On Yonder Hill

Natasha had been on hundreds of missions in her life and she had lost any kind of pre-mission nerves before she had hit double digits. Or at least that was what she thought before she found herself lying awake the night before the Time Heist, staring at the glow-in-the-dark constellations she had stuck on her ceiling in a fit of whimsy years ago. She watched the minutes tick by on the electric clock beside her bed for the better part of an hour before she finally got up, pulling the first sweatshirt that came to hand on over the tank top and shorts she was already wearing. She went soft-footed by the closed doors of the other bedrooms down to the kitchen, vaguely thinking about either chamomile tea or vodka.

She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep, she found. Clint was sitting at the island, nursing a beer bottle that was weeping condensation onto the coaster he had put under it – Laura had trained him into that, Natasha remembered.

He looked up as she came in. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She went to the freezer and dug out the bottle of vodka that Bruce had stashed there the last time he had made a grocery run, then tipped it inquisitively in Clint’s direction. When he nodded, she got a couple of shot glasses out from the cupboards and went over to the island to sit down next to him. She poured both glasses full and pushed one in his direction.

He took it, running his thumb over the rim of the glass. “You know, I always used to sleep like a baby before an op,” he said. “Well, better than one, because I don’t think my kids ever slept through the night until they were toddlers.” His jaw worked silently. “This has to work, Nat.”

“It’ll work,” Natasha reassured him. “It will.”

“What if it doesn’t?” he asked her. “What if it doesn’t work and we’re right back where we started, except with no Pym particles, no plan, no hope –”

Natasha squeezed his shoulder. “It will work, Clint.”

“God, Nat –”

“It will work,” she repeated.

“Then why are you up too?”

She shrugged.

“That’s real reassuring,” he said, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He finally picked up the shot glass and toasted her with it. “За нашу дружбу.”

“За семью.” Natasha clicked her glass against his, then downed it. She considered the bottle for a moment, then got up to return it to the freezer and put both glasses in the dishwasher. She went back to Clint and put an arm around his shoulders. “Get some sleep,” she told him. “Busy day tomorrow.”

He closed his eyes briefly, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

“We’re all going to be okay.” She pressed a brief kiss to his forehead. “This is going to work, Clint, and we’re all going to be okay. I really believe that.”

He reached up to catch her hand, callused fingers gripping hers with desperate strength. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Then I’ll believe it too.”

They were all quiet and nervously focused the next morning. Nobody talked much over breakfast, then they scattered to take care of any last business before they suited up. Loki already had his amber orb in his hand as he left the kitchen, talking quietly to the Valkyrie, who was leading the Asgardian recovery fleet.

Natasha went upstairs to her room and sat on her bed for a few minutes before leaning over to pull one of her burner phones out from her nightstand drawer. She dialed by memory and set the phone to her ear, letting it ring. She hadn’t expected an answer and wasn’t surprised when the call went straight to voicemail, but at least she had the security of knowing that that was just because her sister hated answering the phone, not because she was no longer among the living.

“If you know this number, you know what to do,” Yelena’s voice said brusquely.

“Hey,” Natasha said. “It’s me.” She was quiet for a moment, thinking about what she could say. “We’re going to do something – we’re going to fix this.” She pressed the disconnect button and tossed the phone back into the drawer, then got to her feet.

She was the last one out to the hangar where they had built the quantum tunnel. They were an eclectic bunch, as the Avengers always were. There was something harder and grimmer to them now than there had been back in 2012, as if everything they had been through over the last eleven years had left a stain on them. Tony hadn’t activated his quantum suit yet and was standing with his AR glasses on, speaking to Pepper; Rhodes was bulky next to Rocket and Nebula in the battered War Machine armor. Clint and Bruce were talking quietly to each other, and Scott was rubbing his hands together, looking nervous but excited. Steve, in an upgraded version of the blue stealth suit he had worn while he worked for SHIELD, was standing by one of the floor-length windows and looking out at the lawn, his expression surprisingly calm. Loki was the only one seated, his elbows braced against his knees and his forehead pressed to his clasped hands, his long hair falling over his face in an apparently random assortment of thin braids and loose curls.

He was wearing Asgardian clothes for the first time in what was probably years – the same black and green garments and battered golden armor he had been wearing during the Battle of New York, sans cape and a few of the armor pieces. The exact same; he had pulled it out of his dimensional fold when Tony had offered to make him a new version. There had been a fist-sized hole in both front and back that Loki stuck his fingers through in annoyed resignation.

“Yeah, that looks bad,” Rocket said.

“Yes, that’s what happens when a Dark Elf stabs and kills you,” Loki had replied blandly. “And then I got better. I would have burned it, but my mother gave it to me.” He spread the garments over his lap and held his hand out palm down over the hole. Green light glimmered as fabric and leather wriggled and then began to grow over the damage, until it looked like it had never existed at all. Loki prodded it thoughtfully, then shrugged and said, “Well, it’s already proven it won’t help against getting stabbed, but that was a Dark Elf weapon and we shouldn’t have to worry about any of those running around Earth for another year. Bullets or other human weapons shouldn’t be a concern.”

He was the only one of the three going to 2012 who had to worry about matching his old appearance, though he had refused to cut his hair and said he’d glamour it instead. On Natasha’s advice, Steve had grown his beard back out; the less both of them looked like their younger selves the better, even though they were still a day or two away from becoming public figures. Even though his return hadn’t been publicized until after the Battle of New York, Captain America had already been a public figure; there was every chance that some WWII fanboy would recognize him if he was walking around with the shield, even covered. It was the same reason he was wearing the stealth suit instead of one of the star-spangled suits. Natasha wasn’t particularly worried about being recognized by anyone other than Clint, mind-controlled as he might be at the time, and her particolored hair would help with that.

Clint came over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You ready for this?”

“Come on,” Natasha said. “It’ll be fun. Hey, you get a cool alien planet; I get an abandoned train station full of mind-controlled mercenaries and a mad god. And a wizard.”

“Technically they weren’t mind-controlled,” Clint said. “Just mercenaries.”

“Eh.” Natasha shrugged. “Whatever, there’s mind control involved.” She and Clint both looked over at Loki, who hadn’t moved from his seated position.

“Pretty sure he was crazy then, though,” Clint said.

“I heard that,” Loki said without looking up.

“Yeah, you were meant to,” Clint said.

Loki made a vague gesture that wasn’t disagreement, still not looking up.

Clint’s mouth twisted. He leaned close to Natasha and said, low-voiced, “Watch your back with him. He’s been okay here, but – once you’re there –”

“Don’t worry about me,” Natasha reassured him. “We’ve got this. You and Bruce watch your backs when you’re on that, uh, dominion of death, okay?”

Vormir had been deserted when the reconnaissance team had visited it; they had decided that between Bruce and Clint – and the Hulk’s partnership with Bruce – that would cover all intellectual and physical bases, whether they ended up needing to punch or shoot something or solve a puzzle. That left Rhodes and Nebula to go to Morag for the Power Stone and Rocket, Scott, and Tony to go to Knowhere for the Reality Stone; they had decided that the double heist was too risky to pull off when there was an easier option.

“Always do,” Clint said. He gripped her fingers briefly, then released her. “Get those Stones and get out, Nat. Don’t stick around until the Chitauri come calling or Fury notices you’re there, you got that?”

“Hey, it’s Earth in 2012,” Natasha said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Clint pointed at Loki.

“Oh, please, he wasn’t the worst. He was just the warm-up.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Loki said dryly. He finally got to his feet, bracing himself on Mistilteinn. “There’s no need to be insulting.”

Natasha smirked and he rolled his eyes.

“Okay, team,” Tony called, taking his glasses off and stowing them in a pocket. He clapped his hands together. “Let’s get this show on the interdimensional road.”

Natasha bumped her knuckles against Clint’s. “Come on. Let’s get it done.”

He nodded, then said, “I can do this, Nat. I know you needed me in Wakanda and I wasn’t there, but I can do this.”

Natasha leaned up and hugged him. “I know you can,” she said against his ear.

He hugged her back, then they both stepped back and tapped their wristlets to expand their quantum suits. Natasha hated the feeling of the nanotech crawling over her body, but she only had to deal with it for this one op. Maybe it was convenient and sturdy, but it didn’t feel real; she preferred a little more security in her uniforms.

