Shattered

Loki was fairly certain they were going to crash into Midgard in a fiery explosion, killing everyone involved (well, he supposed, if they crash landed in the middle of a battle field and killed themselves and everyone on it, it would take care of Thanos’s army at the very least, but he had still come too far to go down by way of a spacecraft crash). Though, even though they were only a minute away at this point and fast approaching the planet, he wasn’t entirely sure the ship would make it that far- it was rattling, pieces flying off as they went, and he thought he might’ve seen smoke surrounding the ship.

Nevertheless, that worry was assuaged when, thirty seconds later, they entered the atmosphere relatively intact. 

Crash landing on the battlefield was, therefore, brought right back to the front of his mind.

Groot seemed relatively unaffected, or even unaware that they were hurtling towards Earth at breakneck speed (somehow he thought it wouldn’t matter much if he broke his neck if he were to explode). Drax was whooping, Mantis was staring, wide eyed, out the window (then again, her stare was perpetually wide eyed, so maybe she was just as lax about their impending doom as Groot was), and Quill was seemingly putting every ounce of concentration onto flying the ship, which didn’t really make Loki feel much better at that point.

They were getting closer… and closer… (was Quill actually planning on stopping the ship?)... and closer… (he could see the forcefield crackling around Wakanda)... and closer….

His stomach gave a great lurch as Quill suddenly slammed his hand into the “BRAKE” button, slowing their descent… though not as much as Loki would have liked. He could see that their pace was not slowing enough for Quill’s liking, either, as his face paled slightly and his eyes widened.

“Everyone grab a chute!” he yelled, dashing into the back of the ship.

“What?” Loki said in a perfectly reasonable and measured tone that most certainly was not a shriek, thank you very much.

“Evacuate ship!” Quill yelled back.

Oh, shit-

Loki scrambled to undo the straps holding him into his seat and leaped up, noticing Drax, Mantis, and Groot do the same. He followed Quill to where he had grabbed a stash of parachutes, throwing them to each of them.

Quill kicked the door open and jumped out, Drax, Groot, and Mantis following quickly after. Loki had a brief, brief moment where the thought of faking his own death and hightailing it out of there flashed through his mind. He could leave all of this behind, no longer worry about Thanos now that an entire team of the most persistent and annoying people in the universe was on him, retire to some other realm and conquer it for himself… not to mention, dying in a fiery explosion as a ship crashed into a huge battle would be one of the most dramatic ways for him to pretend to die.

But then Thor’s face flashed through his mind, and he was reminded that his brother would very much care if he died, and had, as much as he had failed to see it time and time again, very much cared all of the other times as well. And he wouldn’t be able to go away quietly if he knew Thor was sad, he knew that.

So with a great leap, he threw himself out of the ship and onto the battlefield below, just in time for it to explode behind him.

------------------------------

Everything was going relatively… well, not well, Scott didn’t think you could really be “well” on a battlefield unless you were someone really powerful like Thor or Wanda, but they weren’t doing badly. That was good, right?

They’d been a bit overwhelmed at first, sure- they only had one truly super powered person on their team, and there was only so much Wanda could do. But then the Guardians plus Loki had shown up with a spectacular explosion, which had helped on its own by being right in the middle of one of Thanos’s ships, evening the playing field even more.

Before Scott’s eyes, the rest of Thanos’s children fell. His army started dwindling. Things were going well.

And then there had been a flash of bright light coming down onto the battlefield, and a hulking figure had stood before them, golden gauntlet glimmering in the light.

Scott heard at least 5 people curse over the comms, and saw Wanda reach for the device at her hip, likely to inform Steve of this latest development:

Thanos was here.

Honestly, Scott had expected him to be a little bigger. Not that he wasn’t huge, but he’d heard Wanda call him a “Titan”, and he’d rather expected a Titan to be, well, as big as a mountain. Then again, he wasn’t exactly complaining, because he didn’t think they were up to fighting a guy as big as a mountain.

“What do we do about this guy?” Quill’s voice asked.

The question was answered moments later, when Drax drew both of his swords, screamed at Thanos, and rushed forward. Was he trying to tackle him? He’d known Drax was dumb, but good lord!

Thanos simply smirked, and batted him back. “Ah, you’ve made friends on Terra. The most irritating people I have ever met, all combined….”

“You’ll find we irritating people are pretty good at kicking some Titan butt,” Quill snarked.

“Please. You are nothing more than bugs, pests to be squashed before I move on to my greater purpose,” Thanos sneered. 

