Jörmungrund
You’re a spy, not a soldier, Clint had told her years ago. Now you want to wade into a war? Why? What did Loki do to you?
Natasha hadn’t said as much to him at the time, but it was the same thing then as now. An alien had walked through a door in space-time, killed her people, and then come back with an army. As far as she was concerned, that made things real simple, not as complicated as Clint seemed to think it should be. Not everything had to be shades of gray. Some things really were black and white.
“Is that him?” Sif asked Loki quietly, jerking her chin towards Thanos. Even at this distance he was hard to miss.
“That’s him.”
Natasha looked over to see a muscle work in Loki’s jaw. Sif glanced at him in time to see it too. For an instant the other woman’s face did something complicated – you didn’t have to be a spy to guess that the two of them had history – but all she said was, “Tactics?”
“Straight up the middle.” He wasn’t looking at either of them. “Overwhelm his opponents. Apparently he used to have a brilliant strategical mind, but that was centuries ago and he hasn’t needed to use it once his forces became strong enough. He doesn’t care how many people live or die, after all – in fact, the more the better, even among his own forces. He has more.”
“I thought he only killed half,” Natasha said.
“Of the survivors. If he’s in a good mood.” Loki’s voice was so thick with self-loathing that it made Natasha wince and Sif look worried. “He killed everyone on the Statesman but me – or thought he did, at least. He killed all the dwarves but Eitri when he ransacked the Nidavellir forge ring.”
“The forge ring’s gone?” Sif said, startled.
“He extinguished the star.”
“You seem to know a great deal about him,” Sif said, her voice so low that the only people who could hear her were Loki and Natasha, not the Asgardian troops arrayed beneath the rise.
Loki nodded. Almost as an apology, he said, “I have red in my ledger,” which made Sif look confused and Natasha smile wryly. “Does that change anything?”
Sif thought about it, but not for long. “Not a damn thing.” Louder: “Do you want to call it or shall I?”
“You’re the goddess of war; there will be time enough for mischief once the fighting starts,” Loki said, relaxing slightly. “Unless I’m much mistaken, you also have more recent experience with set-piece battles than I do. And the Vanaheim garrison will listen to you.”
“Mmm.” Sif didn’t argue. Her gaze flickered consideringly over the various forces arrayed on the battlefield, then she shook her head. “I wish we could coordinate this. Even with the rest of our people –”
“The only soldiers over there are the Valkyrie and Thor and a few of the einherjar and ulfhednar who came to New Asgard from the Vanaheim garrison.” Loki’s voice hitched slightly on his brother’s name. “Everyone else is whoever we could get off Asgard before Ragnarok. None of the einherjar from Asgard survived.”
“Mmm – wait, did you say Valkyrie?” She jerked around to stare at the white-armored figure who stood beside Thor, her blue cloak snapping behind her.
Loki grinned in genuine amusement. “You’d be surprised who you run into when you leave the Nine.”
“We had better survive this,” Sif muttered, then raised her voice and called, “Bows!”
Natasha had expected only the ulfhednar to respond, but instead light rippled off the shining tips of nearly two hundred spear points as the einherjar all grounded their spears beside them, swung their shields over their backs, then reached to pull something off their belts. Loki and Sif did the same, green magic glimmering on Loki’s fingertips as he did so. Two hundred longbows snapped into existence with a sound like a cracking whip as they extended from whatever mechanism the Asgardian soldiers used – like Clint’s extendable bow, presumably, except these weapons were gold-gleaming and strung with what looked like silver, the tips capped with ivory. The ulfhednar already had their recurve bows in hand.
“Don’t be offended,” Loki said politely to Natasha when she opened her mouth to say that she could shoot; no one who was friends with Clint Barton escaped a lesson or two. “But you’d be overbowed with these.”
“Fair enough,” Natasha admitted. She let her gaze travel over the battleground again, watching the other forces from Yggdrasil. Most of them seemed to have ranged weapons as well – six-foot longbows like Japanese yumi among the Vanir, crossbows and some kind of artillery among the dwarves, a mixture of bows and guns among the Alfheim contingent. She couldn’t see what the fire giant and frost giant contingents had, but they seemed to have something; she could see the flurries of movement from here.
Clint would have loved it.
Where the hell are you, Barton? she thought. He had to be alive. He had to be.
At another barked order from Sif, part of the Asgardian line picked up their spears again and pivoted like a hinge until they were no longer ringing the rise where Sif, Loki, and Natasha stood. They stood in ranks three-deep, at an off-angle from Thanos’s forces. Natasha watched the other alien forces doing the same, until there were six blocks of archers – or whatever – arranged to form a V facing Thanos, creating a gauntlet that his troops would have to pass before they could get to Earth’s defenders. To confirm her suspicions, she glanced over her shoulder at the mixed up ranks of Avengers, sorcerers, Wakandan troops, Asgardian warriors, and Ravagers, some of whom looked slightly confused by this maneuver. Steve and T’Challa had realized what the Yggdrasil forces were doing, though, and were both barking orders, rearranging whichever of Earth’s forces were actually inclined to listen to them – not a given, Natasha saw with a combination of amusement and annoyance. Humans weren’t good at taking orders, especially not from someone they saw as an outsider.
“God, I wish I had my comms,” she muttered to Loki.
He nodded and started to say something, but Sif snapped, “Heads up!” and they both turned to face the battlefield. Natasha also glanced up, taking her at her word, and wasn’t particularly pleased with what she saw there. She had really never wanted to see Chitauri leviathans again. But hey, at least they had dragons on their side this time, lurking huge and dark on the other side of the battlefield.
Thanos, who had watched the forces of Yggdrasil arrive with something like disbelief at their presence and amusement at Loki’s desperation, seemed to have come to a decision. He pointed his double-bladed sword at the center of the gauntlet, at what might have seemed like a clear path to Steve and the rest of the Avengers – if you ignored the thousand or so alien archers lining it. His forces began to rearrange themselves.
“He’s not this stupid,” Sif said disbelievingly, her gaze fixed on the enemy.
“Stupid? No.” Loki’s gaze was fixed on Thanos. “War’s different outside the Nine, Sif. When we fight, it’s a straight-up fight, a set-piece battle like this one. Out there – they fight in the air, in space, in small groups, door to door or in ambushes. Like most wars on this realm in the past seven decades or so.” He glanced at Natasha, who nodded in response. “Most of the time in the Nine when we fight it’s a slugging match on the ground. And we’re very, very good at it, but we haven’t fought anyone outside Yggdrasil in a long, long time – longer than you or I have been alive. Thanos fights on the ground by choice. He has to – that’s how he kills. But beyond the Nine most people don’t know how to fight that way anymore. They think of themselves as having evolved beyond it. It’s why his forces were so thrown in Wakanda.”
“That was thrown?” Natasha said.
“Oh, yes. Usually his forces simply overwhelm whoever attempts to stand in their way.”
Sif scoffed. “What happens when people fight him, then?”
“They die,” Loki said. “In confusion and terror. I’ve seen it.” His jaw worked. “I’ve been party to it.”
Natasha and Sif both looked at him; his gaze was on Thanos, his fingers shifting restlessly on the handgrip of the bow he was holding.
“You’re not talking about New York,” Natasha said after a moment.
He didn’t answer for what felt like a long time but was likely only a handful of heartbeats. Eventually, he said, “I have, perhaps, too much red in my ledger to wipe out.”
Natasha glanced at him, studying his familiar features. He was looking away from her, his gaze fixed on Thanos. “It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “I used to think it did, but – none of it, what we did then, what we do now – you can’t tally it up so that one column cancels out the other. You just do what you can.”
He finally looked at her, then nodded, unspeaking.
“Loki, I’m very happy that you’ve finally made a friend you have something in common with,” Sif said, her gaze on the approaching army, “but maybe you could bond another time, because we need to kill your former liege lord now.”
That got a sarcastic glare from Loki. “Well, Lady Sif, whenever you’re ready,” he said. “I certainly have nothing better to do just now. And I would hardly call him my liege lord since that implies a few things that are manifestly not true.”
