Shattered

About half an hour earlier, on Asgard….

Hela stared at Thor. “He wants us to do what?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. “He was rather brief while he was explaining it to us, they are in the middle of a battlefield. But something about casting illusions, and the Bifrost, and tricking Thanos. I’ll explain on the way, once we’ve gotten everyone gathered.”

She nodded, and behind her, Fenris got to his feet. She saw the slight flinch in Thor’s face- she had never quite apologized for her extremely dramatic entrance with Fenris and the old Asgardian army, and she could tell he was still a bit terrified of them. 

Everyone was gathered relatively quickly, and Thor led them to the Bifrost. People were still giving her and Fenris a wide berth, except for Brunnhilde and the Avengers, who were actually clustered closer to her. Brunnhilde, thankfully, was not drunk enough that it would compromise her fighting, and was decked out in what she recognized as an old Valkyrie uniform. Everyone was in uniform- the Avengers were a far cry from the people she’d met lounging around on a couch drinking juice boxes. Now, they were serious, professional- if she weren’t a goddess, she would be intimidated. Instead, she was just impressed.

“Alright!” Thor’s voice lacked the same authority that Odin’s had carried, but for now, it would do- she actually preferred this, much less chance of her panicking. “Heimdall is going to send us down to Midgard. Thanos has gathered what seems to be most of his forces there- that is what we are going to be focusing on. No one is to attack Thanos himself until Loki gives us a signal- he will be casting an illusion over us to make us appear invisible to Thanos’s eyes, so he will think that his army is winning.”

She noticed that some of the Asgardians around her shifted a bit, as if uncomfortable with the thought of following Loki’s plan. She didn’t see why- it was a sound plan, perhaps a bit overdramatic, but effective. But, then again, the Asgardian people had never been big on “subtlety” and “planning”, and it was too much to hope that they had changed in the last millenia.

Thor turned his attention to the communication device in his hand. “Brother. We are ready.”

“One moment, Thor. We need Maximoff to distract him, and she’s a bit busy right now.”

As they waited, Hela tilted her head back and ran her hands over her hair, the familiar feeling of her armor coming on washing over her. She reached a hand up to pet Fenris’s flank, as Romanoff powered up her suit next to her, batons lighting up in an electric blue. 

Behind her, Banner took a deep breath and muttered, “Alright, big guy. Now’s the time. Come on.”

She perked up, just before a roar erupted from Hulk as he burst out of Banner’s smaller form. “Hulk!” Brunnhilde grinned. “We missed you!”

Hulk grinned right back, and around them, the Asgardians backed up even more. “Angry girl!” He turned to her. “Death lady!”

She smiled. “Good to see you, Hulk. We were right, we didn’t like Banner nearly as much as you.”

Hulk looked pleased, and patted her on the shoulder, nearly sending her tumbling to the ground. “Funny horns.”

Yes, her helmet was a little strange, even by Asgardian standards. But she’d chosen it out when Odin had put her in charge of his army, and she’d been around the Midgardian 12 at the time and going through a bit of a weird phase, and then there had been no changing it.

“Better than her brother’s,” Romanoff said. “Hey, big guy.”

Hulk actually looked surprised for a moment, as if he hadn’t noticed her or the other Avengers right away, but then he scooped Romanoff up into a hug. “Ow, buddy, watch the ribs!”

He plopped her back down immediately, causing her to stumble back slightly. “Hey, buddy!” Stark grinned, faceplate popping up. “We missed you!”

“Hulk miss team,” Hulk said, and Hela grinned- it was good to have her old friend back.

“Everyone!” Thor yelled. They all fell silent. “We’re heading out now. Heimdall?”

The gatekeeper nodded, and twisted the sword, and the Bifrost brought them down to Midgard, where battle raged on.

She spotted Thanos almost immediately- he was hard to miss, at the moment, as he was battling with Maximoff and there was a great clash of purple and red energy between them. Surprisingly, she looked like she was holding her own- then Loki appeared behind her and tapped her shoulder, and she shot up into the air and out of range.

It seemed like they had that under control, she thought as Loki continued weaving illusions. She turned her attention to the battle- Thor was making quick work of the Chitauri (she hated those damn things, they’d been a thorn in her side when she was younger), but there were countless amounts of them.

She should go help him out.

There were around 20 different Leviathans causing trouble at the moment. Stark was attempting to fight one, Hulk was pounding another, and Vision was dismantling yet another. Good. That meant 17 for her.

She easily dispatched of 3 in less than a minute- her necroswords easily penetrated their armor and sent them careening towards the ground. Over the comms, Stark said, “Damn. Wish we’d had her on our team before. Come on, Thor, why can’t you do that?”

