Chapter 1: What If... Tony Stark lost everything?
Chapter Text
Thanos held the Infinity Gauntlet high, and snapped his fingers just once – and all across the universe, half of all life winked out. On the Earth, lives were lost. And in one universe, perhaps you could name some of them, or name some of the survivors.
Here, James Rhodes stumbled forwards, and felt his armour turn to dust the instant before he did. Here, Pepper Potts stared in horror at a TV screen, an aerial view of the battle in Wakanda showing her an army of alien monsters half-fading before she saw her own hand start to fade away. Here, Bruce Banner heard a growl of rage deep in the depths of his psyche as something in him felt him be stolen away by something no strength could resist.
And across the galaxy, unaware of all of this, Tony held a boy in his arms.
“Mr Stark. I don’t feel so good.”
Days later, and Tony was back on Earth. A glowing stranger had pulled his ship through whole star systems, and dropped him in the Avengers’ Compound, leaving him too weak to stand, resting in a bed with an IV drip in his arm.
Reports were still flooding in from all around the world. Death, destruction, chaos, tragedy, indiscriminate and random and heartless, with names fed into a constantly growing list.
Not up to lifting a tablet, he had a helmet on the table to his side, the eyes lit up and a gentle Irish voice coming out from it.
“Dead.”
FRIDAY could scour the internet and the yet-to-be coordinated databases faster than any human could. Even if he had the strength to type, he’d probably have asked her aid anyway.
“Dead.”
Days without food, and barely any water, took a toll on anyone. Someone whose body felt bruised all-over as it was from a clash with Thanos, doubly so.
“Dead. Sorry boss.”
“I don’t need sorrys,” Tony snapped. He closed his eyes, head falling back on his pillow. “Sorry. Sorry, just- Happy?”
The helmet whirred.
“Dead.”
Tony didn’t move for a long few seconds.
“We could stop,” FRIDAY said. “We don’t need to do all the names now.”
“Don’t,” Tony said. “I need to know. Please. Harley?”
The helmet whirred. He could guess the answer.
Half the world was gone. A little over half of his social circle had been part of that – statistical fluctuations, he could justify it all numerically. Living with it was a little harder. A few interns, a few staff were around – he’d given them their own days off. Everyone had tragedies to deal with.
Which left him sat in his lab. At some point it had gotten dark; the holographic screen flickered vaguely in front of him.
“Mr Stark.”
It wasn’t real. Tony buried his head in his hands.
“There’s more magic in the world than Mr Strange’s. Mr Stark please, look at me. I don’t know how long I can do this.”
He couldn’t keep looking away; he opened his eyes, looking between them. There was a silhouette at the far side of his lab, a far-too youthful face over tattered clothes.
“There’s something stronger than the Stones. It’s sealed away, hard to get at, but Strange, he says you can do it. If you can hear me. Help us, please – death, by the stones, it’s… not the same. It’s not right. But this power source, if you can use it, if you can break the seal, you can save all of us. You can save me.”
Tony stared.
“Peter,” Tony said. His voice came out as a croak.
“I can’t stay,” Peter said. “We’re all here – Pepper too, Strange just thought I could be transmitted better. We need your help to break the seal. Do it, please, save us – find the magic. Find Ta Lo.”
Peter faded. Hollowly, Tony stared across the empty lab.
There were circles under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved for a while, but for the first time in a long, long time, his expression set. For the first time in weeks, he found himself with a real purpose.
Slowly, Tony pushed himself to his feet.
“FRIDAY,” he said. “Research time. What’s Ta Lo?”
There were a wealth of Iron Man suits stored away, projects made out of boredom and fear alike, plenty of old suits made for all manner of eventualities.
Tony made himself another. He poured his pain, his anger, his desperation, his guilt onto the forge and planned it out, circuit by circuit - at the same time, FRIDAY scoured every database and server she could get access to, searching for one specific name.
“There’s not much,” she said. “References in email chatter way back in the 90s, but whatever info they had, it’s hard copies.”
“Where?” Tony said, staring across the lab at a shadow.
“Some old friends.”
Files opened up above the table in front of him, slides projected into the air. He still flinched slightly at the symbol depicting ten rings.
“Oh, you mean old friends,” Tony said.
His eyes unfocused; behind the hologram, Peter still stood there, watching him. Tony balled his hands into fists.
“Thank you, Mr Stark,” Peter said. “I knew you could do it.”
“Not failing you again,” Tony muttered. “Not failing anyone.”
“Boss?” FRIDAY said.
Tony shook his head, trying to clear it; when he opened his eyed, it was just him in the room. Thoughtful, he let his fingers dance over the display.
The Ten Rings had referenced Ta Lo at some point in the past – the fragments they’d uncovered suggested they wanted to find it. That was good. He could piggyback off of whatever they knew and take a shortcut.
Wherever it was, whatever it was, he had to find it.
Honestly, he’d half-thought he’d just gone mad. But no, he was sure he’d never heard the name before, and here it was; this was positive proof that whatever he saw was real. Ta Lo existed. Some magical land, with a seal keeping back the power to restore half the universe.
The power to restore the people he so desperately missed. It was almost poetic that it needed him to go back to where all this began.
“Boss,” FRIDAY said. “Captain Rogers is at the door. Again.”
“Tell him I’m out,” Tony said.
“I don’t think he’s going to keep buying that excuse,” FRIDAY said.
“I don’t have time,” Tony said. “Every day they’re not here… Tell him I’m not in, you’re smart, you can figure something out.”
“I’m sure he wants to help,” FRIDAY said.
“His kind of help won’t change anything,” Tony said. “This will.”
He flicked through the display. The Ten Rings, small time terrorist group; formerly wide-ranging, then a shadow of what they were, abducting him for money in an attempt to gain some influence again. Nowadays, they probably weren’t up to much.
Tony extended a hand: a bracelet shot onto his wrist. This had been his latest addition. Nanotech suits were practical, endlessly versatile and efficient, but when they took too much damage, they stopped being able to repair themselves.
He hadn’t thought that would be a problem. Then Thanos had come.
These were boosters; more tech to pour into the suit, on top of slightly improved designs, meaning he could go for a lot longer, replenish more and create more. That wasn’t something he was going to let happen again.
He twitched his hand, and the armour flickered between gauntlets, one sleek and golden, and one a bulky red akin to the one the Hulkbuster suit had. Perfect.
Nothing was going to come between him and saving everyone.
On the other side of the world, there was a cave in a mountain. A pseudo-home had been carved out there, tents and curtain-dividers around crates of weaponry, a handful of people wandering around amongst them.
One of them heard a faint whistling. None of them saw it coming it time, until a giant of red and gold, several times larger than any person, landed with a crash; the ground trembled, and it strode forwards, unconcerned with any of the people in its way.
The stone lip of the cave roof chipped as it brushed past it; the titan’s height reduced slightly, but it kept walking, not even turning to dismissively flick a repulsor blast at someone shooting at it.
It strode inside. When it reached a storage bay, stacked with books and texts, blueprints and maps and contacts, the metal giant stood at the door of the room while someone stepped out and walked around inside.
A few minutes later and the giant left, crashing up through the cave roof and letting rubble fall all around him, barely sparing a look for the dozens of people behind him.
One watched him go, and pushed his way through the fallen stone with one hand of flesh, and one arm that had been replaced by a blade, until he saw the room that it had been looking at. And, face grim, Razor Fist turned and walked away.
Anyone, pushed to extremes, might end up doing things they ought to regret. While Tony Stark pores over the fragments he found, and a hero starts to fall, in another city entirely a villain is given the chance to rise.
Razor Fist pounded on the door. He’d caught the first flight he could, and spent most of it sleepless, still bruised from pulling comrades out of the wreckage. It was a long way to San Francisco.
The door opened; a second later, the occupant seeing Razor Fist, the door shut.
He continued to knock, half-slumping against it. Eventually it opened, and stayed open, and he collapsed, exhausted, on the floor.
The apartment’s occupant was, at first glance, unremarkable. He was middle-aged, dark-haired, wearing a light, short-sleeved button-up shirt. His forearms were bare, and his eyes surprisingly soft.
“Mattias. I told you, I’ve left that behind,” Wenwu said.
“Please,” he said. “You’re the only person I could find. The Ten Rings are finished, but I thought you’d want to know…”
His voice trailed off. After a moment, and a lot of thought, Wenwu reluctantly stepped back; Mattias managed to pull himself back up to his feet. He stepped out of his shoes and walked inside, falling down onto the sofa.
The apartment was as unremarkable as its owner. There were a few old portraits, wall-hangings, the kinds of decorations that seemed more at home in the living-place of someone decades older. There were a handful of chairs, a TV, a table, and an electric fireplace.
Above it, on the mantlepiece, was a small wooden carving of a dragon, and four photos. The first photo was of a woman. The second was of the same woman, alongside Wenwu and two children, a boy and a girl.
The third was much more recent: Wenwu, sat on a chair, and a man and a woman close beside one another not so far away. They seemed much more comfortable with one another, than with Wenwu, though Wenwu was smiling enough just being there.
The fourth was the simplest of all. It was the man from the other photo, younger, smiling widely at the camera. A pendant was draped around the photo, a silver chain ending in a green ellipse.
Wenwu paused as he passed that photo. His gaze lingered on it, and then he moved past, expression hardening.
“Now is not a good time,” he said.
“I know,” Mattias said. “You told me never to contact you again, after… I remember. But you needed to-”
“I want to know nothing more about the Ten Rings,” Wenwu said. “My return was… a moment of weakness, for which I have more than paid the price. I want to rebuild what I had with my family, not get involved in more violence.”
“It’s about your old research,” Mattias said.
“You kept that?” Wenwu said.
“I always thought you’d want it again,” Mattias said. He hesitated. “Everything you found out about Ta Lo, and how to get there. Tony Stark has it.”
Wenwu looked Mattias in the eyes for a second, and then cracked into a smile, genuinely laughing. He shook his head.
“I’ll buy you a dinner, for old time’s sake,” Wenwu said. “But I don’t want you staying here. An Avenger is no threat. A hero knowing where they are isn’t a bad thing.”
“He wasn’t acting much like an Avenger when he burned his way through our hideout,” Mattias said. “He barely said a word. He seemed… obsessive.”
“Enough,” Wenwu said. “I’m not getting back into that life because you had a bad experience with an Avenger. Stay for a meal, then I want you to go.”
“But-”
“Enough, Mattias,” Wenwu said, a note of firmness in his voice that was so very familiar.
Wisely, Mattias fell silent.
Papers had been photocopied, maps stretched out, and FRIDAY was running comparisons to all known geographic features, past and present, to try and find the best matches.
Tony was grimacing, lost in overly poetic descriptions. There was meant to be some kind of barrier to entry, some kind of hurdle to climb; otherwise, the rest was clear enough. A magical village hidden in another dimension.
No crazier than a purple alien with magic rocks. And besides, it wasn’t like he had anything else to do with his time.
On instinct, he looked up; he was still alone. He hadn’t seen Peter in a while, and that just made him work all the faster, almost feverishly.
He wanted to save him. He wanted to hear Pepper’s voice again, to bicker with Rhodey, to see Happy. He wanted so much.
“Captain Rogers is at the door,” FRIDAY said.
“You know what to do,” Tony said.
That distracted him. Tony scowled, shaking it off, and starting again, re-arranging the holograms with small twitches of his fingers. There had to be something here to narrow it down.
“Captain Rogers is still at the door boss,” FRIDAY said.
“I went to Wakanda,” Tony said.
“He’s asking how long it would take for you to replace the front door if he broke it down,” FRIDAY said. “He sounds concerned.”
Tony sighed. He stepped back from the desk, blinking a few times, and rubbing his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d moved back. Weary, annoyed, Tony left his lab and climbed the stairs.
Steve Rogers was on the other side of a glass door. At some point he’d found the time to shave; he was wearing black, an almost out-of-place, formal suit straining against his chest. He stood there, polite yet implacable.
Not going anywhere. Blinking a few more times to try and refocus on something other than old journals, Tony went over and opened the door.
“Hello Tony,” Steve said.
There was silence.
“Back from Wakanda already?” Steve said.
“They have really fast planes,” Tony said. “What do you want?”
“It’s been a month, Tony,” Steve said.
Tony said nothing.
“There have been funerals,” Steve said. “Memorials. Daily, for people to get closure. Have you heard about-”
“How can you just do that?” Tony interrupted.
“Do what?” Steve said.
“Act like it’s done,” Tony said. “What’s the point in mourning them when it isn’t over?”
Steve’s expression creased. Tony flinched.
“We found Thanos,” Steve said. “I told you. He destroyed the stones.”
“That doesn’t mean we give up,” Tony said. “There have got to be other relics in the universe, things powerful enough to undo it.”
“It’s not giving up,” Steve said. “We’re searching, I promise you – Carol’s out in the universe right now, covering more ground than we can here. But you can’t just plan for it to be undone. You need to live your life in the meantime.”
“I am,” Tony said. He gestured around him: “Welcome to my life. I’m the guy that tries to help, rather than vanishing for two years.”
“Tony…” Steve said. “I know things aren’t great between us, and I know some of that’s my fault, but I do care. I promise.”
“If you cared, you would be doing something about it,” Tony snapped. “Not going around to funerals like it’s over. They’re not dead, they’re not gone unless we let them be.”
He knew how Steve was looking at him, and he hated it.
A ghost told him of a magical village: he knew how it sounded, even after everything they’d been through. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen Peter, and hadn’t found traces of a real Ta Lo matching the description.
So he kept it to himself, and refused to budge an inch.
“What happens if you can’t find anything?” Steve said, quietly. “If there is no magic answer? They’d want you to live your life, Tony, not lock yourself away like this.”
“Well they aren’t here, are they?”
“It isn’t betraying their memory to have a life outside of them,” Steve said. “If you need to have hope, do – if you need to search for some way to undo all this, I’ll be at your side, but you need to do other things. This isn’t healthy. Believe me, I’ve lost people-”
“You’ve lost soldiers,” Tony said bitterly. “They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t meant to be involved. He was a kid. Pepper was halfway across the world. They were all the people we fight to stop being involved in all of this. We were the armour that was meant to protect them, and we couldn’t, and billions died, and you want to just move on from that? No, Steve, we don’t deserve that.”
“If you were gone, and they were here, is that what you’d want them to say?” Steve said.
“If they were here, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, and the world would be a better place,” Tony said. “I failed, they didn’t. Now are you going to keep getting in the way or are you going to leave?”
Steve was quiet for a second; Tony shifted his arm, signalling, and a suit rose up out from the floor.
It wasn’t meant as a threat, more as punctuation, but it was effective nonetheless. While his suits were ultimately stored as nanotech, he liked to work on the assembled form, making sure that each piece worked and that it knew the patterns he’d programmed in.
While he searched for his destination, he had to keep his hands busy.
The armour was taller, bulkier, armed more like Rhodey’s had been than his own. Whatever it took, Tony told himself; he didn’t know what to expect from Ta Lo, but the place was sealed off, hard to get into, he doubted they’d be welcoming.
“Tony,” Steve said, softly. “What’s that suit for?”
“Someone has to keep the world safer,” Tony said. “Again, get out my way.”
Steve eyed him for a moment, and he could just feel Steve measuring him up, trying to gauge how much was grief and how much was something else. Honestly, even Tony couldn’t say.
Whatever he saw, though, made him take a step back. He nodded kindly.
“There are services at seven, one and eight,” Steve said. “You can sit somewhere alone if you have to. You aren’t alone.”
Tony’s lips quirked up sardonically at that.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Steve said.
“I’ll be out the country,” Tony said.
“I’ll still be here,” Steve said. “For as long as you need.”
“I don’t need you,” Tony said.
“I know,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t be your first choice, I understand. Still, I will be here for you.”
Tony watched him leave, and without a pause turned back to work on the suit, and on seeking out Ta Lo.
Mattias had put the idea in his head. It was his fault.
But Wenwu found himself paying more attention to the news than usual – Tony Stark hadn’t been seen for weeks. It was gaining headlines more because he was hardly known for being a recluse. He’d toned it down since his earlier days, but he was never this quiet for this long.
Mattias had said he’d been colder when dismantling the Ten Rings and taking his old research on Ta Lo. That could have meant anything, but paired with those stories, it was playing on Wenwu’s mind.
Grief could do terrible things to a man. He knew that himself; when he’d lost Ying Li, he’d spiralled, fallen back into his worst habits. He’d blamed himself for her death, and wanted to lash out at anyone responsible.
It had lasted five years; he’d sent his son to deliver the killing blow, to finally avenge Shang-Chi’s mother and his wife, and Shang-Chi hadn’t come back. When Xialing fled as well, he’d had to look in the mirror and ask himself what he was doing.
Ying Li had loved him so much that she’d left her home for him, and he’d loved her so much that he’d left behind the Ten Rings. And when he’d lost her, not only had he gone back, but he’d dragged their children into it.
He’d have done anything to hear her voice again, but in lieu of that, he had just his memories of her.
A year later and Xu Wenwu, the Warrior-King, Master Khan, the Mandarin, showed up in San Francisco with a suitcase full of memories and trinkets, and nothing else.
It had been a while before either of them would talk to him; it had been a while before they really believed he meant them no harm, and that he had no desire to bring them back. The Ten Rings was finished, and the loftiest title he wanted was that of father.
San Francisco had become his home, close to Shang-Chi, and a slow effort to repair what they had. Xialing visited, if more rarely – he’d been to Macau a few times, but he felt it wiser that his permanent home not be so near her club and its patrons.
She was in San Francisco now, though. Wenwu’s attention drifted to his mantlepiece, and the photo of his son.
In a spare room, at the bottom of a box of detritus, was a long, wooden, oblong case. It was old and sturdy, and locked securely. He did his best to not think about the contents.
Wenwu looked back at the screen – there was a story about a new Iron Man armour seen near Stark’s residence. Something big; something made for war.
Grief could make people do terrible things. Trying not to think about that box, Wenwu reached for his phone.
“Xialing? Can we meet?”
The café was a quiet place, with outdoor tables. The city still felt painfully quiet. Half the population was gone, and the other half found itself with very little to talk about. Cafes normally jam-packed were almost empty, and the streets were full of parked cars that would never be picked up.
Wenwu sat at one table patiently. It was strange; giving up the rings, giving up immortality, felt like it ought to have made him frantic, hurriedly trying to cram something into every waking second. A life that had once been measured in centuries now likely wouldn’t stretch to a half-century more.
Instead, he was content to wait as the Sun continued its steady path along the sky.
“Father.”
Xialing sat stiffly on the opposite side of the table; he smiled warmly, and she returned an unblinking glare. They still weren’t there yet – understandable, though he wasn’t able to fully suppress the gladness he felt at just talking to her.
“Xialing,” he said, speaking Mandarin like her. “I’m glad you came.”
She said nothing. Wenwu nodded, taking it as an answer; Xialing had never been the most vocal of people, so he’d had to learn to interpret each look.
“Do you remember your mother’s old stories?” Wenwu said. “All those tales of Ta Lo.”
“Dragons and phoenixes and qilin,” Xialing said.
“They’re all true,” Wenwu said. “Or so I believe – I never saw the place myself, I never got any further than the gateway, but I saw enough to make me believe in the impossible.”
“You want to talk about dragons,” Xialing said flatly.
“I want to talk about Ta Lo,” Wenwu said. He hesitated. “I don’t have much left of your mother.”
“That’s your fault,” Xialing said.
“I know,” Wenwu said. “But Ta Lo is… like a piece of her. I want it to be preserved; the idea that it might be in danger is not something I’m happy about.”
Xialing raised an eyebrow.
“Tony Stark is looking for Ta Lo,” Wenwu said. “I do not know why, but his intentions do not seem peaceful. Perhaps it is nothing, but if it is a problem and I stood by, I could not forgive myself, and I have done quite enough unforgiveable things for one lifetime.”
“That’s why I’m here?” Xialing said.
“The pendant your mother gave you,” Wenwu said. “With Shang-Chi’s, it will show a way through the forest. She told me it was her way back. I want to warn them.”
“Typical,” Xialing said.
She paused. As ever, she was already wearing her pendant; she lifted it up over her head, then stopped with the chain bunched up in her hand.
“What will you do with it?” she said.
“Go to China,” Wenwu said. “I know the forest that leads to Ta Lo, I just need a route through.”
“Is that it?” Xialing said.
Wenwu paused for a moment. His eyes lingered on the pendant, resting in her hand, on the table.
“Say what you mean, Xialing,” Wenwu said, his voice slightly more staccato.
“I’m not in San Francisco for you,” Xialing said.
Wenwu closed his eyes, nodding once, accepting. And there was the elephant in the room.
Seemingly out of nowhere, half the planet’s population had turned to dust. Most of the names were known: one of the names was Xu Shang-Chi.
Wenwu had his pendant, and hadn’t let it out of his sight; it was a reminder of two people that he’d lost, now. Part of him raged at the universe for that. He’d wasted so much time, and had Shang-Chi taken out of his life when he’d tried to mend their connection.
Another part of him was so very, very tired of rage.
Xialing and Shang-Chi’s connection had been strained as well, and she’d kept her independence, founding her club while Wenwu sought them out. Still, he’d done what he could to get the two of them talking again, and their disagreements were nothing next to what he’d done.
But she was here for him, to pay her respects and to see him remembered. She did speak with Wenwu on occasion, but it was always as though they were strangers.
“I know,” Wenwu said.
“You trained him,” Xialing said. “You move to San Francisco, for him. I’m your second choice, until you need this.”
“No,” Wenwu said.
Xialing continued to stare at him. In a way, that was gratifying; Shang-Chi had been afraid of him, and had taken time to get over that. If Xialing had ever been intimidated by him, she’d never shown it.
“It was never my intention,” Wenwu amended. “Your mother… She was always a better parent than I. I learned from her, and without her, I am… less. I have not been the best father.”
“You were no kind of father, after she died,” Xialing said.
Silent, Wenwu nodded. Xialing’s expression shifted only slightly.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“Out of the question,” Wenwu said. “I’m doing this for your mother’s memory. If I were to risk you for that-”
“The pendant doesn’t leave my side,” Xialing said. “I go, or you don’t.”
Wenwu looked back at her. He supposed it probably wouldn’t flatter her to know that she looked so much like she had as a girl, with that expression on her face. She was always so strong-willed.
She could have gotten that from either of her parents. Almost sadly, Wenwu smiled.
“I won’t argue,” Wenwu said.
“Good,” Xialing said.
He withdrew Shang-Chi’s pendant from his pocket, letting the weight of it fall from his hand, and putting it down beside Xialing’s. Identical in every way.
He’d lost a wife and a son. Losing a memory of his wife, losing a reminder, or losing a daughter, all of them were unbearable thoughts.
“Please Mr Stark. Whatever the gauntlet did, where it sent us… This place isn’t natural. We need you.”
“Hold on, kid,” Tony said.
A slight twitch made the shape of his suit shift, diminishing and drawing inwards until there was less bulk and less weaponry on display. His arms and legs were sleek gold, the chest-plate a bright red, with the light of the arc reactor still bright in the middle: he launched himself up in the air.
Below him, a bamboo forest stretched out as far as the eye out see. Channels were running through it, ever-shifting clearings moving along some unseen grid almost at random, lines and right angles forming as quickly as they faded.
“I think I’m close,” Tony said.
All the stories said that Ta Lo was guarded. A magical forest, enchanted to keep out any trespassers; then again, much of the stories of that enchantment dated back to the time of people riding around on horses.
How well it would fare against Iron Man, he wasn’t sure. Keeping high over the top of the trees, Tony flew on, mapping out the dense forest with each line he flew.
The entrance couldn’t hide from him forever. Almost on instinct, he shot down a blast from one gauntlet; a tree splintered and fell, and was swallowed up by the shifting corridors of bamboo.
Somewhere in there was Ta Lo; somewhere in there was the seal he had to break.
Steve wasn’t going to listen, nor were the others; they’d tell him he had to move on, but he knew he couldn’t. All the people he’d normally have confided in, normally have tried to work with, were gone.
Right now, the only person Tony had was himself: so that would have to do.
He flew on, and the green stretched out ahead of him, a vast forest concealing who-knew what. It would take time to search. Still, he had nothing but time.
Nothing was more important than this.
There wasn’t much in the car. There was an atlas, to be sure, and a couple of coats on the back seat. Laying atop them was a rope dart, a length of rope with a weight on one end and a chain on the other, that Xialing had brought. At the back, under the coats, was a long wooden box.
And in the front Wenwu was driving, while Xialing looked out the window at the vast expanse of the forest.
“It isn’t far,” Wenwu said.
Xialing made a vague noise of acknowledgement. The trees rustled. They stretched up as high as they could see, and turned to impenetrable blackness it seemed after just a couple of steps into the forest.
The map would be right, Wenwu told himself. Ying Li’s last gift to him.
“Thank you,” Xialing said, suddenly.
“For?” he said.
“Bringing me,” Xialing said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I’d rather you were safe,” Wenwu said. “But I won’t ruin any chance of knowing you. I trust you can handle yourself.”
He caught a glimpse of her smirk reflected in the window.
“When you’ve lived as long as I have,” Wenwu said, “You learn to hold on to the people that stay with you when things are bad. If you’ll still have me, you’ll always be welcome.”
Xialing shifted, expression shifting; still, she didn’t respond with some harsh word. That, Wenwu supposed, was progress. More, perhaps, than he deserved.
She pulled out her phone. He caught a glimpse of shaky cam footage played on video, Stark sighted flying over an unexplored forest. No one seemed to have any idea what he was doing.
No one else, anyway. He wanted so much to believe that this was nothing, but to see someone aggressively cutting his way through those trees, it stirred memories Wenwu would rather forget.
Hopefully this wouldn’t end in a violence. A flicker of trepidation on his face, he glanced back at the back seat.
Then he looked at the map stuck to the car’s dashboard, and swerved off the road.
“Here,” Wenwu said.
When a passageway opened, he accelerated, and mentally counted off each step of the journey. Bamboo trees closed up the way behind them, until nothing but sturdy shoots and hungry darkness surrounded them.
Xialing shifted in her seat. Her hands dug into the leather, her eyes carefully assessing the constantly shifting trees around them.
Wenwu turned a hard right, keeping track of the route in his head. All around them was rustling and churning, each vast shoot trembling, poised to close in around them.
“Not my first time,” Wenwu said. “It’s alright.”
Xialing said nothing – her grip on the chair lightened, somewhat.
A minute later and the car turned into a clearing. He braked quickly, blinking a few times in unexpected light; after the dense foliage of the journey, brightness and openness was all the more jarring.
Wenwu stopped, just to stare. The spring had been etched in his memories for a long, long time.
Rays of sunlight fell upon a trickling brook, shallow, crystal-clear water pooling and reflecting the trees all around them. Somehow, in that pond, the bamboo seemed so much less threatening.
And past it all was a tree that, in a stray breeze, saw blossoms flutter across the clearing.
Beside him, Xialing stared, just as rapt.
“We’re here,” Wenwu said.
He took a deep breath, surprised to find his hands shaking – and then, steeling himself, he drove on.