Sif frowned at him briefly, then nodded at whatever she saw in his face and said, “Sorry.”
Loki looked startled at the apology. “Thank you,” he said after a moment.
“Well, you’ll have your vengeance soon enough,” Sif said.
There was a low rumble that Natasha could feel through the soles of her boots as much as hear. It grew steadily more intense as the army of aliens approached – Chitauri skiffs and leviathans in the air, Outriders and other creatures racing over the shockingly small stretch of open ground that separated them from the allied forces. Pebbles bounced, the earth shaking beneath their approach. Natasha licked her lips, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the face of their relentless advance despite the Asgardian troops around her. Loki was a reassuring solidity to her left; at least there was one other Avenger here with her, not just strangers.
Sif’s shoulders shifted a little in eagerness for the coming fight, but her gaze was calmly intent. She stooped briefly and put her hand to the scrum of dirt and rubble they were standing on, then brought a clod of something that was probably mostly dirt to her lips and kissed it. When she stood again, she said, “Earth must be fed.”
“Earth must be fed,” Loki and the mass of Asgardian warriors echoed, harsh with sincerity, many of them touching their fingers to their lips in turn.
They meant something different by Earth than Natasha did when she talked about her planet, something different than merely Midgard. Primordial earth, where Asgardians believed the roots of the World Tree were watered by its three great wells. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Loki was one thing, Thor another; they were – at this point – normal. But this wasn’t just Loki or Thor; this was Asgard. This was what had made them.
“Draw!” Sif’s voice snapped out.
Like one massive organism, two hundred odd Asgardians drew back the silver bowstrings on their longbows or recurve bows. As they did so, energy hummed and light glittered suddenly all around Natasha as bolts of energy appeared on the bowstrings – no physical arrows.
“Right,” she said out loud. “Aliens.”
“Gods,” Loki said kindly without looking at her. He had drawn with the rest of the Asgardians, his right hand back past his ear and the ivory-tipped longbow curved into a C.
Since she couldn’t do anything just now, Natasha looked across the battlefield. The Vanir had drawn their six-foot longbows too – like the yumi they resembled the huge bows had their grips about two-thirds of the way down the shaft, rather than centered like the Asgardian bows. The Light Elves, across from them in the gauntlet the Yggdrasil troops had made, had done the same.
She was close enough to hear the Vanir order ring out, though she couldn’t make out the words. Natasha knew the sound of a bowstring snapping against an archer’s bracer – but not the sound of hundreds of them all at once. Arrows – and bullets from some of the Light Elves – arced out from the Vanir and Light Elf positions like a pair of dark clouds, a shrill, high-pitched whistling sound that she wasn’t unfamiliar with, except that she had never heard it en masse before.
“Loose!” Sif’s voice cracked out.
Bowstrings snapped all around her. It was light that leapt up from the Asgardian bows, rather than physical arrows, like a meteor shower; the Asgardians were already drawing again before the first bolts had struck, sending another shimmering wave of energy into the air, then a third or a fourth – a relentless, unceasing ripple of motion that made Natasha’s all-too-human eyes ache. She couldn’t see what kind of weapons the frost giants on the other side of the gauntlet had, not with the star-bright glitter of the Asgardian arrows half-blinding her.
Outriders, Chitauri, and other aliens she didn’t recognize went down as if they had struck a wall. Those following scrambled over them, screeching the whole time; Natasha could feel the tread of their passage under her feet, the earth shaking as Thanos’s army came on relentlessly. Still arrows and other missiles lashed out, until Sif shouted an order and the front three ranks of the einherjar deactivated their longbows and took up their spears again.
“Shield wall!” Sif yelled, her voice a clear soprano that carried over the sound of screaming Outriders and Chitauri and the relentless snap-snap-snap of the archers who were still shooting, Loki and the ulfhednar among them.
The first rank of einherjar went to one knee, round shields coming up in front of them; the second rank’s shields went over those to form a wall studded with the sharp-gleaming points of their spears.
“We are the Aesir who saw our folk slaughtered by the living dead in our own land,” Loki said, the words undercut by the snap of bowstrings all around them. “We are the Aesir who saw Asgard burn. We are the Aesir who saw our folk massacred by a monster who sought nothing but destruction. We are the Aesir who saw the universe halved in a culling it has never seen before and will never see again. We are the Aesir who saw Ragnarok come and go and have lived on borrowed time past the end of days twice over.” He crouched and lifted a clod of earth to his lips in the same gesture Sif had used a few moments earlier. “Earth must be fed,” he said, “and it feasts on gods’ blood today.” He stood again, his fingers moving restlessly over the handgrip on his longbow. “And Titan’s blood.”
His voice rose, as heady and rich as fine wine. “Our kin are even now pouring out the grave-ale in the great hall where the brave live forever!” he cried. “If we fall, we go to feast with our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, our sisters, and the line of our people back to the beginning of time!”
“Hail to the Æsir!” Sif shouted.
“Hail!”
“Hail to the Ásynjur!” Loki shouted.
“Hail!”
Loki threw back his head with a clatter of metal hair-beads and a ululating hawk-screech of triumph. “Allfather Odin! Your son calls you, god to god, king to king, Allfather to Allfather! Some of our folk will greet you in Valhalla this day! I bid you welcome them beyond the great gates which even the divine Aesir pass but once! If I see you this day, I ask that you remember me kindly, for I and my folk come as warriors of Asgard! Hail!”
“Hail!”
Natasha’s skin prickled even as she unholstered her remaining pistol and clicked the safety off. By now she had known Loki for years – had fought with him, drunk with him, laughed with him, mourned with him. He had never felt as far away and alien as he did now, drunk on battle-fury and the sheer vicious fanaticism of utter belief. It left her small and human and very alone.
You and your brother Thor came to Earth to walk amongst the last of the Norsemen and drive them into battle, the Ancient One had said only a few hours before, and Loki had never denied his participation, just its extent.
Natasha could see it now in his wild-eyed fervor, the way she had seen it during the Battle of Wakanda when he had cut a killing swathe across the battlefield, reaping Outriders like a harvester reaped wheat.
What do the gods worship? Themselves, and their kin who came before.
There were shouts of agreement from the other Asgardians and a few cries of, “Valhalla, I am coming!” but Natasha thought most of the einherjar were a little shocked by the sincerity of Loki’s words. Even Sif glanced at him sidelong for an instant. Loki didn’t seem to see it, breathing hard and with his teeth showing in a wolf’s grin as he drew and shot, over and over again with a trained archer’s discipline.
These were not the Asgardians who had come with Loki to Earth, the folk of New Asgard who had seen him fight and bleed and mourn with them. Natasha knew those Asgardians as well as any human on Earth did; she knew that they loved Loki with the unyielding fervor of a people towards a ruler who had brought them alive out of hell and suffered every loss with them. But these weren’t those Asgardians. These were the Asgardians of Vanaheim, the Asgardians who after the Snap had turned their backs on New Asgard with polite disbelief for their kinfolk’s tales of Ragnarok and what had come after, or the snapped and returned Asgardians of the Vanaheim garrison whose last memory of Loki had been as the traitorous second prince.
New Asgard would have stood with Loki without so much as a heartbeat of hesitation. Natasha wasn’t entirely certain that these Asgardians would.
She had a heartbeat to worry at that thought before the first of the Outriders reached them.
They hit the Asgardian shield wall and bounced, screaming with rage the whole time. Even far back from the front Natasha staggered back from the impact as the ranks of einherjar flexed but held the line. Energy flared where the Outriders struck the surface of the shields – there was something other than merely metal there, apparently, and dozens went down on the spear-points of the einherjar as the warriors jabbed and thrust between the gaps of the shield wall. Loki, Sif, and the rear ranks of the ulfhednar and einherjar continued to rain arrows – or whatever – down on the Outriders as the aliens flung themselves still screaming at the Asgardians. Natasha raised her pistol, picked her target, and fired.
