupt fury that broke across Heimdall’s normally placid expression and suddenly remembered Loki as he stood in the hangar bay, how his eyes had seemed to glow a golden amber. “Heimdall…”
“I must see to the people,” he said firmly, his face smoothing out again, though anger still lingered in his blood-red eyes. “Now that the King is gone, we must utilize the remaining council to ensure they do not falter.”
Sighing, the Valkyrie felt exhaustion weigh in on her at the thought, wanting nothing more than to curl up with a bottle and pretend that she’d been unaffected to fight alongside her sisters again for a sparse span of minutes. Then she nodded resolutely and rolled her neck and shoulders as though to prepare for another fight.
“Yes, fine. Give me a boost, big guy,” she said and grinned when he lifted her easily, letting her see out across the wide, wet field. Clearing her throat, she took in a deep breath and then began barking orders at the lot of them as though it were another one of their drills.
After only a few moments of hesitation, her damage control team leaders caught on and began echoing her calls across the expanse and everyone began to move, spurred on by weeks of routine maneuvers. In short order the massive horde of Asgard had organized itself into semi-neat clusters so that the leaders could account for them and she perched herself comfortably on Hulk’s wide, green shoulder to wait for their reports. Vision floated up beside her to see it for himself, observing curiously.
“You are their General?” he queried, looking at her.
“She is their Valkyrie,” Heimdall corrected him from where he remained firmly on the ground to watch the proceedings, seemingly calm now.
“I simply have a low tolerance for idiocy,” she said lightly, running idle fingers through Hulk’s short curls.
Vision watched this with an odd expression. “Doctor Banner seems…calm.”
The Valkyrie sighed and glared at Vision as Hulk growled out, “No Banner. Hulk is Hulk!”
“And he can obviously hear you when you speak about him like he isn’t there,” she chided him.
Taken aback, Vision processed this, then inclined his head. “My apologies…Hulk. I admit that I did not realize how far your capacity for speech had come.”
“Hulk not stupid,” he grumbled, folding his arms rather petulantly.
“Of course you aren’t,” the Valkyrie assured him and then leapt off his shoulder nimbly when the first runners started heading her way to make their reports. She and Heimdall listened gravely as they began to get the numbers of the wounded, the missing and the confirmed dead, though she kept at least part of her attention on Hulk.
“Perhaps I could arrange for Natasha to-“ she heard Vision begin and quickly turned round as Hulk roared in defiance.
“That’s enough!” she said sharply and Hulk cast an angry glance her way, but reluctantly lowered his arms from where he’d been reaching for Vision. “Come here.” She held out her hands and Hulk sighed and sat down heavily, the ground trembling slightly.
He set his head in her hands and glowered sulkily. “No Banner.”
“I know it isn’t fair, but I really need Bruce right now,” she told him earnestly and his massive hands fisted in his lap.
“Why no Hulk?” he demanded, clearly hurt.
“Because I want to get Thor back and you’re the only one I know that can turn into a genius. It’s your superpower, big guy…there’s no need to be ashamed of it,” she assured him. “Bruce built the machine that Loki used to get us here, so we need him to get back to the fight.”
Hulk’s brow furrowed as he worked through her reasoning for a long moment, then reluctantly nodded. “Hulk gets to fight?”
“I’m certainly not going into battle with Bruce,” she teased with a grin, patting his cheek.
Grinning fiercely in return, Hulk leaned into the touch, then closed his eyes and began to shrink, body going slack and pale. The Valkyrie held onto him through the change, until she was crouched and could pull Bruce’s head to her shoulder, rubbing his back soothingly as he oriented himself. Pulling her cape free, she wrapped it about him to ward off the chill of the wind rising up over the cliffs.
“Val?” Bruce said dazedly, squinting a little in the bright light of early morning.
“Welcome back,” she smiled at him, threading her fingers through his hair.
“Seducing me on another alien world?” he asked, huffing out in amusement. “Is that our thing?”
“If only,” she sighed helped him to his feet. “I suppose I ought to have said ‘welcome home’ instead.”
“What?” Bruce asked in surprise, then looked around the field, marked with the clear signs of battle and strewn with the bodies of the alien horde. The attack on the Foundation came back to him suddenly with glaring clarity and his breath caught. “The Tesseract… This…this is Earth.”
The Valkyrie squeezed his shoulders briefly before releasing him with a teasing smile. “Top of the class.”
“What happened?” he asked, looking round at her, then a flutter of movement drew his eyes upward to where Vision was watching them both with his unblinking, inhuman stare. Disoriented as he was, it seemed to take Bruce a moment to sort out his memories, but then he smiled. “Vision! You’re…still a good robot, right?”
“Doctor Banner,” Vision greeted him, his impartial voice managing just the barest inflection of relief as he descended down to stand in the grass beside them. “It is good to see you. I assure you that I am still not Ultron. Nor do I have any intention of causing an extinction level event. I must remind you that I am not, however, a robot.”
“Are the others here? Where’s T-“ He was cut off as music suddenly blared to life in the sky above them, making the refugees flinch in alarm. Grinning rather helplessly as he recognized Robert Plant’s howling wail, Bruce looked up and was unsurprised to see a Quinjet shimmer into view. “Never mind.”
“Mister Stark has arrived,” Vision explained for the benefit of Heimdall and the Valkyrie, resigned at the display.
“No wonder you got on with the Grandmaster…” the Valkyrie muttered as she watched the ship settle in for a landing a safe distance from the throngs of nervous Asgardians.