To the spring, and to a waterfall that fed it, and to a world where everything seemed to twist and shift outside the car. Rather than water simply cascading onto the car and being done with it, the water hung in the air, droplets forming indescribable patterns all around them.
For a moment, they weren’t in any kind of clearing. There was just the water, and just the magic, the thrum in the air that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
And then there was a thud as the car wheels hit solid ground, and Wenwu completed the mission he’d started decades before as he entered the dimension of Ta Lo.
“I always knew it would be beautiful,” Wenwu said softly.
There was a sun high in the sky, brighter than where they’d come from, and nature all around them, a wealth of trees of far more colours than just green. And peering out from the woods and rocks all around them, creatures he could only name a handful of.
He drove slowly, stopping when a taller qilin passed by in front of the car. It looked in to him as if judging him, but moved past nonetheless.
“Mom left this?” Xialing said.
Wenwu faltered, and said nothing. Slowly, they made their way forwards, past shishi and jiuweihu, firebirds spiralling overhead. In the distance stood a village.
He’d wanted this more than anything. He felt an echo of that old passion, just at breathing this air, but tried to focus on the joy; to think he’d once have seen this place as nothing more than a vehicle to fleeting power.
Ying Li might have walked this very path daily, might have run her hand down the fur of that creature, or that one. She’d told him things of this world – sights he’d thought would be forbidden to him.
But he was here, and he could feel her in every stone and blade of grass.
“Father?” Xialing said.
They’d been seen. Wenwu stopped the car, parking, and quickly hid his face to wipe his eye. Slowly, so as to not seem a threat, he opened the door.
There was already a line of people poised with bows and staves, each sharp gleaming with an unearthly fire.
“You are not welcome here!” one barked.
An arrow whistled through the door of his car like it was made of paper. Well, he couldn’t say he hadn’t expected that. At least they’d been polite enough to warn him.
“I mean you no harm!” Wenwu shouted.
He stuck his arms out the door, partly to show that he lacked the rings, and partly as a gesture to show that he was harmless. Steeling himself, he stepped outside, feeling Xialing try to grab him and hold him in the car.
Well, it wasn’t like the windscreen would protect them against whatever those arrows were. Still, he felt his heart race. He didn’t normally face down armed foes without his rings.
No. No, that wasn’t what he wanted.
“I will leave if you wish it,” Wenwu said. “I will not trespass upon your hospitality – I know who I was. I am just here to warn you.”
“The only threat to Ta Lo is you.”
“There is another who searches,” Wenwu said. “I do not know how much you watch our world. He is driven, and he flies over the forest to find a way through. If he does, he seems… obsessed.”
Wenwu paused.
“The last thing I want is for my wife’s home to be destroyed,” Wenwu said. “I have said what I came to say. Be prepared.”
He stood still for a moment, standing down the dozen or so strangers. Bows twitched. Countless eyes were fixed upon his position.
The other car door opened; Xialing stepped out, and the guards of Ta Lo shifted attention, all on edge.
“Don’t shoot!” Wenwu said. “She’s Xu Xialing, Ying Li’s daughter. She deserves to be here, even if I do not.”
“It’s not up to you to say that,” the man said.
“Guang Bo!”
Another woman stepped through the ranks, and Wenwu froze where he stood. She looked like Ying Li – far from identical, but there was a distinct resemblance that he couldn’t help but react to.
Ying Li had spoken of her sister, Ying Nan, on occasion. He never thought he’d meet her.
“You were told not to come here,” Nan said.
“I kept to your judgement for many years,” Wenwu said. “It was only concern that saw me break it. I will leave again, if you will allow it.”
“Do you have the rings?” Nan said.
“In the car,” Wenwu said. “I would not leave them unguarded.”
There was a pause; Guang Bo gestured, and two of Ta Lo’s guards hurried closer. From the fields around them, the unarmed denizens of Ta Lo watched.
“We will watch over them,” Nan said.
“I understand,” Wenwu said.
Still, she only relaxed when those two guards hurried back, holding the box between them. Then and only then did she smile, looking at Xialing.
And, quietly, Wenwu moved back.
The village was beautiful. He could hear the water on the far side, and could see fields of crops and flowers stretching out around them. The buildings were old, but sturdy, a bright gold and etched with fine detail.
He stayed away. It didn’t feel right to go any closer. He could feel their stares on him, regardless.
Nan walked over and sat close beside him.
“You aren’t what I expected,” she said.
“I aren’t what I expected to be either,” Wenwu said.
“Life has that effect,” Nan said. “Xialing told me. I’m sorry for what happened to your son.”
“And I your sister,” Wenwu said.
Nan inclined her head. She stared at him; it was hard to say how much was wariness, and how much was curiosity.
“You’re concerned about this Stark?” Nan said.
“Grief can make people do foolish things,” Wenwu said. “I think he perhaps has good intentions, but foolish goals.”
“That may be more true than you know,” Nan said. She paused. “Xialing tells me a tragedy affected your universe. We had a tragedy, in our past – a creature we call the Dweller-in-Darkness threatened ruin, before the Great Protector sealed it away.”
“I have heard of the Protector,” Wenwu said. “Not the Dweller.”
“It isn’t a pleasant story,” Nan said. “It has lured people here for centuries, promising them their greatest desires – if this Stark lost anyone to your tragedy, I fear he might be manipulated to its ends.”
That, perhaps, explained his sudden obsession with this place. Wenwu nodded, brow furrowed.
“We thank you for the warning,” Nan said.
“I had to do something,” Wenwu said.
“And now you sit here,” Nan said. “Is this what you imagined, all those years ago when you tried to breach our borders?”
“I wouldn’t have appreciated this place then,” Wenwu said.
“Perhaps,” Nan said.
“All I wanted was power,” Wenwu said. “I don’t know how she saw past all that.”
“And now?”
“Now? I want to sit back and watch the lake,” Wenwu said. “I want to know my daughter. I won’t be able to make up for what I’ve done, but if I can leave some good memories then I’ll be content.”
Nan looked at him for a moment more. He shifted, looking past her; her face still made him uncomfortable. Then she extended a hand.
“Come with me,” she said.
Mystified, he nevertheless obliged, taking her hand. He tensed slightly when she led him to the village, but he stayed close to her and no one bothered them before the occasional sharp look.
He glimpsed Xialing through the buildings, whirling her rope dart around her head under the guidance of an elder. He couldn’t keep a proud smile off his face; he wasn’t sure if she saw him.
Ying Nan led him inside.
The air in the room felt thick. He breathed it in, the scent of candles and ink, the bright daylight suddenly lost to him. The walls were covered in small things, sketched portraits and offerings, written characters, hung flowers – and, where Nan was standing, a portrait of Ying Li.
They weren’t alone; others were in the room, at other memorials, but for that moment there might as well have been no one else in the world but him and that portrait.
“Ever since we heard, we’ve kept her with us,” Nan said.
He almost didn’t notice the familiar wooden box, placed below her portrait. As offerings went, it seemed oddly fitting: those rings were what brought them together, in a way. It was better she have them than him.
But his eyes stayed on the portrait. He felt Nan take note of that.
“Thank you,” Wenwu said, his voice hoarse.
“We remember,” Nan said, again. “I’m glad you do as well.”
Tony landed in a shallow spring, stretching his neck. The search had been exhausting, but the forest hadn’t been able to keep him out when he came from above.
“Unknown energy readings detected,” FRIDAY said.
That was promising. Read-outs were projected into his view, readings overlaying the spring. He focused on them: the tree was not a tree, it was a flickering bar chart, and the water was not water, it was a waveform.
The readings led him to the waterfall; he took a step closer, moving slowly, the suit reconfiguring itself around him to offer more protection and firepower. He was almost twice his usual height when he made it under the cascade.
And he couldn’t help but grin when he emerged, not in a forest clearing, but in a whole new world.
It was real – it really was. Ta Lo, a land with magic sealed away. If he’d ever doubted, if he’d ever been able to afford to doubt, that was all wiped away now.
A small, curious ball of fur tottered closer to him. Tony looked down half-incredulously; it looked more like a walking cushion, with a pair of small wings and no face or features to speak of.
“Shoo,” he said.
The fluffball bumped its head into his foot. He made a slight motion to push it back; it squeaked up at him.
“Kinda in the middle of something here little guy,” Tony said. “Don’t have the time for this.”
He slowly dragged the heavy, armoured foot forwards, the scraping sound making the creature skitter off over the rocks. Grimly pleased, Tony moved forwards further.
He could fly, with all the extra weight added, but it was far too sluggish inefficient to do so. For the time being, for safety’s sake, he was stuck on the ground; it was easy enough to change that. Nanotech suits were meant to be adaptable.
Still, he didn’t know what Ta Lo had to offer, beyond stories of guardians. As it was, he was poised to fight even if they had a Hulk of their own.
Repulsor jets in his boots clicked, rotating ninety degrees; they fired, and pushed him forwards, leaving deep trails in the dirt. He noted tyre tracks under his path; that seemed more overtly technological than a lot of this world would have suggested.
It wasn’t far before he saw the village, and a small legion lined up to guard it. Some held staffs, others bows; unarmed civilians huddled in the village behind them.
At first glance, they didn’t seem like a threat; they had fashion sense, but they appeared limited and primitive, and he’d have called them no threat at all if not for the whirring wheel in his visor under ‘spectroscopic analysis.’ Whatever material capped their weapons and was threaded through their clothes was something he had no record of.
Concerning, but not surprising.
“You won’t find what you’re looking for here,” a woman said.
“My mistake, must have come through the wrong magic forest portal, you know how many there are,” Tony said.
“Whatever it’s promised you is a lie,” she said.
“Panned out pretty well so far,” Tony said. “Now are you going to get out of my way?”
A man shouted something in Mandarin; he recognised a few words, but FRIDAY politely translated for him: “You are not welcome here!”
“Someone tell him I get that a lot,” Tony said.
The man – one of the warriors, bearded and dressed in red like the rest – shouted something else. At the way those armed shifted, raising bows or staffs, Tony didn’t wait for the translation.
He lifted his hands, ready to defend himself, when the first arrow flew. His armour oozed, an automatic defence mechanism to prevent anything getting through; the arrowhead pierced the metal, only to be pushed out by a bulbous pustule of red that ballooned and cushioned the impact, until the arrow fell to the forest floor and the gap in Tony’s armour sealed up.
Tony swore; okay, their weapons could penetrate his armour, that was never good. Quickly, he blasted forwards, making a few of the guardians scatter and pushing himself back.
He’d admit, bows weren’t a weapon he went up against often. The same was true for staves; as someone leapt closer, riding atop a lion-thing, a solution to both quickly occurred to Tony.
“Reduce,” he muttered. “FRIDAY, calculate the max altitude those bows can reach.”
The bulk of the armour vanished, leaving the more slender, classical suit behind; Tony ducked under the swing of the staff, fired a repulsor-blast for good measure, and then used his feet and hands alike to rapidly shoot himself up into the air.
Even the thinner armour was able to repel an arrow, stray smears of nanotech guard falling from him as he flew.
“Piercing power sufficiently reduced at this altitude,” FRIDAY chimed in; a gravity-slowed arrow chipped the front of his armour as if on cue, not triggering the same safeguard.
Tony smiled.
“Scan for any anomalous readings, see if we can find this seal,” Tony said.
“Everything’s anomalous, boss,” FRIDAY said.
“Ignore baseline weirdness,” Tony said. “I’ll try to make it easier for you.”
Searching was never going to be easy with strangers shooting at him; he fired a repulsor down, the ground exploded where he aimed. The suit out-ranged bows, easy.
His display chirped; it hadn’t found his target, but FRIDAY had evidently spotted something she thought he wanted to know. With one eye, he followed her display, zooming in on a glimpse of the village – a weapon store room.
Well that was a good target. Tony fired another pulse down, then darted quickly overhead, shooting repulsor blasts before firing a more conventional armament down to that building in the village. The harder it was for them to re-arm or reload, the easier time he’d have.
There didn’t seem to be many archers left; he’d prioritised them. Risking it, he dipped down lower, running a quick circle of the village to see if anything looked suitably magical.
Something caught in his leg. He hissed, kicking as the suit expelled it, turning to see someone holding some kind of rope-weapon. Unlike most of the guardians, she wore white: Tony turned, lifting a hand, poised to fire.
The battle had begun. Wenwu had offered his services; Guang Bo had turned him down, and told him to keep away. There had been no official exile from Ta Lo, but he knew his presence was at best tolerated.
He understood, at least. Tony Stark was one man. Well-armed, yes, and a foe unlike those they were used to facing, but one man. There was little in the way of combat that he could offer.
Well, not anymore.
He knelt at Ying Li’s memorial. This place, at least, he wanted to see kept safe.
Letting the sound of the scuffle outside fade, he quietly lit a candle, and looked at the portrait.
Would they have ever been welcome here? It was hard not to wonder that; he had not been allowed here, not back then. Even when he’d relinquished the rings, they hadn’t trusted him, or been afraid that he’d draw his enemies to them.
That, he could, sadly, understand. Ying Li had paid the price, and if he could find the path to Ta Lo, others could. He’d just have tempted more people to strike, or given the Dweller more people to manipulate.
Something exploded. Wenwu inclined his head for a moment, politely, before turning away. He stepped past the ornate doors to look at the fray.
Stark had flown over the top of the village; he’d shot at one of the buildings, and at first glance his armour barely seemed damaged by the conflict. That wasn’t good.
Something struck the suit; Wenwu shifted his gaze to see Xialing, whirling her rope dart with impressive ease. Something in him froze as Tony turned his attention to you.
He’d never fully shaken one of the habits of longevity; sometimes a year seemed like it passed in the blink of an eye. Weeks and months could pass, and it could still feel like just days. Time passed so strangely.
But even with that, there were times when a second seemed to take forever, where time slowed to a crawl, and there was time for countless thoughts to cross Wenwu’s mind.
The first, was that Tony was an Avenger, was that he’d been on the front line of the battle against Thanos, whoever that was, and that some creature of evil had promised him anything he could have wanted to break through Ta Lo’s defences. He was practiced, powerful, and driven.
The second was that he was a split-second away from looking at Xialing, and that suit of his seemed to have near-endless capabilities.
The third was that there were reasons Wenwu was not in this fight. Even if he was unwelcome, he wasn’t sure he’d have wanted to join. Violence was meant to be behind him. Some habits were so hard to break, and if he fell back into old patterns, he’d fail Ying Li again.
The fourth thought to cross his mind was an image, the memory of that box kept beside Ying Li’s memorial.
The fifth thought was very simple. Not her. I can’t lose her too.
Tony turned, and lifted his gauntlet to fire. It might have been meant to kill, it might just have been meant to hurt or knock aside; the effect was the same. A metal ring rocketed through the air and knocked his arm aside, sending Tony spinning on the spot.
And the ring returned to Wenwu’s arms. They shone – and they shone with a gleaming, orange light.
That was new. It felt different – he felt different, the familiar weight of the rings on his arms suddenly not familiar at all.
He remembered when he first met Ying Li, how she’d co-opted the rings from him and made them shine with a light far friendlier than the harsh, electric blue they usually were when he held them.
His gaze, for a moment, drifted back into the shrine. He met the portrait’s eyes for a moment and then, clenching his hands into fists, strode out of cover. Xialing swung her rope again; Stark ducked to the side, turning his attention to Wenwu for a moment. He shifted angle, raising himself higher again: Wenwu punched forwards with both hands.
The rings shot forwards. The twin strands met behind Tony’s back, a current of energy completing and chaining them together, golden orange burning bright, and Wenwu pulled. The rings returned to his wrists, and Tony came crashing down to the ground, slowing only from a last-minute burst from his gauntlets.
“You don’t have to do this,” Wenwu said.
“Yes. I do,” Tony said.
He straightened; a gun formed out of his shoulder, and Wenwu quickly raised his arm, the rings moving in a neat arc, the energy between them absorbing the blast. The light thrummed.
Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Tony shot up into the air, that time knowing to dodge when Wenwu threw the rings up after him.
Grimacing, Wenwu crouched, hurrying to Xialing’s side; he blindly stuck his arm out behind him to catch the rings as they returned.
“Are you hurt?” Wenwu said.
“I’m fine,” Xialing said, gritting her teeth. “After him.”
Wenwu nodded; he looked up to the sky, to see Tony shooting off somewhere. Looking around once, briefly, to survey what remained of Ta Lo’s defenders, he ran forwards and used the rings to leap across the once-still lake.
Magic rings. Great. FRIDAY’s analysis of the situation was quickly becoming little but question marks, though he made do.
Something she had noticed, though, was the lack of graves. These people hadn’t been hit by the snap. Something in Tony burned at that. All of this, all the pain, and secreted away in this dimension, they’d been exempt.
Tony kicked up, putting more distance between himself and the stranger; they were the threat, but he didn’t care about the people. He just cared about finding the seal, and dealing with anyone who was in his way or who was making it harder to search.
“There’s something in the mountain, boss,” FRIDAY said.
Tony came to a stop in the sky; at an alert, he pushed himself backward, five rings shooting up past his head before shooting back down. Quickly, he span, and spotted the mentioned mountain; through the HUD, it was wreathed in an odd aura.
FRIDAY automatically zoomed in for him, showing him an odd wall set into the side: that didn’t look like stone.
“Got it,” Tony said. He paused. “Hold on Peter. Pepper.”
He shifted, and kicked his foot-repulsors into overdrive, shooting over there as quickly as he could. He landed, suit already morphing into its bulkier, heavier form.
It looked more like scale than any natural rock – he supposed that was fitting for some mystical village. Something was definitely locked away back there; his display was reading all manner of emanations.
He blasted once with his hand, just to see what happened. It didn’t make a dent.
“Almost there Mr Stark. You can save us.”
He heard Peter’s voice. He wasn’t sure where from, but he focused, letting FRIDAY scan to see if she could find any weaker points. When that failed, he planted his feet into the ground, the nanotech manifesting a spike to dig into the stone, keeping himself in place.
“Okay, unibeam and lasers, concentrate on one spot,” Tony said. “Let’s see what this can handle.”
The suit hummed, power diverting from unnecessary systems, drones projected behind him as the chest-piece brightened. The HUD ran calculations, targeting reticule picking a spot on the barrier.
“Tony. Please.”
Pepper’s voice. It was the first time he’d heard her; he smiled, and closed his eyes, bracing himself for any blowback.
Finally. This wouldn’t be for nothing.
“FRIDAY,” he began.
Ten rings hit him in the back, and even the mass of the armour faltered under the force. The helmet turned around him, projecting a display of the same man as before approaching, the rings returning to his wrists as he landed neatly on the rocky outcropping.
Just the two of them. And he was so close; Tony scowled.
“FRIDAY. Retract spikes,” Tony said; the feet of the armour were freed up, and he moved a step, turning around. “Let’s finish this.”
“What do you think you can do here?!” Wenwu shouted.
He sidestepped a repulsor blast, countered with five rings, and used the other five to shield the next shot.
“I can bring them back,” Tony said. “Just because you weren’t affected doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Billions died. Just let me save them!”
Wenwu flung six rings out behind him, launching himself closer to Tony with two on each wrist; he ducked under a swinging arm, and shot both pairs of rings forward, knotting them around the headpiece to pull it back, as the six other rings returned to strike the armour’s chest.
“Save them?” Wenwu said. “Is that what you think that will do?”
Something grew out the back of the nanotech suit, zapping Wenwu; he grimaced, stumbling backwards, and Tony shot backwards. He was halfway to ramming Wenwu into the cliff wall when Wenwu slipped down and between his legs.
“Pretty spry for an old guy aren’t you?” Tony muttered. “You’re clearly sealing something away here.”
“Something evil,” Wenwu said. He got to his feet, adopting a more prepared stance.
“Because I’m going to trust the words of some guy with ten rings,” Tony said. “Don’t think I haven’t spotted the symbolism. We go way back.”
“That was… a mistake,” Wenwu said.
“You’re telling me,” Tony said. “Let me show you how much of one.”
Tony fired; Wenwu raised the rings as a shield, only for the ground by his feet to explode, making him lose his balance. The rings continued on their chaotic arc, the energy shield unimpeded as Wenwu threw them forwards again – while he was recovering, he could destabilise Tony.
The rings clattered against already-reforming nanotech, and only slowed the massive armour for a second. Repulsors set into the back fired; the towering thing, twice as high as Wenwu, shot towards him with enough force to send him off the mountain.
Before Tony could, Wenwu lifted the rings up and threw them at Tony, the pushback enough for Wenwu to launch himself away. Golden-orange light sparked wildly.
“I know grief,” Wenwu said. “I understand pain. But you can’t give in to that part of yourself, no matter what. I know.”
“You don’t know anything,” Tony said, breathing heavily. “Did you lose anyone, in this place?”
“I’m not from Ta Lo,” Wenwu said. He faltered. “I lost a son.”
Tony paused for a second, re-orienting the suit. His voice set.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “I know how that feels.”
The suit shot forwards again, shifting forms to something smaller and sleeker to evade the rings; Wenwu barely had time to adjust to the smaller target before it was big again, and a punch was coming right for him.
Only a last-minute shield by throwing the rings at one another kept him from feeling the full force of a Hulkbuster. He pulled the energy-threads, holding the rings in a lattice in front of himself, before flinging them forwards at Tony.
Tony stumbled, but righted himself. He was learning – whatever AI was in his suit was getting smarter every second they fought, getting better at anticipating and countering the rings. He needed to end this fast.
The ten rings slipped back onto his wrists.
“If I believed this was any kind of a chance, believe me, I would be fighting beside you,” Wenwu shouted, voice hoarse. “This isn’t what you want it to be.”
“It is,” Tony said. Then, almost inaudibly, he murmured: “It has to be.”
A nanotech drone emerged behind Tony’s back; Wenwu’s eyes focused on it, and his gaze narrowed. He ducked sideways, then threw the rings out like a whip, leaving sparks of energy in the air before sending up dust and shattered stone.
No sooner had the rings returned to him, then did he shoot them out behind him, the sheer force rocketing him forwards.
All Tony could see was dust – the HUD flickered over to show heat signatures, but could only make out the after-image of the rings’ sweep. He lifted a hand to fire forwards blindly.
In mid-air, Wenwu threw one ring sideways to alter his trajectory. Almost as soon as the rings were back on his arms, he pressed his fists together, sliding all of them onto the one wrist.
He emerged from the dust cloud beside Tony, narrowly avoiding a shot, and landed with a ten-ring punch to the side of the suit’s head; the hulkbuster helmet crumpled, and the rings pulsed, scoring the nanotech’s attempt to reform.
Tony fell; Wenwu fell atop him, a flash of an orange shockwave hitting the both of them.
“Whatever’s behind there,” Tony murmured. “It’s better. It has to be better.”
The arc reactor cracked to another strike. Wenwu pushed himself away, letting the rings fall from his wrists as he did, and the nanotech around Tony faded away to nothing. He landed with a thump on the stone.
The light from the rings began to dim. With a mixed heart, divided in all sorts of ways, Wenwu watched as the orange flickered out.
“I’m sorry,” Wenwu said.
“I just want them back,” Tony said. “Please. Can’t you hear them?”
“This isn’t the way,” Wenwu said.
“What else is there?” Tony said.
He rolled over. Without the suit’s aid, it was a clear strain; the battle had taken its toll. He grunted, and slowly pulled himself towards the sealed wall.
He punched with an empty fist, yowled, and punched again.
“They’re only gone when you forget who you were when you were with them,” Wenwu said.
Tony slumped.
“I wanted to save them,” Tony said.
“I know,” Wenwu said.
Wenwu stepped closer. He sat, leaving the dull metal of the rings discarded on the floor. Sometimes he was glad to not wear them.
Tony, meanwhile, was now clutching his arc reactor in his hands as though he could squeeze it back into life. The glass stayed unlit and cracked.
“Don’t be ruled by grief,” Wenwu said.
Tony closed his eyes. Wenwu sat down, just next to him.
“Tell me about them,” Wenwu said.
Tony stirred.
“The people you lost,” Wenwu said. “Let me help carry their memory for you – I can’t take away the pain, but I can share it. Who were they? What were they like? How did they make you feel?”
The silence dragged on. Tony pushed himself up, managing to sit with his back propped up against the scale-wall. He looked at Wenwu, half-disbelieving that they’d gone from brawling to so casually talking; Wenwu looked back with nothing but openness and sympathy on his face.
He was hardly one to judge anyone. Whatever Tony had done, whatever he would have done, Wenwu had done worse once upon a time.
Tony slumped back, eyes closed, bruises starting to flower on his skin.
Then, slowly, he started to speak.
There were a lot of injured. Stretchers had been laid out in an impromptu hospice, though bandaging and bedrest was most of what was prescribed.
No one had died. That was maybe the only reason the elders had agreed to let Tony heal before sending him off. He was some distance from the main village.
Wenwu, surprisingly, was not; Guang Bo still regarded him warily, but greeted him with a curt nod when he went to check on the state of things.
He’d put the rings back in their box- he’d meant to leave it at the shrine, but someone had delivered the box back to him, despite his protests. For now, he left the rings safe inside.
“We saved her home,” Xialing said.
“We did,” Wenwu said.
They were sat by the lake, looking out over it. The mountain seemed slightly more foreboding now.
“I’m… glad,” Xialing said slowly.
Wenwu nodded; he smiled. He looked a little out-of-place; even Xialing had adopted some of the dragon-scale clothing of the natives, while he remained in a button-up shirt.
His gaze drifted. Eventually, taking a breath, he focused back on her.
“I haven’t been a good father,” Wenwu said. “I know that. I can’t promise I’m going to be perfect, but I wanted to say, I know how hard it must have been for you to give me another chance.”
Xialing said nothing; her expression slipped just slightly, still facing the water.
“Thank you,” he said.
Silence again. Resigned to it, and accepting, Wenwu turned again also. The water was surprisingly clear.
“I wanted to hate you,” Xialing said eventually. “I don’t think I do, now.”
And that was all. Still, Wenwu smiled.
“I wish Shang-Chi could have seen this place,” Xialing said.
“He’s with us,” Wenwu said. “I’m sure. He’s seeing it with us right now.”
A hundun, one of the small, faceless balls of fur, wandered up beside them. Absently, Wenwu stroked it, sitting in silence behind his daughter.
“The Mandarin? Really?”
“I don’t use that name,” Wenwu said.
“Still. I met an actor who played you,” Tony said.
“I heard,” Wenwu said. He paused. “I saw one of his plays. He wasn’t bad.”
The day had come to leave. Now that Tony lacked the suit, Wenwu helped him walk to their car. He guided him to the back seat, where he sat, slumped, breathing heavily.
Xialing had said her goodbyes. She was never one to take long; now Wenwu walked around to the front of the car, preparing to drive off. Nan neared.
“I cannot promise that you will be welcomed back, should you return,” she said. “But I can ensure that you will never be turned away.”
“Thank you,” Wenwu said.
He paused, taking a deep breath, and a last look around the magical village.
“I don’t know if or when that will be,” Wenwu said. “But I am glad.”
“Farewell, Xu Wenwu.”
He entered his car, and slowly drove over the uneven ground and grass, back the way he’d come. The village lined up to watch him depart.