Thor didn’t answer, but another Leviathan got struck with a giant bolt of lightning, sending it down. She smirked. Thor may be powerful, but there was no way he could ever beat her in terms of power and fighting prowess. 

She took five more down almost instantly, and Thor cursed quietly over comms.

After that, it could barely even count as a fight- not against the Chitauri, at least. Her brother wasn’t putting up much of a fight, either, but he was trying, she would give him that. Because of that, every single Leviathan had been sent to the ground in a matter of minutes, and she didn’t even have a hair out of place.

“The illusion’s falling soon,” Loki muttered over comms. She looked over to where he was standing, a look of great concentration on his face as he sent a fake Vision flying through the air. “I’m going to need some backup- shit!”

A brief look of panic crossed Thor’s face, followed quickly by anger, and he swiftly made his way to his brother’s side and sent a sword through the Chitauri soldier trying to attack. Loki was surrounded by a ring of them, now- she wasn’t sure if they had decided that he was an easy target or if he’d been identified as the biggest threat. Either way, that was her little brother they were trying to kill and, annoying as he may have been, she did not want him to die.

The Chitauri never stood a chance- within seconds, they were all dead at her feet, and she had joined her brother’s side. She felt Thor’s eyes on her, and she turned to glare at him. “What?”

He just shook his head. “I’m very glad you’re on our side.”

She snorted. “You should be. I am much more powerful than you.”

“Not that much,” Thor frowned. “I could still best you.”

“Oh, please.”

“If you two are done with your pissing contest over there,” Loki growled, “we need to deal with Thanos.”

Ah. Yes. She looked at the Titan just in time to see the confusion on his face as the illusion fell away. She walked up to Loki’s side and drew two swords into her hands, and Thor joined her on her other side, lightning crackling at his finger tips. 

Thanos gaped at them. “It’s- it’s not possible.”

She smirked. “Darling, you have no idea what’s possible.” 

Next to her, Thor snorted quietly at the reminder of their first meeting (Norns, what a long time ago that seemed right now). Thanos scowled at her. “Your illusion does nothing against me. You think it will help you fight me? You are nothing compared to-”

“Oh, shut up,” she sighed. He looked like he wanted to argue, but she flung her swords at him, and after that, he was a bit too preoccupied to speak.

He blasted her two swords out of the way with the Power Stone, then made to send a surge of energy towards her. He gathered up the energy- and then only had a split second to use it to defend himself against the lightning bolt shooting down from behind him. Using his temporary distraction, both she and Loki went for his unprotected side. Loki’s caught on his armor, but her blade found a chink to slip through, and Thanos howled with pain.

She grinned in triumph. The grin faded almost immediately when he grabbed Thor’s arm and flung him away, and she suddenly found herself face to face with the Power Stone. 

Shi-

Something shoved into her side, sending her sprawling to the ground. Looking up, she saw Maximoff holding up a shield against the stone’s power, and scrambled back up to her feet. She raised a sword-

-and used it to block an attack from one of Thanos’s soldiers, who had taken a shot at Maximoff’s back. It was enough to distract the woman- she glanced behind her for a second, and the power stone blasted at her at full strength-

“I got you!” a panicked voice shouted, and she had to duck to avoid a masked figure swinging down and grabbing Maximoff around the middle, flinging her up and out of the way. 

“Peter, I told you to stay away from the big fight!” Stark shouted, coming down himself and taking a swing at Thanos, who blocked it with ease.

“But she was about to die!” Peter protested. “I didn’t want her to die!”

“Thanks, Peter,” Maximoff mumbled.

“Well, I don’t want you to die either,” Stark argued, shooting a beam of light at Thanos, which he dodged. “And you’re a kid, so you do what I say, alright?”

“Fine,” Peter grumbled, swinging himself off to another corner of the battlefield.

Stark shot at Thanos again, who raised an arm to ram his fist into Stark’s face. Hela started towards them, but stopped when a now familiar red glow surrounded Thanos’s hand and brought it back in time for Stark to fly out of the way and take another swipe at Thanos.

“Hey, Thor! Hit me,” Stark called, and that was the only warning Hela got before her brother shot a massive amount of lightning towards Stark’s suit. What in the Norns is he doing?! she thought, panicked, before realizing that this was entirely strategic- the extra boost gave Stark the power to send an even stronger blast at Thanos.

While they distracted Thanos, she ran at him again and rammed her blade at his neck. Distracted as she was by this attack, she missed the hand swatting at her until it was nearly at her face, and before she could bring up a hand to defend herself, she was batted back onto the ground.

From above, Thor roared, and the clouds darkened overhead. She had to clamp her eyes shut tight to protect against the brightness caused by the spectacular bolt of lightning that tore down from the sky towards Thanos.