From Clint’s expression, he felt the same way. The nanotech made an awkward lump over his quiver and sheathed sword, the same way it presumably did over her baton harness. Steve had slung the shield over his back so that the nanotech covered it completely; Loki, looking mildly annoyed by the whole concept, had conjured a strap for Mistilteinn and had it over his back too. He had said he wasn’t positive he would be able to access anything he put into his dimensional pocket in the present day once he was in the past, so the polearm stayed with him. When he activated his quantum suit it pressed the long split tails of his coat against his legs and made strange patterns over the fine details of his armor. He made an expression of disgust when Tony looked at him.

“Well, if you have a better idea –”

“No, no, by all means.” There was no real ire in his voice; he sounded distracted more than anything else and as if his distaste for the suit was pro forma. “I’m sure you did the best you could with the time and materials you had.”

Tony stared at him consideringly, then wagged a finger at him and said, “I’m going to let that slide, because I think you’re mad about having to go to 2012 and deal with yourself back then.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Tony tipped his head to one side and shrugged. “I call it like I see it, Reindeer Games.”

“Okay, enough of that,” Steve said. “Bruce, are we ready to go?”

“2012 and 2014 laid in,” Bruce said, tapping at the console by the quantum tunnel. “Ready when you are, Cap.”

The Avengers assembled on the platform around the quantum tunnel – seven humans, a cybernetically-enhanced Luphomoid, a genetically-altered not-a-raccoon, and the last king of Asgard. They didn’t quite fill the platform; Natasha could put a face in every one of those gaps. Sam. Wanda. T’Challa. Bucky. Vision. Nick Fury. Maria Hill. Scott’s partner Hope, whom she only knew from files. Tony’s young protégé Peter. Nebula’s sister Gamora and the rest of Rocket’s crew.

Thor.

All of them should have been here, and even after all this time their absence was an open wound that had never fully healed – had barely even scabbed over.

This is wrong, Natasha thought suddenly. We shouldn’t be splitting up. We should be doing this as a team. As a family.

She knew as well as anyone else that that wasn’t an option for this particular mission. They were the Avengers; they’d get it done. But they should have been doing it together.

Steve was looking around too and Natasha could see the same knowledge etched on his face. He didn’t look as hollow as he had back in Wakanda, but maybe it was just that she had gotten used to seeing it or that he had gotten used to living with it.

“Five years ago we lost,” he said, and the soft, scattered murmurs of nervous conversation stilled. “All of us. We lost friends, we lost family – we lost a part of ourselves. Today we have a chance to take it all back. You know your teams, you know your missions. Get the stones and get them back here. One round trip each; no mistakes, no do-overs. Only a few of us are going somewhere we know, so be ready for anything. Look out for each other.” He took a deep breath. “This is the fight of our lives,” he said quietly, as if it was just for himself this time, and not for them, “and we’re going to win, whatever it takes.”

He looked around at them again, a brief, electric moment of eye contact with everyone there, and Natasha felt it – felt it like she had felt it back in New York, in Sokovia, in Washington, even in Germany, as if he was speaking directly to her, touching that part of her that had survived the Red Room and the KGB and SHIELD. The desire to do better, the desire to be better; not just the desire but the knowledge that it was already there, waiting for her. There was a reason Steve Rogers was Captain America.

“He’s pretty good at that,” Rocket said, impressed.

“Right?” Scott said, beaming, and his enthusiasm made Natasha smile too.

“All right, let’s sync up,” Tony said, and they put their fists together in some kind of bizarre parody of a high school pep squad. Their wristlets beeped as they synchronized their departure and return times.

“See you in a minute,” Clint said to Natasha, grinning at her, and she grinned back.

Her nerves were gone. Natasha had had enough of waiting, planning, grieving; all of it makework building up to this one mission. Now it was time to do something.

The first thing that struck Natasha about New York City in 2012 was the noise. It was a nearly physical thing that staggered her back as she tapped the wristlet to deactivate her quantum suit, an overwhelming press of sound from the street outside the alley where they had landed. People and cars rushed by, more of them than she had seen in five years and all together – moving with the hurried pace that had been characteristic of the city before they had had half an apocalypse. Scent followed a moment later, and the only half-familiar taste of the air – clouded over and heavy with the promise of an upcoming storm, with the faint grittiness of a New York City still rich with life.

2012. Six years until disaster. Six years until half of those people hurrying past vanished into ash.

She clasped her hands together and pressed her fists briefly to her face, overwhelmed with the enormity of it for a moment. She had thought she was over this – that she was used to it.

Steve put a hand on her shoulder. Natasha reached up to grab it, hanging on for dear life until her shaking stopped.

“Okay,” she said after a moment. “Okay. I’m fine. I just – I just needed a minute.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, squeezing her fingers. “I know the feeling. It’s not my first time.”

“This sucks,” Natasha said. She released him and turned to look at Loki.

He was looking up at the slice of sky visible between the tall buildings on either side of the alley, the expression on his face nothing short of pure longing. In his Asgardian clothes, he was an oddly discrepant sight amidst the ordinariness of the alley, like an exotic bird dropped into the middle of a chicken coop.

“Are you all right?” Steve asked him gently.

Loki blinked and looked at them, then nodded. “Asgard is still here,” he said, his voice distant. “Heimdall, Odin, my mother – Thor. They’re all still here. My mother dies in a year, Thor – my father – Asgard – in six. But right now they’re still here.” He wiped a hand furiously beneath his eyes, then turned the gesture into a wave.

Green-gold magic washed over them. Natasha shifted uneasily as her jumpsuit turned into the jeans, t-shirt, and bomber jacket she had been wearing two days ago, her guns shifting from their thigh holsters to the small of her back and her staff suddenly in her hand in the form of an umbrella, the weight of the harness gone. Steve blinked rapidly as his stealth suit was replaced by civilian clothes and the shield on his back by another backpack. Loki was in a long black coat over a pale green shirt and a darker green scarf with gold embroidery at the ends, his hair pulled into a knot at the back of his head. He flipped the cane he was holding up and caught it again; Natasha assumed it was Mistilteinn, transformed into something he could walk the streets with.

“Suitable?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Natasha checked to make sure her guns were actually still there and that the weight on her wrists was her widow’s bites, mostly hidden by the sleeves of her jacket. Steve had pulled the backpack off and was looking at it dubiously.

Loki flicked his fingers and the backpack glittered briefly, the shield flickering into sight for an instant before it became a backpack again. “Satisfied?” he said.

“Is it real?” Steve asked.

“It’s real enough. You can put things in it if you like, though I can’t be certain they’ll still be there when we return to the present day as that will shuffle them into another dimensional fold. It’s not exactly an illusion or a glamour, though it’s not a pure shapeshift either. It’s –” He thought about it for a moment. “It’s a rearrangement of matter, to be crude about it.”

“Got it,” Steve said, slinging the backpack over his shoulders again. “Let’s go find Strange and the Sanctum. If we landed in the right spot, we should only be a block or two away.”

“Lead on,” Loki said. “The last time I was here I didn’t go in through the front door.”

Natasha’s mouth twitched. She had heard that story from Wong, who maintained that it had been a very, very stupid and very dangerous thing for Stephen Strange to do and Earth was lucky that Thor and Loki had taken it so well. He had thought it was funny, though, since neither Asgardian had retaliated by burning down the Sanctum and killing everyone in the city. Or on the planet.

Her smile fell away as they stepped out of the alley onto the street. On some level she knew that it wasn’t even all that busy – they were in Greenwich Village, not Times Square, and it was an odd hour of the day anyway – but it was still more cars and more people than she had seen in a single casual setting in years, all of them going about their lives without the slightest awareness that in six years half of them would be nothing more than ash in the wind. She didn’t even know any of them.

No wonder Loki had refused to go to Asgard.

Natasha Romanoff wasn’t often a woman to look for comfort, but she found herself reaching back for Steve anyway. His hand closed reassuringly around hers, familiar and real, something from the world she lived in.

“This is stupid,” Natasha said.

“No,” Steve said. “No, it’s not stupid.”

“I could call Fury right now,” Natasha said. “I could tell him – I could –”

Nick Fury and Maria Hill – probably on the helicarrier right now, briefing Steve and Bruce; Tony wouldn’t arrive until Stuttgart. Yelena, still under the Red Room’s thumb; Alexei, in prison; Melina, refining the mind control drugs for Dreykov’s Widows iteration by iteration. Sam, secure in his life in DC; Wanda and Pietro in Sokovia; Bucky –

She looked up at Steve and saw the knowledge writ clear on his face, too. Loki’s grim expression mirrored it.

“I know,” Steve said quietly.

Natasha had spent her whole career making compromises. This was just one more.

