On Yonder Hill

Earth must be fed.

For a fleeting moment, Natasha thought she almost understood the Asgardians, then it was gone and she was left watching Thanos’s blood soak into the muddy dirt with all the rest of his army’s. She turned away, drawing Clint with her when he hesitated, and stuck her sword point-down in the ground before pulling him into a hug. He returned the embrace, the bow in his hand a hard line against her back and his breath warm against her cheek before he pulled back to check her over for injury.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine. I was mostly with Steve and Loki the whole time.” Natasha picked a piece of what she was pretty sure was alien viscera out of the end of her braid and flicked it away. “I need a shower,” she added wryly.

Clint made a disgusted expression of agreement and looked over at the ruins of the Avengers compound, where at least one Chitauri leviathan and a couple of spacecraft had crushed most of the structure that had survived the initial bombardment. “I think the shower’s toast.”

“Shit,” Natasha said, and resisted the urge to say, but all my things are there! After all this time she had gotten used to having an actual home and had made the mistake of getting attached, and look where that had gotten her. With a dead, time-displaced alien warlord blowing it all to hell. In fairness, even she couldn’t have predicted that. She hoped the ostensibly nuclear bomb-proof strongbox in the compound had protected the Fabergé egg Loki had given her.

“Where were you?” she asked Clint instead. “I didn’t see you earlier –”

“The floor collapsed when everything –” He made a “boom” gesture with his hands, “– and I ended up below the compound. With the damn gauntlet and a bunch of aliens chasing me.”

Natasha looked at him in alarm. “Where is it now?” Clearly Thanos hadn’t gotten his hands on it –

“With Scott and his girl and a couple of the wizards,” Clint said, and gave her the same longsuffering look he always wore when magic came up. Then he put his hand to his pocket like he expected to find his phone there and said, “Oh, god, I have to call Laura, I was on the phone when – she’s got to be freaking out –”

Natasha dug her phone out of a belt pouch, checked that it was still functional – the screen had gotten cracked at some point, but it still worked – and handed it to him. Clint took it with a nod of thanks and stepped aside to make his call as Yelena came up to Natasha and whispered in Russian, “Why is the Winter Soldier here?”

Her attempt to be clandestine might have worked better if Clint, Steve, and Bucky didn’t all speak Russian, if Clint hadn’t still been standing close enough to hear, and if Steve and Bucky didn’t both have serum-enhanced hearing. Clint just winced at the question and went back to reassuring his wife that he was still among the living and he hadn’t even gotten a little blown up – yeah, that had been an explosion, but he was fine and that was the important part –

Steve and Bucky, who had been hugging – Steve looked a little like he was trying not to cry and failing – both glanced over at Yelena’s words. Bucky’s shoulders went tight as he drew away from Steve. He said in English, “I’m not him anymore.”

Yelena registered his accent, blinked, then apparently accepted the words for what they were. “Okay,” she said, then added, “I’m Yelena. Natasha’s sister.”

Bucky’s eyebrows went up and Clint stopped mid-sentence to stare, then had to hastily tell Laura that everything was fine, that hadn’t been anything important. Natasha shrugged a little, but managed to keep her face neutral when Yelena turned to glare at her.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky said, when Yelena looked back at him. “Bucky.”

This time it was Yelena’s eyebrows that went up. She looked at Steve, looked at Bucky, looked at Natasha, and said, “Huh.”

The two former assassins regarded each other like wary dogs as Natasha rolled her eyes, a little relieved that they had both taken it so calmly. She was looking around to count her people as Steve stepped over and put a hand on her shoulder. Natasha leaned into his grip with relief, grateful for something solid and grounding amidst all the madness around them. Tony, not far away, had started to fold up and nearly sat down before Pepper and the Parker boy each put a shoulder under his; Rhodes made a gesture towards him but the War Machine armor – even in the Iron Patriot suit – wasn’t exactly meant for that kind of support. Wanda had sat down, looking overwhelmed at the mess of chaos and death and alien species around her. Sam was crouched down next to her, talking to her quietly.

Sitting down felt like a really good idea. Unlike some of the people on the battlefield, Natasha didn’t have superpowers, and she knew she was on her final reserves of energy. If she sat down, though, she wasn’t going to get up again – not to mention that she knew very well what edged weapons did to human (or alien) bodies and didn’t want to sit in the remains – and she was too proud to be carried off the battlefield when she wasn’t even injured.

Clint disconnected his call with a wistful goodbye to Laura and a “Nat’s fine, she’s right here,” and came back to return Natasha’s phone. He looked around and said, “So…aliens.”

“Aliens,” Steve said wearily. “On our side, though.”

Clint snorted. “That’s new.” He glanced over at Loki, who still had his face buried in Thor’s shoulder while Thor patted his back reassuringly, and added quietly, “So Thor’s – I thought Thor was dead, like, dead dead, not coming back dead.”

“I’m pretty sure Loki thought that too,” Natasha said. After a moment she punched Clint in the shoulder and added, “And I’m still mad at you for faking your death five years ago.”

“I – sorry.” Clint shifted a little and repeated, “I’m sorry, Nat. Steve.”