A ramp descended from the ship even as the door retracted to reveal a man in a well-tailored suit, the music dying down as he raised his hands to declare, “I come in peace! Which, if we’re being honest, is supposed to be your line. Being that you’re the alien invaders and all.”
“We are not invaders, Anthony Stark,” Heimdall said severely.
“Worse, you’re squatters,” Tony replied and sounded as though the very concept were repugnant. “You know, Thor is an okay guy and all, but I have to say…dropping off your kingdom on foreign soil and then bailing? So rude.”
“Wait…Thor’s not here?” Bruce asked in confusion, looking at the Valkyrie.
“He went back for Loki,” she told him quietly while eyeing the newcomer.
“What? Why?” he wondered, perplexed, but the Valkyrie only gave him an exasperated look in answer.
“Do my eyes deceive me or is that my very own long lost Doctor Banner?” Tony gasped theatrically, clasping a hand to his chest before striding forward to take Bruce by the shoulders. “Are we huggers? I’m saying we’re huggers.” True to his word, he pulled the scientist in for a tight embrace, which was somewhat awkwardly returned. “I have to admit, alien abduction was pretty low on my list of what happened to you. Did they probe you?”
“We can hear you,” the Valkyrie said in wry amusement, folding her arms across her chest.
“Did she probe you?” Tony asked in a stage whisper.
Bruce sighed and shook his head, his mouth twitching in a weary smile. “It’s good to be back, Tony. Are Cap and the others with you?”
Tony’s charming smile froze and faltered slightly before he stepped back and rubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah…no. That’s…complicated. I had a Beatles analogy ready to go, Yoko Ono and all that, but…I’m here to get everyone settled in and registered appropriately before the world collectively loses its shit.” He gestured with a practiced affectation and a number of large chromatic crates flew in from above and began unfolding themselves into a honeycomb like structure, gleaming in the sunlight.
“Registered?” Bruce repeated in confusion, even as the Valkyrie laughed outright at the suggestion.
“The people of Asgard do not require your registration, Anthony Stark,” Heimdall told him frankly, stepping forward. “Nor will they allow themselves to be interred here.”
“Uh, yes actually they do, Clear Eyes,” Tony corrected and dismissively pulled out his phone, tapping at it. “And if you’ve got a better off-world suggestion for where you’ll be staying, I’ll be glad to hear it.” He waved a hand at the rapidly forming encampment, which enclosed the small network of field tents that had been there prior to their arrival. “Otherwise, welcome to Casa de Stark.”
The Valkyrie considered the forming structure for a long moment, then shrugged. “Is there liquor?”
“She can stay,” Tony declared and, finished with his text, stored his phone away again.
“Hey guys,” Korg said mildly, holding up a hand as he thumped toward them. “Don’t mean to interrupt the planetary negotiations you’ve got going on, but I think that magic hammock thing is getting tired.” He pointed at where the crimson cape binding up the limp form of Stephen Strange had started to flag, hovering listlessly.
“What is that?” Tony asked, squinting at the cape, then changed his mind and gestured at Korg. “No wait, what is that.”
“Oh, hi. I’m Korg and this here is Miek,” Korg introduced himself jovially, nodding at the insectoid that came jogging up in a crude mech suit to stand beside him. “He is an insect with knives for hands and is highly resistant to being stepped on. I’m just your average Kronan, though I suppose I might be considered below-average in the rock mass department, but I like to think I make up for it with my freethinking perspective.”
“Perhaps an infirmary should be the first course of action,” Vision interjected calmly. “Doctor Strange has been unconscious since opening the portal back to the point of origin and a number of Asgardians were injured in the alien attack.”
“Doctor Strange…the neurosurgeon?” Bruce asked in confusion. He had rather hoped that the reappearance of Tony Stark in his life would come with answers, but found instead that his head was starting to hurt from all the questions piling in it. “Wasn’t he in a car accident a few years ago?”
“Right…” Tony pushed his thumb and forefinger up under his designer sunglasses to pinch the bridge of his nose briefly, then nodded decisively. “Oh yeah. Today’s gonna be a good day.”
Reading through the ship manifest for the third time, Natasha Romanoff didn’t even blink as a weapons crate thumped heavily to the deck beside her, joining its half-dozen fellows. “That the last of it?” she asked Sam Wilson, who rolled the stiffness out of his shoulders.
“How is it we got stuck with all the heavy lifting? Whatever happened to equality between the sexes?” he complained jokingly, grinning at her.
Natasha’s lips bowed upward and she spared him a critical glance. “You suddenly learned to read Cyrillic?”
Another crate thumped down on top of Sam’s and Steve Rogers dusted off his hands lightly, looking no worse the wear for the manual labor. “That’s the last of it. Anything missing?”
Glancing over the crates piled into the Quinjet one final time, Natasha nodded in satisfaction. “Yes. All of the Chitarui weapons on board were to be offloaded at the port in Lebanon. It all matches up with the manifest,” she confirmed and brushed her red hair out of her eyes.
For the last eighteen months the three of them had been tracking down advanced weaponry based on stolen Chitauri and Ultron technology, after Steve had ‘gotten a lead’. Both Natasha and Sam knew this to mean that he’d gotten the information from Tony, but they didn’t bother to press the issue. That situation was complicated enough without them rubbing his nose in it. This latest, and with any luck last shipment was one they had caught while in transit through the Strait of Gibraltar, ultimately bound for Aleppo. Sam called them the Secret Avengers. Natasha called him an idiot.
