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Chapter Text

Heimdall stepped out of the Bifrost perfectly upright, unshaken by the rough ride through the unmoored bridge. Loki's own disorientation went mercifully unnoticed, as no one expected a snake to keep its feet. He did tighten a bit around the gatekeeper's neck, but he was a small snake, and Heimdall either didn't notice or didn't react.

They were in a park, standing out on the grass, and it took Loki a few seconds to recognize the smells and sounds of the surrounding city as New York, the site of his (Thanos') failed invasion.

A few mortals startled at their appearance, but when Heimdall simply rested his sword on the ground and folded his hands over the hilt, most of them overcame their fear and edged closer. Loki was reminded of a flock of skittish pigeons.

One of the mortals pulled out something—a phone, most likely—and started taking pictures. "That armor is awesome ," she said.

"Do you do selfies?" another asked. Heimdall stood, tall and stoic, and ignored the question until the mortal slunk off.

"What kind of snake is that?"

The questions continued—the mortals, it seemed, did not have the instinct for self-preservation in sufficient quantities not to try and actively bother an enormous armored man with a sword—until a familiar face stepped out of a black car and headed toward them, devoid of friendly curiosity and cell phone cameras both.

"Why are you here?" Director Fury asked, not wasting any time on pleasantries.

The gatekeeper didn’t blink. "We are refugees from Asgard, seeking asylum."

Fury's eyebrow raised, and his single eye swept over the open, empty space behind them. "Who's we?"

"Just over two thousand of us escaped the destruction of our world." Heimdall's voice was steady, soothing, but the reminder of the sheer magnitude of their loss stung.

Another voice, this one far overhead but growing closer, cut in with a sharp mechanical edge. "And where are the rest of them, in your pocket?" He drifted closer, then fell the last few inches to the ground with a heavy sound and dented the neat, even grass. "Hey Nick. You know, this is really awkward. I thought you lot were all uninvited to the party now? I already unfriended you on Facebook."

"Stark," Fury growled.

"In essence, yes," Heimdall answered, and everyone blinked, trying to remember what they had asked. Humans, so easily distracted.

"Wait, was that a yes about the uninvited pirate over here, or yes you've got several thousand people stowed on your person?"

"The latter," he said without inflection, and Loki desperately wanted to know whether the gatekeeper was actually this stoic or whether the dry sense of humor he'd always suspected was bleeding through.

"How do we know this isn't an invasion?" Fury asked.

Heimdall stiffened imperceptibly; if he wasn't draped across the man's shoulders, he'd have missed it. "Asgard is fallen. Our people are refugees, not warriors. Most are women, or children, or simple craftsmen."

"Where's Thor?" Stark asked before Fury could respond.

"He is with us," Heimdall said. "This place is not suitable for the discussions we must have."

"I've got a place," Stark said.

A blur; time passed, and then they were moving again. At some point a man in armor similar to Stark's had joined them, but Loki wasn't quite sure when. His snake's senses were disorienting—eyesight awful and blurred, sense of smell nauseatingly sharp, and sounds were muffled, if still distinguishable. He could taste—smell—feel the body heat of everyone standing around him.

On top of it all, being in motion set everything into a confusing blur, his vestibular senses rejecting the unnatural movement. He was momentarily grateful that snakes didn't seem to be equipped to feel nausea.

Before too long they were indoors. He didn't think the building was in the same tower the Avengers had been using last time he'd seen them, but he couldn't be sure.

"Interesting necklace," he heard Stark saying from somewhere ahead of them. "Definitely has that Slytherin vibe. Is it common on Asgard to use disturbingly venomous-looking animals as accessories?"

"This is not a snake," Heimdall said simply, and Loki swore furiously. It came out as a long, angry hiss. Of course he couldn't make this easy.

"Wow. Could've fooled me. What is it then? Some kind of amputee lizard?"

"He is Prince Loki," Heimdall said, and the mortals all froze. He heard the sound of Stark's energy weapons powering up, and he tightened even further around Heimdall's neck. The gatekeeper wouldn't let them kill him, he reminded himself. Not while he held all that remained of Asgard.

Besides, the only one of the Avengers powerful enough to truly hurt him had been the Hulk, and he knew exactly where the beast was.

Stark was swearing. "You brought Loki here ? Thor said he was dead! Shouldn't he be in some kind of inescapable space prison or something?"

"Our prisons were destroyed with the rest of Asgard," Heimdall said, and Loki would swear he did have a sense of humor. It was awful, but it was there. Probably.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure we can find a prison for Voldemort here until you get around to building a new one. No way does he get to just slither around free."

He let himself drop, sliding over the edge of Heimdall's shoulder and taking on his own form before his feet hit the ground. He kept his own balance without reaching out to steady himself and counted it as a win.

Stark swore, and weapons swiveled to point in his direction. Surprisingly, Heimdall stepped forward, putting himself between Loki and the line of fire. Or maybe not so surprisingly—if he died now, who knew what would happen to the rest of their people?

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now," Stark said, brandishing his glove-weapon.

"If you do, Thor and several thousand innocent people will be trapped for all eternity in a pocket of magically-created space-time," he said.

"And how do I know you aren't lying about that, huh, Pinocchio?"

He gestured to the watchman. "Ask Heimdall. He would certainly not lie to you on my account. Obviously." He shot him a dirty look, and though the gatekeeper wasn't looking at him he reassured himself that he probably saw it anyways.

"How do we know he isn't one of your illusions?" Fury this time, and Loki swore internally. The mistrust wasn’t completely unearned, but there was no time for this.

"Or you could have brainwashed him," Stark added. "And how do we even know this is Heimdall? We've never seen him before."

Loki raised one hand, and there was a high-pitched whine as Stark's weapon grew brighter, the sharp blue light more intense.

"Don't try anything, pal. We can have an entire army on your sorry ass with one phone call." The stern metal mask of his armor glared.

This was getting out of hand.

He thought of the dimensional space and reached for his brother.

***

Thor wasn't there and then he was, standing solidly upright while Loki swayed.

"—it," he said, then blinked his one good eye as the scene change registered. The window, the building, the people... he saw the exact instant his brother realized they were on Midgard.

Thor went horribly pale, then flushed an angry red.

"Loki," he said, his voice raw and devastated and enraged. "What did you do?"

He spun around and grabbed Loki's shirt so it bunched at his throat, driving him into the wall. "You left our people behind? They were all we had left, Loki! All that was left of Asgard. How could you be so selfish?" His voice broke, and he sounded like he actually might start crying.