Over the past few weeks none of them had brought up the fact that Clint had faked his death during the initial Snap – well, “faked” might have been over-generous. He hadn’t answered any of Natasha’s frantic calls and by the time she and Rhodes had been able to get out to the farm – by unspoken mutual consent they hadn’t left Loki alone without someone at the compound who could probably go head to head with him for at least a few minutes, so Steve and Bruce had stayed behind – he had been long gone. It had taken her twenty minutes to do a fast onceover of the property and a little longer to do a more systematic one to be doubly certain that Clint’s bug-out gear was gone. That had been confirmation enough for her that he had survived. She still didn’t understand why he had never tried to come back until she had gone to Tokyo to get him. It wasn’t like the Avengers had been subtle about their return to polite company after the Snap.

“It’s okay,” Steve said. He put his hand on Clint’s shoulder, which might have been more reassuring if he hadn’t had alien blood caked into his knuckles, dyeing the worn brown leather of his fingerless gloves nearly black, but it was the thought that counted. Besides, Clint had seen worse.

They’d all seen worse.

Granted, Natasha wasn’t actually certain they had seen worse when it came to the sheer amount of blood and viscera a couple armies’ worth of aliens who still went to war with edged weapons could produce – they were lucky it was a cool day, but in a couple hours the smell would be overwhelming – but they had all seen worse. No matter what other horrible thing was coming down the line in the future, they had all seen worse.

She was gathering herself to go hug Wanda and Sam, and maybe introduce herself to some of the newcomers, when a flicker of movement caught her eye. Natasha turned before she was even certain what she had seen, wincing as the movement jarred muscles that were starting to stiffen up now that the adrenaline of the fight had worn off.

It was Loki, of course; two years of having to ride herd on him every time he left New Asgard and three more of having to escort him every time he went somewhere other than Scandinavia or a few of the other northern European countries who had gotten accustomed to his presence had left its mark. Steve was turning too, with the same honed instincts – it had usually been them with Loki, rather than Rhodes, since War Machine wasn’t exactly inconspicuous and Steve didn’t need a suit of armor to go a few rounds with Loki. Or any of the several groups who had tried to kill him.

Loki pulled warily back from his brother’s embrace to watch the frost giants approaching them. He had been crying; tear-tracks cut through the dirt and grime on his face, and he wiped a hand beneath his eyes to dash the last of his tears away. Thor made a motion like he meant to get between Loki and the frost giants, but stopped when Loki stepped in front of him. He had also been crying, Natasha saw. It made her feel both a little embarrassed to see and a little annoyed at the interruption; they should have had the time to themselves.

She glanced at Steve to find him already looking at her; Natasha picked up her sword again and without a word they both moved to back up Loki and Thor if the Asgardians needed it, though Sif and the Valkyrie had joined the two men and were watching the frost giants uneasily. She felt rather than saw Yelena, Bucky, and Clint following them. Another flicker of movement at the corner of her vision showed her Sam and Wanda coming to join them, with Tony limping over with most of his weight on Rhodes – they had apparently found an angle that worked for them. Parker trailed behind, his helmet retracted and his eyes bright with interest; Pepper, apparently convinced that Tony wasn’t about to keel over and die on the spot, had her cell phone out and was probably doing something useful that didn’t involve aliens.

The tightness in Loki’s shoulders eased a little at their approach, though he didn’t look at them, his attention on the frost giants.

“Queen Farbauti,” Loki said, twisting his fingers together like he wanted Mistilteinn for something to hold, but knew better than to reach for the polearm. Cautiously, he added, “I’m grateful for your aid here. And – surprised, I admit.”

There was something eerily familiar about the Jotun queen’s sharp features, like Natasha had seen them before, but she couldn’t think where; she had never seen a frost giant before today. The woman stood a good three and a half feet taller even than Loki’s six foot and change, blue-skinned and dark-haired with raised markings tracing patterns across her face, bare arms, and one exposed shoulder; she wore a arisaid-like garment that fell past her knees and a lot of ivory and leather jewelry, with a crown-like headpiece that looked like it was made out of ice. The two frost giants that had followed her – there were more hanging back, exchanging wary, hostile looks with the Asgardian warriors – were both male, bare-chested and wearing only brief kilts and jewelry.

There was purple blood drying on the end of the staff the queen was holding.

She tilted her head to the side as she peered down at Loki, like a curious bird seeing something new. Loki stood his ground, but there was an uneasy look in his pale eyes, and when Thor put a hand on his shoulder he leaned into it, just enough for Natasha to notice.

“Funny,” said the frost giantess eventually.

“I beg your pardon?” Loki said.

“I can see all four of your parents in you, but your father more than the others. You look like Odin when he was young, millennia ago. And Frigga too, a little. Something about the eyes. Certainly you look more like Odin than your brother does. He takes after Frigga.”

“It’s – it’s my face,” Loki said uneasily. “I’d rather not think too closely about it.”

“We’ve always been like that,” Thor said, his gaze intent on the frost giantess. “Since we were in the cradle. Everybody’s always said so.”

The woman nodded without surprise. “I’ve heard. Old One-eye was proud of his sons.”

Loki flinched like he had been struck, and Thor’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

The queen cocked a dark eyebrow at that and Natasha thought, I know that gesture, I’ve seen it before, but couldn’t work out where. “The past makes the present, Odin’s son, but it does not unmake the past that came before.”