“Yes!” Sam celebrated the news with a fist pump. “Please tell me this means we’re taking a vacation in Wakanda.” He turned to look at Steve imploringly, clasping his shoulders to shake the man slightly. “I need a Wakandan vacation, man. Have you seen the Dora Milaje?”
“I’m pretty sure those women could kill you, Sam,” Steve told him wryly.
“Easily,” Natasha confirmed. “And painfully.”
“Worth it,” Sam said confidently.
Laughing, Steve shook his head in amusement and drew out his phone as it chimed, ignoring Natasha’s withering look for having left the sound on. The humor drained from his face as his eyes read over the screen and something tightened in her chest when he glanced at her.
Seeing the change in his demeanor, Sam moaned piteously, “Dora Milaje…”
“It’s Tony,” Steve said softly, which sobered him immediately. It was an unspoken rule among them that they simply didn’t talk about Tony, so to hear Steve say his name openly was startling to say the least. “He’s in Norway…with Banner. He needs an extraction.”
“Funny how quick he is to forget the Sokovia Accords when it’s his bro on the line,” Sam muttered mutinously, folding his arms.
“They’ve had a warrant out for him since before the Accords,” Steve pointed out seriously. “Even after Tony’s intervention and relief efforts, they classified what happened in South Africa as an Enhanced Persons Attack.”
“Tony’s trying not to lose his control over the Avengers. He knows that Hulk would sink the Raft if Bruce lost control,” Natasha reasoned stoically, her demeanor firm despite the rush of blood in her ears. It was all too easy to remember the vulnerability that came with the mention of Bruce Banner, the stark reminder of the brief moment in her life where she’d flirted with the idea of being…human. “If Bruce sees the Joint Task Force coming for him, he’ll run.”
“And the JTF won’t know or care that Banner’s doing it to protect them,” Steve sighed, then frowned as his phone started to ring. Checking the ID, his eyebrows rose in surprise. “It’s Sharon.” Setting it to speakerphone, he picked up the call, his brow furrowed worriedly. “Hello? Sharon?”
“I’m sorry, Steve. I know you’re on mission, but…it’s Wanda,” Sharon Carter sounded a bit frantic as her voice echoed into the confines of the Quinjet, small and tinny. “A few hours ago she just started…screaming. I’ve been trying to calm her down, but-“
“Is that Steve?” Wanda demanded, her wild, agitated voice sounding in the background. “Let me speak to him.”
“Alright, Wanda, just- Oh for fuck’s sake…” Sharon’s voice rapidly became distant in a way that suggested Wanda had just snatched the former agent’s phone with her powers.
“Steve,” Wanda said urgently and they all glanced at one another to see a small flicker of red energy come through the phone’s speaker.
“What’s going on, Wanda?” Steve asked, his voice calm and even.
“I saw…something. Or I felt it…maybe both,” she half-sobbed, her breath hitching as she spoke.
“You gotta give me more than that,” he pressed. “What did you see?”
“The end,” she gasped.
“The end?” Sam repeated, frowning. “The end of what?”
“Everything.”
It took some time for Steve to talk Wanda down enough that she finally relinquished the phone back to Sharon once more, retreating to her room to rest. She had been unable to give them any further clarification as to what she might have seen or felt, so all Steve could do was promise her that they would be careful and watch for any signs of an apocalyptic event. Sam reasoned they were likely due one right about now anyway. Given that Bruce had suddenly emerged out of hiding and Steve was openly admitting to his dealings with Tony Stark, Natasha was inclined to agree.
“What’s the plan, boss?” she asked Steve, propping her hip up against a weapons crate.
He brushed his fingers over his beard once, a habit he’d picked up over the last year, his brow furrowed in thought. “I’ve got to get these weapons back to Wakanda. They aren’t safe out in the open and if something is coming, I want to give T’Challa a heads up.” Steve looked at Natasha seriously. “Are you up for the extraction?”
“I can handle it,” she affirmed, her face impassive. “If I leave now I can be there in a few hours. What about Wanda?”
“Sam?” Steve asked.
Sam shook his head. “I know where I’m useful and that ain’t it. If some big bad is coming, then we’re going to need reinforcements. Think I’ll head back stateside.”
“I thought Scott was trying to go straight,” Natasha commented, arching a brow. “Clint certainly is.”
“That was before our witch started spouting doomsday omens. Hoping I can change his mind.”
“Then it sounds like we have a plan,” Steve said with a nod. “Nat, be ready to divert to London if we hear anything more from Wanda. For now, we’ll trust Sharon to look after her and keep us informed.” Sam nodded and slung his bag onto his shoulder to depart, but Steve held Natasha back before she could follow. “You sure you’re okay with this?”
“Of course, Norway’s beautiful this time of year,” she said lightly.
“You know what I mean, Nat. You and Banner…you never got closure there.”
Natasha’s lips pursed slightly, then she lowered her eyes. “That was almost three years ago. He made me an offer, I pushed him off a ledge and he vanished off the face of the Earth. I’d call that closure.”
“I just know what it’s like to be haunted by missed opportunities. Don’t discount the possibility of second chances.”
“Speaking of second chances,” Natasha changed the subject with a teasing smile, eyeing him. “You planning on cleaning up before you get to Wakanda?”
Steve’s eyes widened and he blushed suddenly, ducking his head almost shyly, which she found highly amusing considering he was six feet of solid muscle. “I don’t…I mean…” He ran his fingers through his hair self-consciously, far longer than he’d ever worn it. “Does it look bad?”
She gave him a mysterious smile and patted his bearded cheek consolingly. “It has a certain roguish charm. Very manly.”