Loki scrabbled at Thor's arm, but his brother had always been stronger than him, and the fist at his throat didn't budge. He needed to explain, tell Thor their people weren't abandoned, that he wouldn't just leave them behind.

Wouldn't he though? If it came down to it, if the choice was to allow the two of them to perish with Asgard or get out alone...

A hand fell on Thor's shoulder, and he loosened his grip. Loki gasped, drawing in air around the knot in his throat.

Thor turned to face Heimdall, and his face crumpled.

"Heimdall, you're—"

"We left none behind," he said in his reassuring, steady voice.

"Then where—"

"They're here," Loki said, pushing himself off the wall. He reached for someone, anyone, to show Thor not all was lost.

In the blink of an eye Valkyrie's strong fingers were closing on his shoulder, and when she spun him around her fist was already arcing toward his face.

He was disoriented and still catching his breath, and she was one of the warriors from the legends of his childhood. He felt the sharp sting as the blow connected beneath his eye, felt his legs give out beneath him, but everything shuttered to black before he hit the floor.

***

He woke up with something cold pressed to the side of his face, and the sharp chill made him flinch away, bringing back memories of blue and snow and wrong. He glanced down at his hands, half expecting them to be blue and tipped in thick black claws, but he still looked like himself. It was only an ice pack, and no wonder—he could feel where his cheekbone was definitely bruised, the eye on that side starting to swell shut.

"Communication is key, Lackey," the Valkyrie's voice said somewhere above him. "If you're gonna teleport someone, you should, I don't know, tell them first. Or better yet, ask."

"I like her," Tony Stark's voice drifted from somewhere farther away.

"Talk to me again when she finds your alcohol." He sat up, the right side of his face throbbing in time with his pulse. "And I didn't teleport you."

"Whatever. You should have asked. You're lucky all I did was deck you."

"Lucky me," he said, but his head was still swimming too much for it to come out properly bitter.

"Loki," Thor said, and his voice was sharp and serious, even if it was softened a bit by concern. "What was that ship? The one that started all of this, who does it belong to?"

He didn't answer. For so long, he'd avoided thinking about the Mad Titan, refused to so much as think his name lest it had the power to summon him like the monsters from the most frightening of children's tales. His throat closed around the name now, holding it back, but no, Thor needed to know. Thor deserved to know.

"Thanos," he whispered, as though the Titan could hear him still. "His name is Thanos."

Valkyrie, of all people, swore.

Thor turned to her. "You know who this is?"

She nodded, then swore again, creatively and graphically. Fury, he noted absently, looked a bit disturbed, while Stark looked impressed. "Sakaar was a landing place for the lost and homeless," she said. "Thanos seemed to make a lot of those. I heard stories from a few survivors. They were never pretty." Her fingers, perhaps unconsciously, sought the hilt of her sword, absently tracing the pattern in the leather. "If that was him on that ship we had a close call. We're lucky to have survived."

"You're welcome," Loki said, and everyone frowned at him.

"How did you know that was Thanos' ship?" Which was, of course, exactly the question he didn't want Thor to ask.

He pressed his lips together, but as the silence stretched on Heimdall answered for him. "Loki told me earlier that Thanos was the one who sent him to Midgard. I can only assume it was he who furnished the scepter with the Mind Stone and the Chitauri army."

Loki swallowed and nodded.

"Why?"

He could try to lie, but frankly, at the moment he didn't have the energy. "I made a deal," he said, not looking any of them in the eye. "I promised to bring him the Tesseract."

"And what did you get out of this deal?" Stark, curious as ever, though the question was tinged with accusation.

Escape. An end to pain. "The Earth," he said. "A throne."

Thor looked like he wasn't quite sure whether to believe him. He could probably tip the balance one way or the next, but he couldn't decide which was worse, to be seen as a cruel monster deserving of scorn or a hapless pawn to be pitied.

"Why does this Thanos want the Tesseract?" Fury broke the awkward silence, and Loki was almost grateful.

"It is one of six similar artifacts. The Infinity Stones. Collecting them all would give the wielder unimaginable power."

He summoned a bit of magic, slowly, so as not to spook the jumpy mortals. He chose a few of the more graphic illustrations he'd come across in his research and brought them to life as illusions, playing out in miniature above his hands. The Power Stone sending a wave of purple light over a planet's surface, destroying everything in its path. The Time Stone rolling back years and shrinking an ancient forest to saplings. Armies stretching as far as the eye could see, eyes glowing the sickly yellow of the Mind Stone.

When the last illusion flickered out they stood still for a moment, the silence uneasy.

"You said he sent you to Earth for the Tesseract," Thor said slowly. "But why would he seek out the remnants of Asgard? We did nothing to attract his notice." Loki saw the moment that his brother put it together, thoughts turning like gears behind his single remaining eye. "Unless he was still seeking the Space Stone," he said flatly. "Which was in the vault. Where I sent you. Loki..."

He swore. When had his brother become so inconveniently perceptive?

Thor threw himself at his brother with an angry howl, and he reached and summoned something, anything, to shield himself.

Thor bounced harmlessly off an enormous torso made of rough-hewn stone, and the Kronian, Korg, reached out to steady him as he stumbled back.

"Easy there, King Thor, seems like we accidentally ran into each other there." The enormous rock man chuckled, the sound reminiscent of the grinding of gravel, then he turned to look at his new surroundings. Slight bafflement gave way to a wide grin. "Now this is nice. No more cramped spaceship for us! Not that I'm complaining, of course, but the ship was a bit small. Not built for my species, not that it was meant to be, and I'm sure it was the perfect size for the people it was made for. And the ship's food was hell on Miek's digestion. Say, where is the little fellow?"

"You drew him right to us!" Thor shouted over Korg's enormous shoulder. "All our people could've been killed! What were you thinking?"

Loki ducked, keeping Korg between them. With a gesture, the alien with giant scissor hands reappeared beside Korg. The Kronian's smile, if it was possible, grew even wider. "Oh, there you are." He waved, then ducked to pick Miek up and tuck him under one arm, the motion blocking Thor's next attempt to advance.

The mortals looking at Miek's scissor-hands had gone a bit pale and queasy-looking, but if he remembered correctly they had always been a bit racist as a whole, uncomfortable around any species more formidable or naturally intimidating than their own.

Loki went to duck away again and found himself facing a wall. He swore again, under his breath.