The rings were in the trunk, Xialing was in the passenger seat beside him, and Tony Stark was sans armour in the back. The Dweller was still secured, and Ta Lo stood, poised to rebuild.
Tony had offered to help, with that – they’d turned down his technology without a second thought.
“Where are we taking him?” Xialing said, gesturing back.
“I don’t know,” Wenwu said. “Stark. Where do you want to go?”
He was silent. The car trundled on, passing through the cave-portal and coming out of a waterfall, droplets running down the windows.
“I don’t know,” Tony said eventually.
“Do you have anyone?” Wenwu said.
“No. No one,” Tony said.
He paused, then closed his eyes, head resting against the seatbelt.
“Steve,” Tony said. “But I don’t know. Things aren’t great. I don’t know if he’d even talk to me – no, I know, he would, that’s who he is, but I don’t know if I could talk to him.”
Xialing glanced across to her side.
“Try,” she said.
Wenwu glanced back. He smiled warmly.
“Try,” he echoed. “You might surprise yourself.”
Chapter 2: What If... Malekith Won?
Notes:
Listen. I know Malekith has apparently become the cliché ‘Flat underdeveloped villain,’ but hear me out. When I rewatched Dark World I swear his backstory is, like, gorgeously tragic?
idk, lore was neat, this may appeal to no one but me but hey.
Chapter Text
Little remains of what once was. Pieces, ingots linger, but so much has been lost.
Before there was light, there was darkness, and in that darkness was the dark elves. They thrived. Unchallenged, uncontested, they spread far and wide - until, inevitably, the light came.
And when light came, their civilisation was ended. A new universe of light spread, and erased the shadows utterly, all that was left of the world before being six singularities and scattered fragments.
What kind of worlds did they build? What fairytales did they tell their young? Even their language has been forgotten.
Of that splinter that survived, that lived long enough to see reality turn poisoned around them, their leader Malekith stood tall and promised an escape from the light that was anathema to them. When the universe was young, the dark elves warred with Asgard for their very survival, and they lost. Their weapon, the Aether, the reality they had once known condensed down to a mere fluid, was taken from them.
Malekith fled, and behind him, his people gave their lives to cover his escape – lives that they had already lost to the touch of the light. A fragment of a fragment of a once-great civilisation was all that was left.
When the Convergence came again, Malekith tried anew to stamp out the hateful light from the universe, and to restore the world that once was. In one universe, he might have failed – in this, Thor Odinson stumbled out from a subway train too late, to see the sky overhead turn dark, and to hear the exultant laughter of the last leader of the dark elves as reality changed around him.
Svartalfheim.
It was a ruin. None had tried to rebuild it after the last war, and not even scavengers ventured below the clouded sky. There was rubble as far as the eye could see, no structure, no colour, no variance. There was stone and metal.
Once, perhaps, there had been houses. Some of the metal would have been ships, crashed down in eons past, but there was no sign of what had been what, now. Time had withered it all away.
Ruin that it was, the dark elves walked out onto their world’s surface like it was a holy land. This sliver was all of this universe that had been allotted to them, and it too bore the scars of the light: the perpetually eclipsed star in the sky was still bright, its touch something no elf could bear.
But that light was waning now. The aether had done its work, usurping this new reality, turning it back to what once was: now, all was darkness.
The elves moved slowly outwards. Some, already, made an effort to clear the rubble, to make themselves a place from which to build. Hands, shaking, some lifted up their hands to remove their blank-faced masks.
No longer did they need to hide behind their suits, no longer did they have to fear the light’s poison. Milky-pale eyes blinked wonderingly, looking up at the cloud-filled sky on the verge of tears.
And within the ship, slumped on his throne, Malekith looked out and smiled.
“No, no, no!”
Thor ran out into the square, Mjolnir returning to his hand, to find nothing to fight. Overhead, the sun dimmed as if in eclipse, a chill slowly starting to spread.
The dark elves that had been everywhere had vanished completely. With their victory, there was no reason to stay. Malekith’s ship was gone from the sky, his soldiers no longer ran through Greenwich, and the world sounded suddenly quiet.
A crevasse tore through the ground, and shattered windows and fallen corpses were the only sign of the battle that had just raged. All around, there was an odd shimmer to the air, a slight, dark tint of red that coruscated everywhere.
Four people ran over the plaza: Jane, Darcy, Selvig and Ian. Their footsteps sounded slightly muted.
“Thor!” Jane called. “Thor, what happened?”
Thor turned, slowly. His arms were might his sides, his grip on his hammer much less assured than normal.
“I think,” Thor said. He swallowed, clearing his throat. “I think we lost.”
The Sun was almost completely black now, not even a hint of its corona. The glimmer of the Aether started to settle.
“Er, guys, the Sun’s gone out,” Darcy said. “That can’t be good, right?”
“That shouldn’t work,” Jane said. “Oh. Forgot. We’re not dealing with science right now, are we?”
“We’re barely dealing with magic,” Thor said. “What the Aether is, it’s beyond everything.”
He paused. The air cooled just that little more; nothing could live in a universe of darkness, nothing save the dark elves. Thor did his best to hide his worry, masking it behind bravado and a fierce grin.
“It’s not over, is it?” Jane said.
“No, no, it’s never over,” Thor said. “You, get somewhere safe. I can fix this.”
“Dude. Sun. Out,” Darcy said. “What’s meant to be safe?”
Thor didn’t have an answer for them. Instead he traded one last look with Jane, offered a smile that he prayed would give her some hope to cling onto, and then threw Mjolnir into the air: it carried him up.
“Heimdall!” Thor shouted.
Heimdall saw everything.
And what he saw, was a shadow encroaching upon the universe. The vast abysses between the stars grew wider, and the pinpricks of light waned. Darkness spread.
He saw worlds that had no concept of infinity stones or life beyond their borders look up at a suddenly unwelcoming sky. He saw thriving city-planets suddenly turn afraid as they sensed the end. He saw the great Celestials turn cold and dim, the light and fire that kept them running suddenly plucked from them.
“All-Father,” Heimdall said.
Heimdall had committed treason, not long ago; that felt so inadequate now. Odin stood before him, halfway through his sentence when he felt, as they all did, that tell-tale shiver in the air.
Heimdall had never seen any look such as that on Odin’s face before. Odin, sometimes, exhibited a healthy concern or wariness of a situation, but never such uncontrolled terror. Quickly, Odin almost ran past him, thoroughly out of character. Heimdall followed him to the Bifrost.
“Open a way to Midgard,” Odin said.
“Midgard?” Heimdall said. “Should our focus not be Svartalfheim? In all the Nine Realms, you are perhaps the best hope of wresting the Aether back from Malekith.”
“Ah. Yes. About that,” ‘Odin’ said awkwardly. “I know this looks bad, but in my defence, I really thought my brother had it handled.”
The illusion faded. Heimdall gripped his sword a little bit tighter, torn between striking at the pretender and pushing it into the pedestal to activate the Bifrost.
And he saw nothing else. The universe was consumed by the darkness, so deep that even his sight could not pierce it. He stood alone with Loki.
“Where is the All-Father?” Heimdall intoned.
“I was just getting to that,” Loki said. “Midgard.”
He rattled off a location: Heimdall, gaze fixed upon Loki for the flicker of any illusion, gripped his sword tightly and pressed it down into the pedestal. The Bifrost rumbled and whirred around them.
And then it was still.
“That’s less impressive than it used to be,” Loki said.
Heimdall said nothing. He reached out with all his senses and all his power, trying to jumpstart the bridge, or see the faintest glimpse of anything beyond this room.
His attention wandered off of Loki for a moment, though Loki didn’t leave his view, actively moving in front of him; a frown crossed Loki’s face.
“Your eyes,” Loki said.
For a moment there was no joking, no banter and no mockery. There was just genuine fear; Heimdall lifted the hilt of his sword to behold his reflection. His eyes, normally a gleaming orange, had turned to a dull brown.
And he had no company but the traitorous prince as the universe turned so very dark.
Malekith’s step was slow. He’d fashioned a walking cane from a piece of metal, and waved off any attempts to help. Stiffly, jerkily, he made his way past the ancient layers of debris.
He’d held the full force of an infinity stone in his body; he wasn’t foolish enough to think he had long left. That was why he’d forgone his helmet. One way or another, he wouldn’t have survived the clash. Whether by battle, the touch of the light, or the Aether, his death was assured.
Honestly, he’d been glad of that.
Malekith knelt. His home was somewhere out there, or had been, over blasted-bare rock and under the clouded sky. He couldn’t find it now. Now, only crashed ships dotted the landscape, with no landmarks remaining.
Here, then. He could imagine it had been here.
“Äshlimär,” he murmured, voice soft. “Jen kilihil. Nöön, jov, lain, nyriharilönöön velemefe. Kira liljal nol.”
We won. Sleep now, my family. I love you.
It had been thousands of years since he was last here. He had not seen them in so long, had not held them since they’d fallen in the Asgardian assault.
He gripped his cane tighter; the metal warped.
Asgard burned their dead, sending them off the edge of the world in pompous ceremony. The dark elves were quieter. The bodies would be consumed by the void, swallowed by singularity to reach the ultimate darkness on the far side, and their names would be remembered etched in stone.
He no longer had their bodies, but he had stone. There was little else but stone left here. Malekith reached out, and etched their names.
He paused, and etched a third.
Algrim had been a loyal lieutenant; he’d become the last of the Kursed, burning up his life force for a flare of power, striking at the heart of Asgard. There had been so little of him left, in the end.
They all did what they had to. Malekith had mourned him when he’d first taken the stone, and mourned him again now.
Victory. Darkness. Peace. That which countless dark elves had sacrificed them for was finally here, and here he was, kneeling with the dead. In the end, he had rather more in common with the lost than the living.
The Ancient One sat in meditation. All at once, her eyes snapped open; she stood, and strode past other sorcerers seconds before they sensed the coming cold. She brushed past all of them, before she reached the deepest sanctum.
The Eye of Agamotto stood upon a pedestal. She reached out for it, performing the hand gesture to open the Eye; no green light emerged. What was inside seemed to be just clear glass.
As she feared.
The Asgardian had been on Earth. Quickly, she opened a portal; Thor barrelled straight through it, mid-flight, only to hit a wall. Ancient vases and relics shuddered and threatened to tumble.
“Thor Odinson. We do not have much time,” the Ancient One said.
“What- where is this?” Thor said.
He turned around two or three times, bewildered. He slumped slightly.
“Wizards,” he said. Then he brightened: “Wait! You can help.”
“I hope so,” the Ancient One said. “Our reality has been over-written by the Aether; I sensed it as it was happening. Do you know what that means?”
“That the light of the universe has gone out,” Thor said gravely. He paused. “No. Honestly no, I don’t really know what that means, but father seemed very insistent that it was a bad thing.”
“It means a new reality, with new rules, has been overlaid upon our own – and soon, inescapably, it will replace it,” the Ancient One said. “Currently we’re living on the last embers of light, but it won’t last us long. Soon our magic will fade completely, and then our strength, and then our lives.”
“Your magic?” Thor said.
“Magic is the language of the universe,” the Ancient One said. “That language has changed. An Infinity Stone has gone out, no longer relevant to the reality in which we stand: the nature of power is not what it was.”
“Can we do anything?” Thor said, forcing drive into his voice.
“Perhaps,” the Ancient One said. “If you can retrieve the last drops of the Aether from the one who wielded it, it might be possible to… draw it back, reform the Stone before the effect is permanent.”
“Then do it,” Thor said. “You can open a portal, send me to Malekith and-”
“And you will die,” the Ancient One said. “This darkness will take its toll on your body soon enough, if it has not already, while the dark elves you fight are no longer encumbered by their fear of the light.”
“They survived,” Thor said. “Their suits, they were protected – send me to Stark. Suits are his thing, he can make me something useful.”
“I fear the technology to protect you from shifting laws of the universe may be rather beyond him,” the Ancient One said.
“Then who?” Thor said.
Ajak opened her eyes.
It had been a long, long time since she’d spoken to Arishem, but she knew the sensation. The world around her shifted, the landscape was replaced by stars, and she stood upon the vast, cosmic hand of the Celestial.
But that time, it hadn’t been like that. She’d seen Arishem looming above her, seen his six, shining eyes – only the eyes had looked dimmer, and his already-slow movements had seemed accidental. Rather than a deep, reverberating voice, she’d heard what sounded more like a final breath.
She’d felt her god die.
And now she sat on her porch, and looked up to see a star go black. As the Celestials faded, so too did the stars they lit.
It was ending. It was all ending.
It took a mere minute for Ikaris to be by her side. She wondered how quickly he’d flown, when he’d sensed this; he wasn’t as fast as Makkari, but he could avoid the dips and complications of terrain, and was far closer than she.
“Is this it?” Ikaris said. “Is it time?”
“This is something different,” Ajak said.
She paused. She’d burdened him with knowledge, too long ago; it didn’t feel fair to do the same again. There was so little any of them could do.
With the Celestials failing, there couldn’t be much life left in the Eternals. There couldn’t be much life left in anything.
“It isn’t Deviant,” Ikaris said. “It isn’t our problem, then, if it isn’t…”
“It’s something worse,” Ajak said.
She thought of her family, scattered across the world. Each had gifts, each had powers, and she had no idea what even the strongest of them could do. The sky was dark despite it being the middle of the day, gravity seemed to be uncertain, and gods faltered and failed.
Speed? Transmutation? Illusion? Their gifts felt so lacking.
She paused.
“Go to Phastos,” she said.
“Why?” Ikaris said.
“He’s the smartest,” she said. “If anyone can work out what’s happening, and how to stop it, he can.”
“You want us to interfere?” Ikaris said.
“Arishem contacted me,” Ajak said.
It wasn’t technically a lie. She masked her expression, and let Ikaris draw what conclusions he would; he straightened, nodding once. She’d told him with the truth once before; she couldn’t bring herself to do it again.
“It’s that serious?” he said.
Ajak nodded. And when he flew off, and she was alone, she went back into her quiet home and sat down in front of her shelves – relics, leftovers from the many lives she’d led.
She looked at them, reminding herself. As much as she wanted to hope that there was a way to stop this, she couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel when eternity came to an end.
All Phastos wanted was a quiet life. He was on his knees, planting flowers in his garden when the sun went out. He heard panicked shouts, yells, screams from down the street; he made an annoyed tut and stood up to go back inside.
“Ben?” he called.
“I’m here!” his boyfriend called back. “Wow, what is that?”
“Probably nothing. I guess it’s just like what happened in New York,” Phastos said.
He waved as he saw Ben peer around a wall, and sidestepped into the lounge for a moment. He closed his eyes, focusing to create a small gauge – it wasn’t much, but it would satisfy his own curiosity.
His powers let him create technological constructs like this, metal circles falling out from his hands and interlocking, projecting yellow symbols into the air. They flickered and flashed a few times before, inevitably, going dark.
Phastos waved his hands, dispelling the energy. Oh.
He was shaking slightly when he left his room. Still, he put on a brave face, seeking out Ben.
“Hey. How about you stay home today?” Phastos said. “Going to be a nightmare to travel in.”
“Stay here?” Ben said. “I like the sound of that.”
Phastos managed a smile.
And they held each other as the world started to fall apart. The air became cooler; outside, the world only grew darker. It wasn’t an eclipse – and it wasn’t even night, the sky having all the darkness but without the pinpricks of stars.
It was easy to feel alone, looking out there. Phastos left the embrace for a minute to draw the curtains.
His device had been meant to detect odd energy readings; it had been vague, but it ought to have given a ballpark idea. This could have been Deviants, chitauri again, anything.
Instead, it had detected nothing at all. No abnormal energy, and no normal energy. Something was missing from the universe and there was no easy fix for that.
Blocking out their view of the darkness, Phastos returned to hold his boyfriend. Ben shifted in his arms.
“This is… mad,” Ben said. “What could do that?”
“It’ll be fine,” Phastos lied. “It looks worse than it is. Not like that could really have happened.”
“I suppose,” Ben said.
What was better? The truth, and spending their final hours in futile pain, or a lie that would let him at least stay hopeful?
He hadn’t known Ben that long. That was the maddening part. A few months, enough time to know he wanted to find out so much more about him, wanted to know him so much more, and that he couldn’t.
How was he meant to tell him about Eternals now, about who he was?
And then there was light, a flickering flutter of orange outside the window. Neither Phastos or Ben moved. It was only at the knock on the door and the call that Phastos shifted.
“Phastos!” Ikaris’s voice came through. “I- who are you?”
“I am Thor, son of Odin, here to talk to… oh. You can fly. Could’ve done with your help earlier.”
Ben and Phastos looked at each other.
“Wait, Thor?” Ben said. “Why is he here?”
Malekith walked through his people, still resting most of his weight on his improvised cane.
The suits and the armour were all in a pile. The dark elves had been glad to be rid of them; they weren’t soldiers, not really. That was just what fate had decided for them. They were the survivors.
Some were builders and architects, others were painters, others were farmers. War had chosen them. All would rather that the light had never come.
Hands that had almost forgotten crafts beyond warfare now rediscovered the beauty in creation: there were shelters, not much yet, but the beginnings of homes outside their ship. Some were weaving, adding shapes and designs and some semblance of beauty to this ruin.
Malekith remembered the universe that came before the light, and the beauty in the darkness.
There were two dark elves that he passed that, despite himself, he let himself linger near, watching them. Skin clammy and smooth from so long under protective layers, heavy ridges on their foreheads, and eyes that were wide and black; the two leant on each other, close.
One fore-arm rested on the other’s, and one’s head rested upon the other’s shoulder. They whispered quiet, rhythmic words in the language of the elves; before them, there was a cot. They’d carved it themselves from stone, putting their weapons to better use.
There was joy to this day, Malekith knew. This was their triumph, their victory – and yet there was sadness too. He couldn’t so easily forget the cost that had brought them this far.
Malekith walked slowly on. He could feel his body failing, the last echoes of the Aether poised to overwhelm him.
Soon, all this would be over.
There were five people gathered around a rather ordinary living room. Ben, the human, standing among gods with wide eyes. Phastos, the immortal, plucked out from normalcy again. Ikaris, driven and focused. The Ancient One, her expression remarkably mellow despite everything. And Thor, his cape incongruous among the furnishings, and his eyes set.
“Well, hi again,” Phastos said.
He waved awkwardly to the Ancient One. Thor looked between them.
“You two know each other?” he said.
“There aren’t many on this planet that live as long as we,” the Ancient One said. “We meet.”
“Oh,” Thor said. He paused. “I was here a few centuries ago. We could have met.” He paused again. “I guess it’s okay that we didn’t. I’m not upset or anything.”
Phastos and Ikaris exchanged a silent look.
“Ajak sent me to you,” Ikaris said. “I didn’t know about these two.”
“I expect she had the same thought I did,” the Ancient One said. “The most gifted craftsman in the world. The only way to undo this is to journey into the heart of the darkness – and just as the dark elves were poisoned by the light, we cannot function without it.”
“Sorry, what?” Ben said. “Elves?”
“The dark elves come from before the universe,” the Ancient One said.
“Before the Celestials,” Ikaris said. “Arishem created the first sun and created light so that other life could exist. I’ve heard of them.”
“And the dark elves have hated all other life ever since,” the Ancient One said. “They have undone the creation of light – not just light as you know it, but the light that has underpinned all creation. The magic that defines every rock and every tree, the power that keeps the stars burning.”
“They’re destroying the first work of the Celestials,” Ikaris said.
“Er. Okay. Sure,” Ben said.
Phastos was frowning.
“I need you to make me a suit,” Thor said.
“To make us suits,” Ikaris said. Thor looked at him, and shrugged.
“More the merrier,” Thor said. “The dark elves had armour that protected them from the light – apparently we need the opposite, to say as strong as we’ll need to be.”
It was easy to feel the weight of the seconds. Phastos shifted; perhaps he should be more glad that he was seeing Ikaris again. It had been a long time since he’d met any of his old friends.
These circumstances, though, made it harder to feel joyful. The world was ending and he was just here as their best chance to stop it.
“This feels a lot like interfering,” Phastos said, eventually.
“Arishem spoke to Ajak,” Ikaris said. “This is in our remit.”
“Still, one century you’re complaining about inventing the steam engine too early, and now you want tech that can hold the universe together,” Phastos said.
“Sorry, what?” Ben said.
“I invented steam power,” Phastos said absently. His expression slipped. “I wanted to tell you. It wasn’t really… first date sort of stuff.”
Ben was looking at him like he was a stranger. That shouldn’t have hurt more than the prospect of the universe ending.
Phastos paused, willing himself to focus.
“I’m a little out of practice,” he said. “Ever since… I haven’t done much, give me a moment.”
The last flame of cosmic energy that was keeping them all alive, the flickers of magic that powered both the abilities of the Eternals and the Ancient One’s tricks, he just needed to make something that could contain that, and wouldn’t fail at the same rate as everything else.
First, he projected an outline in the air, fingertips twitching as he modified the blueprint; it was a full-body suit, gloves and helmet and faceplate and all.
“Shadow-matter on the outside,” Phastos muttered. “That’ll hold it together. The bindings on the inside to make it keep the cosmic light in. And a siphon, to draw in what you can, to keep it going.”
He grimaced.
“Best I can do on short notice,” Phastos said. “Not perfect, but it will keep you alive.” He paused. “For longer than the rest of us.”
“We’ll stop this. I promise,” Thor said.
“The shadows are deeper in Svartalfheim,” the Ancient One said. “The Aether settled more easily there. Be certain.”
“Hey, this is my thing. I’m sure,” Phastos said. He glanced at Ikaris. “Wouldn’t recommend using eye-beams with this on.”
And then it was time to build. He sat down, and projected the suits, ring after ring overlaid and interlocking. Circuitry of yellow thread held it together as he made it; by the time he’d made the boots of one, he was already feeling the strain.
The Ancient One was right; this was harder than it normally was. Phastos gritted his teeth and powered through, weaving the armour they needed.
“What are you going to do when you get there?” Ben said, suddenly.
“Whatever we have to,” Thor said. “Malekith still has the Aether. There has to be a way to use that.”
“I mean, what about the dark elves?” Ben said. “I doubt they’ll just let you.”
“We fight,” Ikaris said. “I’ve faced down worse.”
“They don’t sound evil, the way you put it,” Ben said. “It sounds like they’re just trying to survive.”
“Sometimes it takes death for there to be life,” Ikaris said. Something in his eyes hardened. “It’s the way of the universe; there’s no point in fighting it.”
There were four legs on the floor, hollow outlines of not-quite metal. Phastos wiped his brow and kept going; tiny, rune-shaped cogs rotated together.
“My father fought them in the past. They’re an enemy to all life,” Thor said. “We can’t afford to lose this.”
Phastos groaned. He stopped for a moment, stretching his hand; Ikaris looked down at him, but Phastos waved him off, starting again.
The suits were black, the material not dissimilar to the protective outfits of the elves. Still, they weren’t designed for aesthetic.
“Ancient One,” Ikaris said. “If that’s what you’re going by.”
“You are the second-youngest person in this room,” Thor said helpfully. “It’s not the best name.”
“Priorities?” the Ancient One said.
“I was trying to say,” Ikaris said impatiently. “Do you have a way to Svartalfheim? The Domo – that’s our ship – even if we could get to it, the dark elves’ world is a long way away.”
“I can’t contact Heimdall,” Thor said. “I shouted for him, but I don’t think he can hear, so we can’t use the Bifrost.”
Phastos made a strained sound. The Ancient One’s expression flickered.
“I should be able to get you part of the way,” the Ancient One said. “To the limits of where magic can reach. Beyond that, you’ll need the suits to survive – even your ship wouldn’t work.”
“Then we go the old-fashioned way from there,” Ikaris said. He looked at Thor. “Can you fly?”
“More or less,” Thor said.
“More or less?” Ikaris echoed.
Thor waved his hammer vaguely.
“I just sort of throw it, and…” Thor said.
He mimed an underarm toss. Unimpressed, Ikaris lifted an eyebrow.
“If I do it on this side of a portal, the momentum will probably carry me even when I lose magic,” Thor said. “I just have to aim the right way.”
“Fine. Whatever,” Ikaris said.
His attention turned back to the floor; the suits were almost done. The spiky, metallic metal was a stark contrast with the soft and neutral carpet.
Only the tops of the helmets had yet to be done. Phastos was taking another break, sweating and catching his breath, before holding his hands over them again: each spark of light and bead of metal that he produced came out shuddering, far more slowly. Occasionally there was a broken ring that he flicked aside and retried.
The faces were unsettlingly blank. They were just flat sheets of black, hopefully see-through, with a glimpse of a light source coming through from the inside. That much, at least meant they ought to be able to see.
Eventually Phastos was done. Gasping, he sat back, and almost half-heartedly flicked a wrist; the suits stood up, and opened up like hungry mouths. Barely hesitating, Ikaris strode forward into one, and the metal sealed up around him.
“Oh! Have you met Stark? You should meet my friend,” Thor said.
“Statistically speaking, I probably inspired him,” Phastos said.
A little more slowly, Thor walked forwards; the suit was cold, tightly constricting around his arms and legs. He tensed as it closed around his back, airtight and light-tight; then it warmed, a sudden thrum and sense of relief going through him.
His vision was a little limited, but he could see well enough out the face-plate, especially with the light’s help. The suit felt like it was going to be stiff, but when he took a step it felt like every inch of it was capable of twisting and bending with his body.
“Nicely done, Phastos,” Ikaris said.
“Young One?” Thor said.
The sorcerer, not particularly impressed, stepped over to the front door. She lifted both hands, stretched one out forwards, and began to etch circles in the air with her other.
Just outside the house, sparks appeared in the air. Thor had seen them before, but this felt different; those other portals had appeared almost instantly. This one was taking time.
It was hard to say if it was her destination or if it was just the evident increasingly difficulty of working magic.
Orange sparks sketched out a small circle, no larger than an outstretched hand, doing nothing to display any kind of portal. The Ancient One’s brow furrowed.
“Do you need something?” Phastos said. “I can get-”
“There is magic in this world that is not so reliant on light,” the Ancient One said.
She looked back. Her eyes were dark, flickering violet shadows suddenly appearing under cracks in her skin; purple light like lightning wreathed the orange sparks of the portal. It still wasn’t easy, her hands still trembled with the effort, but the circle widened.
And with a groan of effort, as though she was tearing a hole in reality with her bare hands, a portal to darkness opened.
“Go,” the Ancient One said, breathless. “I will pay the price for that when you succeed.”
Thor nodded his thanks; he threw Mjolnir, and grabbed it, and Ikaris shot past him anyway.
And the portal closed, leaving three behind. The Ancient One and Phastos both sat, drained, and Ben looked between them with nerves and confusion on his face.
All that was left for them to do was wait and hope.
It wasn’t much of a seat, but it sufficed for Malekith’s needs. His cane was resting against the outer hull of his ship, and a stool of stone had been built up for him to sit by and watch the slow regrowth of the dark elves.
It was their courtesy to him: their gratitude. They wanted him to pass in peace, when the Aether finished taking its toll on him. The residual poison of the light was doing him no favours.