For a second, she held her breath, thinking that there was no way that any being- except perhaps her- could possibly survive something like that. But Thanos simply clenched his fist, and the red stone in the gauntlet glowed bright, and the lightning stopped, in midair, before shooting straight back to where it had come from- right at her brother.

Thor’s eyes widened just a fraction before he was hit, flying back several hundred feet and hitting the ground with a dull thud.

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

Ow.

Steve had forgotten how much battles like these could hurt. Sure, he’d been in small skirmishes since Ultron, but those were more- one on one. Most of the time, he could win those, and even if he didn’t, there weren’t many opponents that could deal him much damage. But things like these- where there were hundreds of thousands of things programmed to kill him and his friends- just hit differently. He had to defend himself on all sides, and the fighting just stretched on and on with no end in sight- there were always more. And this was the biggest thing he’d ever thought. (And a small part of him protested that, yes, this was hard, but at least he wasn’t one of the people actually fighting Thanos himself, who didn’t look remotely tired but who had almost just blasted Wanda into oblivion- those people were, well, insane, but also more powerful than he would ever be. He could never contest against Hela, or Thor, or Loki, or Wanda- logically, it made sense that he should be taking care of lower level threats. But still, some part of him itched at the fact that his friends were putting themselves in far more danger than he was, and he wasn’t going to help them).

“Hey, Cap!” Natasha grabbed him, and pulled him behind a particularly large rock. “Got any plans?”

“Huh?” he gasped.

She stared at him. “Do you have a plan? To kill Thanos.”

Oh. Did everyone expect him to have a plan? He didn’t have a plan- well, he did, but that plan consisted of “Let Hela Take Care of Thanos” and didn’t really extend beyond that. But, considering the fact that Hela was now laying on the ground from a hit, he thought that maybe that plan needed to be rethought.

“Uh,” he said, and Natasha sighed.

“You don’t have a plan,” she stated.

“Well,” he said. “Um.”

“You don’t have anything?”

He remained silent for a moment, staring at Thanos. Was there anything he could think of? Come on, he was usually pretty good at this, why couldn’t he think of anything now?

Just then, the a massive lightning bolt ripped out of the sky, heading towards Thanos. Oh, he thought. Look at that. Thor’s gonna take care of it for us. But those hopes were quickly and swiftly crushed as, as if in slow motion, the bolt stopped and shot back around to hit Thor square in the chest.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered, and Natasha reached for her comms. 

“Thor? Thor, come in.”

Silence.

Oh, god….

“Thor?” he asked. “Can someone get to Thor?”

No one answered, but Tony, who had been taking care of some of the Chitauri around Thanos, flew over immediately. 

“He’s out cold, but FRIDAY says he’s good,” he said finally, and Steve let out a breath of relief. 

“Thank god,” Natasha breathed.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “Listen, Tony, we can’t leave him out in the middle of a battlefield. Think you could lift him out of here, get him to the palace?”

“Yep.”

As he took off, Thanos took one last shot at Thor, and his entire body tensed up for a second before Hela ran forward and swiped at his hand, the blade glancing off but leaving a small cut on the skin. Thanos roared at her, and the power stone glowed, and he knew that the swords Hela was holding would be no match against an Infinity Stone, and his heart caught in his chest….

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

… and Brunnhilde swooped in, sword in hand, and slashed her weapon against Thanos’s cheek, sending him stumbling back. Hela, heart still racing, stepped forward to join the fight, but was brushed aside by Hulk, who jumped onto Thanos with a roar and pounding fists.

Hulk had knocked her to the ground, and Brunnhilde, who had jumped out of the way for Hulk, reached down to give her a hand. 

“Thanks,” she muttered, getting to her feet.

“Well,” Brunnhilde shrugged. “I owed you for that bullet.”

Oh, right. That seemed like such a long time ago too- had it really only been a few days ago that she’d jumped in front of a bullet for Brunnhilde? The wound had almost healed up, thanks to her time on Asgard and her accelerated healing, so she supposed she had put it out of mind.

She opened her mouth to respond, but paused in horror as Thanos grabbed Hulk’s foot and flung him away. “Hulk!” 

She flung herself at Thanos, and drew a long cut down his back. He roared at her, and turned to retaliate, but Brunnhilde swiped at him, drawing him back. She grinned in triumph as he staggered back, and brought her sword up…

And, as it hit against his skin, the Titan broke apart into bubbles, floating away in the air. 

She had just enough time to realize what had happened before she heard a blood-curdling scream from next to her, and saw the blade sticking out of Brunnhilde’s abdomen.

Her blood ran cold as Thanos removed the blade and Brunnhilde dropped to the ground. “No!”