Natasha nodded in response, her throat tight, and squeezed Steve’s hand before releasing it. The three of them went down the sidewalk, searching for the characteristic front window of the Sanctum Sanctorum, and found it a block from their landing place. Natasha and Steve almost walked right past it before Loki cleared his throat and pointed it out; even then, it took Natasha nearly a solid minute of blinking and staring before the building came fully into focus. She kept wanting to just keep walking, convinced that there was either nothing there or what was there was another run-of-the-mill townhouse.

“A minor spell to prevent casual visitors,” Loki said, frowning at the front door – doors, rather, painted green and with clouded glass windows. “I expect the postal service and food delivery workers have trouble finding it, unless they’re specifically excluded. Even then it’s not a very discriminating spell.”

“They probably have a PO box,” Steve said.

They followed Loki up the front steps, where he tapped the head of his cane against one of the doors. Natasha never saw them open.

They were suddenly standing in the Sanctum’s foyer, warmly lit and paneled in worn, dark wood, with artifacts from all over the world displayed on and against the walls. When she looked behind her, it was to see the front doors still shut.

Steve looked just as rattled as Natasha felt. He was in his stealth suit again, the edge of the shield gleaming over his shoulders. When Natasha looked down at herself, it was to find that her civilian clothes were gone and she was holding her staff instead of the umbrella Loki had transformed it into. She disconnected the halves and slid the batons back into her harness. “I hate it when they do that.”

“No, I did that part,” Loki said; he was in his Asgardian clothes again. “Apologies.”

“A little warning would have been nice,” Natasha said pointedly.

“I did just apologize.”

“An Asgardian,” said an unfamiliar woman’s voice. Natasha looked up to find the speaker standing at the top of the stairs, backlit by the window behind her. “I’m honored. It’s been some time since we’ve had one of the Aesir here – you are Aesir, yes, not Vanir?”

“I am, yes,” Loki said, cautiously polite. “More or less.”

“Is it more or less?” When she came down the stairs, the speaker turned out to be a tall shaven-headed white woman in robes like the other sorcerers Natasha had met, except that her robes were yellow. She was wearing the Eye of Agamotto.

“For the moment, it’s more,” Loki said.

“And which of the Aesir are you?” the sorcerer asked.

“I am Loki,” he said. “God of mischief.”

The woman smiled slightly. “And magic, I think?”

“It’s one of my epithets.” He was regarding her with a slight frown, his eyes narrowed.

“Loki, god of mischief – son of Odin, son of Frigga. Prince of – no.” The woman frowned at him, as if she was seeing something other than the man in front of her. “Not prince; that’s not the magic that clings to you. King of Asgard, Allfather of the Aesir, and Lord Protector of the Nine Realms. So Odin is dead in your time, then.”

“Every creature that was ever born must die, wise one,” Loki said. “Even the immortal gods.” He relaxed a little, as if he had just worked out some riddle, then his brows drew together again in confusion. “We’ve met. Not recently – I was very young at the time.”

“We’ve met twice,” the sorcerer corrected him. “The first time you were barely out of your swaddling clothes. Your mother brought you with her when she came for a gathering of the vǫlur.”

“The last time the vǫlur met on Midgard was more than ten centuries ago,” Loki said. “Humans don’t live that long.” He frowned at her, blinking several times as if looking for something that wasn’t visible to human eyes, then said, “Oh. That’s a dangerous trick for a mortal to try.”

Under less serious circumstances it would have been funny to see Loki so obviously rattled by a human, let alone cautious of one. As it was, Natasha cleared her throat and said, “I’m Natasha Romanoff and this is Steve Rogers.”

“Ma’am,” Steve said.

“Captain America,” the woman said, sounding less impressed than she did intrigued. “You look different than in your film reels, but the beard suits you. And – I’m sorry, I don’t know you,” she said, turning to Natasha. She sounded genuinely regretful.

Natasha smiled. “You wouldn’t. Not yet.”

“Ah. A mystery. But I’ve been rude to keep you standing here. Will you join me for tea? Unless your purpose in coming here is so urgent it can’t wait.”

“We would be pleased to join you,” Loki said, with all the courtly grace of a king.

Steve glanced at Natasha, who shrugged in response. It was time travel. In theory, they had all the time in the world, as long as they got to the younger Loki’s hideout before he left for Germany. Neither Clint or Loki had remembered exactly when that had been, but their best guess had been between five and seven hours from their arrival, which should be enough time to drive there. Natasha wasn’t sure of the details of that yet; it was the kind of thing that they had decided to figure out on the go.

“I am called the Ancient One,” the sorcerer said as she led them out of the foyer and through two similarly decorated rooms to a well-lit sitting room. Natasha frowned at the windows as she sat down cross-legged on a battered but comfortable cushion on one side of a low table like a Japanese chabudai, Steve and Loki flanking her and the Ancient One settling down across from her. Loki set Mistilteinn down behind him as he sat and Steve did the same with his shield. There was a Japanese-style tea service laid out already on the table, and as the Ancient One busied herself with it Natasha looked back at the windows.

“That’s not New York,” she said. The view outside was that of a forest, light shining down through the canopy above. Natasha calculated the angle of the sun against the time in New York and guessed western Europe somewhere.

The Ancient One glanced up, followed her line of sight, and smiled. “Ah!” she said. “The Teutoburger Wald. I felt the need for a change – perhaps I had some notion I might have company today, and one of the royal Aesir at that.”

Loki blinked. “What does a forest in Germany have to do with me? I know there was a time when the Aesir and Vanir were worshiped from Scandinavia almost to Italy, but most of that was before I was born.”

“As was this,” the Ancient One said. “You’ve heard of the clades Variana, perhaps? The Varian disaster, in English.”

“It was a Roman defeat in the first century AD,” Steve said. “Germanic tribesmen lured the army into the Teutoburg Forest, ambushed them, slaughtered three legions – sixteen, twenty thousand troops, maybe. What?” he said as Loki looked at him in surprise. “I read.”

Natasha hid a smile. She took the cup that the Ancient One offered and folded her hands around it, breathing in the fragrant steam of the tea. It smelled as grassy and green as it looked; a second-flush sencha, if Natasha was any judge.

“What does that have to do with the Aesir?” Loki said. “It certainly has nothing to do with me; I wasn’t born for another nine centuries.”

“Oh, not you. Your sister, Hela, the goddess of death. She was one of the patrons of the tribes of the Germani – she whispered in the ear of the man history has remembered as Arminius and many others on Earth over the millennia before Odin locked her away. Some say she even walked battlefields with the Cherusci and the Chatti and the Batavi – all those tribes that the Caesars tried for years to bring to heel and who fought them tooth and nail and left rivers of blood across Europe. When you and your brother Thor came to Earth ten centuries later to walk amongst the last of the Norsemen and drive them into battle, hundreds suffered for it, maybe thousands.”

Pain flashed across Loki’s face at the mention of his brother’s name, but he said, “That was really more Thor than me.”

“But not him alone, nor Hela either. There have been many of the Aesir and Vanir over the millennia who have treated Earth as their playground. Every time your kind comes here to walk alongside men, it’s humankind who pays the price.”

Loki sighed and pressed his fingers to his forehead. “And this started on such a good note,” he said.

The Ancient One smiled at him, but there was steel in it. “Wherever Asgard goes, there is war, ruin, and death. Which of them have you brought today, god of mischief?”

“You know, you’re not actually the first person to tell me that,” Loki said.

Steve put his teacup down. “We’re not here to start a war, ma’am, and we’re not here to kill anybody or destroy anything. We’re here to save our people.”

Natasha smiled thinly. “To save the universe.”

“Then save it,” the Ancient One suggested, “in your own time.”

“We can’t,” Natasha said. She kept her hands wrapped around her teacup as she leaned forward, meeting the other woman’s eyes. “Five years ago, an alien warlord called Thanos gathered all six Infinity Stones after a lifetime killing thousands –”

“Millions,” Loki said. “He’s almost as old as I am and far less principled. And I say that as someone who once tried to blow up a planet.”

“Not helping, Loki,” Steve said.

“He’s actually succeeded in genocide, I only attempted it.”

“Still not helping.”

The Ancient One tipped her head slightly at Natasha in a “you see?” kind of gesture.

“Let me rephrase,” Loki said, “when I say he succeeded in genocide, I mean that my people were the last he slaughtered in the conventional manner before he got the Infinity Stones and could do it with the snap of his fingers.”

The Ancient One turned towards him in shock. “Asgard is gone?”