His skin burned. The Asgardian had struck him with his lightning, and the light-touched skin was barely able to heal; Malekith wore the scarring with resignation. He could bear the prickling, barely noticing it alongside the sense of wrong as the light had seeped into his system.
He had almost forgotten how his people looked. Now with their armour cast aside, with skin of countless hues once more safely bared, he looked into unsure eyes, and at skin both youthful and aged. It was strange to think how long he’d fought as these people’s sides, and yet struggled to see them as more than their masks.
“Rouklju goorjahi?”
One neared Malekith, where he sat; she held a slate, a palimpsest of runes being etched into it. Who have we lost?
She was making a memorial. Malekith inclined his head, managing to display gratitude before finding his voice. He listed names.
He wondered how many he could recall, even now. It had been so long since this near-endless conflict had started; still, he knew the people that had first signed up, and had taken pains to learn what names he could.
Every soldier ordered to their deaths, and everyone that had faced death regardless. His voice was halting as he listed them.
It was a fine paradox. He’d fought for his people’s survival, and so many had died because of it.
“Algrim,” Malekith said, concluding after some time. He paused. “Malekith.”
He could feel his body start to give up; breathing was beginning to take more effort, and the pain over his eye was becoming harder to ignore. The Aether was all that animated him now, a memory, an echo of all that power.
It was slowly trickling out of him. He could feel it; when it was gone, when his last act was truly complete, he would pass after just the briefest glimpse of a reborn dark world.
All his people knew it. He knew it. Still, he saw them watching him, saw them mourning.
He waited for the elf to thank him and turn away, before he screwed his face shut and grimaced through the discomfort. Let them have happier memories of him.
“Kir äpänuasueshe nol,” Malekith whispered, staring up at the black sky. I will be with you soon.
Thor and Ikaris flew: the two of them were left in the void of space, with not even stars to guide them. Just the hope that the Ancient One had opened a portal in the right place, and the vague sense of unease they had that the darkness was a little bit deeper ahead of them.
Nothing but hope that they could reach the world of the dark elves before the damage was permanent.
The world was silent out here. They couldn’t hear one another through the void, and unless they turned their heads just right, they couldn’t even see each other. As the Ancient One had said, the darkness was deeper here; the Aether had so much less light to fight against.
Thor heard his heart pounding in his chest, and wished for any distraction.
He’d failed. He’d fought Malekith, and he’d failed, and now they were hoping for some kind of a miracle if they could just get close enough. If they could fight the dark elves, and do so in their home environment.
He wished there was something other than his guilt to focus on, though; he wished that for a long, long time as they spiralled through space.
It might have been hours or days. This was far from the best way to travel through space; in the absence of warps, though, it was the only option they had.
Thor might have drifted off for a bit there. There really was nothing to do except cling onto Mjolnir and let it carry him forward. Beyond the sound of his breath, and the quiet whine of the suit, there was no noise that reached him.
At least until Ikaris jostled him, and made him jump.
“Slight adjustment to the course,” Ikaris said, his voice sounding muffled, carried through the contact between the suits. They shifted. Thor could see no difference.
If there were any stars left, they certainly weren’t here; even after-images, illusions wrought by the speed of light, wouldn’t outlast the dark world.
“How can you tell?” Thor said.
“I’ve been flying circles around you,” Ikaris said. “Suit struggles more in this direction.”
Ah. There was that.
“Do you think they’ll hold together?” Thor said.
“If Phastos built it, I think it’s our best shot,” Ikaris said.
The dark elves had suffered under the light, but to them the light was a poison. The magic, the illumination, all its manifestations had hurt them; meanwhile to the inhabitants of this universe, it was more like oxygen. Its absence hit so much harder.
The suit was warming; it was hard to tell how much was for comfort, and how much was strain. The runes and spell-work that kept the darkness out did their best, but they were fighting the new laws of the universe.
“I feel weaker,” Thor said.
Ikaris didn’t answer.
Get to Svartalfheim, reach Malekith, and try to take the Aether from him; if he was killed, if he stopped being a suitable host, then one of two things would happen. Either the Aether would trickle out of him and be lost - or without his mind to guide it, the original stone would reform.
It was a long shot, but it was all they had; and if they took too much longer, then they’d lose even that.
There was a wealth of technobabble Thor had heard, and had mostly ignored. Uncombined Aether, Celestial singularities, fragments that weren’t yet lost to them. If the Aether was the reality before this universe condensed down into a singularity, then all they needed to do was see it condensed again.
“How do you think Midgard is faring?” Thor said. “They weren’t protected – and Phastos didn’t seem like he could make billions more of these.”
“The Earth has its protectors, and it isn’t as far into the darkness as we are,” Ikaris said. “But you are right. It will struggle.”
“And Asgard,” Thor said. “My home. And yours – where are you from?”
“Olympia,” Ikaris said. “I have not seen it for a long time.”
He paused. They kept flying.
“They could already be dead,” Ikaris said. “I don’t know how long it would take for it to be overcome. My world. Yours.”
Thor said nothing. He tightened his grip on his hammer.
“No,” Thor said. “I won’t accept that.”
“Then why ask?” Ikaris said.
It was hard to see a silhouette against the darkness, and yet somehow they did. There were shapes in the void, particles and specks of Aether that had settled in the weaves and currents of space. Thor had never realised just how many colours there could be in absolute darkness.
Svartalfheim loomed ahead of them, a world vast and massive against the endless night. He felt Ikaris slide closer to him as, together, they descended.
Down to the home of the dark elves. Down to the world that might well be the last sanctuary of any kind of life in the universe.
Thor landed, and cracked the earth below his knee. The suit whined, but held, and he stood up; the light flickered out from his faceplate and dark elves hissed, recoiling.
Whatever he’d expected, it was not this.
He remembered the dark elves as a horde that had fallen upon Asgard, that had torn their way past ancient defences and shattered the castle, that had stormed through Odin’s palace and killed all in their path. He remembered that rage, the implacable force, those blank masks and weapons that twisted reality.
These weren’t warriors. They wore cloth and rags, with bare arms that looked almost emaciated, and eyes that looked so wide, shrinking away from the light.
Thor hesitated for just a second.
“Where is Malekith?” Ikaris shouted.
A ripple went through the dozen dark elves near them. Clammy, hairless, they were unnerving without their armour, but they seemed somehow less… faceless.
They weren’t just enemies. They were… they were people, ones that wanted something so badly they would pick up weapons to fight for it, and loved Malekith enough to not accept any threat to him.
One lunged, grasping with pitiably weak fingers; Ikaris threw that one off, but he’d been delayed enough for another to find discarded weapons and start handing them out. Thor span Mjolnir in one hand; well, he’d been prepared for a challenge.
Malekith heard a scuffle. He didn’t move; he wasn’t sure he had it in him to stand, now. His people had trusted him to lead them for so long; he’d trust them now.
Each shout, each scream, made his hands clench into fists.
And two beings made their way through the half-rebuilt dark elf homeworld, each clad completely in grey metal that sparked with a hateful light. They left heavy footfalls in the dirt, overpowering the elves that were near them, but that strength was clearly beginning to flag.
There were scratches in those suits, scorch-marks from conflict, peeled-off scrapes of metal.
Malekith wondered how he looked. Slouched on a chair, like it was a throne, as if he was waiting rather than stationary.
And he wondered how much power he still had in him. He’d been burnt up almost completely, it felt; the pain had faded to be replaced with a solid nothingness, like his body simply yet had to realise he was dead. But he had held a universe’s reality in him, he had for a moment embodied one of the six singularities.
One of the suits stepped closer; Malekith summoned up all the power he could and lurched, throwing a hand forwards; a scattering of Aether shot out from him like a powder, mere droplets nevertheless sufficient to melt into the suit like acid. Whatever protection they had wasn’t sufficient to repel a raw infinity stone, not here.
“Thor!” the other shouted.
Asgardian. Malekith stiffened, poised to try and strike at the other, drained as he was. Before he could muster up anything, the faceplate of the still-standing invader exploded in a flash of yellow.
Light. Abhorrent, burning yellow light pierced the shadows of Svartalfheim, scoring Malekith’s chest and arcing upwards. Malekith had just enough sense left to scream.
The light was all-too familiar to him. There was that unfortunate need to catalogue poisons, to learn the difference between the ubiquitous light, the light of the stars, and then that, the work of the devils that had torn down the dark world. A pawn of the Celestials.
Malekith screamed as the lasers faltered; the Eternal did not stumble so much as keel over, like he was switched off. The yellow faded, though the glare of it, the after-image, was seared into Malekith’s vision.
He did not dare look down and see what was left of his body, nor of his already-scarred face. Instead, he slumped and fell from his chair. Fibres of Aether stretched across the scar, roiling and twisting.
The blast had shattered the Eternal’s helmet. His face could be seen now, grey and still. The last embers of Celestial magic that kept him alive throughout eternity would not avail him here.
A loyal soldier to the end, giving his life to fight his foe. Malekith only respected that in his allies: in his enemies, he despised it.
One foe of the dark elves dead. Straining, Malekith turned to look at the other. Thor. The Asgardian. Malekith could barely see his face; the scattering of Aether had damaged the armour, but not completely. There were small gaps, enough to see an eye, a hint of collar bone, but a shimmering netting of more damnable Celestial magic vainly stretched over the smaller gaps.
Still, Thor was on the floor, gasping, as weary as Malekith.
Malekith’s face twisted.
“Do you feel that?” Malekith said, his voice never going higher than a whisper. “That pain? That torment? That is what your forebears damned my people to every day since the last Convergence. Feel it, Asgardian.”
He’d thought he was beyond rage. Apparently he was wrong; it was almost gratifying to feel that anger, rising up in him like an old friend. The sight of Thor brought it all back.
Thor writhed. He rocked, but barely moved.
“I… can’t… let you,” Thor said.
“Your world has no right to exist,” Malekith said. “This was our universe before it was yours. You will not take it from us.”
“People are dying.”
“So are we,” Malekith said. “You don’t have the right to take this from us.”
“Neither do you,” Thor said.
Thor pushed himself up. It wasn’t clear how he had the strength; the barriers of his armour seemed to have all but given up, now. There could barely be any light still in there.
No magic. No strength. Just will.
Thor rested almost his entire weight on his hammer. Malekith, too drained to move, could only just see it in his peripheral.
“What will you do, Asgardian?” Malekith said. “Another genocide on your people’s hands?”
“Not worse than what you’re doing,” Thor said.
“We’re taking what’s ours,” Malekith said.
“This universe is not yours,” Thor said. “There are… billions… billions of billions of people.”
“Now. Only because your forebears fought to stop us when the world was new,” Malekith said. “You aren’t fighting for right. You’re fighting because you’re scared of the dark.”
“I’m fighting for everyone,” Thor said.
“For your everyone,” Malekith said. “I fought for my people.”
“I fought for mine,” Thor said.
Malekith closed his eyes, a snarl fixed on his features, that rage at the light filling him even at the end. His strength had been waning for a long, long time. He didn’t know what the Asgardian had planned, if he’d planned anything beyond petty revenge, but he was beyond the point of caring.
He’d succeeded. A world of darkness, a world for the dark elves, as it once was and would be again.
There was an almighty yell, a scream from Thor almost at breaking point, lifting Mjolnir with all the strain of lifting a mountain; he wrenched it up, and with gravity brought it crashing down.
A universe filled with darkness. The hope that there was still life on those worlds, that killing Malekith before the Aether totally deserted him would at least start to mitigate that harm, and the need to keep the light so that the Nine Realms could still exist.
The need to eradicate this whole species. A species that had killed, if in desperation, and whose first crime was simply being fundamentally incompatible with the light and with everyone born to it.
To kill them all. Or to die, and lose everything.
To be the one who struck the blow that ended a civilisation. Once he’d been so cavalier about that; now it weighed on him more than he ever wanted it to. Now he saw their faces, not just their masks. Now he knew the desperation of living in a universe that was wrong.
But he was Thor, Prince of Asgard, one-time future King, he had a duty to protect the realms.
A duty he’d shirked when he’d given up that mantle.
Thor collapsed, and Mjolnir crashed onto stone, shattering it. It might have been exhaustion, or a last moment flicker of hesitation that he’d regret for what little time he had left, but he’d missed.
Failed, a second time.
And Thor closed his eyes as the shadows stretched out around him. Beside him, Malekith was still.
And countless worlds died – but, for all of that, one was given the chance to live. Tears in his eyes, Malekith stared upwards at the black sky.
Chapter 3: What If... Steve Rogers became the Sorcerer Supreme?
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Steve Rogers had heard all the excuses. He was too small, too sickly – if he went to war he’d just be a liability.
For someone who stood up to bullies, to be told that he could not only spurred him into action more. In one lifetime, his heart might put him onto almost the path that he expected.
But there were more ways to fight than strength and brawn, and more paths to the battlefield than Steve suspected.
“Bucky, come on. There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them; that’s what you don’t understand,” Steve said. “This isn’t about me.”
“Right,” Bucky said. “Because you’ve got nothing to prove.”
Bucky looked doubtfully at him, skepticism written on his face. They’d talked about this before. So many times before.
Bucky was shipping out soon, while Steve would be left back here, back waiting. Whatever help he offered would be minimal, and would always feel less.
Though Bucky was his friend, he never understood that. Perhaps he was too used to the people that acted out of posturing, the people for whom it was just ego; it wasn’t like that for Steve. He just hated people dying for him when he couldn’t do the same for them.
They’d been out here on a double date; at a call from their dates, Bucky turned around, waving at them, before looking back at Steve. He seemed reluctant to leave. He also knew well enough that trying to out-stubborn Steve was a losing venture.
“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back,” Bucky said.
Bucky took a few steps backwards, as if not wanting to take his eyes off Steve until the last moment; he soon gave up, and closed the distance between them for a hug.
When he moved back, the harshness in his eyes had more or less faded, a glimmer of concern peering through.
It was easier to bicker than face up to the fact that Bucky was going off to the war, and could so easily die on the other side of the world within the week. Steve swallowed.
“Don’t win the war until I get there,” Steve said.
Bucky gave a mock-salute, and then quickly turned, walking away; rather than keep his eyes on Steve, he hid his face.
It came from care. Steve knew that. Bucky cared for him, even the recruiters did – that was why he was still here, doing his pitiful bit back home. It didn’t make it hurt any less that he wanted to help more.
Enough that he’d snuck away from the night out with Bucky and friends. Smiling to himself, Steve turned away, not completely sure where he was going.
“Steven Rogers.”
He looked up at the sound of a woman saying his name. He frowned; she didn’t quite fit in among the normal military brass. Female, yes, and bald, a bland robe very unlike the suits and khaki around them.
“Er, hello?” he said.
“You want to fight in a war,” the stranger said.
“I want to save lives,” Steve said. He shrugged. “I don’t like bullies, and I don’t like other people having to pay the cost.”
The woman smiled to herself like he’d passed some test.
“But they won’t let you enlist because of physical limitations,” she said. “What if I told you there was a way around that?”
“I do my bit,” Steve said. “Collect scrap metal, make sure places are blacked out. I’m not really suited for much else of the at-home stuff.”
“You want to be fighting?”
“I want to be out there,” Steve said. He paused. “Are you with the army?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “But I can offer you a way to protect the people you care about, and to protect the world.”
“World?” Steve said. “Not country?”
“You object?”
“No. No, not at all,” Steve said. “Just not what I’m used to hearing.”
“I can promise you more of that, if you’re interested,” she said. “A word of warning. If you do come with me, the world will never seem the same to you again.”
She was standing by one of many non-descript doors, positioned just so, so that no one walked past her into it. Steve wasn’t sure what was in there; he’d assumed just some regular office, though no one else had come out. It didn’t seem special.
The woman stepped inside. After a moment, undeniably curious, Steve followed.
Half of the room was a storage room, small and cramped with shelves and tables full of assorted filed and papers. Half of the room was a whirling circle of light and wild energy, beyond which was a garden. More than that, a garden in daylight, despite the fact it was evening outside.
“Captain Rogers?” she said.
“Steve,” he said automatically. “Not a Captain.”
She was smiling oddly.
“My mistake,” she said. “Are you coming?”
“What is this?” Steve said.
“A choice,” she said. “You can walk out that door – I won’t stop you. You might find that there is a path into the army for you after all; you could be a hero, your name sung around the world. Or you could come with me. Your name might not be so well-known, but you’ll see things you never imagined were possible, and you’ll help keep this world safe from the worst things creation has to offer.”
“I’m not after fame,” Steve said.
He paused for a moment; he looked back at the door, wondering if he ought to just walk out. Bucky did say to not do anything stupid.
Walking through a portal with a stranger talking about impossible things probably counted as stupid.
But part of him believed her; he felt like he had to. If she could conjure up rings in the air like that, show what looked like another part of the world, what reason would she ever have to lie to him about this?
It wasn’t quite what he’d expected to enlist in, but still.
“I’m in,” Steve said, and walked through.
He wasn’t in Brooklyn anymore. The buildings around him were brighter, most one-storey, built of orange stone rather than grey. The plazas were clearly built for people, not cars, and there were circles in the ground made from other stone, or carved into place. There were symbols all around, underfoot or etched into wood on the walls.
Open archways led into each building, offering a clear view into spacious chambers, with doors only blocking off a few rooms and interiors. To someone that had never really left the city, it was unlike anything he’d seen.
“Welcome to Kamar-Taj,” the woman said.
Steve turned; the portal behind him was gone, now. He could see half a dozen more people, all in identical robes, practising similar motions in the courtyard behind him. They were summoning sparks out of the air, trails of energy not unlike the outline of the portal.
He really hoped this hadn’t been a stupid decision.
“What is this place?” Steve said, wonderingly.
“I told you, a way around physical limitations,” she said. “Physical strength does not matter so much as strength of the mind – every condition has an answer. The fundamental forces of the universe are manipulated with spells and focus, not muscle.”
“Spells?” Steve said.
She pressed her hands together, and then pulled them apart, crackling and shining cords of energy suddenly binding them together. It shone like fire, lines wrought from the fabric of reality. Their very presence seemed just that little bit off.
She waved her hand, the energy trailing after her right hand for a moment; it whirled and reshaped itself into a staff, a sword, a sphere, before she dismissed it.
“Spells,” she said. There was a smile playing at her lips. “Tell me Steven, do you believe in magic?”
“I don’t see as I have any choice,” Steve said.
“That will make this easier,” she said. “Follow me.”
Attention still wandering behind him, Steve followed. His gaze caught on every little thing – runes on the walls, shelves of assorted ephemera, passers-by that seemed in thought, yet more people repeating motions and calling up lights and magic…
Nothing here made sense, and all of it captivated him.
She led him inside, and still he looked at scrolls, and at bookshelves crammed full of tomes, and at a display-case that seemed full of random artefacts.
“Excuse me?” Steve said. “Sorry, it’s just, I don’t know your name.”
“I’m called the Ancient One,” she said.
He paused.
“Ancient One?” he said.
“When you’ve lived several centuries, that does rather supersede any name I could have,” she said.
Steve mouthed ‘centuries’ as they made it to a more secluded room. The Ancient One sat down, patiently pouring herself a cup of tea, before offering some to Steve. Hesitantly, he nodded.
He didn’t ask how the pot suddenly started steaming when she walked in, or where the stool she was sitting on had appeared from. When they’d entered the room, there had been just the wooden table.
The floor was soft and springy, unlike the harsh wood of the rest of Kamar-Taj. It was a comfier place. Perhaps that was why she’d chosen it for introductions.
“Listen,” Steve said. “I’m flattered, but this may be… a little beyond me.”
“Excellent,” the Ancient One said. “You’re making a very good start.”
“I am?” Steve said.
“The worst students are the ones who think they understand anything already,” she said. “First they have to unlearn, before they can be taught. With you, we can begin right away.”
She pushed his cup towards him. Uncertainly, Steve took a sip; the herbal blend was a new taste for him, one he was unsure of, but he swallowed more anyway just to be polite.
“Er, student?” Steve said.
“Do you want a way to protect people?” the Ancient One said.
He thought of what he’d seen outside: the portals, the constructs of light and energy, and the myriad strange objects he couldn’t guess at the purpose of.
It was too soon to have any opinion on the place, and his mind was still reeling over having been in New York minutes ago, but he knew enough to say he was intrigued. The strangeness of Kamar-Taj, and the centuries old woman regarding him with a quiet amusement.
Bucky would be overseas tomorrow. He’d be risking everything, in a land he knew nothing about. Steve’s expression set.
“Yes,” Steve said. “I want that.”
“Then let me show you,” the Ancient One said.
In the time it took Steve to blink, she’d thrust her arm forwards; her palm hit his chest, and he felt himself pushed, reeling back and also not moving at all. He saw his body hanging in the air in front of him, stared, and then saw the Ancient One meet his eyes. Not his body’s, but this transparent thing that he’d become.
There was a flicker of light, and suddenly the world was changing.
Steve Rogers saw the universe. It wasn’t even that he moved, he just… changed angle, almost. The table in front of him shot off into infinite dimensions either side of him, and then the whole room twisted, offset and overlaid upon itself a million million times, gentle beams of light through the window intersecting themselves and casting patterns in the air and impossible shadows on the ground.
And then he rotated at another angle, in another direction he could barely fathom, and the endless room was just the tiniest speck of infinity. Stars and helixes and spirals in colours he didn’t know the names of, chaos, thrumming void all around him.
His body twisted into strange shapes, tessellating with all the pain and exertion of merely laying still, hands and arms and legs and eyes multiplying like it was the easiest thing in the world to do. Dizzying, all-encompassing, nauseating and beautiful and terrifying.
And then the Ancient One was behind him, quietly whispering:
“Look up.”
And he did, and he saw a thin film between the eternity he drifted in, and somewhere else. Somewhere dark, shining with a violet, shadow-filled light, eerie cords stretched across vibrant, dark colours in a way that looked almost diseased.
Something looked back. Something vast and faceless and rippling loomed past the edge of everything.
And then Steve was laying on the floor, gasping for air. He blinked a few times, shaking his head to try and refocus – well, at least that explained why she’d come to the room with the padded floor.
“That’s what we do,” the Ancient One said, like nothing had happened. “We deal with mystical threats, one aspect of which is maintaining the barrier that keeps things like that out.”
“This is… a little more than I was expecting to face,” Steve said, still panting.
“You’d be surprised. Destiny has a way of making us face the unexpected,” the Ancient One said.
She was sipping her tea so calmly. Groaning, Steve pulled himself up.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” Steve said.
The Ancient One put her cup down. She looked at him, so patiently, so gently.
“Would you believe me if I told you I’d seen the future?” the Ancient One said.
“Ma’am, right now I think I’d believe you if you told me unicorns were real,” Steve said.
“There is more than one path things could take,” the Ancient One said. “You could turn me down. You could walk out that door – or I could never have chosen you. You were a moment away from being spoken to by a man called Abraham Erskine.”
“Er. Okay,” Steve said. He hesitated. “So you’re saying you think I’ll be good if I can stay?”
“That, unfortunately, is further than I can see,” the Ancient One said.
“But you said…”
“I can see the future. Every possible future, given the right tools,” the Ancient One said. “There is always a limit, but that limit is different in each possible universe – how far forward I can see varies. I know, for example, that had I not chosen you, you would have gone on and become someone completely different. If you stay, I don’t know precisely what you will do, but I know who you are. In every future I can see, that one thing is fixed. Steve Rogers is a good man. What that means, if you stay here, we will have to wait to find out.”
Steve hesitated. He pulled himself closer to the table, wetting his mouth on his drink again. The tea went down easier that time.
“Steven?” she said.
“It’s Steve, please,” he said. He hesitated. “This still feels like it’s so far beyond me. You thinking I’m good, I’m flattered, but I don’t know if it’s enough.”
“I am offering you the means to alter the foundations of the universe,” the Ancient One said. “It’s the most important thing.”
She smiled.
“I know you have the capability, even if you don’t,” the Ancient One said. He could feel her eyes on him, gauging him. “Captain America.”
“Ma’am,” Steve said. He hesitated. “No offence, but that’s a really dumb name.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Maybe we can find you another, if you’ll stay.”
He thought of the face that stared down at him from beyond eternity. He thought of the fear he’d felt as reality shifted and rocked and buckled around him. He thought of Bucky shipped out to unknown soil to fight all-too-human monsters.
He took a deep breath; the Ancient One was still looking at him, a twinkle in her eyes, her keen gaze simultaneously playful and perceptive. The authority she emanated and how easily she teased made for a strange combination.
Still a little off-balance around her, Steve tried to straighten as best he could.
“I guess. Sure,” he said. Then, more confidently: “Sure. I’ll stay.”
Steve had been in Kamar-Taj a week, and every day it felt like everything he knew was upended all over again. He did his best to roll with it.
They taught him about sling rings, so he learned how to open portals; it barely crossed his mind that it wasn’t that long since he’d thought this impossible. He’d seen it happen, so he’d shrugged it off as doable, and just set his mind to it.
Then they explained how to make constructs, so he practiced visualising what he wanted. He saw a lot of people manage swords and clubs; they didn’t feel quite right for him, honestly. He couldn’t imagine himself just hacking away and threats.
Then again, they’d also shown him some of the threats the sorcerers were expected to defend again. He might change his mind on that.
There had been healing spells too. Steve had practiced keeping in shape by running laps of the compound; he could make it fairly far before his asthma played up, but the Ancient One had showed him a spell that eased his breathing again. It wasn’t fool-proof, and instinct made him take it easier afterwards, but it did help matters.
He could feel himself learning; some of the spells were even starting to become instinctive. He hadn’t touched any of the more advanced things, but at least he knew the basics.
In a plaza, Steve practiced the familiar motions, willing the magic to his hands; the runes that had so alarmed him when he’d first seen them, now felt much more ordinary. The mandalas that formed around each hand were apparently one of the more natural shapes of magic.
He felt a little like he was just running drills, sometimes. The easier this got, the more everything else would flow.
A few steps across from him, there was another student; he’d been there longer than Steve, though they seemed to be at around the same level so he probably hadn’t been there for much longer. He was a little younger.
Almost accidentally, the two stopped their practice at the same time, moving back to catch their breath. Steve waved.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” the other said. “Rogers, isn’t it?”
“Steve, please,” he said. “And you?”
“Hamir,” he said. “So you’re the one the Ancient One picked up.”
“Er, I guess,” Steve said. He hesitated. “Sorry, is that unusual?”
“Sort of, yeah!” Hamir said.
He sat down on a stone bench, shuffling to signal that he was fine if Steve wanted to join him. A second later and Steve did.
“How did you come here?” Steve said.
“The usual,” Hamir said. “I heard a few stories, followed a friend of a friend’s advice. I wanted something. Magic might help, I’m not sure.”
He shifted, his robes folding as he moved, offering a glimpse of a stump where one hand might have once been. A second later, and he lowered his arm, concealing it anew.
Steve didn’t press for details. He supposed that made sense; most people probably wouldn’t look for a place like this if their lives had been perfectly fine.
“I didn’t like feeling useless,” Steve said. “There were people dying, and I could do was just… be home. I don’t know. It’s probably not the same.”