She was vaguely aware of chatter over the comms, of Rogers screaming for everyone to back away, of Romanoff sliding past her to grab Brunnhilde up off the ground to drag her away. But it was hard to concentrate over the blood rushing in her ears and the red in her vision. She could feel the ground rumbling beneath her, could feel the pull of her powers in a greater intensity than she’d felt since she’d been banished away to hel. 

The spikes she pulled up out of the air where huge, and as she started sending them towards Thanos, she saw the first spark of real fear in his eyes. Good. He should fear her. She was the Goddess of Death. 

She had him pinned to the ground in no time, one pike buried in his stomach and another through the gauntlet, stopping him from using its power. Drunk on the power coursing through her veins, she knelt down next to him and smiled. She drew a sword into her hand and rested it against his chin.

He knew he was beat. She could see it in his eyes, the way he was looking up at her- he knew that he was about to die.

Good. It was always so much better when they knew it. 

She pushed down on the blade, and it cut through his skin, taking his head off in one clean slice.

She stood up, the mad Titan dead at her feet, and looked around her. There were huge pitch-black spikes sticking out of the ground in a ring around her, and she felt a brief moment of panic- had she accidentally taken Brunnhilde out in the process of killing Thanos? But, no, Romanoff had come through and grabbed her before anything could happen. Hopefully, she was fine.

Her eyes found the metal gauntlet still sitting on Thanos’s hand, and she removed the pike holding it down and slid it off of his hand. She turned it over, and looked at the two stones nestled in their spots. It was impressive, really- no other being had ever collected more than one Infinity Stone before, at least to her knowledge. Odin had wanted to, once, to make their conquests easier, but had only made it to the Space Stone before he quit his reign of terror. For one moment, one terrifying moment, his voice whispered in her ear, telling her to take it- she had two Infinity Stones in her hands, two more were on this battlefield right now, and another was on Asgard. She could have them all in her grasp in mere hours, if even minutes if she wanted to. Old dreams of conquering all of the realms came to the front of her brain.

But they felt… wrong. Like they were someone else’s, or hadn’t ever belonged to her at all. But, when she thought about it, where those dreams ever really hers to begin with? Or had they been Odin’s, passed down to her when it was clear that she could help him do the job better than he could alone? 

Even if she had once wanted it… it felt silly, almost, to her now. There had never been anything to gain from her helping Odin conquer the realms, except for his approval, and she had her doubts that anything she did could have earned that anyway. She didn’t want to rule- it had been blood for blood’s sake, and that thirst for blood had run out somewhere on Sakaar. Taking over the universe wasn’t something she needed anymore, wasn’t something she wanted. She wanted to let her brothers rule Asgard in peace- they would do better than she or Odin ever did. She wanted to stay here on Midgard, and- do what, she didn’t know quite yet. Join the Avengers, if they would have her? She enjoyed their company, loathe as she was to admit it- but only if Brunnhilde and Hulk were with her. 

Speaking of which….

She strolled over to where the rest of the team was waiting, battle still raging behind them but dwindling as the Wakandans and Asgardians dispatched of the Chitauri with ease. Thor tensed up, for just a moment, when he saw her carrying the gauntlet- could she blame him? He had no reason to trust her, besides a few heart-to-hearts and a battle fought together. She would have to earn that trust, someday. 

And maybe that would start today, she thought, as she approached him and wordlessly shoved the gauntlet into his arms. She could see in his expression that it would- that, even though he had half expected her to use the gauntlet against all of them, he could get rid of those doubts in the back of his head about her intentions. He nodded at her as she passed, and clapped a hand on her shoulder before starting forward, likely intending to do something about the pile of black spikes in the middle of the field.

She could feel the familiar exhaustion creeping in now that her adrenaline was wearing off, and was ready to collapse into one of Midgard’s extremely comfortable beds and sleep for days before she spotted Brunnhilde, laying on the grass and being tended to by Banner, who Hulk must have let out when he saw his friend injured. Romanoff was kneeling next to her, and looked up briefly when Hela collapsed next to her. 

To her surprise, Brunnhilde’s eyes were open, and immediately found hers when she sat down. “Hey, Majesty.”

“Hey,” she sighed. “You’re alive.”

“Mm. Now you’ll never get rid of me.”

“Well. Maybe you’re not so bad. I might enjoy having you around.”

“Ditto,” she muttered. “And once Doc’s done healing me up, we can have all the adventures in the world, deal?”

“Perhaps we should take a break for a while, don’t you think?”

They looked at each other for a moment, before they both chuckled. The idea that either would ever really settle down was a laughable one, after all- Hela may not have the same bloodlust that she used to, but her blood still sang under the thrill of a battle, that wouldn’t go away anytime soon.

So they would continue on. Maybe they could travel the galaxy, or stay on Midgard, or do Norns know what with their lives. She didn’t know, and she didn’t particularly care- no matter what, it was bound to be an interesting life, and that was just fine by her.