“I am king of ashes and atoms and the three hundred and seventy-nine Aesir who survived my sister killing everything in her path, Surtur’s destruction of the planet, Thanos’s massacre of those who escaped, and his final culling of half the universe,” Loki said, his voice trembling with sudden rage. He flattened his palms on the table in front of him, as if aware that if he closed his fists he would break something. “You are lucky, sorcerer, that I have come only to bargain for what I need and not to take it.”

There was no threat in the Ancient One’s voice, just quiet competence. “That would be a grave mistake, god of mischief.”

“I make grave mistakes all the time,” Loki said. “But they never seem to work out.” He gave the woman a thin smile, then made a small “go on” gesture at Natasha, sitting back and lifting his cup again.

Natasha took that to mean that, having made his point, he was going to leave the rest of the negotiation to them. Thank god. Loki could be pretty convincing when he wanted to be, but it was obvious that he wasn’t going to make any headway with the Ancient One.

“Let’s start over,” the Ancient One said, with an unspoken “now that the Asgardian has decided to shut up” implied. “Unless I’m much mistaken, it wasn’t me you came here looking for. Who was it?”

“Stephen Strange,” Steve said, after a brief moment of hesitation.

Her brows knit for an instant. “Then you’re about five years early. Stephen Strange is currently performing surgery about twenty blocks that way. What do you want from him?”

Natasha’s mind ticked over the words and filed them away to consider another time; once she had known about Strange, she had assumed he had pinged HYDRA’s radar because of his position as Sorcerer Supreme, but that had been back in 2014, still three years away from the date that the Ancient One had just named. Zola’s algorithm must have picked up on something else.

“We need the Time Stone,” Natasha said.

“I don’t think so,” said the Ancient One, kindly but firmly. “You seem to have mastered time travel already yourselves, something I might be surprised that your companion hasn’t warned you against – if he wasn’t the god of mischief.”

Loki sighed pointedly, but didn’t say anything in response.

“He did,” Steve said. “And before you ask, since you obviously know who I am, that part doesn’t have anything to do with time travel. Just hear us out before you tell us no, okay?”

“I’ll indulge you, Captain Rogers,” the Ancient One conceded. “I have some time to spare today. But it won’t change my answer.”

“Maybe it will,” Natasha said. “Yes, we’re from the future, but not very far in the future. Five years ago in our past, six years from now, an alien warlord called Thanos succeeded in gathering all six Infinity Stones, including the two that were on Earth at the time. When he had them all, he put them together into a gauntlet –”

“Forged by the dwarves of Nidavellir,” Loki said quietly, “under duress.”

Natasha nodded. “– and used them to wipe out half of all life in the universe. Then he used the gauntlet again to destroy the Stones.”

The Ancient One’s eyes widened slightly, though the reaction hadn’t come at Natasha’s mention of the Snap, but at the destruction of the Stones.

“We’ve lived with that for five years now,” Natasha said. “Friends gone, families destroyed, children orphaned – and that’s just the personal cost. I’m sure you can imagine what happens to an airplane or a nuclear submarine when its pilot turns to ash at the controls. Or a bus or a train. Or what it does to a country – or a planet. It happened all over the universe. We’ve spoken to people from far, far beyond the Nine Realms, and they’ve spoken to those from even further away, and no one was spared. The Stones took half of all living things in the universe and turned them to ash.”

“A tragedy, to be sure,” the Ancient One said. “And one that you and your friends now seek to keep from ever coming to pass.”

“No,” Steve said, putting his cup down and leaning forward. “We’re not trying to keep it from happening; we’re not trying to change the past. We’re going to reverse what Thanos did in our own time. But since he destroyed the Stones, we need to get them from a point in time when they still exist. We don’t have any intention of keeping them in our time. We’ll use them to restore those who were snapped – who were taken in the culling – and then we’ll return them to their proper times.”

The Ancient One blinked at him for a moment, looking honestly taken aback, then turned to Loki and said, “And you went along with this?”

His eyebrows arched at the irony, considering what she had accused him of only a few minutes earlier, but he said gravely, “While the notion itself is mad, the theory is sound. I am very desperate, wise one – we all are – but I wouldn’t have gone along with it if I didn’t believe it could be accomplished. I am the god of mischief, not fool’s errands. I am also the King of Asgard, with no heir and no living kin. I don’t take this risk lightly, not when my loss would put my people in an impossible position.”

“An admirable task,” the Ancient One said, “since I assume that you, at least, know what’s at stake, Asgardian. But I cannot help you. If I give up the Time Stone to help your reality, I’m dooming my own.”

“There are five other Infinity Stones besides the Time Stone,” Natasha said, hoping that the Ancient One wasn’t aware that two of them were currently on Earth. “We’re not the only members of our team getting them. We know where they are and when they are. This mission is in motion whether or not you like it. We need the Time Stone or all the rest will be for nothing.”

“And we won’t be able to return those Stones if we can’t undo the culling,” Loki said. “The, ah, method we used for this excursion is not replicable without one of those who was taken.”

The other woman’s lips thinned slightly. “Not magic, then.”

“No,” Loki said. “Not magic. Though as the humans say, any science significantly advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” He tipped his head a little side to side, with a wry smile. “Crude, but not totally inaccurate in this case.”

“Hmm. Not something I expected to hear from an Asgardian.”

Loki spread his hands, amused.

“We’ll bring the Stone back when we’re done with it,” Steve said. “We don’t want to keep it, to keep any of them. I’ve got some experience with Infinity Stones and so do Loki and Nat and they’re more trouble than they’re worth. If it wasn’t for the fact that we need them to reverse this, I’d be glad they’re gone in our time. I promise you,” he added, with the good-natured earnestness that made him so disarming and so dangerous, “that when we’re done with this Stone and the others we’ll return them to the exact point we removed them, so it won’t change anything going forward. You’ll barely even know it was gone.”

“I can also remove your memory of this meeting afterwards,” Loki said helpfully. “If you’d prefer to never know it was gone.”

Natasha gave him an ironic look.

“Yes, but you’re leaving out the most important part,” the Ancient One said. “In order to return the Stones, you have to survive.”

“Well, nothing else that’s tried has been able to actually kill me yet, so we should be able to manage that,” Loki said.

“Loki –” Natasha said.

“We’re not taking the Stones to a battlefield or a war,” Steve said. “We’re just taking them to our home. We’re going to use them once and then bring them back where they came from, that’s all. Even if it’s not one of us three that brings them, someone from our team will. And they’re all good people. None of us are doing this for power or to take over the universe or to – to change the past, nothing like that. We just want to fix something that these Stones did. That’s all. I promise you.”

“I can’t risk this reality on a promise,” the Ancient One said. “It’s the duty of the Sorcerer Supreme to protect the Time Stone.”

“Then why did Strange give it away?” Natasha asked pointedly.

The Ancient One blinked. “What did you say?”

“He gave it away,” Natasha repeated. “Stephen Strange – he gave it to Thanos.”

Loki looked away.

“Willingly?”

“Yes,” Steve said.

The Ancient One looked genuinely baffled. “Why would he do that?”

“Very likely,” Loki said quietly, “he realized that he couldn’t bear to watch someone else be hurt when that person’s life was in his hands. It is very easy to say such things before the screaming starts. And it’s easier – as such things go – to bear the pain yourself. When it’s someone else – even if it’s not someone you care about, someone you love, but a comrade, a child, even a stranger – the choice can seem very simple then. If it’s someone you love then it’s no choice at all.”

“You say this as if you’ve lived it,” the Ancient One said.

Loki nodded. His eyes were very bright.

“Or he might have had a reason,” Steve said. He shot Loki a worried look, but Loki’s gaze was downcast, his fingers pressed to his forehead. “It can show you things, can’t it? The Time Stone? Tony – our friend Tony, who was there – said that Strange looked into millions of possible futures and only saw one success.”

The Ancient One nodded slowly, and said, her voice low, “Strange is meant to be the best of us.” She stood up – Natasha and Steve stood as well, though Loki remained seated – and made a gesture with both hands in front of the Eye of Agamotto. The center of the necklace unfolded, revealing a gleaming green gem.

Loki flinched.

The Ancient One drew the Time Stone out, balanced in mid-air between thumb and forefinger but not touching either. Steve put his hand out, and she set it into his palm, then folded his fingers around it, keeping his hand clasped between both of hers. “I’m counting on you, Captain Rogers,” she said. “We all are.”

“You have my word,” Steve said.