She could see Outriders and other aliens racing past the Asgardian redoubt, but didn’t have time to pay attention to them other than a vague worry for the Avengers and the rest of Earth’s defenders. Heedless of the dead piling up beyond the Asgardian line, Outriders continued to throw themselves at the Asgardians the same way they had done with the barrier in Wakanda. Then –
“Loki!” she shouted, and saw his gaze flicker towards her, though the smooth, repetitive motion of his shooting didn’t even hesitate. “They’re using the corpses as a ramp!”
The mass of dead Outriders – and a few Asgardians – made it more difficult for the first ranks of the einherjar to maneuver. Outriders were clawing their way up the piles of their dead companions to launch themselves onto the Asgardians from above, where the archers couldn’t shoot them without potentially hitting their own people.
Loki flicked his wrist and deactivated the bow until it was just the handgrip again, then made it vanish with a flicker of green light. “Sif!” he yelled as Natasha picked off two more Outriders with her pistol, then had to pause to eject the spent clip and slap a new one in.
She deactivated her bow when she saw the indicated danger and pulled her sword and shield off her back, shouting orders to the einherjar. There was a ripple of motion as the remaining archers among them deactivated their bows and took up their spears and shields.
Loki stood still for a moment, his gaze briefly considering as he took in the situation. The rear ranks of the einherjar had swung their shields up over their heads, studded with spear-points in the handful of gaps created by the interlocking rounds of metal and spellcraft. The spears were doing the work of keeping the Outriders from completely swarming the Asgardians as they flung themselves from the heap of corpses onto the top of the Asgardian position, screaming as their bare flesh struck the shields and burned against the energy – or magic – that made the metal flare white.
Loki shouted an order and the spear-points dropped down, the shields coming together to cover the gaps. Sif glanced at him, frowning, as Loki raised his arms crosswise in front of him, then brought them down to either side in a swift chopping motion.
Green fire rolled out over the top of the shield wall, turning Outriders to ash in the time it took Natasha to breathe in and out again. Then Loki leapt, Mistilteinn flashing in his hand and his torn green cloak a banner behind him, and ran over the tops of the shields to throw himself down into the mass of Outriders still charging the Asgardians.
“Oh, fu –” Sif screamed, the words lost in Loki’s hawk-screech of challenge. “What are we, six hundred again?” she shrieked after Loki, but she was already following him. “Ulfhednar, with me! Protect the prince – protect the king!”
The rangers flowed to either side of the mass of armored einherjar rather than over them, most still shooting, a few casing their bows in favor of their short swords and wolf’s head shields.
Natasha judged her moment, then leapt after Sif and Loki. The tops of the einherjar’s shields were oddly hot beneath her boot-soles, but didn’t burn her. When she reached the final rank, she looked down at the bemused Asgardian face that peered up around the edge of the shield, dark-skinned beneath the golden helmet.
“Give me a boost?”
The woman grinned. Natasha braced herself as the Asgardian flung her upwards into the air, angling her shield to send Natasha over the Outriders to Loki and Sif.
For a long moment she hung suspended, her trained mind taking in the sudden bird’s eye view her height gave her. The battlefield had dissolved into a mass killing ground, clumps of aliens from both sides fighting. Up above her, a pair of dragons, one ice-white and one the deep black-flecked red of lava, closed on a Chitauri leviathan, bugling war-cries; more Chitauri were leaping from skiffs or other leviathans as they swarmed Iron Man and Rescue, who were back to back in mid-air, War Machine fighting his way through the mass of screaming aliens to get to them and the Hulkbuster on the ground below with Chitauri crawling over him. After New York, Natasha supposed it made sense that the Chitauri hated Iron Man – and by extension, any suit of armor that looked like him – more than anyone else here.
Varicolored bursts of energy marked T’Challa’s and Shuri’s positions – the siblings were keeping close to each other, with most of the Dora Milaje and a number of other Wakandans around them. Glittering circles of magic indicated the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj. She couldn’t spot Steve, but he had still been in the stealth suit, which wasn’t as eye-catching as his old uniform. Lightning boiled like a pot on the stove; there was no question about where Thor was, and presumably the Valkyrie and the other Asgardians with him trying to make their way to Loki and the rest of their people.
Natasha took in all of this in the instant before she was hurtling downwards again, firing her last three bullets as she did and putting each one through the brainpan of an Outrider. She landed in a roll not far from Sif and Loki, and came up on one knee, sweeping her batons out of their harness. She put one into the throat of the first Outrider to charge her, shrieking like a banshee; an Asgardian arrow took the next Outrider that came towards her.
Natasha hadn’t particularly enjoyed fighting Outriders the first time she had done it.
She snapped her batons together into their staff configuration the first chance she had during a brief lull of no more than a few seconds, wanting the extra reach it would give her. She didn’t have superstrength, superpowers, or a suit of any kind. All she had was her training and her horribly fragile human body, which she intended to keep intact as long as possible.
The world dissolved into a splintered chaos of violence and bloodshed. Natasha was aware, in a distant sort of way, that Loki had fought his way over to her and Sif had followed him. Light flickered continuously at the edges of her vision – Asgardian arrows, Asgardian shields. Now and then the blades of swords or speared flared bright as well, which part of her mind automatically catalogued to ask Loki about later. Very occasionally she saw a flash of green-gold: Loki’s magic, which she knew he didn’t prefer to use in combat except as a last resort.
Now and then a shield went down alongside her to knock back someone’s energy bolt – a round einherjar or ulfhednar shield, or Sif’s kite-shaped buckler. There were Chitauri among the Outriders now, uncomfortably familiar, Chitauri and other aliens she didn’t recognize. The torn-up earth and rubble of the Avengers compound was turning to mud beneath her boot-soles, watered by alien blood, Asgardian and Outrider alike. Human too, undoubtedly, elsewhere on the battlefield, but Natasha hadn’t seen another human face since the fighting had started.
There was one of those brief lulls in the battle that she had gotten used to and Natasha braced the end of her staff in the mud to lean on, breathing hard. Directly in front of her, an Asgardian soldier took the head off an Outrider with one sword-stroke, only for two more to fall on him with ravening jaws and clawed hands outstretched. Teeth and claws scored across his golden armor and shredded his yellow cloak as the Asgardian turned and struck one across the face with his shield; an gleaming arrow took the other through its eye. To her left Loki and Sif were killing one of the Chitauri beasts that Natasha had silently dubbed “gorillas,” since that was what they most resembled, at least as they resembled anything of Earth at all; to her right a trio of einherjar and a pair of ulfhednar were keeping more Outriders back, the shrieking aliens bouncing off the einherjar’s shields and spears as the ulfhednar loosed and drew and loosed again. Above them winged figures – Light Elves – chased Chitauri skiffs and leviathans, some with bows or gun-like weapons, others with swords or bare hands.
There was blood in her mouth. It must have been hers, because it had the bright coppery taste of new pennies, and when Natasha swiped her tongue over her lips she winced at the sharp stab of a fresh cut she couldn’t remember receiving. She wanted to do nothing so much as lie down and take a nap.
She shot another Outrider in the face with her widow’s bites instead, which sent it reeling for an instant before Natasha dragged herself up and walloped it with her staff. Another Outrider came at her and she put her staff into what was probably its solar plexus, which didn’t have the effect she had been hoping for. The Outrider grabbed her staff with its first front four hands and dragged it out of Natasha’s grip. She threw herself into a roll as it swiped at her, just barely missing having her head taken off, and nearly stabbed herself on the sword still held by a dead Asgardian. She grabbed the wolf’s head shield from the dead man’s grip instead and barely got it up between herself and the Outrider.
Its claws scored the shield’s surface, forcing her back down against the corpse. Natasha curled her legs up and did her best to kick the Outrider in the chest, which had about as much effect as kicking a brick wall. She didn’t the raw strength to push him off even for the few instants it would take to get a hand out from behind the shield so that she could use her widow’s bites or a knife on the Outrider. It kept pushing her back down, screaming as she shoved the shield up against its ravening mouth.