Loki opened his mouth, clearly about to argue, then thought about it for a moment longer and didn’t say anything. It was Thor who said, “As my brother said, we’re grateful for your aid, your majesty.”

Farbauti leaned on her staff, considering the two Asgardians as she nodded. Eventually, she said, “Your crimes are not forgiven, Odin’s son. Odin’s sons.”

Loki shut his eyes briefly before opening them again. “I can offer you neither vengeance nor justice,” he said. “I have my own people to see to.”

“You hold your throne by virtue of your brother’s death, Loki Jotun-born,” said the queen, “and yet here now stands the first son of Odin.”

Loki’s eyes widened and he went a shade paler. Thor started to say something in protest before Loki silenced him with a glare. He looked back at the giantess and said, “Is that what you want, Farbauti Naldottir? My head as wergild for Laufey and for those who died at Utgard twelve years ago?”

“Is it not what we are owed?”

“What happened at Utgard was my doing, not my brother’s,” Thor said. “If it’s vengeance you want, take it out on me.”

“That isn’t going to happen –” Steve started to say, taking a step forward.

“That is not strictly true –” Loki began.

The Valkyrie’s voice cut over all three of them. “Loki is king of Asgard by acclaim of the Althing, not by blood-right alone. Thor’s return doesn’t change that.”

There was a murmur of agreement from slightly more than half of the watching Asgardians, and some extremely dubious looks – though no outright protests – from the others. Natasha tested her grip on her sword and thought that no matter how surprised the returned Asgardians were by this news, at least no one was stupid enough to try and start a civil war just at the moment. She suspected that they were waiting until they didn’t have an audience that included their old enemies, which from what Loki had said included most of the Nine Realms.

Queen Farbauti put her head a little to the side and considered the two brothers again. She let the uneasy silence between them stretch out before she said, “You and your companions returned my children to me, Odin’s son. That debt is paid.”

“What?” Loki blurted out. From his expression, he had been expecting either a fight or a summary execution.

Farbauti gestured at the two male frost giants behind her. “The culling took my sons, which I’m sure you knew already, as you always seem to know a great deal about the state of the Nine despite rusticating on Midgard. So now I have my children and the half of my people who were taken in the culling and our vengeance on the monster that stole them. Your crimes against my people are not forgiven, Odin’s son, but I consider their price paid in full.”

Loki’s mouth worked silently. Eventually he just nodded, apparently at a loss for words.

The queen reached out and put one hand beneath his chin, tipping his face up towards hers. Loki flinched and the Asgardians all tensed, Thor making a reflexive move forwards before he stopped at the hand Loki put out to him.

Loki shut his eyes. There was blue spreading up his skin from where the queen was touching him, slithering up his throat and across his face, the bones of his skull shifting just enough to notice.

The watching Asgardians were utterly silent.

“Look at me, Loki Odinson, King of Asgard,” the queen said, her voice even but cold.

When Loki opened his eyes to obey, they were as red as fresh blood, and the sharp angles of his face were very like the queen’s as she bent her head to his. Her voice was pitched to carry to the watchers as well as to him and to Thor at his side.

“I will give you this one warning, in payment for my vengeance and my children, for the rightful sons of Laufey and Farbauti,” the Jotun queen said. “Do not conjure with Jotunheim’s name again, son of Odin and Frigga. By our laws and Asgard’s you have no claim to it and have not for ten and one half centuries, not since the hour of your ill-omened birth when Asgardian swords first spilled Jotun blood across our ice. That choice was made long ago and is not unmade now.”

Loki made a small sound, like he had been punched in the gut. He tried to pull back, but the queen’s hand was hard on his chin, keeping him from moving. Thor took a step forwards, Sif and the Valkyrie both reaching for their weapons, before Loki put his empty hands out to stop them. Natasha could see him shaking.

“Do you understand me, Asgardian?”

“Yes,” Loki said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“Good.” Farbauti released him with a jerk and Loki stumbled backwards, the blue already melting away from his skin like he couldn’t maintain it without an outside impetus.

Thor caught him in an embrace and drew him close as Loki stood gasping, pulling his brother’s head against his shoulder as if to shield him from the frost giants. Loki didn’t fight him, just leaned heavily against Thor with his hands opening and closing uselessly at his sides. Sif and the Valkyrie came up to flank them, both women’s expressions wary.

“I think you’ve said enough, your majesty,” Thor told the queen coldly, keeping a soothing hand on the back of Loki’s head and his other hand on Loki’s shoulders. “I’m sure you have many things to see to back in Utgard. Asgard and Midgard are grateful for Jotunheim’s aid in this battle, but you have your own people to see to, as Asgard has ours. By your own words before witnesses from the Nine, you have no claim to wergild from Asgard or to my brother.”

“No,” said Farbauti. “Jotunheim wants nothing from Asgard – not that Asgard has very much to offer these days. Jotunheim is well satisfied in that, even if it was no doing of ours.” She smiled a little as the watching Asgardians bristled, most of them with their hands on their weapons. “I think we will not meet again, Odin’s sons, though whom among us can say what web the Norns might weave? The divine Aesir and the Jotnar alike walk each step of our wyrd, whatever it might be.”