When she finally released him and stepped back, he stowed the Time Stone carefully in one of the pouches on his belt, then leaned down to pick up his shield.

“Thank you,” Natasha said. “We’ll see you again soon, I hope.”

“I hope so too,” the Ancient One said. She still looked worried. Natasha tried to find something that she could offer as comfort, but couldn’t think of anything they hadn’t already said.

Loki pushed himself slowly to his feet, leaning on Mistilteinn as he did so. “You have my thanks as well,” he said to the Ancient One.

“I’m sorry for your grieving,” she said, “and for your loss.”

He nodded, not quite looking at her.

“You’ve been touched by the Stones before,” she said. “More closely than either of your companions.”

He nodded again. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he said. “They’re not pleasant memories.”

“I understand.” She looked between the three of them. “I suppose you’ll be on your way now.”

“Actually,” Loki said, looking up suddenly, “you might be able to help us with that.”

They stepped out of a sparking golden ring into a day so heavily overcast that it looked like it was twilight, despite the fact that it was barely noon. Natasha glanced upwards at the dark clouds; across the river the storm was much closer than it had been in Greenwich Village.

The Ancient One’s portal had deposited them in a side street less than a block from the closed-up entrance to the abandoned train station where Clint and Loki had set up their safe house in 2012. Magic washed across them again; this time when the gleam of Loki’s power faded Natasha and Steve were both in black tactical gear, the anonymous uniform of mercenaries the world over. Steve’s shield had vanished entirely, though Loki had left Natasha’s baton harness in place. Instead, Steve had a couple of pistols in thigh holsters and a machine gun on a strap over his shoulder. Natasha assumed the first two were true illusions and the latter was his shield.

“Better fix your hair,” Steve said to Loki.

Loki made an annoyed expression and twitched his fingers, replacing his braided hair with the shorter, spikier hair Natasha remembered from before. The armor on his outfit faded away in a slower shimmer of green-gold, leaving him in what Natasha supposed must be the equivalent of fatigues; it was what he had been wearing on the helicarrier. Mistilteinn turned into a replica of the scepter when Loki scowled at the polearm.

“Well, let’s get this over with,” he said. “Follow my lead.”

He strode out from the alley without waiting for either of them to respond. Natasha rolled her eyes at Steve and followed, keeping her gaze moving around. She spotted three guards on the entrance to the train station, two on the ground and the third on the roof. The two on the ground stood respectfully back for Loki as he walked past them and didn’t look twice at Steve and Natasha, either.

The station didn’t look too different from how it had the last time Natasha had scouted it in 2023, at least not until they got down to the lower level. Then, seemingly all at once, it was buzzing with activity – more mercenaries, mostly dressed like she and Steve were, and a bunch of white-coated scientists she recognized from old SHIELD files. There were various work stations set up, all of them playing fast and loose with safety protocols in a way that would have made even Tony Stark wince, and a big makeshift lab cordoned off with plastic sheeting that held an all-too-familiar machine. The scientist who seemed to be in charge of it was standing by the edge of the sheeting, talking to another man in black whom Natasha recognized from behind.

“– it’s very hard to get hold of.”

“Especially if SHIELD knows you need it,” Clint Barton said.

“Well, I didn’t know,” Erik Selvig said, then turned towards them, manic and blue-eyed. “Hey! The Tesseract has shown me so much – it’s more than knowledge, it’s truth.”

“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” Loki said, which got a confused look in return from Selvig.

“Natasha?” Clint said, looking at her over Loki’s shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

His eyes were shot blue through and through, and Natasha felt a stab of anger at Loki even though this was years past and gone. The lines of grief were gone from this younger Clint’s face, replaced with the steely determination Natasha remembered from the fight on the helicarrier, like all that mattered was the mission.

“Well, you spoke so highly of her,” Loki said. “I couldn’t resist bringing her in.”

“Good choice,” Clint said. “Who’s your friend, Nat?”

“Stevens,” Natasha invented. “He’s working with me, but STRIKE’s been headhunting him.”

“Hi,” Steve said.

Clint nodded shortly. “Sir –”

Loki moved past him to part the plastic sheeting and step into the lab. “I’ll need the Tesseract, Erik,” he said. “Just for a short while.”

“Of course, of course! I’ve got it just here.” Selvig’s hands hovered jealously over the glowing blue cube in its case before he shut the lid and locked it, handing it to Loki.

“Thank you,” Loki said. “Everything else is going well?”

“Yes, yes. We just need one more thing that Agent Barton’s managed to find –”

“Very good.” Loki touched a green-glowing finger to his forehead, making Selvig stiffen. “Forget this.” He stepped out of the makeshift laboratory and repeated the process with Clint, who stood stock-still as Loki handed the Tesseract case to Steve and stalked away. After a moment of hesitation where she and Steve just stared at each other, Natasha and Steve followed him.

Natasha didn’t see the younger Loki at first, not until Loki stepped up to what seemed to be an empty step and said, “I’m afraid I need that.”

The Asgardian shimmered into existence in a familiar wash of green-gold light. He was sitting on the step with the scepter in his lap and –

Natasha hadn’t remembered him looking quite that bad.

He looked brittle and ill-kempt, eyes bruised with weariness and cheeks hollowed, the bones of his face standing out sharply. He looked up at Loki standing over him with an expression that was less surprise and more confusion, then put the hand without the scepter in it to his forehead in the same gesture Loki had used in the Sanctum.

“Enough,” he said wearily.

“Up,” Loki said.

The younger Loki stood. “You’ve made your point,” he said. “Tell your master I –”

Loki’s punch snapped his head back. He snatched the scepter from his younger self’s hand as the other Asgardian crumpled, his eyes rolling back in his head before they shut. Loki handed the scepter back to Natasha without looking at her, then flexed his fingers as if trying to shake off the feel of the thing. He stood looking down at the other Loki.

“I know you won’t believe me,” he said, “though I do know you can probably hear me. Go home. I know groveling is absolutely excruciating, but in this case it’s the better option for everyone, yourself included. And if I truly believed that you think this is anything other than another hallucination, I wouldn’t tell you any of this, but I know you won’t. I’ll take that.” This last was to Steve, who released the Tesseract case to him with only a moment’s hesitation.

Only Clint frowned after them as they made their way out of the makeshift laboratory, but Selvig drew him back into conversation and he let them go without question. None of the other scientists or mercenaries so much as glanced at them.

Instead of going back to the alley, Loki kept stalking down the street until they reached a mostly empty lot which was blocked on three sides by tall buildings. Then he stopped, shuddering, and let Mistilteinn – now back in its regular form – stand upright as he pressed his free hand to his face.

“Are you all right?” Steve asked him. “We’ve got all the Stones, we can go back now –”

“I just need a moment,” Loki said as thunder rumbled overhead, a thin streak of lighting illuminating the dark clouds. “Just a moment, please.”

Natasha and Steve exchanged a look, then Steve said, “Yeah, of course.”

Loki nodded. He stood still for a moment more, then opened the briefcase and took the Tesseract out, lifting it until it was eye level with him. Its blue glow illuminated the sharp angles of his face. “I never thought that I would see this thing again,” he said eventually. “I never wanted to. I was – I was glad when I found out that it had been destroyed.”

His long fingers flexed against it. “My brother died for this,” he said. “I took it from the vault during Ragnarok because I didn’t think Surtur’s fires would be capable of destroying an Infinity Stone and for that Thanos slaughtered my people and killed – and killed Thor.”

There was another crack of thunder, though no accompanying lightning. Natasha shifted her shoulders, not wanting to get soaked in the inevitable storm, but she wasn’t going to stop Loki now.

“It was supposed to be me,” Loki said. “It was supposed to be me. I was so sure that it was going to be me. And it wasn’t me. It was supposed to be me, and it wasn’t me. I gave the bastard the damn Tesseract so that he would stop hurting Thor. I was out of magic, I was out of tricks, and all our people were dead. I pulled a knife on him – on the Mad Titan. I thought he would kill me for that and let Thor live. I was so sure. It was me he hated; I was the one who failed him, and he’d – he had made me certain promises about what would happen if I did. It was supposed to be me.”

There were tears on his cheeks. “Thanos let me scream the whole time he was killing my brother,” Loki said. “It took – it took a long time and I screamed the whole time. I begged him. I told him I’d get him the Stones, I told him I’d kill anyone he wanted, I told him I’d give him the Nine Realms, I told him – I offered him anything he wanted.” He let out a crack of broken laughter. “‘Your world in the balance and you bargain for one man.’ I told you that years ago, do you remember? I begged. And the last thing Thor ever heard in this life was me screaming for him.