Natasha Romanoff wasn’t too proud to ask for help. She filled her lungs as best she could and yelled, “Loki!”
She had no idea if he heard her, just curled herself up beneath the shield and kept trying to push the Outrider off her. It didn’t seem to be smart enough to realize that it could have dragged her out by her legs, at least. It kept clawing and gnawing at the shield, shoving her against the dead man, its ravening screams and the screeching of its claws against the shield filling her whole world –
Until all at once it was gone. Natasha didn’t even register the gunshots until after the Outrider had fallen heavily on top of her.
She shoved at it with the shield, but death hadn’t made it any lighter or more amenable. She had a moment of fear with its weight on top of her, cutting off her ability to breathe, before someone pulled the corpse off of her. Natasha forced the shield down from her face, breathing hard, and saw Loki toss the Outrider’s body aside one-handed on one side of her and Yelena peering worriedly down at her from the other.
“Thanks,” she gasped, taking Yelena’s hand when her sister holstered her gun and reached down to haul her to her feet. Then Natasha blinked and stared at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, everything was crazy when everyone who got snapped started coming back, and then this wizard showed up and –” Yelena made a circling gesture with one hand, “– and he said, ‘Come with me if you want your sister to live,’ and –”
“He said what?” Natasha said, appalled.
“– and I wasn’t really doing anything so I thought, you know, why not, and this might be the coolest thing you’ve ever done.”
“So this is the sister,” Loki observed dryly; Natasha vaguely remembered telling him about Yelena one of the times when they had both been drunk in Wakanda after the Snap five years ago.
Yelena gave him an unimpressed look.
“I’m Loki,” he said helpfully. “I –”
“I know who you are,” Yelena said. “I saw that YouTube video where you and Captain America read all those thirst tweets. That was funny.”
Natasha put her head in her hands, ignoring the fact that they were covered in mud and blood and worse things. “Oh my god.”
Loki pointed at Natasha. “It was her idea and that is why she no longer handles New Asgard’s PR.”
“Hey, it was part of that Disney World press tour, we all had to do it,” Natasha said. “You’re an Avenger, so you had to do it too. Don’t blame me; you shouldn’t have agreed to the interview.” She slid the Asgardian shield onto her arm after checking that the straps were still intact, then picked up the dead Asgardian’s sword, since she had no idea where her staff had gone.
“I don’t think that was in any of the paperwork I signed when your government allowed me to remain on this planet,” Loki said.
“Should have read the fine print,” Natasha said.
“I do read things before I –”
Natasha didn’t see what struck him, just that all of a sudden he went flying. He landed in a roll amid a tangle of green cloak and came to a stop against the feet of a tall, horned alien figure who kicked him over onto his back. Proxima Midnight put the tips of her trident against Loki’s chest and smiled down at him.
“Hello, little brother.”
“Oh, shit,” Natasha said, putting out the arm with the Asgardian shield on it to try and keep Yelena behind her, for what little good that did. Yelena ignored her outstretched arm and stepped up beside her instead, unholstering her pistol again.
Sif was still on her feet, backing warily up towards Loki with her sword raised over the protection of her shield, but Natasha couldn’t see any other Asgardians. The only other people standing around them were the members of the Black Order, Cull Obsidian reeling his chain hammer back up. There were other aliens with them, a mixture of species that surrounded the two Asgardians and two humans still left alive. At a gesture from Ebony Maw, they all turned their backs. From beyond them, Natasha could still hear the sounds of fighting – Asgardian battle cries, so at least the Black Order hadn’t slaughtered all of Loki’s people on the way to get to him.
“Oh,” Loki said. “It’s you.”
His gaze went sideways towards Mistilteinn, which lay where he had dropped it when Obsidian’s weapon had sent him flying, then he put his hands up to show Proxima that they were empty before pushing himself up to a sitting position.
“Who’re these guys?” Yelena demanded, though she was canny enough to keep her voice low enough for Natasha’s ears alone.
“Bad guys,” Natasha said.
“No shit.”
“Loki,” Sif said warily.
He put one hand up to silence her, which she regarded with an annoyed expression. Her gaze flickered quickly to Natasha and Yelena, marking their position, before it returned to moving restlessly between the four members of the Black Order, never resting on any of them for more than a few seconds.
Proxima reached down and hauled Loki to his feet with a hand around his throat, then sent him stumbling backwards before he regained his balance. “We’ve missed you,” she said.
“Then you should have been looking harder,” he said. “I wasn’t that hard to find.”
Proxima spun her trident around in her hands as Loki took a wary step back from her. “All those months you swore you would never go back to Asgard, to the Nine Realms.”
“Well,” Loki said, “perhaps if your master had listened to me, we wouldn’t be here now.” His gaze went unwillingly to Sif again. She wasn’t looking at him, her attention on the enemy, but Natasha could tell from the set of her shoulders that she was listening intently.
Loki swallowed and went on, “But he just had to have his way, didn’t he?”
There was something oddly bitter in Proxima’s voice as she said, “He always does.” She moved towards him and Loki took another step back, trying to angle himself closer to Mistilteinn. “You betrayed us. You ran back to Asgard the first chance you had, after all of your lies –”
“I lie to everyone. You’re not special.” A muscle worked in Loki’s jaw. “And I would hardly call being dragged to the dungeons in chains ‘running back to Asgard.’”
“Excuses, excuses. Pathetic. As always.”
“You sang a different song once upon a time, Proxima,” Loki said.
“You were moderately interesting once upon a time, little brother,” she said, dragging the tip of her trident across the blood-soaked ground as she moved towards him. “You should have stayed that way. You were…efficient. Flashy, but efficient.”
“Well, I didn’t have a choice, did I?” Loki said through clenched teeth. “Your master wanted the Tesseract more than he wanted another child and once he found out who I was –” He stopped, breathing hard.
“Excuses again.”
“Perhaps.” His gaze flicked sideways to Sif; he was clearly unhappy about letting his childhood friend hear any of this. Natasha doubted that he was particularly pleased about Natasha or Yelena hearing it either, but they at least had this in common with him, no matter how much the details differed. She wouldn’t have been any happier letting Steve or Bruce hear Dreykov spill all the unpleasant details of her past.
Sif didn’t look at him. She glanced at Natasha and Yelena instead, her expression clearly asking if the two of them together could handle the Black Order member nearest them. It happened to be Corvus Glaive, whom Natasha had already tangled with and beat once – albeit with Steve and Sam there to back her up – so she felt confident in her response. She wished she had a weapon she was a little more familiar with than a sword for it, but it wasn’t like she didn’t know how to use one. She nodded slightly in response to Sif’s questioning look and nudged Yelena slightly with her shoulder, tipping her head at the alien. She got a nudge and a ‘sure, why not’ look back in response.
It left the massive Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw for Sif, if one or both of the two didn’t go for Loki as well. Maw was the only one that Natasha had never seen in person before, and that lack made her nervous. She had seen the footage from New York and talked to Tony about him a little, enough to know that, like Wanda and Loki, he had some kind of magic or psychic ability.
Loki had never talked about the Black Order at all.
“The Chitauri think you owe them a debt, little brother,” Proxima Midnight said. “You promised them victory and gave them only blood in exchange.”
Loki’s jaw worked again, but he didn’t say anything.
“You owe us a debt too,” she went on. “The Chitauri will have to get in line.”
“I owe the Chitauri nothing and I owe you less,” Loki said, his voice harsh. “Get off my planet, Proxima, before I make you.”
She grinned. “Make us, then.”
Loki spread his hands, empty and elaborately casual. “Fine.”
His magic lashed out in a glittering green whip that Proxima blocked with her trident. She knocked aside the spray of throwing knives he sent at her, rushing at him as he danced backwards, his hands bright with magic and knives in turn. He threw his forearms up to shield himself from her blow, his vambraces flaring white with energy when her trident struck the elaborately figured uru. Loki slammed a kick into her chest, then a hard backhand with an armored fist into her face. His cloak and the skirts of his hauberk and tunic whirled in a dizzying swirl of green, black, and gold as he spun to fling another blast of magic at Ebony Maw, who batted it aside with one sweeping hand.