She turned and strode away without waiting for a response. Her sons followed her, though one looked back briefly at Thor and Loki. There was a glimmer of magic, blue-silver, like glittering frost, and a sound like a door opening, before the frost giants vanished from the battlefield.

Natasha felt her shoulders relax.

“Shit,” Bucky said, sounding somewhere between impressed and horrified. “What just happened?”

“Adopted,” Natasha said quietly, because Steve looked too gobsmacked to answer immediately and while she was certain he remembered that particular detail, she was also pretty certain he was too polite to say it out loud.

“Oh,” Yelena said, the single syllable harsh with understanding. Her hand crept out for Natasha’s, callused fingers curling around hers; Natasha squeezed back before Yelena released her.

“Christ, that was his mom?” Clint said, with genuine horror that Natasha could see echoed on Tony’s face; Tony was looking around to make sure that Pepper hadn’t heard, his expression relieved to find her out of earshot.

Loki finally pulled back from Thor, his face so stark it looked like it had been carved from marble. He leaned a shoulder against his brother’s and swiped his hand across his face; Natasha didn’t think he had been crying, but his expression suggested he wasn’t certain one way or another. He looked at the Valkyrie and said, “If you wanted to revisit the question of who’ll sit on the throne of Asgard, now would probably be the time. I think there are enough Aesir here for a quorum of the Althing.”

“Brother –” Thor began.

“No,” the Valkyrie said flatly. She leaned on her spear and said, “It’s not a quorum, and even if it was, our laws forbid the Althing from being made up solely of warriors. The rest of our people –” Your supporters, her expression said clearly, “– are back in New Asgard or on the rescue ships on their way here, and at the moment we’ve got no idea how many there are. If you really want to put it to the vote, Loki, you’ll have to wait until we can do a census. Not that even our laws were really made to deal with this sort of thing.”

“Okay, wait, hang on,” Rhodes said, apparently unable to help himself. “You guys have a democracy?”

Loki looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “No.”

“The Althing affirms the king’s choice of successor from among his heirs,” Thor explained. “It’s a formality from our past –”

“It helps when there’s still actually a king to make that choice,” the Valkyrie said dryly. “At least these days. From what my mother used to say, Bor cheated the Althing out of the choice by naming Odin as king in his place when he went into the Borsleep for the first time, so when he died a few millennia later, it was just a formality, never mind there were other heirs who could have been chosen. Odin did the same thing with Hela and then everything went to Hel in a handbasket when she decided not to wait and tried to seize power anyway.” She cocked an eye at Thor. “It’s not supposed to be a formality. There were still people in Asgard annoyed about that when I was a girl.”

Thor looked a little shocked, but Loki just shook his head, weary.

“Elective monarchy,” Natasha said to Clint, who looked like he was trying to put what the Valkyrie had just said together with what he already knew about Asgard. “The whole ‘name a co-king to get out of the elective part’ is how a lot of the Roman emperors used to do it.”

He made a face. “Sounds complicated.”

She shrugged. “You’ve seen the U.S. government, right?”

“Oh, god,” Tony said. “You guys aren’t about to have an Asgardian constitutional crisis, are you?”

“Of course not,” Loki said. “We don’t have a constitution.”

“I thought this was an oldest gets the throne sort of thing – which of you is older, by the way?”

“Me,” Thor said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Loki said. “Asgard’s never had primogeniture.”

“I’m still older,” Thor said.

“We’re twins,” Loki said, apparently on reflex. “It doesn’t matter!”

“You’re what?” the Valkyrie burst out.

“Oh my god, he’s literally your evil twin,” Tony said, and at Loki’s raised eyebrows added, “Well, I mean, not evil –”

Loki crossed his arms and looked annoyed at himself for having said anything at all. “Well, clearly we’re not actually twins, as I believe was just made exquisitely clear to everyone here.”

“You didn’t know?” Sif said to the Valkyrie. “It’s a very famous story.”

“Yes,” Loki said, “as in ‘story,’ as in ‘fictional,’ as in ‘Odin made it all up.’” He ground his teeth and looked irritated.

“What story?” the Valkyrie said pointedly.

Sif shot a glance at Thor and Loki, then explained, “About Odin’s sons being born at the beginning and end of the Battle of Jotunheim. There’s supposed to be a prophecy – Odin’s sons, battle-born –”

Loki ran a hand over his face. “Which is clearly nonsense –”

“Actually,” Thor said thoughtfully, “from what –” He glanced at his brother before he went on. “If you were born when the fighting started, then we really did come into this world together.” He grinned, pleased at the revelation; Natasha got the sudden impression that it was something that had been bothering him for a while. He added cheerfully, “Though I’m still older, because everyone says I was born when Asgard arrived on Jotunheim, before the fighting started.”

“You’ve been dead for five years, Thor, whatever order we were born in I’m definitely older now,” Loki said, bumping a shoulder against his brother’s. A little of his tension seemed to have eased with Thor’s words, as if he had gotten something back that had been lost some time ago.