Thor stalked around Korg and Loki was trapped. He shrunk back, withering in the heat of his brother’s rage.

Thor never reached him; Heimdall’s restraining hand fell on his shoulder and he drew up short. "My king," he said, and it sounded more chiding than respectful, as though Thor were still the child that had come running through the observatory, fighting off imaginary monsters with a stick. "The remaining people of Asgard are well. Prince Loki has done much to keep them that way, and what they now need is for you to negotiate with the people of Midgard and secure a place for them."

Thor brushed the hand off his shoulder, then sighed. "You're right. I'm sorry. It's been... a trying couple of days." He looked back to Loki, but the anger had been replaced by a bone-deep weariness that cut lines into his brother's face and glazed over his one remaining eye. "We need to talk. Later."

Loki swallowed and nodded.

"Hold up. Even if I were comfortable with him having the Tesseract," Fury cut in, "won't it draw this Thanos right to Earth?"

"If Thanos truly seeks the Infinity Stones," Heimdall replied before Loki could snap back an irritated answer, "he would have come in any case, for two of the six already reside here. Nothing is changed for this planet except that you now have advance warning of his approach, time to prepare, and one more tool to use against him."

Loki blinked. Heimdall, of all people, was defending him? Against the Midgardians and Thor both, despite their fairly tumultuous history. This was… unexpected.

In the background, he could hear Korg going on, introducing himself. "...and you here have metal skin! That's pretty neat, what planet are you from?"

Stark, who had opened the faceplate of his mask when it became apparent Loki wasn't about to start a firefight, gaped at the rock man. It was almost amusing to see something render him so completely speechless.

Thor's voice cut through the distraction. "You say our people are safely in stasis until a place can be found for them?"

"Yes," Loki said, uneasily. It was true, but he was starting to wonder how, exactly, this stasis worked. He had plenty of things in storage at any time, mostly inanimate things like books and food and camping supplies, but living things felt different.

He'd never had trouble with the mice and snakes and lizards he'd experimented with, or even his brother for a short period, but now he was starting to feel drained and dizzy, the way he'd used to as a child when he overextended himself during magic lessons. He was beginning to wonder if maintaining the state of suspended activity drew on his magic.

Two thousand souls and change was not many for the remnants of a once-great nation. They were an awful lot, though, if you were acting as a living life support.

It didn't matter though, either way. Thor would negotiate for space, and the Asgardians would be out in the world once more where they belonged.

He could hold it together until then.

Thor nodded. "Good. That is... good."

***

On the positive side, everyone seemed to have decided that the plot of this drama was too complicated — and possibly too stupid — to be of his making.

On the negative, it seemed these negotiations were going to take far longer than they had anticipated.

He only caught bits and snippets of the actual arguments, something about national sovereignty and enhanced individuals and some Accords that were apparently causing significant amounts of dissent. Normally he'd be right in the middle of this type of negotiation, but the Midgardians still mistrusted him too much for it to be wise to try and join, and he and his brother were still too cross with each other about the Tesseract for Thor to fill him in on the missing details.

That, and he'd been growing more and more exhausted as the week went on. It wasn't that he wasn't sleeping — he was actually sleeping enough for it to be concerning, sinking into bed at the earliest possible opportunity and rising far later than he intended. He was eating far more than normal as well. When one of the mortals had mentioned it he'd quipped about eating for two thousand, but he rather suspected that was actually the problem.

He pulled enough magic together to run a quick scanning spell and make sure the people trapped in stasis weren't suffering any ill effects, but they seemed perfectly fine. That was good; he didn't think any of them could bear it if they started losing more people now.

He was back in the room set aside for him (no doubt it was heavily monitored, which he objected to in principle, but he had no plans to do anything more nefarious than nap), dozing off in a chair with a book in his lap when Thor barged in. His brother didn't bother to knock, a habit that took centuries to ingrain and apparently a couple of short years to forget.

He couldn't muster the energy for proper ire, so he settled for setting the book aside and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Brother," Thor began hesitantly.

Loki waved his  hand. "Say what you wish, Thor. There's no need to tiptoe."

"Was it your plan all along, to steal the Tesseract from the vault?" The words came out fast, so much so that Thor nearly tripped over them.

Oh, so they were having this conversation now. Lovely. A dull, aching throb pulsed preemptively in the space behind his temples.

"No," he said immediately. "It wasn't until I saw it sitting in the vault that I thought to take it."

Thor bit his lip. "Why, Loki? If you knew Thanos sought the Stone, why take it and risk our people, when we've lost so much already?"

Loki blinked. "I thought that would be obvious. I didn't want to die, Thor."

Thor flinched as though he'd been slapped, eyes going wide. "Why would you--"

Loki cut him off with a sharp, bitter laugh; it stung his throat. "Oh, come now. Asgard went down in flames, quite literally, and in case you've forgotten I am a Frost Giant. We're about as fireproof as the name suggests. Even if I had somehow managed to escape the initial explosion, I could hardly be expected to survive when the entire city was aflame. How did you think I made it back on the ship?"

Thor looked stricken, his face pale beneath its usual golden tan. "I thought—you can teleport."

Oh. Of course his brother didn't have a clue how his magic actually worked. "Only short distances, Thor, and only when I am somewhat familiar with the destination."

"That's not true!" An edge of panic crept into his voice. "I've seen you teleport between realms before, and they are much farther apart than the vault and the ship!"

Ah. He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. "That's world walking, and it is completely different. It requires a connecting route among the branches of Yggdrasil, which does not, surprisingly, include an orgy ship that once belonged to the party king of a trash planet."

Thor closed his eye, and he moved back, dropping down to sit on the edge of Loki's bunk. "Do you mean to tell me," he said, his voice quivering with emotion, "that had you not seen and decided on a whim to take the Tesseract, I would have ordered you to your certain death?"

Something inside Loki's chest constricted oddly. He chose to believe it was another symptom of his magical exhaustion; certainly, it had nothing to do with the broken edge to his brother's voice. "I wondered if you thought of it, at the time."

"You thought I would purposefully send you to—" He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

He didn't meet Thor's eye. "Not maliciously, no. But I thought that maybe—perhaps you had decided it an acceptable loss. To defeat Hela." After all, a king had to put the good of his people first. It was what Odin would have done.

But no, apparently Thor hadn't considered his survival at all. He couldn't decide if that was better, or worse, or if, in the grand scheme of their battered relationship, it meant little at all.