Sif lunged for Cull Obsidian with a shout, metal clashing as her sword met his weapon. She looked absurdly small against his bulk, but only for an instant; Natasha was already throwing herself at Corvus Glaive and lost sight of both Sif and Loki as she slammed her borrowed shield into the alien’s face. Yelena shot him, looked annoyed when it had no effect, then hooked her toe under a fallen Asgardian spear and tossed it up into her hands. She swung it around as she ducked his polearm, the blade cutting a gleaming stripe across his torso armor.
Light flashed at the corners of Natasha’s vision – Loki’s green-gold magic and the flare of his vambraces each time he blocked one of Proxima’s blows. He didn’t seem to be able to get his hands back on Mistilteinn and was down to his magic and his knives.
Loki could take care of himself.
Natasha dropped low to slam the edge of her shield in the back of Corvus’s knees, then popped up like a cork from a bottle with her sword outstretched. Corvus caught it with the hook on the edge of his glaive and knocked it out of her hand, but turned into Yelena’s spear-thrust through his shoulder. The Asgardian metal sliced through his armor like it was cardboard, forcing his hand to open reflexively on his polearm and drop it. He backhanded Yelena with his other hand, sending her flying. Natasha ducked his next blow and came up with a kick to the jaw, then another strike to his weak arm with the shield.
But Natasha had been fighting for the past who-knew-how-long – she had lost all track of time – and fighting was the hardest work there was, especially for a human. Before that there had been the harsh emotions of the Infinity Gauntlet and the Time Heist, with a mostly sleepless night before. As she wound up for another hit, Corvus’s good hand shot out and closed around her throat, jerking her off her feet.
“Humans,” he snarled. “The most irritating of all the species in the cosmos.”
“Yeah,” Natasha croaked, scrabbling at his hand with the fingers of her free hand and trying to hit him with the shield on her other forearm or activate her widow’s bites, but the angle was wrong and he shook off her blows like they were insect bites, squeezing until her vision started to gray out. “We get – that – a lot. Should have – learned – your lesson – the first –”
His grip was like steel cables around her throat. She curled her legs up and tried to kick him, to twist her way free, but no matter how humanoid he looked his alien physiology seemed to keep him just out of reach. She couldn’t get the right angle to break his grip on her neck.
Relief came with a sharp crack that echoed through her body hard enough to jar her teeth in her skull.
Natasha hit the ground with the vague, with a little distant horror that the alien might have broken her neck even as she dragged in gasps of air. Then the roaring in her ears cleared enough that she heard someone saying, “Nat – Nat, hey, Nat – look at me, are you –”
“Hey,” she managed to rasp in response eventually as the blurriness in her vision faded. “Been – a while – Sam. You look – good.”
“You look like crap,” Sam said.
“Long day.” She rubbed at her throat, wincing, and Sam pulled her hand away. Heedless of her bruises, Natasha put her arms around him in a swift hug, then drew back to let him pull her to her feet. Behind him, Steve was slugging it out with Corvus Glaive; Sam must have carried him in and one of them had hit the alien hard enough to knock him back and make him drop Natasha, but not enough to break bones.
“I like the hair,” Sam added.
“Thanks,” Natasha said, leaning down to pick up the sword she had dropped. She looked worriedly around for Yelena and was relieved to see her back on her feet, warily circling Corvus and Steve with an Asgardian spear in her fist. Sif was still fighting Cull Obsidian; he was bleeding black blood from a dozen shallow wounds, none of them apparently enough to do more than annoy him.
She could see Mistilteinn on the ground, the bright uru of the blade gleaming even amidst the bloodied mud and rubble all around it. Ebony Maw and Proxima Midnight had kept Loki from being able to get to the weapon or call it to him, and fighting both of them – one with his magic alone, one with his knives and his bare hands – had kept him from getting an advantage over either. Natasha counted back the seconds and realized it had barely been more than a minute since the fight had started.
A Chitauri skiff went by overhead; Sam glanced up at it and said, “I should –”
“Go,” Natasha told him. “We got this.”
Sam’s gaze went to Loki as the Asgardian threw himself over Proxima’s trident and flung a brace of throwing knives at Maw in the same smooth motion, which Maw sent flying aside with a wave of his hand. The knives had been a feint, though: a slab of rubble slammed upward and struck Maw in the chest, throwing the tall alien backwards even as Loki came up in a spin kick to Proxima’s head. He’d had his cape ripped off at some point and the bright fabric was trampled into the bloody mud. Natasha couldn’t remember the last time she had seen his horned headpiece, but he wasn’t wearing it anymore.
“Good guy now, huh?” Sam said.
“Remind me to tell you about Disney World after all of this,” Natasha said.
“You took the guy who tried to take over the planet to Disney World?”
“No,” Natasha said, and managed to grin at him. “Disney invited him to come. I’ll tell you about it later. It’s a better story if you’re drunk.”
“Okay, now I gotta live through this,” Sam said.
“That was the plan!”
He winked at her, then unfolded his wings as he went straight up; the backdraft staggered Natasha for an instant. A trio of winged humanoids – two bat-winged women and a man with an osprey’s hooked back wings – swept towards him, making Sam bank warily.
“Well met, cousin!” said one of the women merrily; her accent sounded nearly, but not quite, Irish. “Will you join us in our harrying?”
“Uh,” Sam said. “Sure, why not?”
“There’s good hunting for us folk of the Air today,” the man said, grinning, and the three Light Elves shot away, Sam with them.
“That was new,” Natasha said out loud.
She hefted the sword she had picked up, testing its balance – perfect, of course – and went to go help her friends. She had taken about three steps before Cull Obsidian picked up Sif and threw her.
Natasha jerked to a halt as Sif struck Loki and both Asgardians went down in a tangle of limbs. Loki rolled free, coming up in a three-point crouch with his upraised hand glowing green, but a tangle of steel wires caught Sif and dragged her up into the air. She clawed at them, gasping, as Ebony Maw moved towards, them, stepping from one piece of floating rubble to another. There was blood on his face from one of Loki’s blows.
“Let her go!” Steve said. He had an arm around Corvus Glaive’s throat, the alien forced down to his knees; Yelena pressed the tip of her borrowed spear against his neck. Natasha could tell from the angle that Steve was holding his shield that he was ready to throw it as soon as he decided it was needed.
“Or he dies,” Yelena added, which saved Steve from having to say it. He didn’t look like he was particularly bothered by the prospect.
“Weak,” Proxima said, her voice disgusted. “Kill him if you like.”
“That’s cold, Proxima,” Loki said, coming warily upright as he rolled green fire between the fingers of his right hand, his gaze moving restlessly between Proxima, Maw, and Obsidian. “Even for you.”
She shrugged. “They’re humans. And it hardly matters anyway.” The smile she gave Loki was cruel. “I’ll have my baby brother back soon.”
He shook his head, a muscle working in his jaw. “That’s not going to happen.”
“That is not up to you,” Ebony Maw said, “brother.”
Loki licked his lips. “You should have listened to your father when he took me from you because he needed Loki of Asgard more than you wanted another sibling.”
Cull Obsidian snarled something in a language Natasha couldn’t understand, the words harsh and growling. Whatever he said made Loki’s face twist into a snarl, half-familiar but without the touch of madness Natasha remembered from the helicarrier.
“My father was Odin of Asgard,” he spat. “You would do well to remember it.”
“You were no one when you came to us!” Corvus snapped, heedless of the spear-point dimpling his flesh. “We gave you purpose!”
“You had no name,” said Ebony Maw, “and we gave you one.”
“You had nothing,” Proxima finished for the Black Order, “and we gave you a family, brother.”
“Yes,” Loki said. His gaze flickered upwards for a second, then went back to Proxima. “But I already have one of those.”
The world went white.