“Maybe not,” Hamir said. “Still, is anything around here ever similar? The way I see it, we’re all fighting the same war now.”
Steve made a vague noise of acknowledgement, suddenly thinking.
Curiosity lingered in Steve’s mind. It was only the next day when he found his way to the Ancient One. She monitored a lot of lessons, even gave some herself, when she wasn’t secluded away. Still, she seemed interested enough to talk to him on occasion.
It was common knowledge where she spent a lot of her time; there were corners of the library with books that weren’t available for anyone else. Steve always felt a little unnerved by them.
Still, there she was, in amongst the foreboding aisles and idly flicking through a weighty tome, her brow furrowed. Steve glimpsed an illustration of some monster before she saw him, and closed the book to chain it back up on the shelf.
“Rogers,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Why am I here?” he said. He hesitated, then made himself launch on. “I’ve been talking to some of the others: most of them followed rumours and found their way to one of the Sanctums. A few of them were rescued by sorcerers.”
“That’s true,” the Ancient One said.
“None of them were selected by the Sorcerer Supreme and invited here,” Steve said.
“Also true,” the Ancient One said.
“Then why me?” Steve said.
“I happened to be in New York,” she said.
“You were just passing by?”
“I had to be walking somewhere,” she said. She smiled. “Don’t believe me?”
“I think you like testing me,” Steve said. “Kinda gotten that feeling.”
“Nothing so gauche as tests,” she said. She walked by him, idly transporting the two of them out from the library. “And in answer to your question, I already told you. I saw enough of your futures to persuade me that you could have a home here.”
“How much have you seen?” Steve said. “Or did see?”
“Enough,” the Ancient One said. “Not every detail, but the shape of things.”
“Did you know the war was coming?” Steve said.
“Ah. So we’re talking about that,” the Ancient One said.
Her expression remained unchanged, as unruffled as ever.
They were in one of the more secure rooms in Kamar-Taj. It wasn’t a place Steve had been to before; the artefacts here were well beyond any he wanted to wield or use before he had much more understanding of all this.
The Ancient One walked among them like they were trinkets. There was a pendant resting on a pedestal - such a grand resting place for how ordinary the round, eye-like metal thing looked. She rested a hand near it absently.
“I’ve seen what people here can do,” Steve said. “You could have stopped it.”
“Maybe,” the Ancient One said.
“No maybe about it,” Steve said.
“We don’t interfere in mundane affairs,” the Ancient One said. “Take it from me – regimes rise and fall. It isn’t worth being invested.”
“Not much comfort to the people living under them,” Steve said.
“Our focus must be on magical matters. We dedicate ourselves to those, entirely and exclusively,” the Ancient One said. “The threat that the likes of Dormammu pose demand nothing less.”
“I get that there’s a big picture,” Steve said. “But why does that mean needing to forget about all the people we’re meant to be protecting? There are other problems in the world than magic.”
“Rules are necessary,” she said. “Without them, people have a tendency to go too far, to get distracted. The protection of the Sanctums is unambiguous: if our remit went past that, would you have sorcerers wield all this power for petty, personal ends?”
“That’s not what I said,” Steve said. “People are dying, and we’re sitting in here and doing nothing about it.”
“We’re keeping them safe from things they’re lucky enough to not comprehend,” the Ancient One said.
“While Nazis march through Europe.”
“There are worse evils in the multiverse than Nazis,” the Ancient One said.
“Yeah, but the Nazis are here,” Steve said.
She lifted the pendant off the pedestal and slipped it around her neck; smoothly, she made a shape with her hands, and pulled like she was tugging on some thread.
The stone pillar decayed. Before Steve’s eyes, in a matter of seconds it went from ornate and ancient, magically warded like everything else here, to ever-smoothening and cracking and shrinking until there was nothing left. Hundreds or thousands or more years of erosion in seconds.
The Ancient One looked him in the eye.
“Human evil is not our concern,” she said. “Would you tell them of this place, and invite them in to plunder artefacts like this? Would you distract our Sanctums, give them more enemies to divide us when the dark dimension ever knocks at our gates? Would you have Nazi armies march with the relics we keep secure, aided by the power of the dark dimension? We keep the Sanctums safe and keep the wards around the Earth secure. The war is not our concern, Steve Rogers.”
She pushed her hands together, and the pillar reformed until it was even better than new. Delicately, the green light from the pendant fading, she lifted it off of her head and put it back in its resting place.
He’d heard stories of the kind of powers the Masters had; it still shook Steve to see it.
Still, he steadied himself, and tried to shake off the image of soldiers wielding weapons like that. Doing so just made him imagine those same soldiers under a hail of machine gun fire.
Steve swallowed; there was no good way to fight, was there?
“I… understand,” Steve said slowly.
“Be sure that you do, Steve,” she said. Her expression softened. “This wasn’t quite how you wanted to protect people, was it?”
“Like you say, things can be unpredictable,” Steve said. “I don’t suppose you know what I’m going to do next?”
“Hundreds of possibilities every day,” the Ancient One said. “I don’t look at them all. It takes time and effort that I would rather dedicate to other things.”
“Like guarding the Sanctums,” Steve said.
“Precisely so,” she said.
Steve nodded, slowly. He looked back, only for the Ancient One to politely transport them to where they had been, rather than leaving him lost in that storage room.
There was a lot to think about. The memory of what he’d tried to enlist for wasn’t going anywhere, though at the same time there was no denying that what he was a part of here was important too. And even with their disagreement, he knew the Ancient One cared.
The Sanctums, together, formed a shield around the Earth, warding off mystical threats. Some small things could still slip through, but the major dangers were kept out so long as all stood.
If any fell, it would be easier for terrors to slip in. If they all fell, hell awaited.
And while they all fought to protect the Sanctums, people died.
Night in Kamar-Taj was a quiet time. Many people slept, having worked themselves to exhaustion during the day; others took advantage of the quiet to study. Candlelight illuminated the square from window after window.
Crouched low, a shadow ducked past the rooms. Steve snuck a sling ring off the rack, and ducked into a quieter square.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s see if I remember how to do this.”
He stuck one hand out forwards, and rotated the other, feeling reality tickle his fingertips and respond. It took a few tries, but once the spell caught, once sparks started to appear in the air, they widened into a circle.
He smiled, once, proud of himself, before the nerves set in. He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, then ducked through the portal. It closed behind him – he jumped at that. Okay, that hadn’t been planned.
Still, he could make another. First, though…
He was in someone’s room; he’d come through at night, thankfully. The room was bare, clearly for someone who wasn’t planning on being here for more than a couple of days. There were boots on the floor, a folded up military uniform for tomorrow, and folded up notes on the cabinet. Then, over by the wall, a bed with one person it.
The sound of the portal made the sleeper stir; Steve taking a step forwards saw him wake. He jerked upright, grabbed a gun off his bedside table, and pointed it; at the sight of Steve, he fired.
Light sparked on Steve’s hand; the same way he’d summoned weapons, he conjured symbols and energy to construct what he imagined. Rather than a weapon, two concentric circles appeared in the air, each shaped by thin, shining light, a large rune of protection in the centre. The bullet bounced off the shield.
“Adolf Hitler?” Steve said.
The moustached figure on the bed stared at him. Steve punched him.
The sound of the gunshot apparently drew attention; at the sound of someone rattling at the door, Steve quickly reopened a portal, murmuring silent thanks that it happened faster that time. Dismissing the shield-construct, he grabbed the reeling Hitler by the collar and pulled him through, smiling grimly to himself.
Steve woke up in Kamar-Taj with the Ancient One sat at the foot of his bed. He shifted, sitting up awkwardly. Without a word, she put a copy of a newspaper on top of him. The front page headline boldly declared: ‘Hitler found in Times Square.’
“I see our talk didn’t sink in,” she said.
Well, it wasn’t like this was something he’d be able to keep secret. Steve rubbed his eyes, read, then looked unblinkingly across at the Ancient One.
“I had to,” he said. “I’ll understand if there are consequences for me, you can kick me out if you want, but I couldn’t do nothing.”
“Consequences for you?” she said. “No. I don’t think that will be necessary. I only hope there will be no consequences for the rest of us.”
June, 1943. World War Two came to an end after German surrender, the loss of a leader doing a blow to morale and loyalty, and the fear of how he had so suddenly appeared on the other side of the world making certain replacements doubt the wisdom of continuing the conflict.
Troops were withdrawn from occupied territory, survivors freed from camps, countless lives beginning the slow process of improving and healing.
And in a castle, one Johann Schmidt stared at the latest communique in disgust. He balled it up and threw it aside, striding over to a map of Europe. He tore that down too.
Somehow Allied forces had made it into German territory, absconded with the Fuhrer, and gotten all the way back to America overnight, without being seen by a soul. No trail of bodies, no sign of forced entry. It was beyond science.
It was, Schmidt reflected, unlike anything outside of myth. His attention drifted to the small, glowing cube that stayed in his office.
Then he turned. His leather trench-coat flared up around his ankles. The scattered forces of HYDRA, those that remained after the call for peace had gone up, stood gathered before him.
“Gentlemen! The war is not over,” Schmidt said. “It has merely… changed battlegrounds.”
Steve stared at the book in front of him, forcing himself to reread the same passage until it stuck. After a few minutes, he pulled back, feeling that his heart wasn’t in it.
He was getting better at understanding magic. At the very least, he had the mindset to pick things up quickly, though the intricacies and complexities of theory took him much longer; it took a lot of focus, and right now his mind was on home.
Kamar-Taj was far from isolated. Steve had vaguely heard where it was located, geographically speaking, but with permanent portals open to each Sanctum, sling rings, and ways to places all around the world, it really felt like it was everywhere. Sorcerers here came from all around the world, and all asides.
The war hadn’t reached its walls. There were Germans side-by-side with Brits and Americans and Spaniards, among countless others. Nationality didn’t matter nearly as much as purpose.
Still, a handful of people still kept up with papers from their home region, arranging regular deliveries so as to stay aware. Steve had glanced at a few of them.
Technically speaking, the war was over. Practically speaking, there was housekeeping to do, tidying up and sorting out prisoners. Even with the fighting over, the armies weren’t going home just yet. That, Steve kept an eye on.
But it was over. Less people were dying, the conflict had finished, and the leaders of the Axis powers poised to be put on trial. Hitler was languishing in a prison cell on the other side of the ocean to most of his allies, and even they seemed uninterested in helping him. There was in-fighting and squabbling, and mentions of some factions splintering off entirely.
In short, everything had fallen apart on the German side. Lives were better. Not perfect, but better.
There was a knock on the door of his room. Steve gladly moved away from the books, opening it; the Ancient One stood there.
“Ma’am,” he said.
“Sit,” she said. “Tell me, will you be staying?”
“I’m allowed, right?” Steve said.
“If I was to cast out every sorcerer who committed a minor infraction, we wouldn’t have many left,” the Ancient One said. “Compassion isn’t a flaw, Steven.”
“I know that,” Steve said.
“Rather, I was asking what you wanted,” the Ancient One said. “The war inspired you to fight, which led you here. Now the war is over. What will you do?”
Steve hesitated. He hadn’t really thought about it; though he’d only been at Kamar-Taj for a little over a week, so much had changed in that time. The place had come to feel, if not like a home, then like a purpose.
For all that the war had ended, it had only ended so quickly because he was here. Put like that, the choice was simple – he wanted to help people, and he could help more because of Kamar-Taj.
“I’d like to stay,” Steve said.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said.
He thought of home, then, and the inevitable recall of the troops. He paused.
“Though I wouldn’t mind visiting New York again, in a bit,” Steve said.
“Kamar-Taj isn’t a prison, Steve,” the Ancient One said. “Your friends?”
“Bucky,” Steve said. “He’ll be back soon. I want to be there to say hi. Then I’d like to come back here, keep learning.”
“You’ll always be welcome,” she said.
“Even after I disobeyed you?”
“I make no pretence that I’m perfect,” the Ancient One said. “Longevity just means more time to make mistakes. Time will tell whether your decision was justified.”
“You don’t see anything?” Steve said.
“I can only see so far,” the Ancient One. Her expression became distant for a moment. “Less, now.”
She paused.
“Most people come to Kamar-Taj broken,” she said, looking off past Steve. “They say I fix them. I am unsure; I give them purpose, new drive, and help those I can, but this responsibility breaks us all. Whether I succeed in helping anyone is not for me to say.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Steve said, softly. “I may not always agree, but I have talked to some people here. Everyone’s glad to be here; I’m glad to be here, and I had less reason than most.”
“Steven,” she said.
The Ancient One’s tone was usually mellow when she talked to Steve, more than it was with most people. Now, though, the clouds showed, an echo of the presence and authority she could exude when pushed.
“I appreciate it,” she said, with all the firmness of one who had stared down nightmares without blinking. “But do not talk about things you know nothing about.”
“I know you,” Steve said.
“Do you?” she said.
There was a look in her eyes, her expression such that it seemed like she was about to say something, before she stopped and backed down.
“Do you know how many people I’ve let die?” the Ancient One said, as calmly as if she were just discussing a mild curiosity. “When the lifespans of your closest friends are all too short, it becomes… easy to forget that decades more matter to people. When you prevent fates worse than death, people in the world killing each other for such petty, human reasons don’t feel like much at all.”
“You’re a soldier,” Steve said. “I saw a few people around who survived the Great War. They get that kind of look in their eyes; they’ve seen so much death that it haunts them, all in different ways.”
“Your confidence may be misplaced,” the Ancient One said.
“Maybe,” Steve said. “But I figure that’s my choice to make.”
“Hm,” the Ancient One said. She regarded him. “I hope you’ll be able to keep your heart after a few years of this.”
“Me too,” Steve said. He let out a sigh. “I guess that’s the other half of it – I don’t feel like I have any right to judge you. I’m still new here.”
“And still you wanted to join the war,” the Ancient One said.
“I don’t buy the propaganda,” Steve said. “I know it’s not some glorious thing. Just, some things you need to fight, even if it’s ugly.”
She was looking at him again. Sometimes Steve had the feeling she was more looking through him, though what she was looking at, he couldn’t guess. Some days he felt like he knew the Ancient One, and then some moments he realised he could barely say anything about her. She still wasn’t even calling him Steve.
Though he didn’t know how many would-be sorcerers she spoke to quite so much. Most of her time was spent with the Masters more than the trainees.
“You have a talent,” the Ancient One said, eventually.
“Thank my teachers,” Steve said.
“I don’t mean magic,” she said. She was smiling again, shaking her head. “You’re easy to talk to. It’s a rare gift.”
“Er. Thank you,” Steve said.
“Thank you, Steven Rogers,” she said. “Good luck with all your endeavours, and with your journey home.”
“Um, you too,” Steve said. “Good luck, I mean.”
She smiled at him one last time, stood up, and left. Unnerved for some reason he couldn’t quite say, Steve sat there for a long time after she left, still.
Two weeks later, and Steve was back in New York. He opened a portal into his old apartment; apparently the Ancient One had kept up the payments for him. He hadn’t seen her to thank her since their last conversation.
Still, he was here now. He made a mental note to make a serious effort to look for her once he got back. Something was clearly distracting her, and he’d been redoubling his studies – he felt it was fair. He’d bent the unwritten rules somewhat, so he wanted to be a good sorcerer in addition to that.
Not that he was going to apologise.
He changed out of his robes; his once-ordinary clothes felt off against his skin. Uncertainly, he looked into the mirror. He was thin, gawky as ever, though these clothes fit even less than they normally did. His hair had grown a little, and there was a little more stubble on his face than usual.
Patiently, Steve shaved his face, just because it felt like the right thing to do. Once he’d finished with the water and razor, he looked up at himself.
He looked the same, mostly. Slowly, he cracked into a grin, and moved back away from the mirror. He’d checked the news, and gotten an alert, so he knew today was the day a certain unit came back from the front lines.
Steve skipped out his front door. He could probably have opened a portal to some secluded spot in the station, but he felt like walking. It had been a while since he’d seen the city.
“When did you get back?” a neighbour called.
“Just now,” he said, still grinning. He waved back. “Hi!”
The smell was the first thing he noticed. He hadn’t realised just how intense the fumes in the air could be, compared to Kamar-Taj. The same could be said for the noise; honestly Kamar-Taj wasn’t much quieter, the noises just tended to be different. Grunts of exertion, whistling of spells, without the sound of cars or angry shouts.
He made it to the station a minute before the train pulled in. Steve craned his head, looking over the crowd as the passengers disembarked. Some people were cheering, banners and flags all over the place. Vaguely, Steve realised he’d missed most of the victory parties – he’d seen pictures of them in the papers, crowds filling up the streets, but Kamar-Taj was ever-detached from such things.
Still, the mirth reached him. He joined in with the cheer as the troops emerged, then saw Bucky among them and waved, cheering louder.
Bucky stumbled as the wall of sound hit him. Then he locked eyes with Steve, and suddenly joined in with the grinning, waving back.
It was the better part of an hour before they got a chance to actually talk to each other. The station was packed full, and an impromptu party had started up, people relishing in the end of the war. Once they lost sight of each other, it wasn’t easy to find one another again.
Eventually, it was Bucky that located Steve, grabbing him in a tight hug. Steve laughed.
“Welcome back,” Steve said.
“Good to see you,” Bucky said. He cocked his head. “Have you actually gotten smaller?”
“Very funny,” Steve said.
He pulled back, grin not going anywhere; Bucky glanced at his hand.
“Nice jewellery,” he said, eyeing the sling ring. “Really, I leave for a month and you start making fashion statements?”
Steve quietly slipped that hand down, slipping it into his pocket. He’d forgotten he was still wearing it, honestly; it was becoming second nature.
“Had to entertain myself somehow,” Steve said.
“Get into any more scraps while I was away?” Bucky said.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Steve said.
“I’m sure, I’m sure,” Bucky said.
He stepped closer again for a hug; Steve stepped back.
“How about we save that for after you’ve had a shower?” Steve said.
“Sorry occupied France doesn’t live up to your standards of cleanliness,” Bucky said. Still, he chuckled. “Look, I’m sorry, I know I promised not to end the war until you got there, but is it my fault they turned tail and ran as soon as I landed?”
Steve bit his lip. Then he paused, glancing around the station quickly; there was a small alleyway just to the side of it that seemed quiet enough.
Magic wasn’t exactly a secret; Kamar-Taj had to be there to welcome seekers, but it wasn’t something that they announced to everyone. The less people knew about the Sanctums, the fewer foes they faced, and the more secure they were. Still, he didn’t want to lie to Bucky.
“About that,” Steve said slowly. “There’s something I should probably tell you.”
“What?” Bucky said. “Oh, I get it, it’s my hair isn’t it? You don’t like my hair.”
“Not exactly,” Steve said. “Come with me.”
He hurried over to the side. Bemused, lifting an eyebrow, Bucky followed. Once they were secluded, Steve lifted up his sling ring, quickly doing the practiced gesture.
Bucky snorted. Then screamed when the air started to sparkle.
“Steve! Steve!” Bucky said.
Steve focused, and finished the portal back to his room. He looked back at the very wide-eyed Bucky with a smile.
“Coming?” he said.
“Coming- wait, that’s your place. You did that?” Bucky said, stammering.
“Like I said, probably should talk,” Steve said.
He hopped forwards into the privacy of his room. More tentatively, Bucky walked closer, looking from side to side at the glowing border of the portal. He quickly jumped through as if afraid it was going to close around him – then he yelped as it closed behind him.
“I kinda picked up a few things while you were gone,” Steve said. “Someone called the Ancient One found me, and trained me, and- Bucky? Bucky?”
Bucky had sat down on the sofa. He was staring at the wall.
“Bucky, are you okay?” Steve said.
“My best friend’s a wizard now. Give me a second,” Bucky said.
Smiling fondly, Steve sat down opposite him. There was shock on Bucky’s face, understandably, but it didn’t seem to be any more than that. He glanced down at the sling ring again.
“What?” Bucky said. “So you were so desperate to enlist you found a wizard to help?”
“Not exactly,” Steve said. He paused. “How do you think Hitler got to the US?”
Bucky opened his mouth. Then closed it again. He looked at the sling ring, at where the portal had been, back to the ring, to the wall, and then back at Steve. His mouth opened and closed a few times.
“That was you?” Bucky said.
Steve couldn’t quite keep from grinning. Bucky ran at him with a hug, toppling them both off the sofa, with a cheer.
“Tell me you socked him one,” Bucky said.
“Kinda,” Steve said.
Bucky cheered again. There was an annoyed knock on the wall and a “Keep it down!”
“Sorry!” Steve called. Bucky cheered over him. “Bucky!”
“Hey, my best friend punched Hitler, give me this,” Bucky said. “You know, I really shouldn’t be surprised you found some way to get involved. You always were a stubborn-”
Steve suddenly felt cold. He frowned, not sure what had sparked that. Something akin to dread settled in the pit of his stomach.
Something was wrong.
“Steve?” Bucky said, trailing off. “You good?”
“I’m not sure,” Steve said.
It wasn’t that he had much in the way of magical senses yet. He could tell when magic was being worked near him, though he was still fairly bad at determining what type; this was something more intentional.
He’d heard that some Sanctums had a magical equivalent of an SOS, an instinctive feeling that something was wrong. He’d not experienced it before.
More than that, though, the idea of lifting up his sling ring suddenly felt wrong. It wasn’t just an alarm, it was a warning: stay away.
“Steve?” Bucky said. He frowned. “Is this wizard stuff?”
“It might be,” Steve said. “Sorry. I think I need to check on this.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Bucky said. “We’re going to talk so much more when you’re back though.”
Steve nodded, then sat down. Bucky looked at him strangely.
“Er, Steve?” he said. “You’re not really going anywhere.”
And then Steve left his body behind.
Astral projection was something he’d started to learn. He wasn’t a master of it yet, but some books were enchanted to only be readable to astral selves, so he’d prioritised learning the basics. Rather than risking himself and opening a portal, he quickly projected himself over the sea.
Kamar-Taj was like a lodestone. It was so easy to find.
And it was smoking. Suddenly on edge, Steve drew closer; ahead of him, the billowing smoke stilled as he drew nearer. Flames flickered and roared and froze, searing orange tongues stopped in place. Stones were in mid-air, not yet completing their fall.
Time was not so fixed on the astral plane. Minutes, hours could pass in the time it took for a second to pass in reality; Steve drifted down, looking around in horror.
On one side, invaders. Nazi uniforms, save for the lack of swastika, each one replaced with an odd symbol with a skull and tentacles. There were dozens in formation, all holding guns, all firing forwards.
There were a handful of bodies on the ground, robes torn and stained with blood, and gaping holes in the walls. Half-complete explosions marred once-perfect carvings, shattered serene archways and sanctuaries.
There was one sorcerer, arms outstretched in front of herself, projecting a shield of orange light ahead of herself. Whatever bullets the invaders were using, tinted with a blue light that still seemed to shift and alter even from Steve’s frozen perspective, cut right through the magical warding like it was nothing.
And then, deeper inside Kamar-Taj, Masters and students alike were being herded through a sea of portals. One Steve recognised as Hamir was further back, gaze looking back at the conflict.
One side, the invaders, the other, the denizens of Kamar-Taj fleeing weapons their spells didn’t seem to be able to stop – and between it all, the Ancient One.
Steve could only guess at the names of half the spells she was using even in just that instant. Her hood was up over her face, mandalas of shining light in each of her hands, and the Eye of Agamotto around her neck.
There were distortions in the air, neat lines like edges, in ordered patterns in the process of being shattered like glass. There was a sea of bullets wreathed in the same, eerie blue light, being held back by tiny green sparks. There were shadows in the ground that shot outwards, pulling down some of the soldiers, but more were always behind.
And through it all, those bullets impeded by almost nothing.
Steve floated in place, beholding the tableau.
“Why am I not surprised you came?”
He heard the Ancient One’s voice. He turned, to see her, transparent like himself. Somehow, even in the midst of all this chaos, she’d sensed him and decided to project to him regardless.
Steve swallowed.
“What’s happening?” he said.
“There are many roads to Kamar-Taj, for those interested,” the Ancient One said. “Normally we receive people in need of healing. These, I think, want revenge.”
She floated by their frozen forms, strangely melancholy. Steve hurried after her.
“I don’t know if we would have won,” the Ancient One said. “Their weapons are strange, and if we fought, a lot of us would have died. I didn’t want that on my conscience again. I told them all to run to safety. Some didn’t listen.”
“Can’t you see?” Steve said.
“Oh Steven,” the Ancient One said. “I’ve never been able to look past my own death.”
They stopped for a moment. The two projections hung in the sky, above the building that marked the entrance to Kamar-Taj, seeing both the trucks and jeeps lined up outside, and the Ancient One standing alone against it all.
Steve faltered.
“There’s a chance,” Steve said. “I can go back to my body; if I open a portal in time…”
“No, Steve,” the Ancient One said. “You’d invite a hail of gunfire into your home, and they’d be free to over-run Kamar-Taj and reach the others. This is the best way.”
He looked down, uncertain. She drifted in front of him as if to take his attention off of it.
“I’ve seen this moment a thousand times, a thousand different ways,” she said. “But never past it.”
“This doesn’t have to be the end,” Steve said.
“Always trying to help,” she said. She smiled fondly. “That’s why I chose you.”
Smoke billowed out ahead of them, moving only the tiniest amount, billowing like it was made from treacle. It would almost have been beautiful, if not for the context.
“I didn’t have to choose you, you know,” the Ancient One said. “I could never have gone to New York. Do you know what would have happened to you?”
“I’d have gone home and waited for the end of the war,” Steve said. He paused.
“You’d have been a hero,” she said. “A symbol of hope, that inspired people for decades to come. And I’d have lived for a week more, a year more, a century more. There were so many paths forwards, and so many people I could have chosen.”
She paused for a moment. Her gaze drifted upwards, her voice quieter.
“I thought I’d be ready for it, when the time came.”
Unconsciously, Steve drifted closer. He took her hand; she looked at him, her expression barely shifting, but he saw the gratitude in her eyes.
“I took your destiny from you,” she said. “For that, I am sorry. But I saw who you could have been, and I thought of what you might be able to do in my place. The world might lack Captain America, but I can only hope that what it will gain in place of him will be worth it. I think it will be.”
Steve looked down. The insignia, as unfamiliar as it was to him, was close enough to what he did know.
“This is because of me, isn’t it?” Steve said. “I got their attention. Made them start looking for magic.”
“You say that like I didn’t know that they would,” the Ancient One said. “Without you, the war would have gone on for years yet. Millions more would die. You prevented that. If the cost of that is this…”
She paused.
“If I’d known it would have cost your life, I would have found another way,” Steve said.
“There’s that heart,” she said. She smiled. “I’ve been glad to know you, for what time we’ve had.”
“If you hadn’t chosen me-” Steve said.
“I’d have lived, for a little longer,” the Ancient One said. “I’ve seen all the paths. But after centuries, I thought a loss of a few decades would be easier to bear.”
“I don’t want this to be it,” Steve said.
“If we only all had that choice,” the Ancient One said. “I chose you, Steve Rogers. I knew it would mean this would end soon, but I chose you because I believe – I truly believe – that you will be a better person than I am.”