“When he – when it was over. He left Thor there. Left us both there. Surrounded by our dead, by Asgard, what was left of Asgard. I should have died with Thor. I was ready to die with him. When the ship blew up – I was ready to die with him. I should have died with him, and I didn’t, and all of it, all of that suffering, because of this, this – this rock. I killed Thor as surely as if it had been my hands around his throat. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t stop Thanos. It should have been me. It was meant to have been me, and if it couldn’t have been me, then we should have died together. We should have –”

“Brother,” Thor said.

In the eight years since she had seen him last Natasha had forgotten how absolutely silent Thor could be when he wanted.

The glamour ran off Loki like ice melt as he turned to face Thor. Natasha already had her hand on her pistol; she hadn’t heard Thor approach at all. Steve swung his shield up; Loki had removed the transformation magic from them when he had dropped it on himself.

Thor blinked for an instant at the unexpected change in his brother’s appearance. He looked younger than Natasha remembered, his golden hair a little shorter than it had been when she had seen him last; his storm cloud eyes were dark with concern. His hammer was hanging at his belt.

Loki dropped the Tesseract. It landed crookedly on top of the padding in the case; Natasha hesitated, then leaned down to nudge it into position with the barrel of her pistol until she could close the case. Thor’s glance flickered towards her briefly, then he visibly set her presence aside to deal with later.

“Brother,” he said again.

Loki took a shaky step towards him, then another, his hands coming up as if he wasn’t certain what to do with them. Thor closed the gap between them in a few quick steps, pulling his brother into a hug as Loki began to cry.

“It’s me,” Thor said, one hand on the back of Loki’s neck. “It’s me, I’m here.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Loki mumbled, his voice muffled by the fact that he had his face buried in Thor’s shoulder. His hands were white-knuckled on the back of Thor’s leather jerkin; Thor wasn’t wearing his cape. “You’re not supposed to be here yet. You’re early. You’re never early.”

Thor rubbed a hand in soothing circles over his brother’s back; he looked on the verge of tears himself, and Natasha suddenly remembered Thor telling her once that Asgard had assumed Loki was dead for almost a year before he had reappeared on Earth. “When Heimdall saw two of you on Midgard, he and Father decided it was worth the risk to send me before they were certain of having enough dark energy for the journey.”

“Heimdall…I forgot.” Loki pulled back enough to wipe a hand under his eyes, though Thor kept his hands on his shoulders.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Thor said, his voice very gentle. “In your time. Like me.”

Loki nodded, his mouth trembling. “Thor…what you heard…”

“You’re my brother, Loki,” Thor said. “No matter what has passed between us, now or in the future, do you think that I would not give up my life for yours in a heartbeat and think the bargain fair?”

Loki’s eyes filled with tears. “It wasn’t a fair bargain,” he managed to say.

“You’re alive,” Thor said, “so it was fair enough.”

Loki wiped at his face again, shaking his head, then his eyes went wide with horror. “Brother, you can’t be here. You can’t – you can’t be here. You can’t change anything.” He reached up with a green-glowing hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have to take this memory, I’m sorry –”

Thor caught his wrists with both hands. “Loki, wait,” he said. “Wait.”

“Thor, I have to –”

“I know, I know,” Thor said quickly. “I know how a temporal paradox works. I know you have to take it. But if you’re going to take this memory anyway, then let me – let me carry a little of this weight for you, if only for a few minutes.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Loki said.

“No,” Thor agreed. “But you do. You can tell me anything. It doesn’t matter; you’re taking the memory anyway. It’s all right, brother. I understand.”

The glow faded from Loki’s fingers and he put his hands over his face briefly, before he lowered them again, like he couldn’t deny himself the sight of his brother. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he repeated.

“It’s all right,” Thor said again. “Tell me – tell me whatever you like.” His gaze darted around the empty parking lot, and he nodded a greeting to Natasha and Steve.

“Hi,” Natasha said. “It’s – it’s been a while, Thor.”

“We haven’t met yet,” Steve added. “But we are – we were – friends.”

Thor nodded gravely. “Then I look forward to our meeting,” he said, and gave them a small smile before turning his attention back to his brother.

“I don’t know what to say,” Loki said, his voice very small.

“Tell me –” Thor searched for a moment, then his gaze fell on Mistilteinn, still standing upright where Loki had left it, and he said, “Tell me about your weapon. I haven’t seen it before.”

Loki glanced over his shoulder as if he had forgotten the polearm existed. “Mistilteinn,” he said. “Father’s – Odin’s last gift to me, if you can call it that. He had it made for me before the coronation, but – you know what happened. So Eitri kept it until I turned up on Nidavellir after you – and after the Statesman – that’s the ship we were on after Ragnarok –”

Thor flinched for an instant.

“– yes,” Loki said. “Ragnarok happened too. It was…it’s been an exciting eleven years. Since now. Too exciting.”

“Oh,” Thor said quietly. “I’d assumed it was longer.”

Loki shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s – it’s only six years from now. I wish it was longer too.” His voice broke. “Father’s dead. And Mother. And Heimdall and the Warriors Three and Sif and – and everyone, they’re all dead. The rest – they made me king. The Althing – and that’s everyone, that’s everyone left now, two hundred and twenty-three Aesir in New Asgard, one hundred and forty-seven on Vanaheim, and nine elsewhere in the Realms – they voted and they made me king. Me.”

“You’re Odin’s son,” Thor said, though he had flinched with each name and number. “And you’ve always cared for Asgard. Even – even what happened last year with Laufey and the Jotuns – I know you did it because you thought you were protecting Asgard. The people know that. We were both raised to be kings, remember?”

“I may have also bespelled Father and usurped the throne for a few years,” Loki admitted. “But to be honest I’m fairly certain that half of Asgard knew it was me and not Odin. I think people were exchanging money when you turned up and revealed me.”

“You did used to do that all the time,” Thor said encouragingly. “People used to bet on whether it was actually you or Father or Mother or me – not that Father hasn’t deserved to be usurped at times.”

“He did, he did deserve it, and it’s not like I actually hurt him. He – it was after Mother was murdered and I think he was a little mad.”

Thor flinched. “Mother –”

“It’s been – it’s been an awful twelve years,” Loki said. “That’s counting what happened – last year for you, I suppose, what happened with Laufey and Jotunheim and the Destroyer. I sort of – panicked. I think I lost my mind when I found out – when I found out what I was.”

Thor just nodded.

“I’ve done dreadful things,” Loki said. “I’m doing dreadful things right now, and you’ll hate me for them, but you don’t know – you’ll never know the half of it. I’ve killed people. I’ve hurt people. Not for Asgard. Not even for myself. I’ve done it because I have to – because I’ve had to. When I – fell –”

“Tell me, Loki,” Thor said when he went quiet.

“I can’t.”

“Brother, it doesn’t matter, you’re going to take the memory anyway –”

“Thor,” Loki said, somewhere on the verge of both hysterical laughter and tears, if Natasha was any judge, “I don’t even want to think about it.”

Steve edged over to Natasha and said quietly, “The other guy’s probably going to start waking up soon and wondering where the scepter went, if he’s not already.”

Natasha nodded reluctantly. She didn’t want to take this away from Loki and she could tell that Steve didn’t either; he would probably be doing the same thing if it was Bucky here.

“Loki,” Steve said gently. “We gotta go.”

Loki looked at them and then nodded, his expression miserable. He turned back to Thor and put his arms around his brother again, whispering something in Thor’s ear as Thor returned the embrace. Then he stepped back and raised a green-glowing hand.

“It’s all right, brother,” Thor said. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” Loki said, tears running silently down his face as he touched his fingers to Thor’s forehead. “I’m sorry, brother.”

Thor went rigid. He was still staring blankly at nothing when Loki took his hand away and rejoined Steve and Natasha, collecting Mistilteinn and slinging the polearm over his back.

Steve put a hand on Loki’s shoulder. Loki didn’t pull away, just stood still for a moment, breathing hard, then said, “Let’s go home.”

The first thing Natasha did when they landed back on the platform around the quantum tunnel was look around and count heads. Ten. They were all there. Everyone had come home. A few of them looked a little freaked out – Nebula, standing next to Rhodes, was staring around as if she had no idea where she was or how she had gotten there – but they had all come home. The knot of nerves in her chest eased.

Across from her, Rhodes lifted the silvery orb that held the Power Stone and said, “Are you telling me this actually worked?”