Thunder crashed overhead, deafeningly loud, and the scent of ozone overpowered the copper penny stench of blood. When Natasha finished blinking sparks out of her eyes, it was to find Thor standing beside Loki, lightning crawling all over him and glowing in his remaining eye. It dripped down the blade of the sword he was holding to fizzle into nothing on the ruined ground, making Proxima take a wary half-step back.
Thor said, “He’s not your brother.”
For an instant Loki looked like he was going to cry again, then he drew himself up to his full height, every inch a king. “I will give you this one chance to leave this field still among the living,” he said. “Walk away now or I give your heads and your hearts to the spirits of my people as a grave-offering.”
Even Thor flicked a quick sideways glance towards him at that, though Loki gave no sign he had seen it. His sharp features were harsh with sincerity.
There was a moment of silence that stretched out, as if Proxima and the other members of the Black Order were trying to decide whether or not to take him seriously. Then she said, “No.”
Loki’s smile was full of teeth. “Good. You owe my people a blood-debt that can never be repaid, but I’ll make a start on collecting.” His fist lashed out and a bolt of his green magic caught Proxima full in the face. As she stumbled back, Loki whirled towards Sif, shouting, “Steve!”
The shield was already in the air. Maw’s magic knocked it aside, but Loki must have been expecting that; he flung himself into the air and caught the shield on its downward swing, sliding his forearm through the leather straps even as he kept turning. The vibranium edge of the shield with all of his Asgardian strength behind it sliced through the steel cables holding Sif imprisoned as if they had been paper. She dropped to the ground in a roll, grabbing for her sword and shield as she came upright next to Loki.
Corvus Glaive died in a fountain of dark blood as Yelena’s spear went through his throat. Steve threw himself forwards in a roll and caught Mistilteinn with both hands, bringing the polearm up to block Cull Obsidian’s downward blow. The end of the polearm went down into the mud as he used the weapon to lever himself up in a kick to the alien’s face.
Lightning crashed all around them, half-blinding Natasha as Proxima shouted, “Kill them all, except my little brother! He comes back to Sanctuary with us!”
The ring of outwards-facing aliens turned inwards – Outriders and Chitauri and other creatures Natasha didn’t recognize. Over the sudden sound of their screeching, she heard Loki yell, “I’m not your fucking brother!”
Natasha slammed her shield into the face of the first alien to come at her, then slashed her sword across its neck, already turning to lunge at the next Outrider as the first keeled away with its spine cut through – whatever Asgardian metal the sword was made from was no joke, even with only Natasha’s human strength behind it. She fired her widow’s bites over the head of the fallen Outrider as it crumpled, then again before another bounced off her shield and fell back, shrieking as the metal flared white.
Over the screaming of battle-mad aliens and the sound of clashing metal, she could hear the constant rolling rumble of thunder, lightning occasionally sparkling at the edges of her vision. Yelena was at her side a few moments later, swinging the Asgardian spear like it was her staff and occasionally firing her widow’s bites.
“I like this thing!” she yelled at Natasha. “I’m keeping it!”
“I’m sure Loki won’t mind!” Natasha yelled back at her. “He probably wants that back though,” she said to Steve, who had appeared on her other side. Mistilteinn’s curved blade was dripping black blood.
“He can have it!” He grinned at Yelena and added politely, “I’m Steve Rogers.”
“I know who you are!” she said happily. “Alexei’s going to lose his mind!”
“He’s – he’s not here, is he?” Natasha demanded, shooting another Outrider in the face.
“I haven’t seen him or Melina but there are a lot of people here.” To Steve, she said, “I’m Yelena. I’m –”
“Nat’s sister. She told me about you.” Steve kicked a Chitauri back, then whipped Mistilteinn around to cave in the skull of some kind of tentacle-faced alien with an enormous gun. “I’m glad to meet you!”
Yelena’s face did something complicated but delighted, though she didn’t have time to say anything before the world suddenly lit up with bright blue bolts of energy. They were massive, man-wide, slashing down all around them without care for who they hit. Two feet away a clump of Outriders died in screaming agony, spraying Natasha with clods of dirt and worse things. Steve made a reflexive gesture as if to gather both women beneath a shield he didn’t have, then glared at Mistilteinn, before his gaze went upwards in horror. Natasha followed it to the massive spaceship above them and the guns belching out energy bolts without care for whether they struck friend or foe.
Loki’s voice rose in a rippling stream of Nordic-sounding Asgardian syllables – Natasha wasn’t certain if he was spellcasting or just cursing, since he had never needed to speak for his magic to work before – and everything went green. Magic rippled out in an upside-down bowl shape above them as the energy bolts continued to splash harmlessly off it. Natasha turned to see Loki standing with his arms upraised, his eyes glowing green and blood dripping from his nose; he had used enough magic in the past hour that this was costing him.
It was protecting friend and foe alike, and she saw the moment the Outriders and other aliens realized it. Thor and Sif were moving around Loki, killing anything that got near him as he poured all of his attention and energy into the magical shield. Natasha caught Steve’s eye and nodded at him; they and Yelena began to work their way backwards to the three Asgardians, cutting their way through the aliens that came rushing through the shield, as desperate for protection as they were to kill their enemies.
She almost tripped over Proxima Midnight’s body on the way there; Loki had gotten his wish, because her head was lying a few feet away.
“I like your hair!” Thor said to Natasha as they reached him.
“The haircut looks good!” she told him, and he grinned; there was lightning in his teeth.
“Notice you’ve copied my beard,” he told Steve, who let out a weary laugh and made a vague gesture towards his chin.
“Men,” Sif snorted, bashing an Outrider in the face with her shield.
“Oh, please,” Loki gasped. “Like you haven’t –”
“You’re wearing enough gold to pay for a warhorse, Loki, you don’t get to talk!”
Yelena just laughed.
The energy barrage ended as abruptly as it had begun. Loki held the shield a moment longer, then released it and staggered. Thor caught him, steadying his brother as Loki panted for breath.
Natasha looked upwards, trusting her companions to keep her from being killed in her moment of inattention. The guns on Thanos’s spaceship were turning upwards, blue bolts of energy shooting at something she couldn’t see. An instant a streak of brilliant light tore through the massive ship, looped around, and did it again.
“Took her long enough,” Loki said, wiping a hand beneath his nose and frowning at the blood on it in irritation. “No one told the damn wizards to get her?”
“Who?” Thor asked him.
It had to be Carol, who had been coordinating preparations for the Snap’s reversal among her allies in space. Natasha stared upwards in relief, then winced as the ship began to fall towards the lake. Well, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
Loki levered himself upright with a hand on Thor’s shoulder. “You’re late,” he told his brother, then blinked as he realized he still had Steve’s shield. “Here –”
Steve tossed him Mistilteinn and caught the shield in response.
Thor’s gaze followed the exchange, then flickered to Natasha’s Asgardian shield and sword. His face did something complicated and confused. “I can’t believe you slept with my friends!”
“What – what?” Loki spluttered, jerking upright.
Steve’s face went bright red.
“Oh, god,” Natasha muttered, feeling her ears heat. She shot her widow’s bites at the nearest Chitauri to make herself feel better. She could deal with this from Clint and Tony, but Thor was something else.
“What – what is wrong with you?” Loki demanded. “I can’t believe you got murdered, how about that?”
Lightning cracked around them, half a dozen bolts striking downwards to take out a rush of Outriders.
“Now you know how it feels!” Thor yelled at his brother.
“Now I – I already know how it feels, Thor, I’ve been murdered before!” Loki shouted at him, Mistilteinn flashing in his hands as he beheaded an Outrider.
“To be the one left behind!”
“I’m sorry, brother, I didn’t realize we were in a competition!”
“I kind of missed this,” Sif said meditatively.
“What is wrong with you!” Loki yelled.