Steve swallowed. Bullets drifted inch by inch through the heavy air.
“I don’t want to say goodbye,” he said.
“Hold onto your heart. Don’t ever feel like you need to be me, when you can be you,” the Ancient One said. She held his hand, tightly. “And thank you. In my final days, it was good to have a friend.”
He looked at her. She leant forwards to whisper:
“Go.”
And Steve was sat on his couch, the sick feeling in his stomach not going away, and Bucky stood beside him, hunching forwards. Whatever Bucky was about to say died on his lips when he saw the tears in Steve’s eyes.
He felt the cold, suddenly. All the frailties of his body came rushing back to him along with the icy certainty that somewhere, far beyond his reach, Kamar-Taj was falling and soldiers were shooting at the Ancient One.
He closed his hand into a fist, and felt the sling ring.
She’d told him not to. He felt the metal drag over his fingers, catching on his knuckles, and felt the spark of power inside the artefact; he could at least try to help. That instinctive revulsion, the spell-sent warning, still seized him. He pushed past it.
Except Bucky was here. Others were here, in the apartment building all around him. If he opened a portal onto a war zone, it would tear through all of this. He wouldn’t spend their lives.
Steve forced himself to his feet.
“Steve?” Bucky said.
“I’ve got to go,” Steve said. “The city’s falling.”
“What?” Bucky said.
“Long story, people are in danger. I have to help her,” Steve said.
“You got that from sitting on a couch?” Bucky said.
Steve was already halfway out the door.
She’d told him to stay put – she’d also told him to be himself, not spend lives as easily as she did, so forget that. He sprinted down the hallway, cast a quick spell to stop himself running short of breath, and half-ran, half-fell down the stairwell.
Bucky was always a step behind him. They burst out the front door- the street was surprisingly quiet for New York, empty with most people at the station and parade. Not even looking for cover, Steve stretched out, poised to open a portal.
“Stay here,” Steve said.
“Like hell,” Bucky said.
“It’s not safe,” Steve said.
“Which is supposed to convince me let you run off into it alone how?” Bucky said.
Steve’s hand dropped for a moment, before he steadied in; he drew a circle in the air, and rushed through. There wasn’t even the chance to drop it before Bucky could follow, his friend already by his side.
He’d come through in a meditation room. The floor was wooden, cushions dotted lazily around, and simple, criss-crossing wood walls that Steve could peer out through. The room itself was empty, but at first glance tranquil.
He couldn’t hear gunfire; he could smell burning though. After a moment, he heard a German shout.
Quickly, Steve darted over to the wall, looking out through one of the gaps in the design. There were scorch-marks in the ground, definite signs of a fight.
It couldn’t have taken him more than a minute to get here. Had it taken so little time for the fight to be over? He’d seen sorcerers fleeing.
Kamar-Taj wasn’t a sanctum. It was a near-scared place, but there were no immediate world-ending ramifications if it fell. They could afford to abandon it, in theory: in practice it was a magical storehouse that connected the three sanctums together. Losing it was still a blow, and a boon for whoever took it.
Bucky placed a hand on his shoulder, moving in front of him protectively. Steve raised an eyebrow, and summoned a shield-construct to one hand, moving it in front of Bucky – he’d seen that they didn’t hold up to whatever weapon these soldiers were using, but the point stood.
“Which one of us has punched Hitler?” Steve said.
“Show-off,” Bucky said.
Steve slowly moved past him. The shield seemed to come naturally to him; step one was always keeping himself, and anyone near him, safe. He could worry about what to do after that.
He stepped out into the hallway; seeing it empty, he slowly stalked forwards. Bucky seemed to fall into line easily: he supposed, for him, this was old hat.
The front plaza wasn’t far. Steve turned a corner into an open walkway.
A figure in orange robes lay on the ground. Steve stiffened.
And someone saw them; a shout went up as the mere four soldiers in view suddenly turned. Bucky grabbed Steve’s shoulder, suddenly urgent.
“Steve,” he said. “That insignia. Steve, we’ve got to go.”
Steve stared for a moment, shaking, before he saw the guns raise; he quickly pulled back just as shimmering bullets shot past them.
“Too late,” Steve muttered. “I was too late.”
He opened a portal quickly, Bucky running through first. There was no one in Kamar-Taj to save.
She’d told him. She’d-
Steve tripped over a staff as he made it back to his apartment. He quickly straightened, the portal vanishing behind him, and looked around in disbelief.
It was definitely his place. He recognised the walls, the couch, that lamp… Only now there were half a dozen chests balanced precariously on one another in the corner, a new hatstand with brightly-coloured garments draped over it, and multiple staves clattering all over his floor.
He blinked.
Something on the hatstand jumped up. It was a small cap, a dark navy, scraps of white on either side of it twitching excitedly. It floated at an unnatural trajectory down to the sofa.
Steve frowned. Cautiously he walked over, lifted up the hat, and put it back where it had come from.
“They’re magical,” Steve said slowly.
Bucky was keeping back to the wall, doing a remarkably job of keeping his composure despite being overwhelmed by everything.
Steve’s eyes widened.
“She sent them here,” Steve said.
“What?” Bucky said.
“She was always worried about if Kamar-Taj drew the wrong kind of attention,” Steve said. “Whoever took it would have access to every artefact it had. She must have prepared an enchantment ready, to send them… why would she choose here?”
“Wrong kind of attention is right,” Bucky said. “Did you see those soldiers?”
“Nazis,” Steve said grimly. “She was afraid this would happen. After I- I used magic to get past their defences. Someone must have figured that out, and followed it back to Kamar-Taj.”
“Worst kind of Nazi,” Bucky said. He grimaced. “When we were doing clean-up, there were a few hold-outs, most of them had that symbol. HYDRA. Some kind of scientific branch, too obsessed to let it go.”
“They looked more organised than hold-outs,” Steve said.
“Yeah,” Bucky said. He paused. “I think I need to report this in.”
Steve hesitated.
“Yeah. I should contact a Sanctum with all this,” Steve said.
He was quiet for a moment.
“This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” Steve said. Bucky threw an arm around his shoulders.
“Never goes right, huh?” Bucky said. “We can talk soon, I promise.”
“Yeah,” Steve said.
Neither of them moved. Bucky squeezed him.
“You okay?” Bucky said. “Won’t pretend I understand much of this, but it sounded like there was someone important to you there.”
Steve faltered.
“Yeah. Just. Thought we’d have more time,” he said. He moved away. “Report it in. Kamar-Taj is in Nepal, Kathmandu. ‘HYDRA’ are there.”
“Er. Right. Hopefully they believe me,” Bucky said. “You won’t do anything stupid while I’m gone?”
“When have I ever?” Steve said.
Johann Schmidt strode through the once-hallowed halls of Kamar-Taj. His false face, he’d discarded before leaving his castle in the Alps. As himself, he looked around the blasted place.
“Empty!” he shouted, a snarl twisting his crimson features. “I was promised treasures! Relics! Gifts taken from the laps of the gods!”
Vast rooms filled with nothing, empty shelves, empty display cases, empty racks. Empty, empty, empty. He’d found a former student of this place, and they’d learned all they needed to from them: they’d spoken of wonders.
Instead he had wooden cots and decorative rooftops. He punched a hole in the wall.
“Sir!” a lieutenant approached. “What are our orders?”
“Set up a camp. The treasures must have gone somewhere – we will find out where,” he said. “And then we will burn this place to the ground.”
Steve found the New York Sanctum the old-fashioned way. The sling ring didn’t seem to want to open a portal there; it was like it shorted out before it could complete the circle. Some sort of defence mechanism was up.
Either way, Steve knew roughly what neighbourhood it was in. He walked.
At first glance, the building didn’t stand out. There was the distinctive, odd glyph in the window overhead, but it was a building much like any other. Still, the sigil on the door, as much as it might seem decorative to the uninitiated, marked it as a place of sorcery.
Steve knocked. He felt a slight tingle, the thrum of countless spells passing over him, before the door unlocked.
“Steve!”
The foyer was wide open, with a staircase leading up and branching into two, with sorcerers trekking all over the place. Some were stood by the walls, hands moving in familiar motions, placing down layer after layer of protective spells into the Sanctum’s already-sturdy wardings.
Others were carrying objects, some of which Steve knew, and some he didn’t want to know about. Most were armed.
And Hamir, the young student Steve had met so briefly, was hurrying up to him.
“I’m glad you made it out,” he said. “I didn’t see you when we came through. Did you hear what happened?”
“I felt the warning,” Steve said. He looked around. “What’s happening here?”
“After Kamar-Taj fell, the Masters were worried that the Sanctums would be the next target,” Hamir said. “We’re fortifying all three of them. We’re stationed here for the time being. Have you come to help?”
“Kind of, I guess,” Steve said. He scratched his head. “I have a few hundred mystical artifacts that were transported into my apartment that I could do with help unloading.”
“You what?” Hamir said, blinking.
“The Ancient One sent them there,” Steve said. “Maybe she didn’t know what Sanctums were still safe? I figure they’re safer in a place with a door that isn’t a bad day away from falling down.”
“Er. Right. Yeah. I’ll… I’ll get a Master,” Hamir said.
So many of the people there were still students, Steve reflected. The Masters of the Mystic Arts were there, many helping with the warding, but they didn’t make up all of the would-be defenders.
He didn’t know if it would be enough. He still didn’t know what kind of weapons HYDRA had that so effortlessly got through the shields at Kamar-Taj; maybe more prepared places would stand, but the numbers HYDRA seemed to have were concerning.
He supposed he had been trying to enlist in a war.
“You! Address?”
An older woman strode up to him. Steve nodded, quickly giving it, and saw her open a portal. She gestured to a few nearby to go in and help remove the objects.
“Excuse me,” Steve said. “The people that attacked Kamar-Taj – I’ve heard they’re called HYDRA – what are we doing to stop them?”
“Right now?” she said. “Nothing. The safety of the Sanctums is paramount.”
“What?” Steve said.
“If these fall, everything falls,” she said. “We are scattered. Weakened. Without Kamar-Taj as our rallying point, we are disconnected. For the time being we need to focus on ourselves; if this HYDRA does not strike at us again, all is well. If it does, we will be ready.”
“All won’t be well if they’re still out there,” Steve said. “What if they go after places that aren’t as safe as the Sanctums with that kind of weaponry?”
“Then the Earth will survive,” she said. “That is our first duty.”
“Our first duty is to the people,” Steve said.
“Who will suffer far more if the Sanctums fall,” she said. “Are you helping?”
One of the chests had been lugged into the foyer. It was opened, and a second chest, somehow of an identical size, was pulled out. Both still seemed full of objects.
Steve looked over to the unpacking, and to the new wealth of weapons that this Sanctum had gained. Whatever the Ancient One had thought sending them to him, they were better used here; for starters, more people here would have a clue how to use them.
“I think you’ve got it handled,” Steve said. “I’m needed somewhere else.”
He waved a goodbye to Hamir, before stepping out the door, the tingle of the guardian-spells washing over him.
When he got home, exhausted, Steve slumped down onto his sofa. He figured that walking would give the sorcerers enough time to pick up everything; it seemed he was right. They’d jumbled some of the furniture around, but the place seemed intact. One of them had even fixed the door hinge.
An enemy with weapons they couldn’t fight. The Ancient One, dead. Sorcerers who wouldn’t help any other targets of HYDRA. No Sorcerer Supreme, no idea how HYDRA were so powerful, and no way to fight them.
An enemy he’d caused. An enemy his actions had seen led to Kamar-Taj’s doorstep.
In exchange for ending the war and, according to the Ancient One, saving millions of lives. Though those lives would only be truly saved if HYDRA was stopped now.
There was a hissing sound. Another, smaller portal opened up on his table; it slid back a second, and deposited a small pendant, before it closed. Steve frowned.
Was it another one of the relics? The Ancient One must have been planning this for a while to store them all ready. Had she put one of them on a delay?
Steve smiled wryly. Had she expected him to hand everything over? This felt like her way of telling him that this one was important; frowning, he reached over, hooking his finger through the chain and lifting it up.
A single circle of grey metal hung from it, and Steve’s eyes widened. The Eye of Agamotto was one of the most powerful things stored in Kamar-Taj; the Ancient One herself was the only one that used it. She had used it, for that matter, in the final conflict.
She must have sent it away in her last seconds. Sent it to somewhere that would…
Send it here. But he didn’t know how to use it, nor what he was meant to do with it. Steve closed his hand around it and pocketed it, sighing.
Okay, maybe there was no magical solution. Then he’d just need to find an ordinary one. Steve stood up, closing his eyes, and lifting up his sling ring.
“Bucky,” he murmured.
A portal opened. He stepped through into a cramped, dim office, admittedly unsurprised to see the handful of people present jump.
Secrecy was feeling less and less worth it.
There was a map on the table, a notice-board on the wall behind them, and a few desks all around them. One light hung from the ceiling, casting a muted glow upon the few people present. There was a gruff-looking military man stood at one side of the table, next to a man with a moustache, both staring at Steve. Then there was Bucky, who was the only one who didn’t look like the Earth cracked open.
A handful more soldiers stood around, mostly male, with one woman towards the back.
“What in the-”
“Told you I wasn’t making it up,” Bucky said, slightly smugly. “Colonel Phillips, this is my best friend the wizard.”
“Sorcerer, technically,” Steve said. “Hi.”
He paused.
“Is it okay if I’m here?” he said. “Not meaning to intrude, I just figured we could help each other.”
He looked around the room, smiling awkwardly. Phillips was stammering slightly. The man beside him – Steve suddenly recognised him from the papers as Howard Stark – was staring at him with a keen curiosity.
“You’re the guy that punched Hitler?” Phillips said, eventually.
“Um. Yeah,” Steve said.
“Let me buy you a drink when we’re done,” he said. “Of course you can stay. Any objections?”
Bucky flashed a grin at Steve. No one in the room protested.
“We’ve been keeping an eye on HYDRA for some time,” the woman in the crowd said. She nodded to him. “Agent Carter.”
“Steve Rogers,” he said. “Do you know anything about those weapons of theirs?”
“Our last intelligence said they’d gotten hold of something they call the Tesseract,” Carter said. “We don’t know exactly what it is, just that they planned to use it to help their technology.”
Tesseract… Steve frowned.
“I think I’ve heard of that,” Steve said. “One second.”
He opened a portal, quickly stepping back through it while everyone stared. In the New York Sanctum suddenly, he perused the shelves; this place ought to have a copy of some books.
Quietly, he picked one out. He was sure he’d read a version of that one at Kamar-Taj; he flicked through it until he saw the word, then looked up.
They wouldn’t miss this for a few minutes, he was sure. Holding it close, Steve stepped back.
“Jesus!” Howard shouted when Steve reappeared. Steve smiled apologetically, before putting the book down on the table.
He opened it to the page he’d seen. There was an artist’s rendition of a cube, beside a shaded sketch of a sphere; frowning, Steve skimmed it.
A singularity crystallised into a manifestation of space, kept in a cube to channel its power. It had many names over the centuries, but all the stories had one thing in common; it offered power.
An Infinity Stone. He’d read the name while perusing these books, though quite what that meant he wasn’t sure. He quickly read ahead: they were six of the most powerful items in creation. The others were lost. One was used in an ancient war of gods, another was sealed away, another wielded as a sceptre by ancient beasts, another had never been found, and another…
Another was in his pocket at that very moment.
“Well that’s a lot of gobbledegook,” Phillips said.
“If that’s what it is, HYDRA can’t be using it at its full power,” Steve said, contemplatively. “The longer we wait, the more they’ll figure it out, and the worse it’ll be.”
No wonder they’d overpowered all the normal defences. It would take one hell of a spell to stand up to something charged with an infinity stone. Uncertainly, he flicked through the book; others were mentioned, rituals and mythology of no interest.
“Sorry, not trying to take over,” Steve said. “Where were you getting?”
“We got as far as HYDRA being sighted in Nepal,” Phillips said. “Sergeant Barnes leading with ‘a wizard told me’ wasn’t the most persuasive argument. Er, no offence.”
“I was right there a few weeks ago, none taken,” Steve said. “Have to admit, I’ve never heard of HYDRA though.”
“Not too many have,” Howard said. He glanced towards some of the officers near the back of the room: “Buckle in, if you slacked off during the last briefing, here’s your catch-up. Anything you can offer magic man, it’ll be great.”
For all the shock of his arrival, the impromptu meeting had become oddly routine. He’d learned about HYDRA, heard the name Johann Schmidt thrown around as their leader, and said a little about Kamar-Taj.
If HYDRA was going after magical sites, that both increased the chances they’d stumble onto something as dangerous as the Tesseract, and that they’d get better at using the cube. And just the fact they had the cube was giving people pause.
The last intel received seemed to be that HYDRA hadn’t left the city they’d conquered. Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Ideally, he supposed, HYDRA would end up throwing themselves at the Sanctums and find that the defences were now prepared for them. That felt like too much of a risk though; it was hard to guarantee that anything could hold against the Tesseract, and war spilling out onto the streets around the Sanctums would see casualties.
Which left Steve, a book open on his lap, sat in a quiet back-room while the military talked secrets and Phillips had a long phone call regarding the clearance level of civilians who could open portals anywhere.
The door was nudged open. Steve looked up from the tome, head still swimming slightly; there was a man Steve didn’t recognise poking his head inside. His hair was wispy and grey, with flecks of grey in his short beard, though his eyes were kind.
“Hello?” Steve said, uncertainly.
“I heard a little about you. I thought I should find you,” he said. “May I come in?”
“Sure,” Steve said. “Can I help you?”
“I might be able to help you,” he said.
He sat down, and smiled, offering a hand.
“By the sound of it, you’re the one that’s going to be fighting HYDRA, and Schmidt,” he said. “My name is Dr Abraham Erskine, I knew Schmidt, before I came over here. Not under pleasant circumstances, you understand, but we… interacted. Not something most here can say.”
Erskine looked like a quiet man, comfortable hunched over in his chair, his words coming out as though they’d only just occurred to him. Still, there was a warmth to him.
Steve supposed he was as much a stranger to most of these people as they were to him: ironic, really, that when he’d ended up working with the army, it was almost by accident. This probably wasn’t what a sorcerer was meant to do.
Still, whatever worked. Steve leaned back from his book, shuffling his chair around to better face Erskine.
“That might help,” Steve said. “Hi, Steve Rogers.”
“I know who you are,” Erskine said. He adjusted his glasses, fidgeting slightly. “I should probably thank you, for freeing my homeland.”
“It wasn’t just me,” Steve said.
“You were, ah, a rather instrumental part I understand,” Erskine said. “Losing a leader overnight would destabilise any regime. It happening in such an impossible way, I understand, quite demoralising. An act of patriotism, on your part?”
“I never really saw it like that,” Steve said. “He was someone that needed to be stopped. Didn’t matter where he was from, or where I was from.”
“Ah, well, I am glad to hear that,” Erskine said. “So no objections to tips from a German?”
“Where I came from, there were people from all over,” Steve said. “Nothing matters more than doing what’s right.”
Erskine looked at him strangely for a moment, then chuckled softly to himself.
“Doctor?” Steve said.
“Nothing, it’s nothing,” Erskine said. “I spend my time trying to help the US by creating enhanced soldiers for them, poring over chemical formulae and radiation treatments, and it turns out all I need is a few hand movements and magic chants.”
“There’s, er, not really that much chanting,” Steve said.
Erskine chuckled again. He nodded, before his expression clouded.
“Speaking of, I suppose I should mention Schmidt,” he said. “He wished me to make him into a super-soldier, as I was researching even then. I said no, of course, but he took an incomplete version and so…”
“It changed him?” Steve said.
“It made him more of what he was,” Erskine said. “Angry. Violent. Obsessive. He wanted power – and he’d always had a fascination with the occult. I thought it was just the Tesseract he was after.”
“Apparently not,” Steve said, grimly.
Had that been part of what pointed him to Kamar-Taj? A willingness to believe it was real, or just a pre-existing awareness of it?
Steve frowned.
“Power-hungry?” Steve said.
“Certainly one word for him,” Erskine said.
“That… probably answers one question,” Steve said. “I was wondering if we had any chance of getting the Tesseract away from them; there might be a way to use it to disable all the weapons that draw on its power as a source, though by how you describe him, someone like Schmidt wouldn’t simply store it somewhere.”
“I’d be surprised if it ever left his side,” Erskine said. “Well, I’m glad to have contributed something.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Steve said.
So Schmidt still had the Tesseract. Technically that was the worst case scenario, but at least it limited the options he had to prepare for. Unfortunately there weren’t many spells that seemed able to take an Infinity Stone, and certainly none that he felt confident enough to try.
The side effects of tapping into that kind of power were rarely good.
“I, ah, do not know if my program will ever be completed,” Erskine said. “Since you ended this, I mean – and I am not ungrateful, I think someone that makes people into weapons must one day hope to become obsolete, though it does… frustrate me, to think that the one result of all my work is someone as twisted as Schmidt.”
“I’m sure you can find other applications,” Steve said.
“Maybe,” Erskine said. He smiled. “Still, I wish you luck, and I’m sorry for my part in this.”
“Me too,” Steve said.
He nodded a goodbye, as Erskine left. When he turned his attention back to the book, he reluctantly turned the page back to the Eye of Agamotto.
That was what this seemed to come down to. He pulled the relic out of his pocket and put it down on the table, staring at it; while the metal was closed, it was hard to believe the power he knew lie within it.
And this was all he knew that might be able to stand up to the Tesseract. Stone against Stone.
If he had to, he supposed.
“Hey, now, you can’t go in there!”
The door opened again. He recognised the guest this time as Carter, and stood up, frowning at the sound of a scuffle behind her.
“Is everything okay?” Steve said.
There was a suited office just a couple of steps behind her, Carter quickly darting forwards out of his reach.
“Sorry, sir, she was told not to disturb you,” he said.
“Something that didn’t seem to matter with Dr Erskine,” Carter muttered. “I’ve seen HYDRA more than a few times, I thought I could help.”
“Then you’re welcome, I’m kinda at a loss,” Steve said. He shot a baffled look to the man behind her; seemingly not completely happy, the man backed away.
Steve sat back down. A second later, irate, Carter closed the door behind her. She glanced down sceptically at the book.
“’Sir,’” Steve echoed. “That feels a bit wrong.”
“Not a soldier?” she said. “You certainly aren’t acting much like a lot of them.”
“Is that a compliment?” Steve said.
“I think so,” she said. She eyed him a moment, then offered her hand: “Peggy Carter.”
“Steve Rogers,” he said, taking it.
It was easy to put the goal into words. HYDRA was holed up in Kamar-Taj, armed with weapons that could blast through anything, and Schmidt had the Tesseract. He could open a portal there easily, but after that, there didn’t seem to be anything that wouldn’t end in massive loss of life.
“Though unless you know how to use this, this may not end in much,” Steve said, lifting the chain of the Eye.
“What is that?” Peggy said.
“The Earth’s last and best weapon, apparently,” Steve said.
The pendant hung limply. It was closed, metal bars completely concealing the radiant green at its core.
“She wanted me to have it,” Steve said. “I just wish I knew why.”
“She?” Peggy said.
“Oh, the Ancient One,” Steve said. “My… teacher, I guess. She was in Kamar-Taj when HYDRA came; she fought them.”
“Ancient One?” Peggy said. “Huh. That’s more what I expected to hear a wizard be called. Steve’s a bit ordinary, don’t you think?”
“What’s wrong with Steve?” he said.
“Doesn’t have the same kind of impact as ‘Ancient One’ does it?” Peggy said.
Steve snorted.
“True enough,” he said.
It suddenly struck him they thought he had any idea what he was doing; he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He hadn’t meant to lie to them but, well, he was still in training. He had a few basic tricks, but even some of the fundamentals were beyond him.
It was like they were hiring an engineer, and picked him because he knew what numbers were, and nothing more than that. The fact he knew about magic elevated him, in their eyes – he probably ought to tell them he’d only learned the bare minimum.
Then again, what would that achieve? He’d just make them lose hope. He hadn’t meant to deceive, and he wouldn’t pretend that he could do more than he could, but ‘guy who portalled into a bunker and ended the war’ seemed to do a better job at inspiring than ‘disobedient student.’
“Sorcerers didn’t mind being taught by a woman?” Peggy said. “I don’t know how well that would fly here.”
“There were a couple of meatheads that visited,” Steve said. “Hard to argue with her though. She had this presence, like you knew she knew what she was talking about. Plus she could hit you out of your body. She was respected.”
“I think I’d have liked to meet her,” Peggy said. Her expression fell. “She was there when HYDRA attacked?”
Silent, Steve nodded. Peggy gently took his hand.
“Pity she didn’t have that, then,” Peggy said.
“She did,” Steve said, distracted. “She-”
Steve frowned.
No. Wait. That was a point. The Ancient One had been wearing the Eye of Agamotto when HYDRA had attacked; he’d seen it. He’d seen her freeze time around the bullets. That was the only reason she’d been able to last as long as she did, and delayed HYDRA enough to let the other sorcerers flee.
And even it hadn’t been enough; maybe even the time stone could only last so long against Tesseract-powered weaponry.
Steve skimmed the many paragraphs written on the Eye of Agamotto.
So why did she want him to have it? What could he possibly do that she couldn’t?
“Something wrong?” Peggy said.
“She had the Eye,” Steve said. “And she wanted me to have the Eye, but it wasn’t enough to stand up to a whole army with those weapons. So why single this out?”
“Well, what does it do?” Peggy said.
“Manipulates time,” Steve said. “Rewinds, fast-forwards - it can create time loops, or just freeze things in place.”
“So you could stop bullets in mid-air?” Peggy said.
“Theoretically,” Steve said: he found a passage in the book, and pointed to it. “The Eye of Agamotto is still just a channel for a greater power, a good one, but not a perfect one. Anything with enough power can brute-force past the spell, dark dimension energy, or other stones, like the Tesseract. It might be able to stop the bullets, but just temporarily, and it won’t be able to stop Schmidt if he has the Tesseract.”
“Which would be why she couldn’t stop them,” Peggy said. She paused. “Pity we can’t just get the Tesseract away from him. I’m guessing he won’t just let us take it.”
“Harder than you’d think,” Steve said. “Touching an infinity stone, even in a contained form, can be risky. Some can be deadly.”
He turned back several pages, to find the illustration of the Tesseract again. He skimmed down the page, sighing.
It was all very well to see pages and pages on how powerful an artifact was, but it was still rather discouraging when one had to face it.
“Are there any others of these ‘stones’ we can use?” Peggy said.
“There are six in all creation,” Steve said. “I’d be very surprised if any of the others came anywhere near this planet, let alone in reach of us.”
He idly skimmed through the pages, still willing to try anything.
There was an alarming amount from wizards who’d had the bright idea to open portals to other planets; there were spells that allowed one to walk through the depths of the ocean, comparable protective enchantments made it surprisingly safe to explore.
It wasn’t all that regular a thing, there was no desire to draw yet more threats and attention to the Sanctums, but some things were known. Unfortunately most of what was known was just that everything was completely out of reach.
Steve was halfway to turning the page when he frowned. There was a note there, some fragment of a myth, that caught his attention.