“We’ll see about that,” Quill shot back, before blasting off and towards Thanos… only for Thanos to clench his hand, sending a tree flying towards him to knock him out of the air.

Well. This might be harder than they thought.

-------------------------

“You know, pacing won’t help anything.”

Hela gave Stark her best glare (she didn’t know why she bothered, they never did affect him, anyway) and continued on pacing. She had too much nervous energy to just- sit down- right now. She knew Stark probably had the same problem, as his hands had been moving non stop over a screen since they got the call from Maximoff telling them that Thanos had arrived on Midgard. 

She hoped he didn’t destroy the entire planet. She’d actually been starting to like Midgard, perhaps even more so than Asgard- though of course, Asgard would always be her home. But she found it interesting that it was more or less the same as when she’d left it, while Midgard had evolved in ways she hadn’t thought possible (and, besides, there were no bad memories on Midgard, no flinching at the statues of her father that seemed to be everywhere around this Norns forsaken palace, no imagining the bodies of the people she’d slaughtered out on the front steps- yes, Asgard was her home, her people, but home had become a concept mixed up in pain and guilt for perhaps as long as she could remember, and why hold onto the half-dead concept of “home” when she could find something new that wasn’t drenched in the blood of her past?). 

Then again, if Thanos destroyed Midgard, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe that he may just as well destroy half of the universe along with it, and then where she was going to live after all this was over would be a rather moot point.

“Hades, you’re doing that thing again.”

She shot him another glare, though this one was much more half-hearted. “What thing?”

“The, uh, pacing thing that I just told you not to do?”

“Well, I’m sorry, if it annoys you then maybe you should leave.”

Stark gasped in mock outrage. “How dare you. And after I helped you open your juice box.”

“Please do not speak of the stupid juice box.”

“It was pretty funny,” Romanoff smirked from her spot next to Stark. Romanoff was doing the opposite of them- while she and Stark were filled to the brim with energy, Romanoff was sitting so still she might’ve thought her to be a statue if she hadn’t known better.

She huffed, and folded her arms across her chest, and just refrained from stomping her foot. She was starting to wish she had joined Brunnhilde and Thor in the throne room- then took that thought back immediately. Thor and Brunnhilde were holed up with the council, putting last minute plans in place now that they knew it would be a moment before Thanos got to Asgard. Hela had started to join them, but the council had given her looks of such loathing and mistrust that she’d felt it would be in her best interests to remain outside and wait.

“What are you so nervous about, anyway?” Stark asked.

“I am not nervous,” she gritted out, even though she kind of was. Not about herself- she was durable enough now that she was on Asgard- but Brunnhilde? Banner? Thor and Loki, loathe as she was to admit it? The rest of the Avengers, who she did not care about, per se, but certainly did not want to see die? They did not heal instantly from wounds. They could not withstand a stab wound to the gut. They could very well die in the coming attack. 

And she didn’t know what she would do if Brunnhilde died. She did, as much as they poked fun at each other, genuinely like the woman, considered her to be her closest friend (not that she had many others to compete with). She shuddered at the thought of Thanos, or one of his minions, taking her out in the coming battle.

“Oh, you clearly are. You’re nervous too, Tony, so you don’t get to talk. I think we all are.”

Stark sighed and looked over at Romanoff. “Never thought I’d see the day where you admit that you’re nervous about something. Alright, yeah, of course I’m a little nervous. If Thanos blows up Earth, we’re all kind of screwed.”

Well, that was certainly an understatement. “From what Loki has told us, that doesn’t seem likely. Blowing up realms is not Thanos’s way. He may kill half of the population, however.”

“Yeah, right, because that’s not something to worry about either. You’re a real beam of sunshine, aren’t you, Hades?”

“Oh, shut up, Stark.”

Really, of all the Midgardians, she had to get stuck with these ones? Romanoff wasn’t too bad, but Stark, as much as she found him entertaining, was annoying. But the rest had gone off to explore, or get a few drinks, or hit things (she had wanted to join Rogers and Barton when they went off to the army’s training grounds, but had elected to stay here with Fenris instead- unfortunately, she had been joined by these two). 

But she was spared from her misery when the palace doors flew open, and Thor strided towards her- an unreadable expression flickered over his face when he realized that there were others in the vicinity (keeping a very wide distance away from her and Fenris, though it was hard to tell which they were more afraid of, despite Thor’s many words of reassurance), so she was unable to tell what he was thinking as he approached.

“Sister. We must begin preparing our army. Stark, Romanoff, find the others and gather them here.”

“What’s happened?” Romanoff asked.

“We’ve just heard from Maximoff. We need to get moving, and quickly….”