She didn’t get a chance to respond before a hoard of Outriders and other aliens came at them, racing across the corpse-covered battlefield as if it was a football field. Natasha braced herself with her shield in front of her, but before the aliens could reach them a wedge of yelling Asgardians hit them from the side. Energy flared white as the Outriders bounced off einherjar’s shields or fell under arrows; the mass of Asgardians was a mixture of the einherjar and ulfhednar Sif had brought from Vanaheim, the warriors who had come from New Asgard, and the snapped refugees the Valkyrie had gone to retrieve from deep space.
The Valkyrie herself cut through the Outriders, her spear whirling around her in a gleaming, deadly arc, and came to a stop in front of Loki and Thor as the rest of the Asgardians spread out to encircle them.
“I told you not to do anything stupid,” she said to Loki.
“I can’t believe you brought our people here from New Asgard!” he told her. “And you’re calling me stupid? Tell me at least that our healers and the noncombatants from the culling are out of the way!”
“Relax, your majesty,” she said casually, which made both Sif and Thor blink. “I don’t let human wizards tell me what to do. Our civilians are still on the ships with most of our Ravager escort, taking the long way back to Midgard. Eir was on the ship that went to the wreck site and I told them to pull back from the battlefield after she dropped your brother off so she and the healers that came with me can deal with our wounded and the human wounded afterwards.”
“Well, I’m glad someone was thinking,” Loki said through clenched teeth, “since no one bothered to ask me if I was all right bringing the last of our people to a killing ground –”
Thor and Sif were staring at him.
“What?” Loki demanded.
Thor shut his mouth. “Nothing,” he said eventually. “This is just very – I wasn’t expecting you to be –”
“I spent a thousand years being the sensible one, brother, I didn’t lose the knack for it just because I went mad for a few years or because you died,” Loki said, scowling. “I’m the king of Asgard, who else is supposed to see to our people if not me? Or did you forget that we both were raised and trained to be kings?”
The Valkyrie pressed her lips together and admitted, “I forgot how much they argued. I didn’t miss this part.”
“I did a little,” Sif said again. She looked at the Valkyrie with burgeoning hero worship in her eyes and Natasha resisted the urge to laugh; now wasn’t the time.
The Valkyrie turned towards her, apparently gauged her relationship with Thor and Loki at a glance, and said, “Were they always like this?”
“Well, Loki wasn’t always crazy –”
Loki rolled his eyes.
“– but more or less, yes,” Sif finished.
“I don’t think that’s accurate,” Thor said.
“You wouldn’t,” Loki muttered. His shoulders were tight when Natasha looked at him and there was something strange in his eyes, not just the uncomplicated love and grief she had seen when the younger Thor had confronted them back in the past. Loki adored his brother, she had no doubt about that, but there had been something harsh between them even before New York. Thor’s death had erased that, made it simple and easy in the way that only death could accomplish, but now that was gone.
And Loki was king. Natasha had no doubt that Loki was thinking about that now, even if Thor wasn’t.
Steve looked between the four Asgardians, his expression suggesting that he half-expected to get a hand bitten off, then said, “If you don’t mind, we’re kind of still in the middle of a fight here –”
Loki huffed. “You know, I remember when people on this planet used to be afraid of me.”
“That was before anyone on Earth with an internet connection could go on YouTube and watch you get wasted and talk about writing the Voynich Manuscript on Drunk History,” Natasha said.
“Or you and Captain America here read thirst tweets to each other,” Yelena put in.
Steve winced, going red again. Loki’s mouth twitched.
“You know what, let’s go back to fighting,” Thor said brightly.
“Thank you, brother, you’ve finally said something sensible,” Loki said, flicking Mistilteinn to one side with a sharp snap of his wrist to get the blood off the blade.
Thor’s one-eyed gaze followed the gesture with curiosity, presumably because he had never seen Mistilteinn before. Before he could ask about it, one of the Asgardians shoved their way through the perimeter surrounding them – from New Asgard, presumably, since he was carrying a war-axe and wearing battered leather armor rather than the einherjar’s plate or the ulfhednar’s elaborately-worked leather and suede.
“Your majesty,” he said.
Loki and Thor both turned towards him. The Asgardian looked at Thor, hesitated, then addressed Loki.
“Your majesty,” he said again, “Eir, Arnbjiorg, and Bek – from the Vanaheim garrison –” He waited for Loki to nod in recognition before he went on, “– have set up a triage area behind the Midgardian battle line, along with some of the Midgardian sorcerers. The Vanir, the Light Elves, the dwarves, and the frost giants also brought healers. And there’s a healer from Niflheim, a Dark Elf.”
“Look at that,” Loki said to Thor as they both took this last in, blinking and looking very similar as they did so, “you didn’t wipe the species out after all.”
“Why is Niflheim here, Loki?”
“Oh, shut up, Thor, I was improvising. We’re lucky anything happened.” He turned back to the other Asgardian before Thor could do anything other than make a pained expression. The man had been watching the two brothers with a slight frown, but his attention went to Loki again immediately as he said, “Our wounded?”
“With our healers, as best we were able –”
He stopped as Loki’s head snapped up with a clatter of the golden beads in his hair. Thor looked at him, worried. “Brother?”
“Get everyone back now.” Loki’s voice was utterly flat, but he motioned with both hands to indicate what he meant, a sweeping gesture back over each shoulder. “I don’t want any of our people mixed up in this.”
“Loki?” Steve said warily.
Loki wet his lips, but it was Thor who said, “He’s here.”
The brothers glanced at each other, wordless, then moved forward in perfect unison as a pathway opened in the Asgardian shield wall. The Asgardian warriors were pulling back, some of them reluctant in the face of Loki’s orders and waiting for Thor’s nod of confirmation, others without so much as a heartbeat of hesitation. Sif and the Valkyrie fell in on either side of the brothers, all four of the Asgardians as intent as hounds on a scent. Natasha and Yelena flanked Steve as they followed, circling a little so that they weren’t directly behind the Asgardians.
Without the protective circle of Asgardian warriors around them gone it was easier for Natasha to get a view of the rest of the battlefield. Whatever Carol had done to Thanos’s spaceship – just punched through it, probably; Carol Danvers didn’t have a lot of subtlety – had made it fall, and now one massive wing jutted out from what had been the lake, even larger than the biggest building in the compound. The sky was mostly clear except for the unfamiliar forms of circling dragons and the winged Light Elves that had come from Alfheim, along with a few Wakandan airships; all of Thanos’s aerial forces seemed to be down, to Natasha’s relief. There were still pockets of fighting – she could hear it even if she couldn’t see it – but the battle seemed to be on its downward swing.
They were winning.
Were winning didn’t mean had won, Natasha was very aware, and there was one big player left on the field. He came towards them slowly and deliberately, limping, and stopped facing the four Asgardians.
“Asgardian,” Thanos said, then, testing, “Frost giant.”
Loki’s smile was humorless. It was as though he had gone beyond fear to some other place and come away from it clear-eyed and cold instead of bright with the battle-fury he had had earlier. He leaned on Mistilteinn and said, “Yes. And yes.”
Thanos clearly hadn’t done well in the battle. His hands were still blackened and blistered from frostbite and most of the armor that hadn’t already shattered from Loki’s freezing spell was missing – Natasha was guessing that he had run into Wanda, and hoped that the other woman had survived the experience. He didn’t have his double-bladed sword anymore, either, and one arm hung limp and useless.
“You lied to me,” he said.
“I lie to everyone,” Loki said, “but in this case no, not about that. You just never asked. And you know that by then I would have told you anything as long as you asked.” He smiled again, not looking away from Thanos as Thor’s gaze cut sideways towards his brother. Loki was on his blind side; Thor had to turn his head to see him.
Thanos saw the movement and looked at Thor without recognition. “The brother, I assume. Not so dead, it seems.”
Loki shrugged as if Natasha had never seen him screaming in uncomprehending rage and grief after Thanos had snapped his fingers and left them all behind in Wakanda, as if he had known all along that under the right circumstances Thor would return to him. “The thing about killing Asgardians is that you have to make sure we’re actually dead first. I’d thought you would have learned that by now – by then, I suppose. My past, your future. But you never actually wanted me dead, did you? You needed a living son of Odin to get you into the Nine – the first time, at least. So you never had to learn that one.”