Thor made a pained face. “I don’t think that counts –”

Natasha turned at the sound of approaching footsteps, wary after the unpleasantness with the frost giants. She could see faint glimmers of magic across the battlefield, doorways in space-time held open either by the original magic of Loki’s summoning or by the sorcerers who had come with the Yggdrasil troops. A number of them had left, like the frost giants had; Natasha was both faintly relieved and a little disappointed to see the dragons gone. All of the remaining leaders were still here, either with their own forces or exchanging a few tense words with each other, most of them clearly waiting for the opportunity to speak to the Asgardians. Small groups of soldiers – Sif and the Valkyrie had designated a couple of Asgardian units to join them – were moving across the battlefield, recovering their dead and wounded and killing any of Thanos’s surviving forces. Natasha tried to make herself care about the latter and couldn’t; none of them could be allowed to live. She hoped that there was a way to take care of the horrendous mass of bodies and that she wouldn’t be the person who had to come up with one.

“Thor!” bellowed the newcomer. “What did you do to my hammer?”

“Eitri!” Thor said, looking relieved at the interruption. “I – what happened to your hands?”

The dwarf king held them up as he stomped over. They were beautifully articulated metal, each digit graven with runes too tiny to make out in any detail – not that Natasha expected to be able to read them, anyway. “What do you think? That purple smear feeding the good land-mother Jǫrð over there.” He tapped a finger to his lips in an abbreviated version of the Asgardians’ earlier reverence, some form of which Natasha guessed the dwarves shared with them. “That was well done, lad,” he added to Loki. “Odin himself could have done no better, nor would he have.”

Loki’s face did something strange, but Eitri went back to haranguing Thor before he could respond. “Now, where’s my hammer, Thor? Why are you using a sword? Loki said something about that witch of a sister breaking Mjolnir when he showed up at the forge-ring five years ago, but he wasn’t exactly in his right mind –”

“Thanks, Eitri,” Loki said brightly. “Though there are a number of people who would say I haven’t been in my right mind for quite some time.”

“Or ever,” Sif said, but it was fond.

Eitri waved that aside. “The boy’s always been more sensible than most of you Asgardians. All hack and slash, you are, no appreciation for fine artistry. Now, about my hammer –”

“It hasn’t been your hammer for five thousand years,” Thor protested.

“And it should have lasted for five thousand more!”

Loki was listening to them bicker with a small smile on his face when his gaze went to something over Natasha’s shoulder and went cold.

Natasha turned, stumbling a little with weariness before Yelena put a hand under her elbow, then relaxed when she saw that it was Nebula and the green-skinned woman who had been with her earlier. Then she tensed again when Clint reached warily back over his shoulder for an arrow before he paused and said, “No – it’s the right one.”

“The right what?” Steve said, sounding as tired as Natasha felt.

“Gamora,” Loki said cautiously, suddenly on Clint’s other side. “I thought –” He paused and frowned at Nebula, who looked like she hadn’t been having a particularly good time in the battle – she was missing the coppery metal plate on her head and all the metallic pseudo-flesh had burned off her left arm, revealing the skeletal armature beneath.

“Is that your brother?” Nebula asked, looking over his shoulder at Thor, who was still talking to the dwarf king.

Loki nodded, but his gaze had already gone back to the green woman. His expression was very wary.

“Ember –” she began, and he flinched backwards. Nebula shook her head a little, and Gamora hesitated before she went on apologetically, “I never heard your real name before he took you from the Black Order and gave you to the Chitauri, just the one Proxima and the Maw gave you.”

Clint looked sharply at Loki, who was still watching Gamora.

“I’m Loki of Asgard,” he said quietly, “son of Odin.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Loki said, with a small, tight smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. After a moment, he said, “You’re not – you’re not the same Gamora I met with the Guardians five years ago, are you? You came with Th – with him?”

“Loki –” Nebula began

“It’s all right,” Gamora told her. She looked back at Loki. “Yes, I came here with him. And Nebula – my Nebula.”

Loki frowned briefly, then his eyes widened. His glance back over his shoulder at Thor was so fleeting that Natasha might not have noticed if she hadn’t already been watching him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Nebula shrugged a little, her expression resigned. Gamora looked down.

“We missed something somewhere, didn’t we?” Steve said. Natasha didn’t think he was following the half-unspoken conversation any better than she was, but that part was easy enough to figure out.

“You didn’t,” Nebula said. “I did.” She looked at Clint. “Where is it?”

“Safe.” They eyed each other the same way Yelena and Bucky had a few minutes earlier, like two wary dogs deciding whether to make friends or fight. There was a soft sound from Steve’s other side that might have been Bucky muffling laughter.

Steve and Loki exchanged a look across the top of her head that almost made Natasha laugh, out of sheer battle-weariness trending into near-hysteria. The two of them were the only people in the small group who weren’t trained assassins, not that it made them any less dangerous. She knew they had both done black ops and wetwork before, but it was neither their preference nor their training. Having just seen Loki in battle with the rest of the Asgardians, she knew it really wasn’t his training, though he, like her, would rather kill one man from behind than a dozen on the battlefield.

Nebula’s lips twitched a little in an almost-smile, then she nodded solemnly to them and made a gesture towards Gamora to get the other woman’s attention. “Come and meet my friends,” she said, nodding in Tony and Rhodey’s direction.

Natasha didn’t miss Gamora’s very slight double-take. She also didn’t miss that Loki didn’t relax until the two women were out of earshot, then he pressed his fingers to his forehead, looking weary.