“That was both terrifying and incredible,” Scott said, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet as he retracted the quantum suit. He lifted a stone-looking box with a thin line of glowing red running around it and added, “And you were right, Loki. It is kind of an angry sludge. I – what the hell happened to you, man?”

Natasha spun on her heel. Bruce was just outside of her peripheral vision, partially blocked by Clint standing between them; she had included him in her head count but had been too busy counting to take a second look. Clint, looking almost as shaky as Nebula, stepped back to lean against one of the platform supports and Natasha got a good look at Bruce.

And it was Bruce, not the Hulk, looking absurdly small after they had all gotten used to seeing him in his Hulk form. He was the only one of them who was still wearing his quantum suit, probably because the Hulk’s clothes wouldn’t fit him.

“Bruce?” she said.

“Are you okay?” Steve and Tony asked in badly-overlapping unison.

“He’s – he’s gone,” Bruce said shakily, looking down at his hands, then touching his face, his chest, his arms, as if reassuring himself that they were still there. His curly hair was damp and slicked close to his skull. “The Hulk. That was the trade. A soul for the Soul Stone. I guess the big guy counted, he – it –”

“It was weird,” Clint said. “There was this, like – ghost guy? And he pulled the Hulk right out of Bruce, or Bruce out of the Hulk, or – I really felt like I was third-wheeling it, I –”

Natasha grabbed him and pulled him into a hug. He stiffened for a moment in surprise – he hadn’t been expecting it – then relaxed and returned the embrace. “You okay, Nat?”

“Even with that hair you look better than you did in 2012,” Natasha told him.

“Oh,” Clint said, wincing. “You didn’t hit me again, did you?”

“No,” Natasha said. “Loki knocked out 2012 Loki, though. One punch.”

Clint looked over her head at Loki, who was leaning back against another of the supports with his head in his hands. “One punch?”

“Solid right hook.”

“I’d have liked to have seen that.”

“I don’t know if he’s – if he’s gone gone,” Bruce was saying to Tony and Steve when Natasha pulled back from Clint. “But I can’t – you know, I could always feel him? All the time, even back before we came to our arrangement? But I can’t feel him now. But I don’t – I don’t remember what it felt like – what I felt like, when it was just me. Does it feel like this?”

Steve put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked him again.

“I don’t know,” Bruce said. “Oh – I’ve got this –” he added, and handed the small orange Soul Stone to Steve. “It was – he volunteered. The other guy. He said it was something he could do that wasn’t smashing. And he jumped – we jumped – and then – there was a lake and I had the Stone –”

“Yeah, I had to climb down the mountain by myself,” Clint said. “It was snowing and I thought they were both dead, it sucked.”

Tony slung an arm over Bruce’s shoulders. “We’ll go run some tests while we prep the Stones, okay. Everyone got their Stones?” he added, raising his voice. “Anyone break the space-time continuum?”

Loki raised his head and said, his voice very flat and almost entirely devoid of emotion, “Well, I’ve just had to alter my dead brother’s memory after he turned up twelve hours early, so if you don’t have an immediate need for me, I’m going to go throw up and then change into clothes I’ve never died in.” He leapt down from the platform rather than use one of the ramps and stalked off.

“So that’s a maybe, then,” Rhodes said, looking after him. “Thor showed up?”

“Yeah,” Natasha said. “I guess Asgard was monitoring Earth and saw us arrive, sent Thor early. They – oh, shit.”

“Loki only wiped Thor’s memory,” Steve said, letting his breath out. “But if Asgard was watching somehow –”

“And Thor being there early at all,” Clint put in.

They looked at Tony and Bruce, as the resident geniuses. The two scientists looked at each other, but it was Scott who said, “Well, we’re still here, so whatever happened either didn’t change anything enough that we’d notice or the timeline branched and created a new reality – I think those are the two main options that have been theorized.”

“Yeah, about,” Tony said. “Couple other theories that have been floated, but it’s not like we can prove it.”

“Or do anything about it,” Bruce said, his mouth twisting.

“Yeah, doesn’t seem like our biggest problem right now,” Rocket agreed. “Hey, can we get this show on the road? I don’t know about you guys, but I got some people I wanna see again.”

Bruce ended up running most of the tests himself with Natasha, Scott, and Steve hovering nervously nearby and helping when he needed another hand; he knew more about the Hulk and his original serum than anyone else. While he was doing that, Tony, Rhodes, and Rocket worked on putting the new infinity gauntlet together with Tony’s nanotech, Tony occasionally drifting over to the other side of the lab to check on Bruce.

“Well, the serum’s still there,” Bruce said eventually, sitting back from the lab table and gesturing to toss the image from the microscope onto one of the holoscreens. “Look here, it’s still in my cells, same as before.” He pulled up an image with a two-year-old timestamp on it; they were nearly identical. “And the gamma radiation levels are the same. But it’s like there’s nothing for them to latch onto.”

“Can you transform?” Steve asked, leaning against a nearby lab table with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I don’t – I don’t think so,” Bruce said. “The serum, the gamma radiation, they’re there, but they’re not – they’re not doing anything. And he was always there – the other guy, I mean. Always. I don’t remember the last time I was alone in my head. Before – before, I guess.”

“How does it feel?” Scott asked him.

“Quiet,” Bruce admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t know if I like it. Even after – you know – Thanos, when we were having our thing, he was still there. Now it’s just quiet. Empty.” He looked up at Natasha, who was sitting on the lab table next to Steve. “I’ve wanted this for so long and now that I’ve got it – maybe got it – I don’t know what to do.”

“Live your life,” Natasha told him. “Just be Bruce Banner.”

“I don’t think I know who the hell Bruce Banner is anymore.”

“Now you can find out,” Loki said, making them all jump; no one had heard him arrive. He had changed from his Asgardian garments into black slacks and a collared green silk shirt with very faint gold striping, his long hair in a single plait over his shoulder. “You’ve been given a gift, Bruce.”

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Maybe.”

“Boom!” Rocket yelled from the other side of the lab, and they all jumped again.

“We got it,” Rhodes called.

“One infinity gauntlet coming right up,” Tony said. “Make your calls, people. We’re just about ready to go.”

Natasha, Rhodes, and Loki all stepped out of the lab to do just that, Loki removing himself to a corner with his round of amber in one hand and a chased gold dish filled with water on the table in front of him; he seemed to be having two conversations at once. Natasha and Rhodes had more mundane forms of communication. They had set as much of this up in advance as they could manage, but it was still a lot of calls to make and Natasha couldn’t shake the feeling that they had forgotten something.

“We’ve done all we can,” Rhodes said when they had both shut their last holograms down. “It’s better than nothing, Nat.”

She pressed her fists together and bowed her forehead briefly against them. “God, I hope this works. I think Okoye might kill me if it doesn’t.”

“I’ll work,” Rhodes assured her. “It has to. Asgard’s ready?” he asked Loki as the other man joined them.

He nodded. “The Valkyrie’s taken most of our remaining starships to the location of the culling in deep space and there’s a Ravager vessel with one of our healers at the wreck site, as well as people standing by in New Asgard just in case. I’ve spoken to the Asgardians on Vanaheim and to the Ruling Triumvirate of the Vanir, and to my contacts in the other five realms – I’m surprised Jotunheim took my call, to be honest.” He wrung his hands nervously together as the three of them went back into the lab, his lips shaping the word please.

“Question is, who’s going to snap their freakin’ fingers?” Rocket was asking as the door slid shut behind them. The other Avengers were gathered around the nanotech cradle, staring at the new gauntlet. Only Nebula was absent; Natasha couldn’t recall having seen her since they had left the quantum tunnel. She had been too focused on the dual problems of Bruce and the Stones to see where Nebula had gone.

Loki shifted uncertainly from foot to foot. “I’m a god,” he said. “And I’m the king of Asgard and Lord Protector of the Nine Realms. It’s my responsibility.”

“You can’t even look at the glove straight-on,” Rocket said, not ungently.

Loki’s jaw worked. “I’m the only person here who’s ever used an Infinity Stone. The rest of you are mortal. You saw what it did to Thanos –”

“Yeah, exactly,” Steve said. “Loki –”

“You’re not the only one here who’s ever used an Infinity Stone, pal,” Rocket said, his voice overlapping with Steve’s.

“Oh, excuse me, I don’t believe holding one-sixth of the Power Stone actually counts as using it,” Loki snapped. “This is the infinity gauntlet. It’s channeling enough power to light the forges of Nidavellir for a century. I am a god, you dull creature –”

“Man, you’re such an asshole when you’re in a mood,” Rocket said.