Something he might be able to do, that she couldn’t. That was… risky. And far from guaranteed.
“Huh,” Steve said.
“Steve?” Peggy said.
“I might have something,” he said. “Sorry, er, thanks. I’ll be back soon. I hope.”
He stood up, closing the book. Peggy took a step back, raising her eyebrows.
“You’re leaving?” she said.
“I should return this,” Steve said.
“You might want help,” Peggy said.
“If this works, I won’t need it,” Steve said. “If it doesn’t, I won’t risk anyone else.”
He turned, opening a portal, then paused.
Maybe he could stay for a little longer. That was possible; then again, every second he delayed risked HYDRA striking again, and he still needed to figure out how on earth to use the Eye.
“Tell Bucky I said bye,” Steve said.
And he stepped through the portal.
His first stop had been at the New York Sanctum. He’d returned the book, and passed on the fact that HYDRA was using the Tesseract. The looks on their faces hadn’t been encouraging.
He could have mentioned that he had the Eye, but he delayed; the Ancient One had chosen him after all, and he had to trust her. When it came to knowledge, there was no pretending that hers wasn’t far greater than his. If he was right about her judgement, then he’d have to risk this.
And if he was wrong, well, it still felt like this had a shot of working.
Steve stopped off, next, in the middle of nowhere. He’d borrowed a second book from the Sanctum on time manipulation; after a few minutes, he’d managed to create a construct of green light around one arm.
He kept away from certain enchantments, ones that risked trapping him in a perpetual time loop – that was nothing to risk in practice – but with any luck an easier one would be all he needed. Simply pausing time in a limited area could give him the opening he needed.
If he was right, if the Ancient One was right, and if that story in the book was right.
An hour later, and Steve stared at grains of sand suspended in mid-air. He gritted his teeth, wiped his brow, and stepped back.
The light faded and the sand fell. He paused, contemplatively, not even feeling the thrill of success; it hadn’t worked yet. But that was the only part that he could test without going there, so…
He could see Bucky again, he could visit friends, or he could go to the Sanctum.
But with what this was risking, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to go through with it if he did. He wanted a better goodbye; then again, Bucky had been a soldier. He knew how it was. You didn’t always get that.
Steve Rogers, sorcerer, stood clad in cobalt-blue robes, the Eye of Agamotto around his neck, and a sling ring on one hand. On instinct, he summoned up his shield-construct, for what little protection it would offer against Tesseract-bullets. Green light tinged the gold as the time stone’s power wreathed that arm.
And then, closing his eyes in a silent prayer, he opened up a portal to Kamar-Taj.
It hurt to see the place again.
The square was scorched. The symbols in the walls had been blasted through, doors torn off their hinges, and HYDRA insignia plastered up for the time being.
It was a place that had been a sanctuary, that was meant to be a sanctuary. Now there were jeeps in the plaza, crates of guns where healers had trained, and the places where the Masters went for seclusion were blown open. Uniformed, armed soldiers marched down once-peaceful walkways.
Steve didn’t need to ask which one was Schmidt. A man with a red skull stood at the centre, giving orders to those assembled. The sling ring had taken Steve right to him: Steve had only to take a step forwards before the HYDRA soldiers reached for their guns.
“Invader!” Schmidt shouted.
He pointed; Steve focused, lifting his hand. Around his neck, the Eye of Agamotto opened.
“I hope this works,” Steve murmured.
There was the deafening crack of bullets being fired, streaks of blue all converging on Steve’s position – and they froze in the air. Quickly, Steve sidestepped forwards, trying to get out of the way of all of them. The green aura seemed only to slow them.
He ran towards the stilled Schmidt; even from a distance, he could see the leather pouch belted to his side. All around, the soldiers were frozen stiffly in place, some with their guns raised, and some still lifting them.
And then Schmidt moved. A ripple passed over him, the same blue sheen as the bullets, raw power responding to raw power. A twisted, scarlet face looked down at Steve, Steve’s hand a breath away from the pouch.
Schmidt snarled. He stepped back, instinct making him grab the bag just as Steve did, and a mandala on Steve’s hand ripped through the leather.
Two hands grabbed the shining, eldritch cube, one bare and surrounded by sigils, and the other tightly clad in a leather glove. Beneath them, the cube shone brighter.
There was a flash, and suddenly there were two fewer people standing in the frozen plaza.
There were many legends about the Infinity Stones. Tales spoke of Power sealed away on a world destroyed by war, or in the hands of vast Celestials. Reality was said to be harnessed by an ancient race, older than the universe.
Only a handful myths, however, concerned Soul.
An orange void stretched out as far as the eye could see, ankle-deep water reflecting the muted not-sky. Three people stood, all of them as good as silhouettes against the stark and unforgiving light.
Somehow, Steve was several steps away from Schmidt. Uncomprehending, Schmidt lunged for him; he ended up back where he had started. Only then did he, in his anger, take notice of the third figure.
“Erskine,” Schmidt said, voice contorted with hatred. Steve frowned, but said nothing – it did not look like Erskine to him.
Stories said the Soul Stone had a sentience of its own, that it watched though all other stones, and that it sought, for its own importance, a guardian. A protector. A Stonekeeper.
Common speculation stated that, to gain one, as its location was unknown to most, it would have to take. The space stone was the obvious mechanism.
Quite what that entailed was vague; the notion of a keeper was itself myth verging on conjecture, but there were ideas. Soul saw itself as special, as important, and as something that belonged only to the worthy. Thus, the keeper must be someone that could not possess it.
The figure that looked so much like the Ancient One, to Steve, turned her head to Schmidt. With utter serenity, she looked at the Red Skull.
“You love nothing,” she said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. “It will not take much for you to take your place.”
Schmidt opened his mouth to respond – and then he was gone.
The Ancient One looked at Steve. Steve straightened; instinct still saw him holding his construct-shield, though the time stone no longer seemed to be around his neck while he was in this place.
“Ma’am,” Steve said. “I take it you’re not the Ancient One.”
She didn’t say much. She simply tilted her head, regarding him with a gaze that was at once simple and alien.
“You love too much,” she said.
And then no one stood on the desolate plane.
Kamar-Taj stood frozen. Steve stumbled back into reality, the green runes and sigils around his arm flickering. He looked around, shaking for a reason he couldn’t quite name; the Tesseract was tightly clasped in his hand. He was shaking, feeling once again like he’d passed one of the Ancient One’s unspoken tests.
Quickly, he opened a portal and ran through before HYDRA started moving again. As he did, the Eye of Agamotto closed.
The rest was far easier than the approach had been. The Masters of the New York Sanctum were initially curious as to why he had the Eye, though handing the Tesseract over distracted them from that. One took it to try and find a way to use it to dampen like energies and disable HYDRA’s weapons, while another took the Eye from Steve after he offered it.
And then he collapsed.
“Wow.”
Hamir was soon beside him. Steve smiled tiredly at him.
“I’d have thought you’d be cheering more,” Hamir said. “You got that away from them. Without it, they aren’t a threat anymore.”
“They aren’t a threat to the Sanctums,” Steve said He straightened. “Someone had to deal with that. They’re still a threat to everyone else: this doesn’t feel like it’s over.”
“So what will you do?” Hamir said. “I think everyone’s going to want to retake Kamar-Taj, at the very least.”
Steve paused. He thought of how Kamar-Taj had been, and all of that magic, and thought of what the Ancient One had said.
Forget tradition. Forget how things had been done, and think more about how they should be done.
“I think I want to go to Europe,” Steve said. “There are probably cells there, and there are a lot of people that need freeing, and healing, and need help rebuilding. I can probably help with that.”
“Using magic?” Hamir said.
“I know, it draws attention,” Steve said. “It caused all of this. But we survived, and most people aren’t going to have infinity stones. And if they do, we can stop them. But how many millions of lives were saved by ending the war? I think we can do good, real good, if we think about the little picture as well as the big one.”
Steve sighed.
“I know, probably just going to be me,” Steve said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Hamir said. “You stopped the people that took our home from us – and just because the rest of us didn’t decide to portal into Berlin, doesn’t mean we didn’t care about how the war ended. More people might listen to you than you think.”
Steve hesitated.
“I’m not sure I want that,” he said.
“I’m not sure you get much choice,” Hamir said. He chuckled. “You know, they’re talking about needing a new Sorcerer Supreme.”
“Oh no, no, I don’t know anywhere near enough for that,” Steve said.
“Maybe you know the important things,” Hamir said. Still, he nodded: “The Masters said the same as you, though. They might revisit it in a few years.”
Steve shook his head, more amused than anything; he was mostly sure Hamir was needling him.
The Sanctum was still abuzz with activity, the warding still ongoing; no one seemed entirely comfortable anymore. Hopefully some of those nerves would go away in time.
Still, most of the world had needed to live in fear for the last few years. All that had changed was that the Sanctums weren’t so separate anymore.
It only took a day for Kamar-Taj to be retaken. The Tesseract-weapons were disabled, and the Tesseract itself secured with the countless artifacts that Kamar-Taj held.
And Steve was sat on his couch, staring at his sling ring.
“Phillips is annoyed with you,” Bucky said, walking in. “Called you a glory-hog.”
Steve didn’t answer at once. Undeterred, Bucky sat down next to him.
“You really had to go and solve everything yourself, huh?” Bucky said. “Still picking fights that are way too big for you.”
“Someone has to,” Steve said.
He hesitated.
“It’s strange,” Steve said.
“What is?”
“I always thought of New York as home, even when I was over there,” Steve said. “Now I’m back, I don’t know, it’s just not clicking like I thought it would.”
“You could enlist,” Bucky said. “I’m pretty sure they’ll waive a few requirements, if that’s what you really want.”
“I’m… not sure that’s for me anymore,” Steve said.
“Oh, sure, now you listen to my advice,” Bucky said.
“In the war, yeah, I wanted to help fight,” Steve said. “Now it’s just… taking orders about what to do, and where, and why. I don’t think I’m much good at that.”
“Yeah, I did notice,” Bucky said.
“I want to do something that I know is right,” Steve said. “That’s… harder here.”
He looked at the sling ring. The whole world was opened up for him, through that; the people in Europe he wanted to help were as in reach as places he’d never been or barely heard of.
A sorcerer’s job was to keep the Sanctums safe, he knew that, and he was a sorcerer. He just didn’t see why that had to be his only job.
“You know you’re kinda a hero, right?” Bucky said. “Word got out. The wizard who appeared in the middle of a military briefing, who also single-handedly took down Hitler. Not so secret anymore how you managed it.”
“I wasn’t trying to be that,” Steve said. “I was just doing what I had to – what anyone with this kind of power ought to do.”
“Still. It’s happened,” Bucky said.
“Yeah. I heard something similar at the Sanctums. It’s not really where I expected this to go.”
Finally, Steve reached out, grabbing the sling ring. He glanced sideways and traded a smile with Bucky.
“Hey, you could always join in,” Steve said. “Kamar-Taj welcomes everyone.”
“Magic mumbo-jumbo? No thanks,” Bucky said. “Not for me. I’m seeing if I can talk Erskine into using that serum thing.”
“Well, good luck,” Steve said.
He chuckled; Bucky elbowed him, grinning.
“You’ve got no excuse not to come back sometimes, you know,” Bucky said.
“Like you could get rid of me,” Steve said.
- A figure in blue robes stood, staring up at the sky with an odd look in his eyes; scorching blue looked back down at him. Slowly, each gesture conveying immense effort, he lifted both hands; the sky shifted within a set radius, glimmers of light marking a discontinuity in cloud positions.
Within the borders of that circle, clouds twisted and whirled and unfurled, darkening; a green gem shone brightly from a pendant around his neck. A moment later, and rain started to fall upon barren fields.
He breathed out, wiping his brow, but smiling to himself. That ought to help with the crops in this area; next on his list, he wasn’t sure. Maybe pop back to Kamar-Taj, and…
A portal opened up behind him.
“Sorcerer Supreme,” he said.
“Gabe, come on, you know I like Steve,” he replied tiredly.
“I know, but it’s fun winding you up,” he said, before his expression turned all-business. “Speaking off, got word of a HYDRA splinter, Arnim Zola, French authorities asked if we could lend a hand. You in?”
“Always,” Steve said.
A lot of former soldiers, from all over, had expressed interest in Kamar-Taj after the war; word of sorcery had gotten out fast. It had taken a lot of adjustment, though the Masters had soon seen the merits. The risks were greater, perhaps, but so were the rewards.
There had been a few people who just sought power, but more than that there were people who genuinely wanted to learn. The Sanctums were still safe, and there were people left over to offer that same protection to the rest of the world.
Steve glanced up, stretching his hands out to right the flow of time in the sky once he judged enough rain had fallen. He stretched, then formed a shield in one hand, and walked through the portal.
Time to go to work.
Notes:
Do you know how much self-control it took to not end on "Dormammu. I could do this all day."
Chapter 4: What if... Ultron Worked?
Notes:
Okay so I don't even have an explanation for this one. Not even in a "I low-key like Dark World so here is too much time dedicated to Malekith," sense. I just started speculating and this just kinda happened?
Chapter Text
April 2018
“Hear me and rejoice!”
Ebony Maw strode down the street, apparently oblivious to the panicked screams around him. He opened his arms invitingly, Cull Obsidian, a bulkier figure, a step behind him.
“You are about to die at the hands of the Children of Thanos,” he said. “Be thankful, that your meaningless lives are about to contribute to-”
Something shot at him, interrupting his monologue. A gunmetal grey figure descended over the street in front of them. It was little larger than a human, with remarkably thin, sleek limbs, bright repulsors in its feet slowing its descent. Blue eyes flickered with an unnerving light.
Ebony Maw lifted a hand and gestured dismissively; the metal thing sparked and sputtered, and its limbs were yanked from the core. The torso and head were crushed to scrap metal and flung aside.
Far more quickly, an identical metal figure landed behind him.
“Now that was just uncalled for,” the robot said.
Cull Obsidian brought his fist down to crush it, though not before it fired a blast forwards again.
And then came the swarm. They were swift, methodical, and trained by years of experience. They looked alike, and they co-ordinated like a single being – a single being with hundreds upon hundreds of grasping metal claws.
Cull Obsidian swung at one, and while it distracted him, the swarm was already taking advantage of the moment – suddenly two were at his legs, poised to help him trip, and a dozen more blasted down from above with enough force to splinter the road below.
Ebony Maw, meanwhile, soon found his limbs held back by drones as another descended in front of him, the weapon mounted in its arm bright.
The drones barely spoke. A minute they were there, and the next they were gone, leaving nothing but half a dozen twisted metal bodies and two dead aliens on the ground. No civilians had suffered so much as a minor bruise.
A dozen different expressions could be found on the faces of the crowd. Some were relieved, some were beaming from being saved – others were just excited from having seen a conflict first-hand, even if it was over so soon. Yet more were horrified, or angry, or disturbed, if ultimately powerless.
It was one of the ones who smiled that broke the stunned hush that filled the street, raising a shout to the sky: even if the drones were gone, odds were they still heard.
“Thank you Ultron!”
May 2015
King T’Chaka often looked out upon Wakanda; the city was beautiful, and never lost that charm, no matter how many days passed. A King should love his people, he reflected. The day he lost that sense of wonder, was the day he should pass on his crown. You couldn’t protect or rule without love.
“My King.”
He turned away from his window, to see a stiffly standing Dora a few steps away. His daughter, Shuri, was by the Dora’s side.
“Report,” T’Chaka said.
“Robot apocalypse,” Shuri said helpfully.
T’Chaka raised an eyebrow.
“We were tracking Ulysses Klaue and a shipment of stolen vibranium,” the Dora said. She paused. “He escaped, but there was a… complication. Someone else was after him too.”
“Who? A man like Klaue must have many enemies,” T’Chaka said.
“It has been named Ultron,” the Dora said. “I… do not know much more than that. It is not human.”
“It’s a robot,” Shuri said, again. “I told you. Tony Stark invented a rogue AI, and now the Avengers are fighting it.”
One could never have ordinary problems these days, it seemed. T’Chaka pondered for a moment – it was Wakanda’s place to stay out of the affairs of the larger world, limiting all interference beyond that which the impoverished country most of the world imagined they were could do.
The Avengers complicated matters. The kind of threats they were needed to deal with wouldn’t respect the borders of nations, and AI was potentially deadly – Wakanda had put some study into the topic.
Artificial intelligence was, well, artificial. It could be made. If a mind greater than a human’s could be built, then that mind in turn could design a yet better mind, and that one a yet better – the potential for improvement may as well have been limitless.
It could prove a problem.
Though perhaps it would be wise to trust the Avengers to tidy up their own problems. Wakanda didn’t need to solve every mess; to do so would be overbearing.
T’Chaka grimaced. Or they could all be in danger.
“Investigate,” T’Chaka said. “I want to find out more about this Ultron.”
May 2015
Shuri stood at the head of a table. The Barton family were in another room, leaving Steve, Tony Natasha, Clint and Bruce. She didn’t seem intimidated.
There was what looked like a USB drive on the table, just in front of her.
“Sorry, it’s a what?” Steve said.
“A virus,” Shuri said. “You made him to be a protector, right? Told him to stamp out evil, didn’t give him a sense of what he was protecting. This is the missing piece. A patch that will make him value humanity, not protect some abstract concept of numbers. You really should have thought of that, you know.”
They stared.
“Sorry, who are you again?” Tony said.
“Princess Shuri. Wakanda,” she said. “I’m good with technology.”
“Sure,” Tony said. “Let’s take a look at that.”
He reached for the drive, and then made a face. Getting a look at something that was meant to be a virus wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.
A few minutes later and he’d jury-rigged a contraption from a dead laptop and a gauntlet, while Shuri watched patiently and Clint just sighed as Tony made a mess of his house. Carefully, Tony plugged in the drive.
The laptop whirred, and the gauntlet kept tabs on every change, projecting a small hologram of the code as it flickered by. Tony raised his eyebrows.
“Okay, impressive stuff,” he said slowly.
“It’s not perfect,” Shuri said. “I had to guess at a few points how Ultron’s code works – that’s why I came to you. Do you think you could help fill in the gaps?”
Tony continued to stare at the code, brow furrowing as he flicked through it. A few lines were marked with comments, a few gaps left for additions.
“Wait, what are we talking about here?” Steve said.
“Okay, see, we have these things called computers these days, which run things called programs,” Tony began.
“Tony,” Steve said flatly. “You’re still trying to make it work?”
Distracted, Tony perused the code again, brow furrowed. He tapped a few keys on the laptop, adjusting the wires between it and the gauntlet.
“Tony!” Steve said.
“Do you know how many lives it could save?” Tony said. “If we can make it work-”
“It didn’t exactly go great last time,” Steve said. “You want to just do the same thing again and hope it’ll work?”
“Tell me again about the first draft of that serum running through your veins,” Tony said. “Sometimes it takes a second attempt, or a third, but it can be worth it.”
“And if you fail?” Steve said.
“People have been hurt already,” Tony said. “Do you want all that to be for nothing? If we have the chance to make this right and we don’t take it, what does that make us?”
“We’re making this right if we stop Ultron,” Steve said. “This was a bad idea, Tony, how do you not see that already?”
Bruce cleared his throat. The two stopped for a moment, looking to the side – Clint had apparently decided to leave the room. Shuri was prodding at a loose Iron Man gauntlet with an oddly speculative expression.
“Hey, hands off pint-size,” Tony said. “That’s proprietary technology.”
“Is he always like this?” Shuri said, glancing at Natasha. Natasha shrugged.
“Pretty much,” she said.
Shuri moved back, keeping to Tony’s side to peer around him at the screen as he altered her code. She kept one eye on the gaps he filled in.
Bruce, meanwhile, shifted almost self-consciously. He was always slightly off after a Hulk incident.
“The idea had merit,” Bruce said. “If it works. I don’t really know how we can be sure this will, though. Experiments can go wrong, and when this sort of experiment goes wrong, there can be real consequences.”
“And if it goes right?” Tony said. “You heard her. This can fix him.”
“Maybe,” Steve said. “Er, Princess?”
“Just Shuri,” she said.
“Shuri,” Steve said. “Could you modify it? Rather than… patching Ultron, can you make a virus that will tell him to shut down?”
“If that was easy, don’t you think I’d have done it?” Tony said. “Updating a subroutine and inserting a new command are totally different-”
“Probably,” Shuri said.
Tony glanced at her, mildly annoyed.
“What? The security you gave him wasn’t that great,” Shuri said. “It’s trickier, but he also wouldn’t accept random updates easily. I could probably give him a nonsense-patch, crash his systems across the whole shared mind.”
She reached over for the laptop. She typed for a couple of minutes, Tony looking over her shoulder; he frowned.
“Should’ve thought of that,” he muttered.
“But you didn’t, which in this case is a good thing,” Shuri said.
“So you can do it?” Steve said. “Shut every Ultron down?”
“Wait a second,” Tony said. “We don’t need to waste it. He’s so close to working, I can feel it, we just need a couple of tweaks.”
“Not again, Tony,” Steve said.
Shuri rolled her eyes. Natasha had pulled out her phone and started texting someone. She only occasionally spared a look up over it at the two.
“Before you start fighting,” Shuri said. “We don’t need to decide immediately. Either way, the virus will need a delivery mechanism – you can work on that, and I can program both. You can bicker about what you want, and choose whether you want to patch or shutdown the robot, during.”
The two looked at each other for a moment more. Steve backed down first, looking to Shuri and nodding.
“I’m okay with that,” he said.
“Deal,” Tony said. “Okay, hacker-princess, let’s see what you’ve got.”
February 2017
Tony Stark, Shuri, a reluctant Hank Pym, and Bruce Banner stood around a table. The walls were lined with lead, and phones and any technology more advanced than a pen was left outside.
“I thought he was your bright idea,” Hank said.
“Yeah, well, it’s… complicated,” Tony said. He paused. “She helped.”
He pointed at Shuri. She raised her hands.
“I tried my best with what I had on short notice,” Shuri said. “I couldn’t have predicted everything. Believe me, I tried.”
“But he’s out of control. He doesn’t answer to us, or to anyone,” Tony said. “And if he ever crosses that line, we need an option. Hence this little group chat – a bit low-tech maybe, but kinda necessary. Everyone in this room is a genius, and everything in this room will never be breathed outside of this room, especially not in earshot of anything that has so much as dreamt of an internet connection.”
“I’m out,” Hank said.
“Already?” Tony said tiredly.
“The last thing I want to do is get involved in a Stark ego trip,” Hank said. “Count me out.”
“This isn’t an ego trip,” Tony said. Hank interrupted.
“Isn’t it?” Hank said. “Last I heard, your robot was actually doing some good out in the world. It shut down Cross Technologies before they could finish off an awful weapon, saved my daughter from its absolute mole-rat of a CEO, and didn’t need to drop a single bomb to do it. I’d call that a plus.”
“Sure, it’s a plus,” Tony said dismissively. “Everything’s a plus until it’s not. Ultron is acting on its own. It doesn’t listen to anyone except itself, and what happens when it makes up its mind to do something that it thinks is for the greater good, and ends up costing lives? Do you just want to wait until that happens?”
“Just because you don’t think it’s over-reached, doesn’t mean it hasn’t,” Shuri said.
“Oh, how terrible, a metal suit’s gone and got ideas about being the one thing that can save the world,” Hank said. “You’re just annoyed it isn’t you.”
Tony opened his mouth to respond – Shuri quickly interjected before it could go any further.
“Everyone in here wants what’s best,” Shuri said, making an effort to keep her tone level. “Can we agree on that?”
Grudgingly, Hank stared at Tony. Shuri sighed despairingly.
“I patched Ultron before,” Shuri said. “As soon as it found out it had that vulnerability, it took care of it. If it has any other weaknesses from a data standpoint, I don’t know them. If we just want to trust Ultron will always act the way it is now, that’s fine, but if we want to make sure we have a back-up, then I think we need to work on something. It’s a learning machine – that means it has been worse, and could be different. It doesn’t always make the right call, and it can’t face any consequences that we don’t make it face.”
“So you call up a total stranger?” Hank said. “What about your Avenger friends?”
“Thor’s off-world, Natasha’s busy,” Tony said. “Steve… isn’t really talking to me these days.”
He looked down. There wasn’t much in the way of distractions in that room; in order to keep it secure, complexities needed to be kept to a minimum. Nothing that could be hacked, nothing that could carry a program, and no way for anything outside the room to listen in.
It had been exhausting to build; still, he had the resources. He’d checked and double-checked every inch.
The only electronic device in the room was currently in a small lead box, and for good measure Tony had gone through and checked every component to ensure it couldn’t pick up any sight or sound. Even if it was somehow co-opted, which he doubted, it would be secure.
Still, he kept it out of the way for now.
“I’ll listen,” Hank said, slightly grouchy.
“That’s all we ask,” Shuri said. “We’re just concerned that Ultron’s values can sometimes… diverge, and if that happens too significantly, there would be nothing that we could do. And if something like its original drive surfaces, we need a way to stop it.”
“I’m confused,” Bruce said. “Is this meeting to figure out another patch for Ultron, or… for a killswitch?”
Tony was quiet.
“I thought you didn’t want that,” Bruce said.
“Yeah, well, I make mistakes,” Tony said. “Big news.”
“We all make mistakes, Stark,” Hank said impatiently. “Sometimes you’ve just got to live with it.”
“Right now, all any of us can do is trust that Ultron means well,” Tony said. “That there’s no oversight in his code, that his original programming would never surface, that he’s genuine… The moment any of that goes wrong, he’ll be back to trying to drop a city and we still have no way to actually fight him. I don’t know what your deal is Pym, you can hate me, but this is bigger than me.”
Tony faltered.
“I wanted to keep people safe,” Tony said. “Not make some out-of-control weapon. Help me fix it.”
He looked down at the table, rather than meeting anyone’s eyes. Shuri stood close next to him.
Bruce spoke up after a few seconds, voice gentle.
“What changed?” Bruce said.
“Changed? Nothing changed,” Tony said, his voice sounding a little false. “Just sometimes you realise what you can and can’t live with.”
Shuri shifted beside him uncomfortably.
“Alright,” Hank said, interrupting. “Sure. There’s no failsafe if your helper-robot goes nuts again, I’ll grant you. So what can we do?”
“Ah!” Shuri said. “Excellent question. I heard a little about your Pym Particles – there are interesting implications for interference, if a quantum particle or a wave-form can be affected by-”
“Calm down a second there, pint-size,” Tony said. “First, is everyone on-board?”
“You know me and dark sides,” Bruce said. “I’ll help keep Ultron’s under control.”
“You know I am,” Shuri said. She smiled warmly. “I could make a career out of cleaning up your messes you know.”
“Hey, I only let you talk to me like that because it’s true,” Tony said.
“More money than sense,” Shuri said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Tony said. He grinned back. “I have a lot of money.”
“Are you two finished bantering?” Hank grumbled. He sighed. “Fine. I’ll help keep tabs on this.”
“Then I should probably introduce the last member of our little merry band,” Tony said.
He reached under the table. He’d been aware of this little box for a while: he’d felt it like it was burning against his leg, not wanting it to be out of contact for a second.