----------------------------

Wanda wondered why Thanos couldn’t have gone to Asgard first. Yes, it was probably not very nice of her, but still. They were much better equipped to fend off an attack from one of the most powerful beings in the universe, which, now she thought about it, was probably why Thanos had come here instead.

She watched him make quick work of two of the guardians, and realized quickly that they weren’t going to beat this man through brute strength alone. They needed a plan. They needed strategy. 

She was so, so horrible at strategy. She normally didn’t need it. On earth, you could beat most enemies through the sheer amount of power on their side alone… and besides, Steve was the strategist, or Nat if he wasn’t available. Not her.

The field had gone silent, their side at a loss on what to do and Thanos looking like he was perfectly happy taking his time, his soldiers gone quiet and retreating back to where he was standing. Right. She could use that. 

… She wasn’t entirely sure how, but she probably could. Somehow.

“Where is the stone?” Thanos asked, his voice carrying over the heavy silence.

T’Challa’s helmet slid off his face. “You will not get it here. You will find only death if you attempt it.”

Thanos only chuckled. “I think not, human. You may have made better work on my army than expected, but you are no match for me. I am all powerful.”

“Then we will do whatever it takes to keep you from it,” T’Challa countered. 

A grin stretched across Thanos’s face. “Then why wait any longer? Ebony?”

What? 

The same flash of blue light came down, bringing down a barrage of the same creatures they had been fighting, as well as things she recognized as the Chitauri, and she felt a shiver run down her spine. At the front stood another figure. She recognized him from the fight in the forest- there was a large bandage on his head. She saw his eyes find her, and he scowled.

“Charge them! Fight them, until every last one of them is turned to dust beneath our feet!”

Wanda only had time to think ‘Well, that was over dramatic’ before the army advanced once more.

No one was speaking over the comms, everyone likely too shocked by the sudden turn of events, and now preoccupied by the oncoming army, which looked much more threatening now that its leader was standing before them. So she should probably do something… What should she do?

Well, the goal here was to keep the stone away from Thanos. To do that, they needed to keep Vision away from Thanos. As far as she knew, he was still in the palace, having just defeated one of Thanos’s children. She didn’t know if Thanos knew this, but he might have gotten that information from his minion. Either way, keeping Thanos from getting to the palace was their primary goal.

“Wanda! Why are you standing there staring into space?” Scott yelled from across the field. Oh, shit. Ugh, she was so bad at multitasking.

“Sorry!”

She blasted a couple of aliens, and went back to thinking.

They couldn’t defeat Thanos, at least not easily. They couldn’t defeat his army, either, now that there were reinforcements. 

“Loki! We need a plan, and fast!” she called, knowing he knew Thanos better than anyone on their side.

He stopped from where he was flinging knives at Ebony Maw. “Help me take care of this bastard, and I’ll be able to think about that.”

Despite herself, she smiled. That she would gladly do.

Ebony was obviously tired, the combination of his head wound and Loki’s constant barrage of knives taking its toll. Once she joined the fight, there was no competition- he held out for a moment, long enough to inflict a shallow cut on her head, but with an expert flick of her wrist he was flying up and towards the barrier around Wakanda, dying in a burst of flame. 

“That was rather gross,” Loki commented.

“You said you wanted him gone, you did not say how,” she replied, shrugging. “Now, we need a plan. He’s too powerful to take him down without using our brains.”

“Yes, yes, and you need my intelligence to help you with that.”

“I don’t like you,” Wanda decided, and Loki shot her a nasty look.

“Feeling’s mutual. Now shut up so I can think.”

She rolled her eyes- she wasn’t actually mad at him, but he was starting to irritate her- and turned her attention back to the army, which was still advancing as Thanos waded through the destruction almost nonchalantly, cutting down anyone who tried to attack him. He was acting almost lazy, like he expected to win and was going to take his sweet time about-

“He’s cocky,” she realized. “He expects to win.”

Loki stopped muttering under his breath (which was only slightly crazy) and stared at her, then at Thanos, then at her again. She could see the gears turning in his head, and the moment when they finally clicked into place.

“I’ve got it.”

------------------------------

“Thanos!”

Wanda landed in front of the Titan, eyes glowing bright red energy gathering up in her hands. This was it. If she messed this up, there wouldn’t be any do overs. If any of them messed this up, they would be screwed. Thank god most of the pressure lay on Loki.

Thanos only waved his hand at her, intending to bat her out of the way, but she grabbed his hand in a swirl of red. For the first time since landing on Earth, there was a scowl on his face.