Thor's sudden lunge caught him unprepared, and before he could react he was crushed to his brother's chest, his one eye dripping tears into Loki's hair. "Never," he whispered, his voice thick and unsteady. "I wouldn't—that you would even think that—"

He pulled back, still holding Loki by the shoulders, and looked into his eyes. "I'm sorry I reacted the way I did. I was afraid, and I thought—but if it is the reason I have you back, I'm glad you took the Tesseract, and I'd have you do it again, a thousand times over."

Thor embraced him again, and this time he allowed himself to melt into his arms. "Are the humans demanding it back?" He asked, and his brother stiffened.

"They are trying," Thor admitted. "And I must confess that if it serves as a draw for this Thanos, I dislike the idea of you carrying it around on your person."

"If you can find someone you're entirely certain won't use it as a weapon and give Thanos an open door to Earth, I'd readily hand it over," he said. "I'd be glad to be rid of it."

"That can probably be arranged."

They fell silent and Loki drifted, exhaustion slowly claiming him once more.

"Are you all right, brother?" Thor's question jogged him half-out of his near sleep.

"I think I'm better now than I've been for some time," he mumbled, and was surprised to find that he meant it.

Thor smiled down at him, and for a second it was like the sun shining on them both.

***

After his conversation with Thor, he found it more and more difficult to make it out of his room, even for meals. Ravenous hunger gave way to a persistent nausea, and the headache that had been with him on and off ever since the ship now pulsed steadily in the back of his skull.

Most concerning, though, was the drain on his energy. Fatigue was his constant companion, now, and he found himself sleeping late and still waking exhausted. Just standing was enough to send waves of dizziness through him.

Just when he thought he couldn't do it any longer, he would have to go to his brother and admit that he must unpack their people now, Thor came back from one of his endless meetings and told him they had finally chosen a temporary place for their people, and the arrangements were being made. It was not, in Loki's opinion, a moment too soon.

The buildings they had set aside for the Asgardians until they had time to rebuild properly were squat and ugly, and would soon be cramped, but they were surrounded by greenery and fresh air and would thus be infinitely better than the Grandmaster's ship. They had wanted him to bring the Asgardians back inside the little compound but he refused, choosing a spot a short ways away surrounded by grass and sunlight. After all that had happened, his people needed and deserved to see the sun.

The relief at being nearly finished gave him new strength, and he walked to his chosen patch of green, forcing himself to stand tall and straight.

Thor stood to his right and Heimdall to his left, ready to greet and reassure the refugees as they emerged. All he had to do was bring them back.

It was like a birth, a beautiful, miraculous happening inevitably spoiled by the messiness of reality.

Some of the refugees panicked, and more than once he heard Heimdall's deep voice guiding someone to take deep breaths. Others cried, out of panic or relief or just an overflow of feelings too tumultuous to keep contained. Several thanked him, but he didn't acknowledge them because if he broke his concentration the exhaustion would overtake him, and he needed this to be finished and done.

It was easier taking people out than it had been putting them away, but this time he didn't have the rush of adrenaline to overshadow the exertion, and even after Sakaar and Hela he hadn't felt so worn thin.

About halfway through Thor ventured to put a steadying hand on his shoulder, and he wasn't grateful for the warmth, he wasn't.

He brought back the Sakaaran refugees with the remnants of Asgard; Thor had bargained for the extra space and they offered the former gladiators a place for as long as they wanted, forever or until they found a way to get home.

"That is the last," he said finally. Well, except Banner, but he wasn't certain exactly how to go about releasing him while remaining unsmashed. He resolved to talk to Valkyrie about it once they'd settled in.

Thor put a steadying arm around his shoulder, and he pretended it wasn't the only thing holding him up.

"You saved them," Thor said once the last citizen had found their way to their new home. "Thank you." His brother's voice rumbled where he was pressed up against his side, and he allowed himself a small smile.

With Thor's help, he managed to make it back to a bed before dropping immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Loki woke from his first night of sleep in the compound that had become his people's new home with a tingle of unease running down his spine.

A quick search showed that his room (or, at least, the room where he had collapsed into sleep the day before) was empty, but the sense of something being wrong remained. After thousands of years, he was inclined to trust his instinct, so he rolled to his feet despite the weariness that still tugged at his limbs.

Surely, though, this was some lingering paranoia, a result of their close call aboard the Statesman. There was nothing here to threaten him, and none who should want to. Everyone here in New Asgard owed him their lives and knew it, and from what he understood very few outside the walls of the temporary compound even knew of his presence here. Thor hadn't lied outright, he was Thor, but he had somehow managed to keep his brother's involvement from coming up in the official negotiations, and even more impressively, convinced his friends to hold their silence.

Loki was almost proud of him.

The feeling of wrongness dogged him out into the corridors as he searched for his brother, giving the bright morning sunlight a shadowed feel.

It wasn't until he found Thor in front of a television, frowning grimly at the screen, that he found what had prickled his instincts.

The picture was from a distance, but he could still make out the ugly contraptions of hovering metal, and if he didn't recognize the ships themselves then the design was familiar.

He felt the blood drain from his face. "This is… not possible," he heard himself whisper. There was no way for Thanos and his ilk to have reached them already, not with the distance between them when they took their leave.

He knew, they all knew, that Thanos would reach them eventually. But it shouldn't be now, not this soon, before any of them had a chance to prepare.

"It's him, isn't it," Thor asked, voice grim and face bloodless. Loki nodded, and Thor's frown deepened, his lips pressed into a nearly invisible line.  "So soon?"

"It's a portal," Loki realized abruptly. "A mechanized doorway through space. They aren't on the ship, they're coming through it."

Thor swore, and Loki couldn't help but agree.

"A backup plan, set in motion in advance in case they should fail to recover the Tesseract," he muttered. "I should have expected as much."

Thor's frown pressed deeper still. "Our mortal allies will be in need of aid," he said, raising a fist and letting his armor wash over him in a crackle of lightning. "Loki, I'm leaving you in charge."

"What?!" That got his attention, had him scrambling up and towards his brother. "That is an absolutely terrible idea. You can't just leave! You're their king, for Fenrir's sake!"

"And as the king," Thor said calmly, "I'm exercising my authority by placing you in charge. Take care of our people."

"Like Hel," Loki snarled. "If I can't talk you out of this I'm going with you."

He followed Thor outside, scurrying to keep up with his purposeful strides. "You cannot," Thor said simply.