“I hate it when I can’t tell whether or not you’re making fun of me,” Steve groused with a long-suffering sigh.
“Don’t worry, Cap,” Natasha said as she headed out of the Quinjet. “I’m always making fun of you.”
Porcelain quivered under Wanda Maximoff’s nails, their black lacquer chipped and cracked in contrast to the finely painted buds flowering the sides of her teacup. Sharon had offered to repaint them for her in what was likely meant to have been a gesture of feminine solidarity, but Wanda had simply stared at her until she’d sighed and walked away. She knew that Sharon meant well when the former agent tried to relate on some human level, but Wanda never forgot her purpose. Sharon wasn’t here as her friend or companion…she was here to be Wanda’s nursemaid.
While the weeks they’d spent aboard the Raft had been difficult for all the former heroes, for Wanda they’d been nothing short of torture, worse than any of the trials she ever suffered through under HYDRA. At least in the time of von Strucker’s experiments, her rapidly manifesting powers had an outlet beyond the confines of her aching body. Imprisoned within the Raft, she’d been bound and collared, like a beast.
Wanda had known from the moment the collar that dampened her power closed about her throat that it hadn’t been coincidence such a device was waiting for her. Tony had made it and had likely done so long before the Sokovia Accords had even been proposed. The betrayal had burned almost as much as the energy trapped inside her, radiating through her mind. When Steve had freed her of it, the backlash had been so violent that only Clint’s quick actions with a sedative had kept her from inadvertently destroying the Raft and drowning them all.
In the roughly two years since Steve’s jailbreak, Wanda’s hold on her power was still frustratingly tenuous. Whatever Tony’s collar had done to her, she lived each day now without knowing what might cause her power to flare up. This morning was a particularly bad one, when she’d woken well before the dawn screaming fit to wake the dead. When Sharon had burst into her room, clad in a sleep shirt and a sidearm, she’d found Wanda floating above her bed, contorted as though in pain as objects flew wildly about the room. Even her S.H.I.E.L.D. training hadn’t managed to save her from a stunning black eye when one of Wanda’s steel-toed boots had shot out of the closet like a bullet.
Wanda dimly knew that she still hadn’t apologized to the woman for what she’d put her through, but she was still too wrapped up in her own head to even consider niceties just now. Dread still lingered in her heart like a shadow, a great golden fist descending from above to crush the life from her body. Shuddering, Wanda closed her eyes, knowing that they glowed red as she tightened her fingers about her teacup. She flinched bodily when she felt the warmth of a hand lay over them.
“Your coffee will go cold, sestřička,” a voice teased her tenderly.
And that was another problem. Pietro.
“Leave me alone,” she hissed, closing her eyes tighter as she pulled her hands away. “You’re not here.”
“Hm…no? Where am I then?” her twin asked her in amusement.
Pain welled in her heart and she keenly felt the place within her that had once been entwined with Pietro, a wound that would never, could never heal. A tear slipped past the tight press of her eyelids as she managed to gasp out, “Gone.”
“Oh jeez…are you crying?” the other one asked from across the room, his voice brash and thoroughly American. A brush of wind across her face told her that he’d sped to her side, even as Wanda shook her head in denial. “Come on now, don’t cry. It’s not fair when girls cry, yanno?”
“Leave me!” she cried and heard the teacup shatter at a lash of her power.
Pushing to her feet, Wanda turned and stumbled blindly away from the table, catching herself on the thick curtains that framed her bedroom window. She hadn’t told anyone about Pietro and Peter, about the visions of her brother that occasionally haunted her waking moments. Despite all her sense and reason, Wanda knew that somehow they were both her twin, and yet neither were the man who had sacrificed himself to save Clint Barton in Sokovia. Yet regardless of what her heart told her to be true, she simply could not accept the appearance of the phantoms when they came before her.
Listening closely to be sure they had gone, Wanda opened her eyes and let out a calming breath, only to feel the air abruptly punch out of her lungs. She wasn’t staring out at the manicured grounds of the Carter Manor, but onto a desolate landscape tinged red and strewn with bodies. Bodies she recognized. A strong hand gripped her arm and she gasped, flinching back with a burst of red energy. The dark-haired woman who’d grabbed her cursed as the power burned at her, but shook it off, her armor already closing over the wound.
“Keep it together, little witch!” she snapped. “We have to- Get down!” The woman shoved her back and flung up her arms, a wall of jagged black spikes rising from the red earth to halt the progress of a thick golden spear, though not before it had caught the woman just under her collarbone. She merely grunted at the pain of it, panting slightly as she pulled herself off of the blade. Looking back at Wanda, her eyes burned a bright, golden amber and her lip curled in a snarl. “We need more time.”
Wanda’s breath came fast and shallow in her chest, her eyes wide as they looked between the woman and the spear wildly. “I-I don’t…that was… I saw…” Distantly she thought that she might be going into shock, an uncontrollable shudder working through her.
The dark-haired woman searched her face, then swore violently and gripped her by the shoulders. “Wanda! When are you?”
The question was so startling that it cut through the ringing in her ears and Wanda stared back at the woman. “When…?” she murmured questioningly and instinctively reached out for the woman’s mind. Abruptly the world tilted on its axis and she stumbled forward, catching herself against cold metal. She spun around, but the desolate landscape was gone, leaving her encased in a cell like none she had ever seen. It looked…alien.
“Who are you?” a man asked her, sounding curious, though his voice was hoarse.
Turning, Wanda saw him sitting on the floor of the cell, managing to look amused by the sight of her despite that he looked half-dead. There was something about him that looked familiar and she frowned at him. “I…know you,” she said slowly. “You…were in the archives.”