“You all right?” Steve asked him.

“I’ve had a very long day,” Loki said.

“Yeah,” Clint snorted. “Tell me about it.” He slipped his bow back over his shoulder into the carrying loops alongside his quiver and started to rub his hands over his face before remembering they were filthy.

Natasha put a hand briefly on Loki’s arm, meaning to finally go and hug Wanda and maybe actually introduce herself to Peter Parker. He caught her sleeve before she could turn away and she looked up at him, raising her eyebrows.

He let go of her immediately, then glanced around to make sure that the others knew he was talking to them as well. “Please don’t tell my brother what you just heard,” he said, a little apologetically. “I’m sure he’s guessed some of it, but – he doesn’t know that part.”

Bucky nodded without hesitation, though Natasha was pretty sure he had next to no idea who Loki was in the first place. With his background – and hers and Yelena’s – you didn’t need to know details to guess what all that had meant, though. Some things were the same no matter where they happened.

“Thor doesn’t know?” Clint asked, frowning.

“Aside from the dead the only people who know any of it are Gamora and Nebula,” Loki said, his mouth tight. “And before today it was just Nebula, and she didn’t know all that much. Neither does Gamora, to be honest, but it’s still –” He shook his head, then glanced around as if he needed a distraction. “You shouldn’t walk around with an unsheathed blade,” he said to Natasha. “In this company someone will take it for an invitation.”

Green-gold glimmered briefly on his fingertips before he handed the sword belt and sheath he had conjured to Natasha, then he winced and wiped away a drop of blood from his nose; apparently he had been using too much magic today for it to have fully regenerated yet, however that worked. He had tried to explain it once. Natasha wasn’t fully certain she had understood.

Yelena held the sword for her while she buckled the belt on, then Natasha dug out one of the cloths she used to clean her knives to get the alien blood off the sword; human blood was hard enough on steel and she had no idea what Outrider and Chitauri blood would do to a perfectly good weapon, no matter what kind of metal Asgardian swords were made from. She swung the wolf’s head shield over her back onto her baton harness and wondered where her batons had gone and if it was worth looking.

“Can I keep this?” Yelena asked, indicating the spear she was still holding.

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Of course. You’ve more than earned it.”

“Might be a little hard to travel with,” Bucky said; the spear was eight feet long counting the blade.

“I’ll work something out,” Yelena said.

“They fold down,” Loki said mildly, and showed her what to do in order to compress the spear down to a three-foot staff of finely-graven metal, with no sign of the foot-long spear point.

Clint watched this with an expression of poorly-concealed disbelief, even though he had living in relatively close company with Loki for the better part of a month now. Natasha didn’t think he was actually trying to conceal it, after a moment’s thought; he just couldn’t believe it.

The Valkyrie drifted up to them and said to Loki, “That dwarf’s still yelling at Thor like what happened with Hela was his fault. To the hammer, not Asgard.” Her lips twitched in amusement. “Says it was some of his best work and then Odin ruined it by putting some stupid enchantment on it.”

Loki smiled a little to himself. “It was a stupid enchantment.”

“Wait –” Clint said. “The whole ‘whosoever be worthy’ thing?”

“That’s the one.”

“He thinks Odin weakened the forge-spells on it by adding his own magic to it and tying it all up with Thor’s,” the Valkyrie said. “I think I heard the words ‘it’s not my fault!’ come out of Thor’s mouth. A couple of times.”

“You know, it was his fault,” Loki said thoughtfully. “Not the enchantment, obviously, but what led to our father placing it on Mjolnir in the first place. Well, my fault too. Mostly my fault. But Thor didn’t have to do anything about it. The Jotuns didn’t either.” His mouth went hard and he looked down.

The Valkyrie nudged him with a shoulder. “That ship’s sailed, your majesty.”

Loki glanced at her. “I wouldn’t get too comfortable calling me that now that Thor’s back.”

“Leave it until the Althing meets, if you’re that determined about it.”

“After what just happened with – with –” He couldn’t say the Jotun queen’s name. “It won’t be any contest.”

“You’re king now, majesty,” the Valkyrie said pointedly.

Something about the way she said it seemed to steady him. Loki passed a hand over his face, then straightened upright and said, “All right. Find out how many of our people are here in the first place so no one’s left behind when we go back to New Asgard, dead or living – I won’t leave any of our fallen here. And someone find out where the damn gauntlet is.”

“Scott and his girl and that wizard with the fancy cloak had it last I saw,” Clint said after a moment as the Valkyrie moved away to obey the first command.

Loki looked irritated. “Strange?”

“I mean, yeah, wizards are pretty strange,” Clint said.

Steve grinned tiredly. “That’s his name. Stephen Strange.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s weird.”

Loki rolled his eyes and nodded to himself before he turned to Steve and Natasha. They both looked at him inquisitively.

“You need to decide what we’re to do with the gauntlet until we can return the Stones to their proper times,” Loki said. “If not for –” His gesture encompassed the ruined compound, “– I would advise keeping it here, but as it is there are only a limited number of options.”