"What's that supposed to—"

Thor broke into a run, bounding a few strides before leaping in the air with a flash of lightning that coiled around him as he took flight. It was like watching him leap into the sky with Mjolnir, only without the hammer and somehow far more impressive.

Loki swore, railing at the sky until Thor was a distant speck, then pacing back and forth and keeping up a stream of expletives that would've made any lady blush.

Well, perhaps not any lady. "Colorful," said a voice from over his shoulder, and he jumped half out of his skin before recognizing the Valkyrie. "Is there a reason for this," she gestured to him, cursing out the early morning sky, "or did you just wake up feeling pissy?"

"Thor left," he said, gritting his teeth.

Her eyebrows went up. "Left? Why?"

Because he doesn't know how not to be a hero, the oaf. "Clearly, he abandoned his senses."

Her hands found her hips. "That seems a bit harsh."

"He left me in charge of our people."

"Okay, fair point." He resumed his pacing, boots wearing a groove into the sickly grass outside the compound, and she watched him impassively. "So what're you going to do?"

"What any sensible person would do in my place," he said. "I'm going to use my newly granted authority to leave Heimdall in charge."

She raised an eyebrow in an 'are you kidding me' gesture, which he chose to ignore. "Can you do that?"

He shrugged. "If Thor can I can."

"Fair enough." She shifted her weight. "And then?"

"Thor left to fight Thanos and his lackeys." He bit his lip, because saying it out loud just made it worse, and he would give quite a bit to have his brother not be doing that. "I'm going to help." Which was worse still, but his mouth apparently didn't need his brain's permission to speak anymore.

She drew her sword, and for a second he was afraid she would try to stop him, and curse her, curse all the Valkyries, she could probably do it.

"I'm in," she said, and he had to blink a couple of times to process that.

"If I take you along, are you going to punch me again?"

She grinned at that. "Only if you deserve it."

Somehow, the way she said it didn't sound too reassuring.

It seemed Thor had listened to Loki when he said he couldn't teleport long distances.

What his brother seemed to forget, though, was that Midgard was at the center of the World Tree, and so the branches of Yggdrasil here were thick and frequent, surrounding the Earth with more Paths than on any other realm, Asgard included.

Loki could've followed his brother even without the Space Stone burning in his pocket.

He summoned it from its hiding space, clutching the clear container to his chest. The ships had appeared across the surface of the planet, hovering over the major cities, but he knew Thor. His brother would have gone to New York, hoping to find and aid his friends.

"Val," he said, slowly and intentionally.

The hand on her sword twitched impatiently. "Yes, Lackey?"

"Do I have your permission to teleport with you?"

He took her answering glare as affirmation and pulled them both through space, landing them right at the base of the giant ring.

Thor was nowhere in sight—evidently, he hadn't finished flying here yet—but a familiar mechanical whine let him know their arrival hadn't gone unmarked.

"Yo, Rudolph." Stark landed a dozen feet away, attention clearly divided between the menacing ship and the near-empty street where he and Val had materialized. "You playing for the home team this time around?"

"For now," he said, and Valkyrie punched him in the arm, hard enough to bruise. He pretended not to notice.

A flash of red fabric behind Stark made Loki think, for a second, that Thor had landed, but no, it was the Midgardian sorcerer from their trip to Earth to visit Odin, way back before Ragnarok. Loki itched for a rematch, to test his skill now that he wasn't caught off-guard and they both had an Infinity Stone, but now wasn't the time.

"Know anything we don't about the giant ring of doom?" Stark jerked a thumb at the invading ship, and Loki snapped back to the present. "Please don't tell me we gotta drop this thing in an active volcano or something."

Strange gave Stark a put-upon look, and it was nice to know he wasn't the only one who felt that way. "It's a portal," Loki said, "not a proper ship. If we can damage it enough we can prevent anything coming through."

"I'm pretty good at breaking things," Stark said.

"Something's already here." Strange lifted a gloved hand and pointed, and Loki turned. Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian stood in the once-quiet street, standing still for now but practically radiating menace.

"Well, this is convenient." The words rolled off Maw's tongue in a way that made him cringe, the inflections cold and wet like a dead fish. "Here I thought we would have to work to track down the Stones, and you bring two of them right to us."

He took a threatening step forward, Cull behind him, and Loki unthinkingly flinched back. The Valkyrie gave him a sidelong look but stayed quiet, sword drawn and pointed towards their two enemies.

At least Thanos himself wasn't here yet. Loki would have known if he were on Earth—even if the Titan's presence wasn't overwhelming, he had felt the Power Stone on that ship in space, had felt the Tesseract calling out to its sibling the way it now called out to Time and Mind.

The other members of the Order probably were here, though, and Loki could only hope the mortals could hold them off and damage the ships before their master himself made an appearance. He wondered briefly if Thanos had somewhere else to be, or if he were simply too cautious (too much a coward) to come himself before victory was assured.

Either way, he was grateful.

"Yeah, well, this isn't a welcoming committee," Stark said, the cheek in his tone bleeding even through the mechanical edge the suit gave his voice. "We're here to stop you."

Ebony Maw laughed, a cruel chuckle that brought back memories better left buried. "Even if you could succeed here—and you can't—we are but the first. Thanos has an army in his service."

"Yes," Loki said, speaking out for the first time, "but we have a Hulk."

Ebony Maw frowned. Valkyrie grinned. Stark, beside her, tilted his head. "Actually, I know you wouldn't have heard, but Bruce's been missing since—"

He was cut off by a roar of rage as the green monster emerged from extradimensional space in a blur of flailing anger. He glanced at the change in setting, momentarily confused by his return to Earth, then caught sight of Loki.

"Hey big guy," Valkyrie called, and he whipped around.

"Angry girl?"

"Wait, the Hulk can talk?" Stark said, stumbling as the reverberations from the beast's footsteps threw him off balance.

"See those guys in black?" Hulk nodded. "Smash."

Cull Obsidian, enormous brute that he was, barrelled forward, and the motion snapped the Hulk's tenuous moment of indecision. He threw himself at Cull with a roar, and the two rolled off in a tangle of enormous limbs, crushing part of at least one building in the process. Valkyrie jogged after them, sword in hand.

That left Ebony Maw. Even the sight of his face made Loki's blood run cold. Too many of his least favorite memories and terrifying dreams featured Thanos' favorite torturer.

A rumble of thunder in the distance told him Thor had joined the Hulk and Valkyrie in the fight against Cull, and against the three of them, he doubted Thanos' muscle-bound son could last long. Perhaps long enough, though, to leave him, the Midgardian sorcerer, and Stark alone against the Maw.  