“Was I?” he wondered, tilting his head to consider her with eyes the same golden shade of amber that the woman’s had been.
“New York,” Wanda said more confidently, taking a step back from him. “You are Thor’s brother. Loki.”
Something flickered in his expression, then he inclined his head. “You must be from Earth. Another new Avenger? You seem to be multiplying at an alarming rate.” Loki shifted his weight and looked as though the motion pained him as he sat more fully upright. “I don’t suppose you’ve come on an ill-advised rescue mission.”
“Rescue mission?” she asked in confusion, looking around the cell again. “Why would I rescue you?”
He laughed harshly at the question, shaking his head and giving her a sharp, wicked grin. “I didn’t mean me,” he assured her scathingly.
Brow furrowing and unsure whether or not this was really happening, she reached out for his mind and to her surprise Loki visibly flinched and rebuffed her firmly. There was a strange thread of familiarity in the brief contact between their minds and she stared at him openly even as he glared at her.
“You’ll have to do better than that, little witch,” he snarled at her and Wanda was reminded strongly of the dark-haired woman from before.
“I felt you this morning,” she realized suddenly, wrapping her arms around herself. “Like a voice…or a thousand voices…all screaming in my head…”
Loki’s eyes narrowed as he studied her and she felt him tentatively reach for her own mind, feeling at the edges of the sickening horror that had woken her before the dawn. His breath caught as he experienced it through her memories, giving a name to the dread and terror that slipped away from her just as quickly.
The strange feeling of his mind against hers pulled away again and Loki shuddered, looking paler than before. “You said that happened this morning?” he asked her, his voice oddly hollow.
“Yes,” she whispered, beginning to tremble again as she stared at him.
Loki looked at her intently, sitting forward slightly. “When are you?”
With a gasp, Wanda flinched back away from him and found herself back in her bedroom, so completely innocuous that it was nearly as unnerving as her visions of alien prison cells or battlefields strewn with the bodies of her friends. Choking back a scream that threatened to consume her, Wanda wrapped her arms about herself as though it could contain the power roiling under her skin.
“Vis,” she whispered into the room. Wanda longed for his sense and reason and order to help calm the chaos that had become her mind, despite how they had each betrayed the other. “Vis, please…I don’t know what’s real anymore…” More alone than she’d felt since the moment Pietro was stolen from her, Wanda sank to her knees and wept.
“This is the Wakandan Air Guard. You are entering Wakandan airspace. Identify yourself.”
Though Steve could neither see the Wakandan ships, nor detect any trace of them on his radar, he had no doubt that the cloaked war birds had him locked in their sights, despite that he was also cloaked. Flipping on his comms, he keyed up the mic. “Wakandan Air Guard, Quinjet A-2015BS. Request to transition your airspace for cargo delivery in the Golden City.”
The radio was silent for a moment before it crackled back to life. “Identity confirmed. Quinjet A-2015BS, you are cleared through to the Golden City on your current heading at 3000. Welcome back, Captain Rogers.”
Steve smiled a little to himself and adjusted his altitude slightly, a curl of anticipation in his belly. Since coming out of the ice just over a decade ago, he had seen a great number of extraordinary things, but flying into the Golden City never ceased to amaze him. His breath caught as he sailed through the barriers of Wakanda’s shields, revealing the almost alien beauty of the heart of Wakanda.
Though Wakanda had opened its borders a few weeks after the implosion of the Avengers, they still kept their capital city concealed from outside view for the protection of its citizens. They had just recently begun allowing immigration, though for now it was largely restricted to refugees and members of the scientific community. There had been backlash at this, of course, largely from the wealthy who saw Wakanda as an untouched playground and corporations who longed for new terrain and technologies to exploit. Despite this, the reception to Wakanda’s revelation had been largely positive, a sign of hope in a world plagued by doubt and unrest; sentiments that had hardly been aided by Earth’s mightiest heroes battling each other two years ago.
T’Challa and his entourage were already waiting for him as he brought the Quinjet to land outside the palace, a courtesy that made Steve feel all too aware of how out of place a kid from Brooklyn was here among the majesty of Earth’s wealthiest nation. Wishing suddenly that he had shaved after all, he glanced at his stealth fatigues to make sure they were at least passably clean and then sighed and opened the cargo door. Descending the ramp, he gave T’Challa a lopsided smile as the monarch came forward to greet him.
“Your Majesty,” he said politely, inclining his head and taking T’Challa’s hand when it was offered.
“Captain Rogers,” T’Challa greeted him with a small smile. “It is good to have you back with us.”
“It’s good to be back,” Steve assured him. “I’ve brought another shipment of the advanced weaponry we’ve recovered. Thank you again for agreeing to store it here.”
When Tony had first tipped Steve off to the black market weapons dealings of Adrian Toomes, he hadn’t even hesitated in trusting T’Challa to store the reclaimed weapons in Wakanda. Tony was far too closely tied to the UN and their Joint Task Force now, and had proven one time too many that he couldn’t be trusted with an excess of power close at hand besides.
“Shuri will be very pleased,” T’Challa said with a wry, affectionate smile. “She never tires of dismantling new toys.”
He gestured that Steve should accompany him into the palace as a pair of the Dora Milaje went past them and into the Quinjet to inspect the cargo. Steve followed, as did T’Challa’s general, ever watchful of her king despite her fond regard of his guest. It was amusing to have someone defer to her with such genuine old fashioned courtesy, which she suspected was owed as much to her gender as her rank. Though Okoye would never speak it aloud, she found Steve Rogers to be boyishly charming.