Steve grimaced, but nodded in agreement. “What do you suggest? Wakanda, maybe, but I don’t want to saddle T’Challa with that when he just came back, especially since we weren’t telling Queen Ramonda or Okoye any of the details in the first place –”

“Wong’s going to argue for Kamar-Taj,” Natasha said; she liked Wong well enough, even if she didn’t know Stephen Strange at all, but she didn’t think that would be wise. She had a pretty good idea what Loki was going to say next.

“I don’t want the damn thing anywhere near me, my brother, or my people,” Loki said unhappily, “but the safest place is probably New Asgard, at least for a short time. Our vault isn’t equal to my father’s, but it’s better than anything else on Midgard, and it will have me, my brother, the Valkyrie, and all of the einherjar and ulfhednar sitting on top of it. And I assure you I want nothing to do with it, so you needn’t be concerned about that.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t.”

Loki looked a little surprised, the way he always did when Steve or Natasha or one of the other Avengers said something like that.

“Tony might argue about it,” Natasha said, shifting a little just to get herself used to the unfamiliar weight of the sword on her hip, “but he’s not going to want it anywhere near Pepper or Morgan, so he’ll come around. Yeah, that’s best. We’ll deal with Wong. And Strange, I guess.”

She sighed and looked over the ruins of the compound again, with god, where am I even going to sleep tonight? suddenly at the forefront of her mind. As such things went it was far from the worst problem she would be dealing with today – or for the foreseeable future, in all likelihood – but it didn’t make it any better, either.

Loki followed her gaze, then said quietly and calmly, “You and the Avengers gave me a place to stay when I had nothing and no one. In return, I offer you and your friends the hospitality of New Asgard for as long as you need it.”

Dealing with the immediate aftermath of the battle took the better part of an hour, most of which Loki spent alternately seeing to the Asgardians and engaged in thinly-veiled threats-cum-diplomacy with the other rulers of Yggdrasil, the bulk of whom were clearly waiting to see whether Loki or Thor would end up on the throne of Asgard, such as it was. Natasha and Steve accompanied Loki to most of the latter, since the last thing they wanted was for the rest of the Nine Realms to think that Earth was weak in any way. Thor, showing more political savvy than Natasha had expected, prudently stayed away from most of it, though his one-eyed gaze followed his brother as though constantly checking that Loki was still there. Rhodes and Tony were already on a call with Ross and a couple of his cronies, looking like they wished the dragons were still around so they could feed the politicos to them. Rhodey waved Natasha off when she went to join them, probably because adding her or Steve to the mix would antagonize Ross even further.

Not long after that, Natasha had to politely make her excuses to the Light Elf queen, who was easily the most terrifying person she had ever met, and step aside to answer her buzzing phone.

“What the hell, Romanoff?” Nick Fury said.

Natasha couldn’t help her grin. “Good to hear your voice, sir,” she said, then had to give an abbreviated explanation of the Snap and the past five years, which resulted in having to pull her phone away before Fury blew out an eardrum yelling about letting Loki, of all people, settle on Earth.

“Honestly, he’s not that bad once you get to know him,” Natasha said, thanking her lucky stars that Fury wasn’t here in person. Yet. There were things that he would figure out after one look at them and she was too tired to deal with that.

Fury made an annoyed sound. “Romanoff –”

Natasha eventually got out of the conversation by sending him a picture of the battlefield and the handful of aliens who were still hanging around – just the dwarves at this point, whose relationship with the Asgardians was such that it was more good-natured joshing than the verbal fencing most of the others had been. When they finally vanished through another door in space-time – part of the original magic of the summoning, apparently, rather than something new and terrifying to be worried about – Loki leaned heavily on Mistilteinn, looking exhausted. Thor, who had joined his brother, Steve, and the dwarves, put a hand on his shoulder and said something to him. Loki nodded back, his gaze a little wary.

Dealing with the sorcerers took a little longer. T’Challa had been happy enough to leave the whole affair to the Avengers and the Asgardians, though he had listened gravely to their arguments before agreeing. Scott had stubbornly hung onto the gauntlet ever since Clint had passed it to him, despite Stephen Strange’s attempts to get him to hand it over. He and Hope van Dyne stared at the gruesome spectacle of the battlefield while Steve, Tony, and Loki argued with Strange and Wong over who was best suited to take care of the Infinity Stones until someone could return them to their own times.

“That will probably be us,” Hope told Natasha; she was a strong-featured woman with her dark hair pulled practically back from her face. “Because I think Hank is going to kill Scott for letting a Stark anywhere near his tech otherwise. He might anyway.”

Scott nodded with a woebegone expression. “I’d say you should talk to him, but I kind of think he hates the Avengers almost as much as the Stark family.”

“That’s fair,” Natasha admitted; she had never met Howard Stark, but she had heard plenty of stories about him. Steve’s tended to be good-natured – they had been friends, and though Steve had never said as much, she suspected he had gotten along better with Howard than he did with Tony – but the bulk of the others weren’t. And Hank Pym had good reason not to like the Avengers, either, not that Natasha had ever met him in person.

“Enough,” Wong finally told Strange. “New Asgard is well-equipped to handle the Stones for a few days. Better them than us if something should happen. Besides, Loki’s a friend.”