In some ways, fighting him was like fighting a dark, twisted, more powerful version of himself. Loki had long ago mastered illusion magic, but his creations were woven of light and shadow and suggestion, the world a theatre with him as the puppeteer. The Maw, though, didn't bother with such subtlety: his illusions were created directly in the head of the other person, trapping them in a new, horrifying reality of his own creation. Loki would never have been allowed to learn such dark, evil magic, not by Odin and certainly not by Frigga, but he liked to think that even with the opportunity he wouldn't have tried to work out something so awful.

(He could probably do it now, though, if he wished; he knew the shape of it well enough, if from the other side. He'd already used one of the Maw's tricks, back on Sakaar when he'd pulled the Valkyrie's worst memories back into her head. It felt nearly as ugly from that end, and that, combined with the memories it dredged from the depths of his own mind, made him resolve never to try it again.)

Loki's mental defences had been strong enough to keep him out, once, back before they'd been degraded by the Mind Stone, before Ebony Maw had had the time to probe for his weaknesses. He would have to hope they were strong enough once again.

Of course, that was hardly the Norns-cursed squid's only trick. He held almost as much power to manipulate their surroundings in the real world as he did in his illusions, and he could turn the very landscape against you until it felt like fighting against the entire world rather than a single man.

Loki could magically manipulate matter, of course, but most of his spells focused on the manipulation of energy. And while his opponent could throw cars and chunks of building all he liked without regard to the surrounding city, Loki could hardly start lobbing enormous fireballs and ignoring civilian casualties.

No, to win this one, he would have to fight smart. No hasty, frantic attacks, no—

"Hey, Squidward," Stark yelled, taking off and aiming crackling blue repulsor blasts at the Maw as he flew. Their opponent brushed them aside easily, raising his hands with the dramatic grace of a deranged prophet and lifting up a half a dozen cars with the gesture.

Loki swore, in several different languages.

With a flick of his wrist Maw sent the cars hurtling after them, and when they crashed against Loki's hastily conjured shield it was like a physical blow, knocking him back a few scrabbled steps.

In a one-on-one battle, Maw would have pressed the advantage, but Loki's allies were already moving, distracting his attention through sheer ostentation, flashes of bright red against the dull sky. Stark was persistently throwing ineffectual blasts of energy, while Strange conjured up a promising-looking spell only to throw it like a discus at their enemy.

Loki sighed. He shuddered to think how this might go if he weren't here.

He summoned up a small ball of fire. If Maw had a weakness, it was that his skin, designed for the far more temperate planet Thanos had presumably plucked him from—a world, if Loki remembered correctly, composed almost entirely of swampland and coasts—did not handle extremes in temperature particularly well.

He waited until Maw had caught hold of the sorcerer to dodge behind him and aim the fire at his unprotected back. The mollusk-man jerked back and yelped and Strange went plummeting towards the ground, building up a concerning amount of speed.

Just when Loki thought they were surely down one fighter, a portal appeared underneath him and he fell through, only to reappear through another facing the opposite way, launching him back into the air. The flying cloak met him when he slowed to a stop at the top of the arc and they took off together. Clever.

Loki turned back to the battle and a wave of despair crashed over him, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut. They were going to lose, first here to the Maw, then to Thanos when he came, and he would take the Stones and the things he would do with them... failure, he had promised Loki pain and worse if he failed and he had, he had failed, failed Thanos during the invasion and his family by agreeing to it in the first place, and even before that with the Frost Giants and the bridge. Everything he did ended in failure, perhaps it was some fault at his core that kept him losing and losing...

He shoved as he stumbled back and pushed Ebony Maw's presence out of his head, tearing at the oily tendrils of magic that wrapped his thoughts and squeezed them out of shape. When he forced his eyes back open that awful grin was inches from his own face, and he choked on a small, terrified gasp.

Before he could react Maw disappeared in a flash of red and gold. He blinked at the suddenly empty air in front of him, gasping again to catch his breath.

"Hey anglerfish," came Stark's triumphant crow, "ever heard of personal space?"

Maw was already pushing himself up from the pavement where he'd fallen, and Loki recognized that scowl. Their opponent was angry, and anger only made him more dangerous.

Which was exactly what they needed, now when he'd already proven that a second's distraction was all he needed to tear through Loki's defenses as though they didn't exist.

As Maw brushed the dust of the road off his sleeves, Loki took a shuddering breath and reached for the one weapon he'd sworn never to use, the cursed thing he had dedicated a fair amount of time to forgetting he even had.

It called to him the second he drew it from space and held it in his hand, singing an eerie, beautiful tuneless melody that stirred and twisted somewhere beneath his sternum. It was hatefully familiar, reaching out to him like a part of himself he hadn't even realized was missing.

It washed over him with a cold tingling sensation as he held it, taking the cool air of the city and leaving it almost stiflingly warm. The flesh of his hands crawled like insects had made their way under his skin, but he refused to look at skin he knew would be a monstrous shade of blue, not with these eyes that saw everything as sharper and brighter than his normal Aesir vision.

The Casket. The one he hadn't held since freezing Heimdall on the bridge, the one that'd burned in his pocket ever since he let go, looming large but desperately unacknowledged in his mind.

He looked up to find Strange pinned against a building, half-swallowed by its once-smooth facade, and Stark on the ground not far away, pinned beneath a truck and waving his arms like an upended beetle. Maw loomed over the trapped sorcerer, spindly fingers reaching for the pendant that held the Time Stone.

He slammed the Casket open, aiming a blast of freezing cold wind that knocked the Maw back and off of Strange.

The ice froze the building behind them brittle, sending a crack shuddering through it down to the foundation. This would have to be quick. Any ice he used would damage the city's infrastructure; too long and he risked damaging the climate of the very planet itself.

He kept it open, piling ice on ice as the Maw struggled to his feet. Strange freed himself from the building and disappeared, presumably rescuing Stark, but he narrowed his focus, everything fading out except the thickening ice forming over Maw's cold-blooded skin.

The two mortals reappeared behind him, scraped and dusty but no worse for the wear, as he counted down three, two, one and closed the Casket down, the howling wind and biting cold shutting off like the twisting of a faucet.

Ebony Maw gleamed like a cold statue, eyes still staring beneath the layer of diamond-clear ice that coated his skin.