“I imagine it was not simply your duties that have brought you back here,” T’Challa guessed. “You must be interested in the progress of Sergeant Barnes.”
Though Steve had been fully intending to bring up the subject of Norway and Wanda’s premonition, he instead found himself blurting out, “How is he?”
“The White Wolf trains our War Dogs,” Okoye told him, approval ringing clear in her tone.
“Training?” Steve asked in surprise and stopped to stare between them. “He’s awake?”
T’Challa and Okoye exchanged a look at this, before the king spoke gently. “I apologize, Captain Rogers. I thought that he had contacted you before now. We left it in his hands.”
Something constricted painfully tight in Steve’s chest and he swallowed thickly as he kept his face impassive, not wanting to show how the news had wounded him. Likely Sam and Natasha would have seen right through him. Probably T’Challa and Okoye did, too.
“I’m sure he had his reasons. You said that he’s training. Is that...wise?” Steve wondered, brow furrowing.
“My sister assures me that she has repaired the damage HYDRA inflicted on his mind. He volunteered to repay her efforts by training our warriors,” T’Challa explained. “The War Dogs are well versed in all manner of combat and tactics, but Sergeant Barnes presents a unique skill set they’ve not yet encountered.”
“A HYDRA assassin,” Steve surmised, folding his arms across his chest. He didn’t like it, didn’t like the thought of Bucky rehashing all the terrible parts of his life, but he couldn’t begrudge him his choices…not when he’d lived so long under the control of others. Pushing thoughts of Bucky, and the emotions that followed, to the back of his mind, Steve looked at T’Challa seriously. “There was actually another reason that I came.”
T’Challa regarded him, then nodded. “The Asgardians. We have been monitoring the situation since they arrived in Norway. My ambassador is on site in a cloaked war bird and has been sending us updates.” He inclined his head toward Okoye and she raised her hand to key up the beads at her wrist.
“Early this morning, Shuri’s sensors picked up strong gamma energy signatures matching that of the Tesseract from the Chitauri attack in America,” Okoye told Steve, showing him a three dimensional diagram of a series of walled in hexagonal structures that had Tony Stark written all over them. Literally in some places. “We estimate close to ten thousand Asgardians came through the portals, as well as a host of other, unidentified aliens.”
Sighing heavily, Steve internally cursed out Tony with language that would have once had his mouth washed out with soap many times over. “Stark left that out when he contacted me. I suppose you already know that Doctor Banner is there?”
“Our war bird caught sight of him while he was still…green,” Okoye confirmed. “Unfortunately, so did a small fishing boat just off the coast. They uploaded the footage they captured when they docked this afternoon.”
She keyed up the shaky video, which didn’t show much of anything with any clarity given the distance, the storm and the low-light, but Steve could just make out the immense shape of Hulk leaping high in the air atop a cliff. There was no chance that the JTF wouldn’t have seen this by now.
“Natasha is inbound to extract Doctor Banner…I don’t suppose you might be willing to provide safe harbor for another one of my friends, Your Majesty.”
Okoye looked sharply to her king with an expression which clearly suggested what an incredibly bad idea that was, but T’Challa only chuckled softly, shaking his head in amusement. “Shuri would never forgive me if I did not agree. She has wanted to meet Doctor Banner for as long as I can remember. I will advise my ambassador to assist Miss Romanoff with her extraction, should the need arise.”
Steve thought about his phone call with Wanda and frowned, a feeling of unease leaving him cold. “I think we can count on the need arising…”
Norway was crawling with Asgardians, because of course Tony wouldn’t bother to have relayed that particular fact. Despite her irritation at having been caught up in one of Steve and Tony’s little power games, Natasha couldn’t help but admire Tony’s guile. Most of the time the workings that came out of his mind did little to impress her – a weapon was still just a weapon, no matter how many bells and whistles it had – but every now and then his genius really shone through in his ability to manipulate others.
If Tony had told Steve that he was harboring an Asgardian army, it would have brought them in force, expecting to find themselves caught up in a potential world-ending event. More than that, Steve would have immediately contacted the Wakandans and Natasha would have notified Nick. By asking only for an extraction of Bruce, Tony had all but guaranteed that she would be the only person showing up tonight.
“Clever girl,” Natasha murmured, smiling very slightly.
The camp wasn’t particularly inspired, in fact if it weren’t for the fact that it was composed of interlocking metal panels in red and gold, she would have thought it looked like a standard S.H.I.E.L.D. layout. Curiously, there appeared to be a second, small camp inside the greater structure that looked exactly like the old field set-ups she remembered. Those particular assignments had always been Phil’s babies, usually with Clint on protection detail, but they had often sent her photos; Phil because he’d been an enormous dork for the strange and otherworldly, Clint because he found Phil’s fanboying hilarious. Natasha brushed away the brief throb of regret she felt for the loss of Phil Coulson and decided that the interior camp was where she was most likely to find Bruce. Where there was a lab, there was bound to be a mad scientist.
Tony’s Iron Legion were patrolling the perimeter of the encampment, but there was a particular rhythm to it that would leave her just enough time to slip through undetected. Given that she’d been invited, Natasha assumed this was deliberate to assure Tony’s innocence when the JTF inevitably came banging on the door. It was tempting not to use the ‘Black Widow Entrance’ just to be contrary, but so long as Tony was rolling out the red carpet for her, she supposed that she could humor him.