“Yes, listen to your Sorcerer Supreme, Strange,” Loki said, smirking. As Strange sputtered and Wong tried to explain with something that included the words you missed a lot, he added magnanimously, “You’re welcome to inspect our vault if it will ease your mind. After all, someone is going to have to transport us all to New Asgard and since you’ve already volunteered as a taxi service, I see no reason why it shouldn’t be you.”

Strange and Wong turned to look at the mass of Asgardians waiting on their king, the dead and wounded laid out on knock-down stretchers. There weren’t too many of the latter; Asgardian regeneration was already doing its work on shallow injuries and the very badly-wounded had been transferred to the starships the unsnapped refugees had arrived on, where the healers were busy. Other sorcerers moved across the battlefield, disposing of the dead aliens – thank God, Natasha frankly didn’t care what they did with the bodies as long as she wasn’t the one who had to deal with it – or creating portals for the varied peoples who had defended Earth against Thanos.

Loki grinned like a shark, all teeth. “Since you went to the trouble of bringing my people here in the first place, regardless of our situation. You can also bring the rest of my people through from space. You owe us, sorcerer.”

Strange and Wong conferred in a silent exchange of sideways glances, then Strange said, “Fine. But I want to see the vault.”

“Of course,” Loki said graciously. “As I said. You’re welcome to both see it and test its defenses. I think you’ll find it formidable.”

“Oh, good,” Scott said, and finally handed the gauntlet to Natasha. It hummed uncomfortably against her fingers and she hastily passed it to Steve, who didn’t look any happier to be holding it. “Here. You take this. I gotta go get yelled at by Hank Pym. Or murdered. Maybe murdered. Probably murdered.”

“You just saved half the universe,” Steve said, handling the gauntlet gingerly.

“Believe me,” Scott sad, “he’s not going to care. Oh, I’m so dead. Okay, let’s get out of here.”

Hope mouthed he’ll be fine at Natasha before they stepped through the glittering portal Wong made for them, through which Natasha could see the brilliant blue sky of a San Francisco day. Just before the portal closed, she heard a man yell, “Scott! What the hell –”

Loki waved after them – he liked Scott – then turned back to Strange and Wong. “When you’re ready,” he said.

Natasha watched Thor as they stepped through the portal into New Asgard. So did Loki, his expression very anxious.

They came through on the big field just south of the settlement, alternately used for arms practice and some kind of stick-and-ball sport that, from what little Natasha had seen of it when she had been here before, was just as dangerous as arms practice. The settlement rose above the field, curving up the hill with most of it on the cliff side over the choppy waters of the Skagerrak – mostly elegant wooden structures which already looked like they had been here for centuries rather than a handful of years. Thor and the other newly-arrived Asgardians tipped their heads back to look at the settlement, a few of them exclaiming softly.

Those exclamations turned into cries of joy and relief as the Asgardians who had been waiting at the edge of the field came towards them, calling out to friends or relatives. Loki had used his amber orb to contact the settlement while they were still in New York, so their arrival wasn’t a surprise. Natasha was so tired that everything had taken on a bright, blurred edge and she was leaning against Steve as inconspicuously as she could manage, but she was aware enough to note the people in both parties searching for familiar faces – many of them finding who they were looking for, but others obviously disappointed. Loki, Thor, Sif, and the Valkyrie had been able to determine who had come through to the compound, but the Valkyrie hadn’t had time to do a full census of everyone recovered from deep space. And even five years later no one knew for sure who had been taken in the Snap and who had been killed during the attack on the Statesman.

Natasha had seen the look Loki and the Valkyrie had exchanged after the refugee ships came through the portals Wong and Strange made for them. They would be able to find out for certain now.

She watched Thor watch Loki as he talked to some of the Asgardians who had met them, a few men and women who had separated themselves from the crowd when they saw him – mostly women; she had noticed that there were about three Asgardian women to every one man, legacy of the twin massacres on Asgard and the Statesman. Without exception, everyone from New Asgard had checked for an instant when they saw Thor next to Loki, then gone to Loki anyway. Thor had regarded this with startled bemusement at first, then with his brows narrowed in thought.

“It’s beautiful,” Wanda said quietly from beside Natasha, looking around.

Natasha had to agree. To their left, a pathway led down to a stone quay where a few boats were tied up; the path was marked with waist-high pillars of alternating stone and wood, both elaborate carved with Asgardian-style knotwork and topped by the stylized heads of various animals. Another path led upwards from the field to the settlement, marked with more pillars and a railing at a steep point where steps had been built into the hill.

The houses on the slope of the hill were small, mostly, built in a style that Natasha thought of as typically Asgardian only because of what it wasn’t – not strange beyond any comprehension, but not what anyone on Earth would have designed, though there were bits and pieces that were almost, almost, familiar. From here you could see part of Iðavoll, the king’s hall and the tallest building in the settlement, though at this angle everything but the upper levels were hidden by a cluster of other buildings. The setting sun caught the glitter of gilding at the carved rafter-ends of Iðavoll’s tiered roofs, visible from here as nothing but a golden gleam.

It was all very beautiful and very peaceful and very, very alien in a way Natasha couldn’t quite articulate.

Thor put his hand on Loki’s shoulder and said something to him too quietly for Natasha to hear. Loki smiled at him, his expression still anxious, then settled his shoulders.

“Come on, brother,” he said. “Let me show you New Asgard.”