"Huh," Stark said, as they stood together and panted in relief. "Cool." Loki stared at him incredulously as a ridiculous grin spread over his face. "Pun intended."

They stood in silence a second longer before the sheet of ice cracked, the sound reverberating through the streets. Loki only had time to flinch before a second later the ice exploded outward, burying itself in buildings and asphalt and, had Loki reacted but a second slower, his own flesh.

This was ridiculous. Maw had every advantage here, where the very landscape served him as weapon and shield and hostage all at once. He was vulnerable to the ice, but the realm surrounding them was too hot, and he could draw from that heat to free himself.

To have a chance, Loki would need a better battlefield, one that he could use to his own advantage as Maw now used the city.

He waited until their enemy had turned to deflect a strike from Strange, who had rushed forward once more with those magical orange dinner plates suspended from each hand, and used a short-range teleport to close the distance. One touch and Maw was trapped in the dimensional pocket Asgard and the Hulk had so recently vacated.

Beside him, his allies swore and whipped around, craning their necks as though looking to see where their enemy might reappear.

He allowed himself a brief smirk of amusement before a blinding flash of pain nearly knocked him off his feet. Maw's magic struck out against the pocket from the inside, and he shouldn't have been able to do that, but the strike left his very being feeling cracked and wrong.

Before Maw could strike again, he summoned the Tesseract, pulling it out of space and holding it between two hands. For a second he worried that Maw would emerge with it, but he didn't, so before he could attack again Loki drew the power of the Space Stone to himself and thought of Jotunheim.

Almost instantly, the air around him was cold enough that, were he not already changed to his Jotunn form, it would have burned his lungs. He released his opponent, stepping back as Maw drew himself up and assessed the snowy wasteland without surprise or emotion.

"You have left your allies behind," he said, steepling his fingers. "That may prove to be a foolish mistake."

With the last word, he sent a handful of sharp pebbles flying from the ground, and Loki barely managed to step aside in time, throwing up a hasty shield to deflect the few he couldn't dodge.

Frost was already gathering on Ebony Maw's face, growing in the folds of his sleeves, freezing the dark fabric of his clothing stiff.

Loki banished the Tesseract and drew forth the Casket once more, opening it and letting the freezing wind slam into his enemy. Maw pushed back, and he could feel the chill wind swirling around him, cold enough to sting even his Jotun skin.

Maw was slowing down already, stiffening even with his magic deflecting the worst of the cold.

A thin layer of ice started to build on his skin.

Loki felt when Ebony reached for a heating spell, trying desperately to warm himself under the onslaught. Just as Loki could not match his skill with manipulating matter, though, his ability to control energy was no match for Loki's own.

The Maw took one step forward and then another, a long-range fighter closing the distance in one last desperate bid to overcome his opponent.

Ice gathered on his skin, his clothes, weighing him down and slowing him further until he couldn't take another step.

Loki kept the casket open, layering on sheet after sheet of frost until Maw was buried upright, a statue carved in ice that, here in this desolate, icy wasteland, would never thaw.

When he was sure Thanos' right hand would never move again, he snapped the casket shut, and his heavy breathing was the only sound in the still-frozen wasteland.

Something wet ran over his lips, and the hand he brought to his face came away stained with dark Jotunn blood. A nosebleed. He grimaced.

With an almost reflexive action he summoned a dagger and flung it, burying it to the hilt in his frozen enemy and starting a crack that caused the entire block of ice to creak and then collapse into frozen gravel.

He banished the Casket and ignored the exhaustion in his shaking limbs for long enough to reach for the Tesseract one more time.

The silence became the sounds of New York City, and he grimaced at the sudden volume.

One hand steadied himself against a wall as the world spun. He was still breathing too hard, too fast, too shallow, like his body couldn't actually believe the threat was gone.

None of this quite felt real. He didn't quite feel real, at least until—

"Loki?" That was Thor's voice, confused and relieved and coming from somewhere nearby that Loki's vision, still blurred with this residual panic, couldn't make out.

The sound of running footsteps and Thor was there, beside him, reaching for him. He collapsed into Thor's arms, intending to return the hug they'd both needed since that moment on the Grandmaster's ship after the fall of Asgard, and then kept on collapsing, and the arms tightened around him as he started to slide through them.

"They told me you disappeared with the enemy you were all fighting," Thor said. "Is he—?"

"Gone. Dead." He nodded, breathing finally starting to slow as he relaxed, panic giving way to a heavy, bone-deep exhaustion. Thor relaxed too, and he could only assume that Cull Obsidian had met the same fate as his brother.

His legs gave out beneath him again, and Thor gently lowered him to the ground, which was more comfortable than he would have expected but still far too warm. This form... he would change back if he could, but he didn't have the energy. The air was like warm bathwater, his brother a searing heat that had nearly burned him even through their leathers.

Thor pressed two fingers into the crook of his neck, ignoring the way he flapped his arms in protest. Rather than Thor jerking back with frostbitten fingers, as he had expected, a wave of warm magic flowed outward from the point of contact, leaving him feeling cooler.

It seemed his skin would shift to protect his brother as easily, as naturally, as it had shifted to protect him on that fateful trip to Jotunheim, a few years that may as well have been a lifetime ago.

Still, he didn't really have the energy to shift just now, and so as the tingling magic that flowed over his skin faded, consciousness faded with it.

The first thing Loki realized when he came to was that he was smothered in blankets and wanted them off.

The second thing, once he had struggled out of his covers and kicked them into an unceremonious heap on the floor, was that he was in an unfamiliar room, on an unfamiliar couch, far from where he last remembered being, and sweet Jormungand how long had he been out? Thor had probably carried him like a damsel. He would be hearing about this later, without a doubt.

The third thing was that there were voices drifting over from the next room, and he sat up to listen. The words were fuzzy and indistinct, interspersed with the occasional fit of laughter.

Even without the words, he could pick up on the tone of the conversation, casual and perhaps faintly celebratory. It told him that the battle had ended in their favor, and that the immediate threat had somehow been dealt with. Thanos had not come, not yet.

Someone had left him a glass of water on the table by the couch, and he was looking around for something to use as a scrying bowl when a soft voice spoke over his shoulder.

"If you want to see what is happening, perhaps the simplest approach would be to join them. You would be welcome."

Loki jumped half a foot in the air and hissed. "Trying to startle me into freezing you again?" he grumbled, gasping against the sudden burst of cold adrenaline.

Heimdall only chuckled. "I saw that you were awake."