It wasn’t totally without effort that she slipped through Tony’s defenses, but rather it took precisely her effort to dart through the tiny blind spot and scale the outer wall. Natasha tried not to think too hard about how much data he had gathered on them all over the years. With Tony, anything was possible and she would be lying if she didn’t sometimes wake in a cold sweat to dream of what he could do with it.
Despite the crowds of people within the walls, Natasha found it easy to move unseen to her goal. The Asgardians had a look about them that she was starting to recognize all too well; a shell-shocked expression she’d seen in New York and Sokovia, in Nigeria and South Africa. In the mirror when she’d learned of S.H.I.E.L.D’s poisonous heart. It was the look of one who had completely lost their mooring in the world, who had seen something so impossible that they could barely process what was happening.
The almost tangible feel of recent trauma in the air meant that Natasha had to adjust her earlier assessment of the encampment as she moved toward the heart of it. Though she had spent enough time with Thor to know that they were certainly Asgardian…this was not an army. In fact, there were but a few she saw that Natasha could recognize as fighters; and of those, several were the full definition of alien, creatures she could not have thought up on her best day. Despite all the tales of bravado Thor had regaled them with over the years, it was painfully clear these weren’t the Asgardian warriors of legend…they were the survivors.
“What the hell, Vision,” Natasha heard Tony complain and quickly melted into the shadows, watching as the pair of them came into view. “What’s the point of having Skynet on the team if you can’t catch this shit before it goes viral.”
“I am not omniscient, Tony,” Vision told him calmly. “And I would remind you that I am not your servant. You cannot expect me to monitor the entirety of the Internet at any given moment. That is a purpose you must set for one of your seemingly innumerable non-sentient programs.”
Tony sighed and rubbed at his face with a groan. “Cool it, Pinocchio, I know you’re a real boy. I just thought that you might be monitoring this particular situation, given that we’re harboring a wanted man and, oh yeah, thousands of alien refugees that you helped bring here.”
Vision actually looked a little chastised. “Again, I apologize that I did not make you aware of my intentions sooner. Given your past history with Loki and your…more questionable methods of protection against off-world invasion, I thought it best to wait.” Tony scoffed and Natasha frowned deeply at the mention of Loki, but Vision quickly continued before Tony could vocalize his complaints. “I…was, in fact, monitoring the web traffic released from this region, but I became…distracted.”
“Distracted?” Tony repeated, folding his arms. “Last time you told me you were distracted, Rhodey ended up with a new pair of dancing shoes.”
“And the cause of the distraction is the same now as it was then,” Vision admitted quietly.
“Wanda,” Tony said sourly, looking troubled. “I thought she was laying low in London.”
“She was…and is still, I believe,” the android confirmed. “But I feel as though she is…reaching for me. It is likely she is not even doing it consciously, but…I feel she may be in some distress.”
From her place in the shadows, Natasha went rigid, making a mental note to let Steve know as soon as possible. She sincerely hoped that Wanda’s ability to reach Vision from London had to do with their shared connection to the stone at the android’s brow. The absolute last thing she wanted was to feel the touch of Wanda’s magic in her mind again, ripping open memories long dead and buried.
“Wonderful. I was just thinking that we needed to add more weirdness to the current situation,” Tony said sardonically. His phone chimed softly and he checked it, then swore profusely. “It’s Secretary Ross. Listen, do me a favor and don’t go running off to Sabrina until we can get the big guy out of here.”
“Perhaps we should ask the Wakandans for assistance,” Vision commented, nodding toward a point off in the distance.
“Absolutely not,” Tony said, pulling a face. “I am not dealing with those smug bastards today on top of everything else.”
“It is only natural to feel inadequate when-“
“Oh. My. Thor,” Tony groaned, giving Vision a withering glare as he stalked away, picking up the call on his phone. “Secretary Ross! Lovely to hear from you, please hold.”
Natasha watched him go, remaining where she was until Vision had also drifted well out of sight. If Secretary Ross was calling Tony, the JTF was already en route to their location. The time table for getting Bruce out of here undetected had just shortened drastically. Glancing up toward where Vision had said the Wakandans to be, Natasha hoped that Steve had already negotiated a quick pick-up with T’Challa should it come to that.
She made it to the field tents at the center of the encampment without further delay, ducking inside and weaving through the interlocking segments quickly, but quietly. There were more Asgardians here, several of which had the intensely thoughtful look so common among men and women of science. Natasha paused briefly when she recognized Erik Selvig, who was speaking enthusiastically with a tall Asgardian with dark skin and red eyes, but quickly moved on, lest he recognize her. Finally she found Bruce at the central most lab of the construct, looking through one of Tony’s tablets as though he’d never left.
It wasn’t as though her heart stopped at the sight of him. Rather, it was like it had suddenly kicked on again, giving a small, hopeful lurch to see him there, alive and whole. Chiding herself for being so childishly sentimental, Natasha slipped into the lab and leaned up against one of the work tables casually.
“How’d a nice boy like you wind up working in a dump like this?” she asked lightly.
Bruce jumped a little in surprise, twitchy in a way that suggested he’d been green fairly recently. Giving her a wide-eyed look, Bruce simply stared at Natasha for a span of breaths, then managed a ragged smile. “Dame done me wrong,” he whispered and she swallowed thickly.
“You got lousy taste in women, mister,” Natasha said softly and meant it despite herself, brushing her red hair back behind an ear.
“Nat,” he breathed and her heart twisted in a way that was wholly unfair.