He smiled again, and there was genuine humor in it – not good humor, but humor nonetheless, a god’s amusement at a mortal’s failings. Despite Loki’s bruises and movie star good looks, there was nothing human about him at all now, nor in the thin smiles Thor and the two Asgardian women wore. Natasha felt Steve tense, unnerved. She couldn’t blame him; there was something strange in the air – magic, maybe, or what Loki had called orløg and drunkenly tried to explain to her as one of the Asgardian concepts of fate when they were all trying to drink themselves to death in Wakanda after the Snap. When she looked over her shoulder at the Asgardian troops, it was to find them all silent, watching the king of the gods and the man who had ravaged their people twice over.
“You won,” Loki went on. “You got what you wanted. The Infinity Stones and half of all life in the universe wiped out. You even got your vengeance on me.” The last words came out in a snarl.
“And yet here you are,” Thanos said, “like a bad luck piece back again to bring me grief.”
“I am the god of mischief,” Loki said. “It’s my nature. You never really understood that about the Aesir – that we are gods.”
“You godlings die like any other men,” Thanos said.
“Oh, yes,” Loki said. “We’ve never said otherwise. The people of this world who worshiped us in my youth understood that, as we always have. Every living thing must die, even the gods. Even stars burn out.” His smile grew. “Even you. Because you’ve lost. You won once upon a time – and now you’ve made it impossible. Your army is gone. Your Children are dead. Sanctuary is fallen. Wherever the Stones are now, they are beyond your reach and there is no going back to your own time to win the way you did before.”
Thanos’s face twisted in anger, but he didn’t deny it.
There was a heavy thud, and then two others; Thanos turned his head a little as Iron Man landed behind him, flanked by War Machine and Rescue. The Hulkbuster landed a little clumsily next to War Machine, his left arm torn off at the elbow, along with Spider-Man and a couple of the sorcerers. Sam touched down on Pepper’s other side, then Wanda as T’Challa and Okoye came up alongside her, M’Baku and Shuri following. Carol settled lightly next to the Wakandans, glowing like a sun. Bucky drifted up to insert himself between Yelena and Steve; Natasha’s sister gave him a startled look of recognition and took a wary step sideways to give him space.
On Natasha’s other side, there was the sudden sound of a bowstring being drawn taut; she turned her head and grinned in relief to see Clint there. His face was bruised and there was blood in his hair, but he was here. His gaze was grimly intent on Thanos.
Earth’s defenders weren’t the only ones encircling them. Rocket and his walking tree friend appeared with the other members of their crew, then Nebula and a green-skinned woman Natasha thought might be her sister Gamora. Three blue-skinned frost giants appeared, a woman whose sharp features were oddly familiar and two men in brief kilts. The two Vanir leaders rode up, with a train of their followers lingering behind, and the big dwarf with the metal hands. A fire giant arrived with a blast of heat that made the frost giants glare at him and the Asgardians hold their weapons more tightly. A clatter of wheels over the rubble heralded the arrival of the Light Elf queen in her polar bear-drawn chariot, with a group of what Natasha assumed were all elves, though none of them looked alike except for their ears – a cat-eyed man with tabby stripes in his hair, a bat-winged woman, a flock of glowing pixies, others. A few stray warriors stepped up to close the circle around Thanos – a scarred man with drooping mustaches who looked human or Asgardian, maybe; a dark-skinned humanoid with their hair in a long white braid down their back; a handful of Wakandans and Ravagers.
Loki didn’t look at any of them, though he tilted his head slightly in acknowledgment at their arrival. “So,” he said, his gaze intent on Thanos, “have you come here to die, then? At the hands of the gods?”
“Come to kill you,” Thanos said. He took a step forward and stumbled, falling to his knees. Loki just watched him, smiling, and Thanos glared at him. Even kneeling the Titan and the god were still at eyelevel with each other. “I should have left you where I found you, Asgardian, instead of wasting my coin.”
“Probably,” Loki agreed. “But here we are.” He ran his hand up Mistilteinn’s shaft, letting his thumb rest against the flat of the blade, then picked the polearm up and took a step forward.
“King Loki,” said one of the Vanir leaders, a woman whose lacquered armor was sticky with blood and who held a katana-like sword unsheathed in one hand.
Loki paused, looked at her. Thor and the other Asgardians tensed.
“Freyja,” Loki said, and to the Vanir man, whose face was near-identical to the woman’s, just a little harsher, “Frey.”
“You made us a promise, Loki,” said Freyja.
“Vengeance, King of Asgard,” said the Light Elf queen. “Blood for blood. Death for our sorrowing.”
The dwarf king, Eitri, said, “Asgard is not the only realm with blood-debts to pay our dead.” He shot a suspicious glare at the Vanir. “And Asgard is not the only realm whose dead will not return from beyond the black gate.”
The fire giant said something that Natasha couldn’t understand; his words sounded like the crackle of dry flames in her ears, making her wince, and she saw all of the humans and some the aliens flinch.
“You swore we would have vengeance in return for our aid, Odin’s son,” said the frost giantess. “Will you keep that oath, Loki Jotun-born? Or will you be Odin Oathbreaker’s heir in that as well?”
There was a rumble of rage from the listening Asgardians. Thor opened his mouth to protest before the Valkyrie leaned over and put a hand on his arm, shaking her head.
Loki hesitated, then nodded slowly. He turned to look from Tony to Natasha to Steve, pivoting as he let his gaze travel across the circle of Earth’s defenders and giving the impression he was meeting each person’s eyes in turn. “This is Midgard,” he said. “Is that what you want, Midgard’s wardens?”
Tony retracted his helmet and looked a little uneasy at the prospect, but it was Clint who spoke from beside Natasha, his voice harsh. “He’ll die?” he said.
Loki turned to look at him. “Yes,” he said. “He’ll die.”
“Then do it,” Clint said. Natasha nodded slowly, and agreement echoed among the other Avengers and Wakandans – some of it reluctant, some of it enthusiastic. A few people looked at their comrades uncertainly, but no one protested.
“Coward,” said Thanos. “You should do it yourself. Or are you too weak for that, Asgardian?”
Loki looked at him, a small smile playing over his sharp features. “I’ve had my vengeance,” he said. “I lost everything, and now so have you. That’s a sweeter wine to me than your blood could ever be.” He crouched down and picked up a clod of blood-muddied soil, touching it to his lips. “Earth must be fed.”
There was an echoing murmur from the Asgardians, the Vanir, and the dwarves.
Loki looked skywards as he rose again. “Allmother Frigga,” he said, “pour a cup for your sons in Valhalla and think of us kindly until we come to dine with you again, for even the gods must die. This blót is yours.” Mistilteinn lashed out, faster than Natasha’s eyes could follow, and when Loki turned away there was a fresh cut on Thanos’s face, bleeding purple blood down his cheek. The Titan touched his fingers to it and looked at them.
Loki flicked Mistilteinn sideways in a sharp motion to shed the blood from the blade. “Asgard’s wergild is paid,” he said, looking down at the Titan. “When you pass through the great void of Ginnungagap on your way to whatever hell will take you, bide a moment at the gate of Gnipahellir that guards the passage to Hel and tell my sister her brothers send their regards.”
He turned away and walked back to his brother as the other rulers of the Nine Realms of Yggdrasil closed in on Thanos, not once looking back. Thor put his arms around him as Loki let Mistilteinn stand upright beside them, curving a hand over the back of Loki’s neck and pulling him close. Loki leaned against him, his fists white-knuckled against Thor’s back and his face hidden in his brother’s shoulder.
Natasha looked away to give the two Asgardians some privacy. Clint let his bowstring go slack, lowering his bow with his gaze intent on Thanos and the rulers of Yggdrasil. He took Natasha’s hand when she offered it to him, relieved to feel his pulse beating beneath her fingers.
She made herself watch. Thanos fought, but not for long.