“Thank you, it’s both nature and nurture.”

“I thought you were adopted,” Scott said cautiously.

“I have both met and killed my blood-father,” Loki said. “But if you had ever met Odin, you wouldn’t argue the point.”

“Okay, wow, we’ll unpack all of that later,” Tony said hastily.

“No wonder you and Nebula get along so well,” Rocket said. “You guys should start a club.”

“Yes, thank you, we were in one,” Loki said. “It was called the Black Order. You may have heard of them. They didn’t have t-shirts.”

“Wait, you were actually in the –”

“It was not one of the better times in my life,” Loki said shortly.

“Okay, that’s – that’s also going on the list of things to unpack later,” Tony said. He put his hands up and added, “Just wait, okay, we haven’t decided who’s going to put it on yet.”

Loki looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “You’re all mortals,” he said. “It will most likely kill any of you instantly. There’s not another option. It has to be me.”

“I mean, I think we should at least discuss it,” Scott said.

“What is there to discuss?” Loki said, his voice slightly shaky. “I’m Lord Protector of the Nine Realms, it’s my responsibility. It’s my duty.”

“Loki,” Natasha said gently, “you can’t even look at it.”

He was looking anywhere but at the gauntlet, his gaze darting around the lab without settling on anyone for more than a few seconds at a time. That gaze flickered to her only for an instant before moving away again. “I don’t need to look at it to put it on. And if you’re concerned that I’ll use it to take over the universe –”

“Not worried about that, buddy,” Tony said.

“Well, now I’m just insulted.”

Natasha and Clint exchanged a look, which Rhodes caught and nodded a little in response. It was obvious to all three of them – and probably to Scott and Tony too – that this wasn’t a conversation that an unenhanced human had much of a voice in. Natasha didn’t mind throwing her body between Earth and aliens or killer robots or psychopathic godlings and if there had been no one else she would have put the gauntlet on without a second thought for the consequences; any of them would have. But right now that wasn’t the situation and all the regular humans could do was listen and try to keep the enhanced ones – and the god – from doing anything reckless.

“Look,” Steve said, holding up his hands. “Let’s just talk about this for a minute.”

“I don’t see what there is to talk about or what other option there is –”

“There is another option,” Bruce said from behind Natasha. She turned to look at him as he said, “And it’s not an option. It’s gotta be me.”

Tony and Loki both stared at him. Tony said, “You don’t have the Hulk anymore.”

“But I’ve still got everything else,” Bruce said. “The serum, the gamma radiation, all of it – it’s all still in me. You saw what the Stones did to Thanos. None of you could survive.”

“I’m a god –”

“Doesn’t make you immortal, pal,” Bruce told him gently, resting a hand briefly on Loki’s arm as he walked past him to stare down at the gauntlet. “And Asgard needs you.” Loki looked away.

“How do we know that you’ll survive?” Steve asked.

“We don’t,” Bruce admitted. “But the radiation that thing’s putting off is mostly gamma. It’s like…it’s like I was made for this.”

“Maybe the Hulk was,” Tony said, “but you –”

“Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean any of the rest is,” Bruce said. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you guys do, but it’s gotta be me. I got this.” He looked around at all of them. “Better suit up, though. Just in case.”

It took another couple of minutes for everyone who had taken off pieces of their gear to put it back on. There was no question of leaving Bruce to the face the gauntlet alone, so once they were all suited up again – except for Loki, who didn’t seem bothered by the prospect of whatever energy the gauntlet might put off – they arranged themselves around him at uneven intervals. Rocket hopped up onto a table behind Loki to get a better view as Bruce reached into the cradle and lifted the gauntlet out.

“Let’s do it,” he said. If he was nervous, it wasn’t evident from his voice.

It was like Natasha couldn’t remember how to read his face anymore – his face, and not the Hulk’s. They hadn’t seen much of each other these last five years, not since he had left after they had killed Thanos and made his deal with the Hulk. They weren’t strangers – hadn’t been for a long time – but whatever else they could have been other than friends and teammates had ended years ago. They’d both mourned that.

“Okay, remember,” Tony said, as nervous as Bruce wasn’t, “everyone Thanos snapped away five years ago, you’re just bringing them back to now, today. Don’t change anything from the last five years.”

“Got it,” Bruce said. The gauntlet looked like one of Tony’s Iron Man gauntlets except for the six glowing Stones across the knuckles and the back of the palm, elegant if oversized in Bruce’s hands. He ran his fingers across the hotrod red plating like he was memorizing it.

Natasha stepped up beside Steve and into the familiar shelter of his shield as Scott and Rhodes snapped their helmets into place. Rocket pulled his goggles down and edged behind Loki, who was watching with his arms crossed and his face unreadable. Tony tapped his arc reactor and let the Iron Man suit spread across him before producing an energy shield to protect Clint on his other side.

“FRIDAY, do me a favor and activate Barn Door Protocol, will you?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

The sound of blast doors closing all across the compound made the hair on the back of Natasha’s neck rise. The bright sunlight from the skylight above vanished as the heavy metal doors slid across the glass, leaving the lab lit with too-bright artificial lighting.

Bruce looked around at them again, as if memorizing them, and said quietly, “Everybody comes home.”

He put his hand into the gauntlet.

And screamed.

Energy ran up his arm in brilliant streams of light, burning through the fabric of his borrowed shirt as Bruce collapsed to his knees. It lit up the bone and muscle beneath, all of it fluctuating hideously between the Hulk’s green and the multi-colored illumination of the six Infinity Stones.

Take it off! Natasha almost shouted, but she bit her lip so hard it bled and held the words in. Clint’s face, when she looked at him, was as stiff as carved stone; so was Loki’s. Both of them flinched at each groan, but neither one so much as moved a muscle. Everyone there knew what was at stake. Bruce was an Avenger. He knew what he had chosen and why.

“Bruce, are you okay?” Steve demanded as Bruce groaned.

“Talk to me, Banner,” Tony added.

“I’m – I’m okay,” Bruce gasped, doubled over on the floor. “I’m okay.” Then he screamed again, bracing his right wrist with his left hand as he struggled back to his knees.

It was like the Hulk was fighting to get out of him. Parts of his face, his chest, his arms, his feet, all bulged suddenly and then retracted, green flaring across his skin and retreating almost immediately. His left shoe burst, the Hulk’s massive foot forcing their way through the nylon, before it shrank again. The gauntlet flexed and compensated as his right hand did the same, finger by finger.

“I’m okay,” Bruce said. “I’m okay.” He forced his right hand upwards with his left even as green skin ran in a flush from elbow to wrist, his shirt-sleeve tearing as muscle expanded and contracted. “Everybody comes home,” he gasped, and snapped his fingers.

The gauntlet hit the floor with a clatter of metal as Bruce collapsed. Natasha and Steve both threw themselves towards him, as did Tony and Loki; Clint kicked the gauntlet out of the way and stood peering over them worriedly.

“Bruce!” Natasha said, dropping to her knees beside him with Steve next to her. “Bruce, are you –”

He was still conscious. He grabbed her hand as Natasha reached for him, his fingers gripping hers with desperate strength.

“Don’t move him,” Tony ordered, the nanotech on his armor shifting as he activated his wound seal spray. Bruce’s right arm was black from fingertips to shoulder and stretching up along his neck, where green still occasionally flushed in quarter-sized patches before shrinking; the spray turned it pale and icy-looking.

Loki moved glowing hands in the wake of Tony’s sealant, his eyes narrowed to slits in concentration. “I can’t heal this,” he said after a moment. “Not right now, not without studying the damage. When Eir returns, maybe – I’m not a healer, not really.”

“Did it work?” Bruce gasped, his glazed eyes moving from Natasha’s face to Steve’s. Light spilled across them as the blast doors retracted and revealed the skylight again, adding an unreal quality to the scene. “Did it –”

“We’re not sure,” Natasha told him. “Just breathe, Bruce.”

“Honey?” Clint said.

She looked over her shoulder. He had been peering worriedly down at Bruce a moment ago, but now he had stepped aside to one of the lab tables where she remembered him putting down his phone before they had started. He was holding his phone to his ear now.

“Honey?” he said again.

Loki, crouched by Bruce’s head, looked up as a shadow fell over them. His face went dead white, all-consuming terror turning his handsome features into a skull. His lips formed the word no even as Natasha and Steve both twisted around to see what he was looking at.

The world exploded.