Loki squinted up at him until he dropped down onto the couch beside him. The sight made him blink—he'd known the gatekeeper for years, but this was the first time he could recall seeing Heimdall sitting. Usually he stood at the observatory on the end of his bridge, stiff and patient as a statue.

Of course, the bridge was gone now, and the observatory with it.

"Didn't I leave you in charge of New Asgard?" He winced internally at how hostile the words came out sounding, but Heimdall didn't seem bothered.

"Yes," he said, "but we are to discuss our plans for the future, and King Thor desired that I offer my counsel."

"Ah," he said. "So why are you in here talking to me, then?"

"I am merely checking in, to see how you fare," Heimdall said. "I saw you battle the Titan's lieutenant. Your methods were... creative."

"They worked," he said, a touch defensive.

"They did."

"You didn't really answer my question," Loki said. "Why check in on me? For that matter, why defend me earlier, when we first arrived on Earth? I'm not delusional; we've never been on the best of terms, and things haven't exactly been better these last few years. You tried to chop off my head even before I banished you."

Heimdall chuckled again, as though attempted decapitation was a common occurance to be shrugged off among friends. His voice was old, and wise, and tired, like a sage answering a question posed by a small child. "The folly of youth is an inflexible mind," He said. "I have lived for more than four thousand years. Much has changed in that time, especially these past few years. I am not yet old and bitter enough to assume that every change will be for the worse."

"So what," Loki prodded his pile of cast-off blankets with his foot so he wouldn't have to look into the gatekeeper's all-seeing eyes, "you've decided to give me a second chance because of some misplaced optimism?"

"I've decided to judge each situation as it arises, and not to make new decisions using old information," Heimdall said.

And that was... actually very wise. Enough, at least, to fill him with a grudging sort of respect. 

"Brother! You're awake!"

Heimdall smiled and stood, and despite their new-found alliance, did nothing to help him as his brother grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the next room like an enormous leashed puppy dragging its owner.

Without even a moment to prepare, he found himself staring at nearly all the people on this tiny planet who had the most reason to hate him. He tried to hide behind Thor without looking like he was hiding behind Thor.

The Avengers he remembered were there, though the Hulk had reverted at some point to his small and seemingly helpless alter ego and the archer was conspicuously absent. There were a fair number of new faces as well, including the robot with the Mind Gem the Avengers had forged during Thor's trip to earth after he had usurped Odin's throne. He thought the girl sitting beside it looked familiar as well, from around the same time, though he hadn't paid terribly much attention to what Thor was doing then beyond checking to see that he wasn't returning to Asgard.

He waved timidly at Valkyrie, who waved back. Korg, seated beside her, waved as well, with much more enthusiasm than was probably warranted.

He expected at least a few glares as he picked his way over to sit beside them, but oddly enough, most of the people in the room seemed more ill-at-ease with each other than with their former enemy.

No sooner had he sat down than one of the ostentatiously sparking portals appeared in the center of the room, bringing Strange and a shorter man he didn't recognize.

"Okay," Stark said, clapping his hands together. "Now that we're all here," a pointed look at the new arrivals, "and not catching up on our beauty sleep," another one for Loki, "let's get down to business, shall we?"

They set themselves first to untangling what had just happened. Thor's account of the battle with Cull Obsidian was entertaining even if it carried no surprises, though it was unexpectedly comforting to hear about the Hulk, of whom he was still somewhat wary, smashing their enemies.

He kept his own account of the battle with the Maw surprisingly brief, given how he usually enjoyed spinning tales and boasting on the victories afforded to him. He hadn't spoken about what had happened in the void to anyone, had avoided it even in the solitude of his own mind, and the victory in Jotunheim felt oddly private, as though it were a part of his past he'd conquered and not a common enemy.

The tale was picked up where he left off by Stark, who, true to his word, had proven very effective at spaceship-breaking once Loki and Maw had disappeared and ceased to distract. He and a youth (his son, Loki thought, though he didn't remember Iron Man having any children when last they'd met. Adopted, perhaps?) had managed to disassemble the portal-generating machinery, and Strange with his own portals had taken the two of them to the other cities, a tour of destruction that had mercifully finished before Thanos himself had come.

Another group had fought off two aliens fitting the descriptions of Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive as they came after the Mind Stone, and both had fought to the death rather than submit when their escape had been cut off. Realization made him take a deep breath—nearly all of the Black Order had been taken out in one fell swoop, here on Midgard.

The war was far from over, but it boded well for their future.

"Any chance Thanos will just give up at this point?  Cut his losses and head home?" The man who spoke—he'd been introduced as Ant-Man, and it had taken all of Loki's willpower and acting skill not to laugh during the very serious meeting—looked like he didn't truly believe it was a possibility.

"No," he said, and was surprised when the sorceress—Wanda—answered with him. "I saw into the mind of the thing we fought," she explained. "They would stop at nothing to get the Stones."

"And we have three of them." Rogers grimaced with distaste at the pronouncement, and he thought he remembered the soldier having an especially strong hatred for the Tesseract.

"I think my brother, Valkyrie and I should journey to Nidavellir," Thor put in suddenly. "They would be able to forge weapons that could kill a Titan."

"Not saying you can't do that," Stark said, "but give Bruce and me some more details and we can probably whip up something that'll get the job done."

"Add me to that team and that 'probably' shall be a certainty," said another youth, a princess of somewhere if Loki remembered correctly.

"Now that we know what we're dealing with," Strange said, "with some research we can likely find a way to counteract the Stones he likely already has, or at least weaken their power."

"And we'll be ready in case he tries something with another alien army, like New York," Rogers added, and though there were a few sidelong glances at Loki, they weren't as hostile as they could be. More curious, if anything.

"I cannot see his approach, but I should be able to give notice when he arrives," Heimdall said, and it slowly registered on the gathered faces that they were facing an enemy that could arrive at any time. Loki doubted any of them would sleep soundly for a long while.

"We don't have any way of knowing when he's coming," Rogers stated flatly, giving voice to what they were all thinking.

"True," Stark said, "but think about what we do have. We have three of these six Stones, we've got time to prepare, and we've got," he gestured to the people assembled in the room, "all of us, working towards the same goal. I'm liking these odds."

"You think we can win?" Loki knew he shouldn't hope. After all, he of all people knew was Thanos was capable of. But they had won the first battle, and in the flood of relief this optimism was catching.

"I think we can't lose." Stark grinned, and around the room, the assembled heroes grinned with him.