“Three years, Bruce,” she said, looking away from him in hopes of dispelling the unseemly swell of emotion he aroused. Natasha looked about the lab instead, taking in the various pieces of alien tech, soil samples and metal fragments that were laid out for examination. A polished rod worked over in attractive swirls of a silvery metal, most likely platinum, caught her eye and she wondered idly if it were a shock baton. “You don’t call, you don’t write. Here I thought ghosting was just for millennials.”
“I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “I…got lost.”
“Lost,” she repeated and flicked her eyes back toward him.
“In space?” Bruce said it like a question, then grimaced. “Please don’t make any Will Robinson jokes. Tony has been insufferable enough already.”
“You were on Asgard?” Natasha asked incredulously, putting it all together.
“No, not- Well, yes, briefly, but…it’s complicated,” Bruce admitted and Natasha simply nodded, because wasn’t it always? They stared at one another for a long moment before he spoke again, his voice soft and almost hesitant. “It’s good to see you.”
“Is it?” she wondered honestly. He opened his mouth to respond, but his words died out as an Asgardian came into the lab, brandishing a decanter that Natasha was fairly certain she’d seen hidden on Tony’s personal Quinjet before.
“Bruce, we have to get off this planet,” she protested loudly, waving the cut crystal bottle at him. “This tastes like water.” Taking notice of Natasha suddenly, she stopped in surprise, eyes widening with recognition.
“Uh…” the scientist said intelligently, looking between them with a flush that made his relationship to the Asgardian immediately apparent. “Val, this is Nat. Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”
“Yes, thank you,” the Asgardian, ‘Val’, said with a wry smile. “I remember.”
Bruce’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You… Oh. Yes, right,” he said, and nodded. “Right, you would. Um… Nat, this is the Valkyrie.”
“Hi,” Natasha said shortly, her expression blank. This was fine; good even. It had, as she kept reminding herself, been three years. It was only natural that Bruce might have moved on. Honestly, it was a relief.
Looking at the Asgardian, Natasha was glad not to feel anything so ridiculous as vitriol toward the woman, who was achingly beautiful in the way all Asgardians seemed to be. She was clearly a warrior, a languid confidence in her stance despite the fact that she was still wielding Tony’s decanter. The Valkyrie was also, she suddenly realized, running her dark eyes appreciatively over Natasha in a way that might have had her blushing if not for the years of training that had beaten such coquettishness from her. Their eyes met and there was no mistaking the heat in the Valkyrie’s gaze.
Oh. Oh. Well. That…was worth considering.
“Wait…” Bruce said slowly, looking between the two of them. “What just happened?”
“I’ll explain it when you’re older,” the Valkyrie told him with a wan smile, biting her lip.
“What?” Bruce asked, sounding vaguely panicked.
Natasha cleared her throat lightly and schooled her expression, refocusing on the mission. “Not the time, Bruce. Let’s worry about breaking you out of here first.”
“Thank the Norns,” the Valkyrie said in relief even as Bruce boggled at her.
“You’re…breaking me out of Tony’s camp? Am I a prisoner?”
Rolling her eyes upward, Natasha lifted her hands as though pleading to some unnamed god. “Does he seriously not explain anything to anyone? Yes, Bruce. I’m breaking you out of Tony’s camp, because otherwise the UN is going to throw you into prison and Tony will have to let them.” She stiffened instinctively when Bruce started to look a little green, adrenaline flooding her system as her body told her to run.
Looking over, the Valkyrie frowned and gripped Bruce by the shoulder, squeezing. “That isn’t helpful right now,” she told him seriously. “Keep it together.”
Closing his eyes, Bruce took several steadying breaths, his jaw clenched tight before he slowly relaxed, the greenish hue fading away again. “Okay,” he said gruffly, opening his eyes. “I’m okay. But I need to know exactly what’s going on with everyone.”
Natasha pursed her lips, feeling edgy with the adrenaline still running through her, unspent. “Cliff notes only, we’re on the clock,” she said firmly. “The UN wanted oversight on all persons actively engaged in saving the world. Some agreed, some didn’t. There…were some other things going on, too, but we’ll have to save the intricacies for later.” She gave him a serious look. “Long story short, Team Stark is playing nice with the UN and will lose the ability to operate legitimately as the Avengers if they have to publicly intervene in your arrest.”
Bruce rubbed a hand over his face, looking pale and overwhelmed. “Jesus, I was gone five minutes.”
“Actually, Doctor Banner, you were gone nearly three years,” Vision corrected coolly as he slid through the wall to join them. He nodded to Natasha in greeting. “Miss Romanoff.”
“Vision,” she replied calmly. “Here to try and ‘stop us’ so Stark can get a good video clip of his efforts for the JTF?”
“Do you believe you could offer resistance if I did?” Vision wondered curiously and the Valkyrie tensed for a fight. He held up his hands peaceably, however, shaking his head. “Mister Stark would merely like to ask that you please accelerate your leaving, as the advance team of the Joint Task Force is less than fifty kilometers away. His personal Quinjet is currently online and prepped for departure, should you wish to steal it for expedience sake.”
“Well gosh, isn’t Mister Stark just so accommodating,” Natasha gushed mockingly, batting her eyes at the android. “I might as well help myself to some of his new toys while I’m at it.” Smirking, she moved to the pick up the baton she’d been admiring earlier.
Vision blinked once and started to lift a hand to stop her when he saw what she was reaching for. “No, that’s-“
But Natasha’s fingers had already closed about the haft of Mjolnir and as lightning sang through her bones she heard nothing but the roar of thunder and an ancient voice whispering into her mind.
“Whosoever holds this hammer, be they worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”