“Out of my way.”

“No,” she retorted, knowing it sounded a bit childish but not really minding. 

“I have no patience to deal with this, mortal girl.”

“Find some,” she growled. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a slight shimmer fall over the battlefield, if she squinted enough. Around her, more and more of the Wakandan army fell. Scott and Hope went down in a swarm of Chitauri, and didn’t reemerge. 

Thanos saw what she saw, and the look of triumph on his face was evident. “You have no hope of defeating me. Don’t you see? Your friends fall around you, overpowered by the sheer force of my army. If you turn over the stone, no one needs to get hurt.”

“That’s not happening.” She hoped Loki was working quickly. She had never been very good at stalling.

“Then you will die,” he said simply, and she was, for the first time, fully appreciative of just how insane this man was. He had absolutely no qualms about leveling entire realms, mowing down countless lives in order to reach his goals. The thought was rushed out of her mind when he rushed at her, fist clenching to show off a bright purple glow on his gauntlet.

Oh, shit.

She had just enough time to throw up a shield before the full might of the power stone blasted towards her. She tensed, thinking that this was it, but to her surprise, the shield held up, and she skidded backwards a few feet but remained intact.

She couldn't see Thanos through the sparkling of purple and red between them, but she imagined he had a frown on his face. The thought made her push harder, even though she was expending energy fast- her legs were shaking, and she could feel a pounding in her head.

Something hard tapped her shoulder, and she switched gears immediately. With all her might, she blasted up into the air, high above the battlefield, where she could see the Chitauri growing ever closer to the castle, the image reflecting the sun into her face. Thanos stopped the flow of power from the stone, and she could see the smug smile cross over his face before he moved on, leaving her crumpled form behind him on the ground.

She came down and landed behind him, feeling extremely disjointed at the sight of her clearly dead body in front of her. There were flames dancing across her skin, making her glow slightly. She looked back up at Thanos, who was still advancing-

Until a beam of golden light shot at him. He only just managed to avoid it, jumping out of the way and rolling back to his feet.

It was Vision who landed in front of him this time, his form glimmering in the light, as she slowly approached Thanos from the back. This was a critical part, and she was already tired, energy draining quickly. She took a deep breath and gathered up what was left of it.

“There you are,” Thanos rumbled. “I’ll be taking that.”

He lunged towards Vision, who managed to dodge his arms, ducking under them and coming up on the other side. His eyes were clouded with an anger that she had never seen in Vision before, that she didn’t think he was capable of.

He shot another beam with the mind stone, and this one hit true on Thanos’s side. The moment it hit, she shot a blast of energy to the same spot, and Thanos howled in pain. He clenched his fist, and the surge of energy was something that Vision was unable to block- he was thrown backwards, skidding through several yards of grass before coming to a stop.

Thanos grinned, striding forward and kneeling down besides Vision. He reached forward, and with a sickening crunch, he plunged his hand into Vision’s forehead, plucking the mind stone up and into his hand.

She tried to ignore the lurch in her gut at the sight of Vision’s body lying there, lifeless and colorless, and approached Thanos, from the front this time, swirling red energy around in her hands. She would have to ask Loki, after this, if there was any way that her powers would be able to turn her invisible. It was turning out to be pretty useful.

Thanos set the mind stone in place in the center of the gauntlet, and frowned when energy didn’t surge through him. This, Loki had said, was the part that couldn’t be faked, at least not well. Now was the time to reveal all their cards.

“What-” Thanos frowned, a deep furrow forming on his forehead. The Mind Stone shimmered and disappeared from the gauntlet, along with hers and Vision’s bodies. The illusion slowly fell, stretching out across the battlefield, showing a very different scene than the one from just a moment ago. 

“You tricked me,” Thanos mumbled. “You-”

“Well.” Loki’s smug voice came from behind Thanos, and he turned around to face him. “They don’t call me the Trickster God for nothing.”

She could have cheered for joy at the sight in front of her. Lightning crackled overhead as Thor clenched his fists, eyes glowing bright blue. Loki drew two long blades and took on a fighting stance. Between them, Hela drew her own weapons- midnight black swords with jagged edges- as the ground rumbled, spikes growing up all around them, taking down the dwindling army of Chitauri. All three were in full armor, and she felt a chill run down her back as she was truly hit with the fact that these were gods. Three of the most powerful beings in the universe stood in front of her, and they were out for blood.

Thanos took a step back. “It’s- it’s not possible.”

Hela tilted her head, a small smile forming on her face. “Darling,” she drawled. “You have no idea what’s possible.”