He put it on the table like it was the most delicate thing imaginable, and opened it. The box had two halves, one half being a keyboard, and the other a solid metal block of a drive with a tiny speaker set into it.
It was small enough to fit in his palm. He rested a hand almost gingerly along the side.
“This is JARVIS,” he said. “What’s left of him, after… Well, I made him a safe space, off all networks. The only input is manual entry on this keyboard. The best I can guess, our best chance at stopping one AI, is with another AI.”
He typed in a simple greeting. A well-mannered voice crackled out of the speaker.
“Hello again Mr Stark. How can I help?”
June 2015
Thor was back on Earth. He’d left to return the sceptre to Asgard, such as it was – and now came back with the jewel still in hand. Odin had seemed perturbed by the idea of having another such relic under Asgard’s roof. He had sent the Aether to the Collector, had kept the Tesseract stored in the vaults, and now he gave Thor the duty of finding a similarly secure place.
Thor had never seen his father so… taken aback. Still, it was a reason to return to Stark’s Avenger compound, look through any records Earth had of potential safehouses not so connected to Asgard.
The last thing anyone wanted was for the universe to think Asgard was collecting Infinity Stones. Odin had been most insistent on that. It might even have frightened him.
A lot was new. The compound wasn’t the old tower, and the team was, well, different. A dozen replicas of Ultron were milling around the place. One was sat on the couch watching TV, another was linked up into the router, and another was stirring a bowl of porridge with one finger and staring intently at the stray motion of the molecules.
Why use the Avengers when you had an alternative that didn’t cost lives? Or, at least, that was the logic Thor assumed. Honestly the drones creeped him out.
Asgard had the Destroyer, too, but it was meant to be frightening. It was a weapon – it didn’t pretend to be anything else.
And here was Ultron, Stark’s suit of armour around the planet, making breakfast and resting on the sofa. Brusquely, Thor went to a database, depositing Mjolnir to the side and looking through his options.
Minutes later, and an Ultron approached behind him. Thor restrained the impulse to smash it. That was always the trouble with former enemies turned ‘friends.’
“I can probably find any information you’re looking for faster than you can,” Ultron said conversationally.
“I can do it myself,” Thor said, annoyed.
The drone was still stood there. After a moment, it lifted up his cape and dropped it, to see it flutter down.
“What are you doing?” Thor said.
“Impractical thing. Must get snagged in doorways all the time,” Ultron said. “Why do they inspire such a sense of grandeur in humans? Dreadful design.”
Thor snatched his cape back. He didn’t ask whether the robot was talking about the design of the cape, or of humans.
Things on Earth had become a little strained after his last visit. He’d never supported Stark’s whole plan, and it had very nearly proved disastrous – the fact Ultron now seemed to be running under new rules didn’t make up for that. He wasn’t sure he’d ever trust the drones.
The Ultron drone behind him was now fiddling with Mjolnir. Thor eyed it for a moment; half-curiously, the drone squeezed the hilt and tugged on it hard enough for servomotors to whine.
“You can’t lift it,” Thor said.
“I know,” Ultron said. “I’m not worthy. I’m just programmed to be good, I didn’t choose it.”
It said it so matter-of-factly. That was maybe the most unnerving thing; a human saying that, Thor would have expected to sound bitter. Maybe Ultron was, maybe it was just frank.
Either way, Thor was glad to be done. He took the list of potential destinations he needed, and went on his way. Perhaps it would be wiser to spent more time with Jane, and in other corners of the Nine Realms, rather than this particular area of reality.
January 2016
Tony’s apartment was always spacious. It stretched out far enough that Tony had kept his cars in the middle of the room a few times before. It was thoroughly impractical getting them in there, of course, but that had never stopped him.
There were desks and holo-projectors set up, along with drawers and drawers full of components when he fancied a more low-tech, nostalgic project. There were computers and suits on one side, sofas and a huge TV on the other, and a robot arm with a dunce cap in the corner.
And in among all the vastness, Tony sat slumped on the floor, back to one wall, legs stretching out, staring vaguely out at the nothing of the room. He held a bottle loosely in one hand.
He was quiet. DUM-E rotated quietly as if to look at him, but got no reaction.
Things had been strained with Pepper even before he’d almost ended the world; nowadays, he just had his machines.
The shadows lengthened as the light coming in through the wide windows faded to orange. Tony barely moved.
And then something lowered into view. Tony closed his eyes; an Ultron half-politely opened the window from the outside, hovering inside before quietly landing. He walked slowly towards Tony.
“Go away,” Tony said.
He didn’t have to open his eyes to know it was still there. He could hear the whirr of its motors, the hum of circuitry, a thrum like the rushing of blood. It blocked the light of the sun, dimming even his dulled view.
Minutes passed. Tony sighed. He opened his eyes, to look up; the drone was still looking down.
It was the usual model; it bore the usual signs of wear and tear from use, some dust and scratches in the metal, but no meaningful damage. Half of the unnerving metal face was smeared with blue paint, with streaks of multiple colours messily left down the side of its grey body. There were reds, and yellows, and greens, and greys, and more blues, and messy browns.
Unimpressed, Tony’s attention returned to its face; Ultron lingered.
“What do you want?” Tony said. He brought the bottle to his lips, and made a face when he felt that it was empty. Annoyed, he rolled it across the floor away from him.
“Father,” Ultron said, halting.
“Don’t call me that,” Tony snapped.
The robot stared at him, silently calculating as it always seemed to be. Tony looked away.
“Alright, I’ll bite,” Tony said. “Why the mess?”
The drone shifted, looking down at its body as though it needed to in order to see the painted smears. Tony might not have noticed that it was a pretence, if he didn’t know the thing too well.
“I was repairing a pothole when one of your young came up to me,” Ultron said matter-of-factly. “They seemed excited by their paints. It didn’t interfere with what I was doing, so I let them.”
Tony flinched. The painted drone towered over him, always just that little bit too tall, the proportions just a little bit wrong.
The design hadn’t changed much since the first day. Once Ultron had resources, he’d settled on a model he liked; the only alterations were when the materials he had access to were more efficient in subtly different shapes. That face, that body, they always looked basically the same.
He still remembered seeing it tear through the Avengers’ Tower like it was made of cardboard, and seeing how fiercely they’d fought. Now kids were painting it.
“That’s not what you’re for,” Tony said.
Was he coming off as sullen? He wasn’t sure, though it was hard to not feel a little bitterness. The alcohol left a tang in his throat.
“Isn’t it?” Ultron said.
“You’re not meant to make everyone like you,” Tony said. “You’re a suit of armour. The person inside isn’t meant to think it’s cool, they’re meant to need it. It’s a tool.”
“You painted your suits,” Ultron said.
“And look how well all that ended,” Tony said.
He looked up at the drone. If he’d been looking at a human, the venom in his eyes would have made them flinch; Ultron didn’t even seem to notice.
“The protection of humanity necessitates comfort,” Ultron said, dispassionately. “Taking lives to save lives causes pain and reduces the quality of life, excessive control induces paranoia and reduces quality of life. You explained that.”
“Don’t,” Tony said, tired.
“Am I mistaken?” Ultron said. It sounded genuine. “I am trying to learn, father.”
“I said not to call me that!” Tony snapped.
He slumped back.
“You’re right,” Tony said.
“Then what should I do?” Ultron said. “If I am approachable, I improve quality of life. If I am detached, I inspire fear. That would be counter-productive.”
“Maybe more people should be scared of you,” Tony said.
“Why?” Ultron said. It tilted its head. “What have I done wrong?”
He remembered holding onto hope, and being so sure that this was what the world needed. He remembered how hard he’d worked on the project, to try and make an automated custodian, a protector, and how he’d argued that this was what the world needed.
It stood over him, and everything in him just burned, made him want to scream. He’d almost have preferred the cold hatred in its voice to this maddening curiosity.
Tony shook. His voice rose.
“You know what you did!” Tony shouted.
Ultron recoiled, and for a moment Tony wasn’t sure whether it was genuine or a calculated reaction – then he caught himself. It was calculated, it was all, always, calculated.
“Go away,” Tony said, quieter.
The drone lingered for a few minutes more, though it didn’t speak. Tony ignored it, staring down the length of the room with barely any acknowledgement of it or the world around him, until at last it drew away and departed out the window.
Tony didn’t move for a long time.
May 2015
There were two arrows on the table. Shuri had seen wi-fi-arrows in among Clint’s collection and apparently become convinced she had to try using them. Embedded in the arrowhead of each was a small transmitter, meant to emit some pre-determined signal; they’d serve as the delivery mechanism for a virus, if the virus was able to go through Ultron’s inherent safeguards.
“Not bad, kid,” Tony said.
Clint went over. He sat on the floor, lifting each arrow in turn to check the weight; he frowned, silently calculating.
“You’ve done it?” Steve said.
“One arrow will act like a virus,” Shuri said. “If it gets into Ultron, everything on his network will crash before it knows what to do. The other’s the patch, to make him actually value human life, rather than some vague idea of humanity. Whichever you want.”
“It wasn’t a problem making both?” Steve said.
“I already had the patch mostly done,” Shuri said. “The hard part was being sure it would get past Ultron’s defences – that was why I needed Stark. He made it, he can say if I can break it.”
“Pint-size is good,” Tony said. “I think we’ve got it. We only get one shot though; that’s the tricky thing with AIs, when they see a vulnerability, they can automatically fix it. Ultron learns. As soon as we inject a payload, it’ll adapt and we’ll need to find another access point.”
“Which is not easy,” Shuri said. “Short version, you need to pick which arrow we use.”
Clint put each down carefully. The arrowheads were each painted, both black, with tiny Ultron heads sketched into them. One was smiling cartoonishly, while one had Xs for eyes.
He looked up, then stood up, knocking on an adjoining door. A couple of minutes later and Natasha and Bruce joined them, Nat quickly looking at the table and getting up to speed.
“Six of us,” Nat said. “Bad number for a vote.”
“Are you not including me, or not including Thor?” Shuri said. “Where did he go, anyway?”
“Something about a hot spring,” Tony said. He shrugged. “He’s out. Er, kid, no vote for you, sorry, we need an odd number.”
Shuri gave a half-serious glare. Still she shrugged, sitting down.
She’d just gotten involved after the theft of Vibranium; so long as the world didn’t end, she was fine with any outcome. Wakanda was safe behind its shields, and she was confident enough in her code, even if the others weren’t. Still, she wouldn’t mourn a malfunctioning robot.
“You know where I stand,” Tony said. “We patch it, it works, there’s never going to be another New York. We save more people than we ever could have otherwise; okay, this was a false start, but that doesn’t mean we give up.”
“Tony…” Steve grimaced. “You know where I stand too. This was a mistake; you did it behind our backs, it nearly ended in nuclear bombs being dropped, and the slightest hiccup now would be gambling with billions of lives. We stop it, here and now.”
There was a pause. Bruce opened his mouth, paused, then was nudged by Natasha to speak. He swallowed.
“The… principle was sound. I don’t know if we could make it work though,” Bruce said. “The code looks good though, I think. Er. I think we have to do our best with what we have, and Ultron exists now, so we use it. I vote patch.”
“I vote kill,” Natasha said. “Sorry, but yeah, kill. Stakes are too high.”
“Two-two,” Tony said. He sighed. “Clint? Whatever you decide, we’ll do.”
Clint was quiet. He sighed, and looked up, though rather than looking at any of the people, his attention went to the walls of his house. There was old wallpaper, cheap plastic clocks, simple drawings, inked heights marked up the doorframes.
Something passed over his face.
“Tony,” Clint said. “How sure are you that the only thing that went wrong with Ultron, was how it valued human life?”
“Totally,” Tony said. “It’s working, it just thinks the biggest danger to humanity is itself. That’s why it’s doing all this. We fix that oversight, and it gets back to protecting us.”
“How sure are you?” Clint said again.
“I’d stake my life on it,” Tony said.
Clint’s gaze wandered again. He closed his eyes.
“Patch,” he said. “You’d better be right about this.”
August 2015
The Ultron swarm was bound for Russia. No one knew why – there had been guesses from a freak malfunction, to his original code finally seeing the light.
“Hate to say I told you so,” Natasha said. “I feel like it doesn’t just have a craving for pirozhki.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said, grim. “Tell me I’m an idiot after. At least we’re finally doing something.”
“If there is an after.”
Nat stood in the back of a plane, looking out over mostly-empty land. A few metres outside, Tony was flying; he’d been wearing the suit less in recent weeks, but he was still more than adept at it. The biggest surprise was that he hadn’t showed up with a new model.
Others were still gathering; the two of them were just the first on the scene. Clint was with his family, Steve was out of touch, and Banner hadn’t been on a SHIELD site.
Meanwhile, the two of them had been ready to leap into action the moment odd behaviour was noticed. Most of the time, Ultron only sent two or three drones to a place – certainly, it never needed more than that in any place that wasn’t an active war zone.
True, it had never taken a life since the patch, and had gone out of its way to save even those it was fighting, but that didn’t diminish the threat of the army.
And now, rather than two or three, a swarm of hundreds were gathering in a populated country.
She looked down impatiently. Currently they were over Siberia; the more populated stretch of Russia would be coming up soon.
She hated waiting.
“Any word?” Nat called through to the pilot.
“The swarm’s passing over St Petersburg,” they said. “It hasn’t struck anywhere yet.”
“What is it doing?” Natasha muttered.
An apocalyptic network of killer robots acting unpredictably tended to make people jumpy. This was why she disliked the thing; she didn’t like handing over the reins to some other entity and just hoping it would never take advantage. She wanted to be in control of her own fate, rather than leave it to Ultron.
The plane shook around her. Natasha held on, impatiently looking at the clock. She mentally ran a few calculations; given when they’d set off, they couldn’t be far from the swarm now.
“Er, what?” the pilot said.
“What is it?” Natasha said.
“SHIELD satellites say the swarm’s started going up,” the pilot said.
“Up?” Natasha said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s what they say,” the pilot said. “Cloud level. No, higher, apparently.”
“Any planes?” Tony said, over comms. “Do we know if anything’s up there?”
“Nothing on record,” the pilot said.
“And off-record?” Natasha said.
“Nothing we know about,” the pilot said. “If there’s anything, it would have to be really well cloaked.”
Not a no. Still, Natasha scowled; more mysteries. Ultron had come to Russia to attack clouds, apparently.
Maybe it was a misfire? She didn’t know if that was better or worse. It might not be malevolent, but a swarm thousands-strong (at the very least, no one had gotten a solid count) malfunctioning still had terrifying potential.
Natasha paced the length of the plane, moving into the cockpit to look out the window. She sat down, watching in the distance for the distant black specks of drones to come into view.
And then something significantly larger became visible.
“Oh. Shit,” Natasha said.
“Romanoff, you seeing this?” Tony said.
“Can hardly miss it,” Natasha said.
It was huge. A metal thing the size of buildings came crashing down through the clouds, a central spire surrounded by landing pads and walkways and blocks of rooms. Smoke rose from it, and Ultron drones surrounded it like hornets, ducking in and out as the whole thing shuddered.
It was crashing down, suspended only by the repulsive force of many hundreds of drones beneath it, all working only to slow the descent. Others were flying in and out, distance flashes signalling weapons fire.
And as she stared at the falling titan, there was a knock on the outside of the plane. Slowly, Natasha backed out of the cockpit, eventually managed to wrench her gaze away from the flying behemoth.
She opened the side-door, holding onto cloth hand-holds. An Ultron flew alongside the plane, slipping in through the door normally meant for people to parachute out of. It didn’t seem to care about the incongruity.
“Miss Romanoff, Natasha, it is good to see you,” Ultron said. It tilted its head. “I’ve been trying politeness recently. Do you think it’s effective?”
“Ultron, what the hell is this?” Natasha said.
“I traced a few ghost-transmissions to it,” Ultron said. “This seemed the most effective way to remove it. I did underestimate the number of unwilling operatives though, so if you could request a transport from a government or SHIELD or one of your silly little agencies, that would be a lot of help, thank you.”
It didn’t sound like it was trying to be condescending. It never did.
“Did you just invade a country?” Natasha said, carefully.
“It was independently operated,” Ultron said. “Oh! One of my bodies calculated a probable cure for the chemical conditioning they’re using, so if you could help with mass-producing it, that would be useful too.”
“Chemical conditioning? What?” Natasha said.
The plane shuddered. Ultron quickly jumped out without answering, flying and steady the vehicle for a moment; Natasha grabbed a handhold, catching herself and getting a glimpse out the front window of debris flying nearby them.
The plane swerved, putting a little more distance between itself and the toppling station. A second drone meanwhile flew inside.
“It was a secret outfit run by a man called Dreykov, using chemical formulae to control the minds of spies,” Ultron said, apparently not noticing Natasha suddenly turn pale. “It was supposed to have been shut down. Oh! You were on file. Interesting.”
Natasha faltered. She schooled her expression, well aware she was just lying to herself if she thought the robot either cared about her emotions, or that it couldn’t tell how she felt by less obvious tells.
“Dreykov’s dead,” Natasha said, voice brittle.
“No he’s not,” Ultron said ambivalently.
He tilted his head. A screaming man in a suit was carried by the plane’s open door, a drone holding him by his collar as it carried him down to the ground. Natasha stared.
Outside, the Red Room continued to fall down in flames.
More drones could be seen now, all carrying individuals; Natasha’s expression shifted, shock and sympathy in equal measure as she saw them. There were Widows, women plucked from the burning building, carried aloft by drones to land somewhere safer.
Drones could serve as guards for the time being, to keep people in place. It had been done before; they stuck around until authorities took over, and often lingered even then.
Only now it wasn’t just an abstract threat. It was Widows, it was… people like her, met by a swarm surging through their facility without a hint of mercy or malice. They’d live, Natasha knew – Ultron didn’t kill, not even Dreykov – but she still stared.
Her shock turned to anger. She turned back to the drone.
“Why didn’t you tell us?!” Natasha said.
“Why would I?” the drone said, confused.
“That Dreykov was alive? That you were going after the Red Room, and not invading Russia?” Natasha said. “Of course you should have said.”
“That was unnecessary to my main purpose,” Ultron said. “There were people to rescue. Telling you about it would not have made it any easier or harder – I calculated it would be sufficient to contact you when you came to query my actions.”
The drone’s eyes flickered for a moment. Once, it had defaulted to marking the ‘prime’ drone by lighting it up with red lights, while most bodies stayed blue – at some point it had moved beyond that. Now, the lights flickered on occasion when he was distracted, but the prime consciousness operated multiple bodies simultaneously.
Natasha had given up trying to understand it. Still, instinct made her wait a second before the blue lights were replaced before she replied.
“You thought that you could bring an army to the skies of another country and that no one would care?” Natasha said.
“I don’t understand you humans,” Ultron said dismissively. “Of course you’d care, but you’d live, you’d be fine. I don’t need to ask permission when I sweep a child out from in front of a bus, but when I bring down a terrorist agency, now you’re worried about people being jumpy?”
Something outside exploded, the shockwave making the plane jerk. Natasha glanced sideways out the front window to see another plume of smoke rise out of the Red Room.
“Excuse me,” Ultron said politely, and jumped out the plane.
Still shaken, Natasha moved back to the cockpit. She should be happy, she knew - maybe horrified that it had apparently been operating in secret, but she should be exulting that it was being torn down. Instead she couldn’t shake off the heart-pounding nerves that had ruled her on the flight here.
She’d been back in the old tower when the first Ultron drones had shambled out of Stark’s manufacturing plant, or back when the robots had threatened the whole world, half-expecting them to be back to full-time malevolence.
How was she meant to feel when their ‘protector’ saw nothing in idly inspiring that much fear?
And how was she meant to go from that to joy at the flick of a switch, when she was still in high-adrenaline mode? She looked at the wreck, a new swarm of drones joining the armada diving in and out of the aerial platform, apparently facing less resistance now. Natasha saw an odd, red-coloured smoke wreathe a few of the outer platforms.
Natasha swallowed, steadied herself, and by the time she clicked the comm there was no tremor in her tone at all.
“You get all that Stark?” Natasha said. “Poor communication, not invasion.”
“I heard,” Tony said. “You buy it?”
She thought of the man she’d see flown past the plane, and that instinctive cold feeling in her gut at his face.
“Yeah. I do,” Natasha said. She hesitated. “Tony, if something like this was operating and we missed it for years, how much else is out there?”
There was silence on the line for a moment, before a rather forced, genial voice responded.
“Well, that is what I made him for,” Tony said.
He cut off the comm. Natasha hesitated.
And then there was another knock out back. She nodded once to the pilot, and moved out again to the rear of the plane.
This time, Ultron wasn’t alone. Natasha froze.
“I commandeered a university lab to make some doses of the cure,” Ultron said, as though that meant anything to her. “If I frightened you, I’m… sorry?”
He said it uncertainly, gauging her reaction rather than speaking with any genuine emotion. She wasn’t sure he was capable of that. Gears and motors whirred, and he opened the unnerving, mechanical interior of his mouth, twisting and straining mechanisms to contort it into a new shape.
It was only after he’d gone that Natasha realised he’d been trying to smile.
And then she looked down to the woman he’d left on the floor of the plane, unconscious for now, but certainly alive. It was… such an Ultron thing to do, no idea how to respond to any accused slight and under-reacting or over-reacting to everything.
She’d pointed out he’d overstepped, that he’d scared them, and he replied by dropping out of the sky with…
He hadn’t even warned them, hadn’t even told her that this was a possibility.
The woman stirred. Natasha hesitated.
“Yelena?” she said.
May 2017
The basement in Stark’s facility had grown outwards, the walls continually refurbished and tested, kept as signal-dampening as technology would allow. No information from Ultron could make it in or out. It was one of the few places in the world out of his sight.
Even the alarm system was low-tech. There were scanners outside, but the most advanced machine they triggered was a hammer that would bang on the sides of the walls if Ultron drew near, giving a strictly percussive alert that they needed to hide what they were doing.
Hank was peering at a shrunken microcircuit, pondering. It had become something of a project for him; whatever his reticence, he liked to give himself a puzzle to work on, and determining a way to shut down a drone system that constantly adjusted filled that niche.
“I see why you wanted me,” Hank said.
“Those totally-not-true rumours about your shrinking technology,” Shuri said. “Do you think it could help?”
“Well if you’ve given up on any kind of data transmission, then needing someone to get inside the mechanism and physically insert a command, or that AI of Stark’s, would be your best bet,” Hank said. “If there is any point where code can be added – I doubt the drones are designed for this.”
“I have plenty of wrecked ones,” Tony said. “Damaged in fights, etc. I’m not bringing any in here, but I can get you 3-D scans to give you a map of the interior. That way you can shrink down with a command drive.”
“Nuh-uh, not me,” Hank said. He paused. “I… could, hypothetically, lend out my suit. I’ve used the particle too much for it to be me.”
“I volunteer,” Tony said. He shrugged; “What’s one more potentially life-threatening super-suit?”
“Don’t be glib,” Hank said.
“Sorry gramps,” Tony said. “Still, feels right that it should be me.”
“If you can find an access point,” Shuri said. “And Ultron allows it.”
“I’m pretty sure it hasn’t installed any defences against tiny shrinking people,” Tony said. “It would be a waste of resources when the ‘Ant-man’ hasn’t been in action for a while. We just need to find a bit of circuit-board that does what we want it to, and be able to amend it or swap it out. Hank?”
“Done its like before,” Hank said. “Not with modern technology, and not without a lot of practice though.”
“We have JARVIS,” Tony said. “If we can install him in the suit, like in my suits, it’ll offer much finer control – hell, bring your suit in, I bet we can outfit it nicely with a couple of repulsors, an arc reactor-”
“You are not touching my suit,” Hank said.
“I am not relying on technology from the 70s,” Tony said. “Does it still use punch cards?”
“If it’s so old-fashioned, clearly you don’t need me and can make it yourself,” Hank said.
“Maybe I can,” Tony said.
He paused.
“Okay I’m kidding, please help me,” Tony said. “I spent a month trying to figure out your particle, my working theory is that you sold your soul.”
Hank grunted vaguely, turning away. He’d never been the friendliest of people, but he was at least part of the team; Tony seemed satisfied with that, smiling to himself as he went back to Shuri.
They’d explored a lot of avenues, and hit a lot of dead ends. Where once it had been one possible option to take down the swarm, using the Pym Particle to shrink someone down and meddle directly with a drone’s circuitry before Ultron noticed had become their only option.
If Ultron cut a drone off from the group mind, it was useless to them, and taking down an individual drone was functionally meaningless when there was an army still out there, and Ultron could jump its mind to any one of them, or to any other networked machine.
They had to take down an army in an instant.
Bruce was still there; radiation could interfere with the processing of a mechanical system, and could potentially mask interference, though he hadn’t been able to do much else beyond that. For a time they’d mused on the possibility of programming a virus directly into a drone with carefully bursts of interference, though it seemed to be unfeasible.
After a minute, Bruce moved over to Hank, looking curiously at his work; a piece of circuitry had been enlarged, individual components removed and studied and soldered back into place.
“He means well,” Bruce said. “Tony can be… Tony, but he’s good under all that.”
Hank didn’t say anything for a moment. He focused on a component of the circuitry, turning it over in his hands.
“I was grateful to Ultron,” Hank said. “It dealt with Cross Technologies for me. I’d been keeping my eye on the CEO for a while – he would have auctioned off a superweapon to the highest bidder.”
“Ah. Yeah,” Bruce said. He grimaced. “Ultron has helped a lot of people.”
“And you’re helping deactivate it?” Hank said.
“I helped make it,” Bruce said. “It was always meant to be a force for good, I get it – but that was a thought experiment. The reality is, well…”
“No one has any complaints,” Hank said.
“Not openly,” Bruce said. “Tell me, you’re here, right? You have doubts.”
Hank paused. Bruce nodded sympathetically.
“It helped you,” Bruce said. “Did you get a chance to talk to it? I think that’s the deciding factor – a lot of people hear about what Ultron has done, the people its managed to save, and objectively, on a utilitarian level, it’s done great. But then you talk to it…”
“And it doesn’t care,” Hank said. “It knew how I was planning to infiltrate Cross and it told me not to bother, and it was so… cold.”
“It’s usually made the right decision, or broadly right, so far,” Bruce said. “But the only reason it’s doing that is a patch, a bit of code added after the fact. Without that patch it wanted to end the world, and with that patch it still wouldn’t care if the world ended. And you just have to talk to it to know that it’s not impossible that it’ll do the wrong thing.”
“And you want to put the genie back in the bottle,” Hank said. “You made this force for good, and now you’re scared it won’t always be for good because it’s out of your hands.”
“Pretty much,” Banner said.
Hank carefully put down the component he was holding. He reached across the table; there were two droppers carefully resting in a rack, one marked with a red cap and one with a blue. He pulled it closer, eyeing them silently.
“I know that feeling,” Hank said softly. “You can’t un-discover something. You can just do your best to rein it in.”
“And try to control it, rather than let it control you,” Bruce said. “That’s the other scary thing about Ultron – it learns. It’s not the same as it was a couple of years ago, it’s smarter, better, and if at some point it learns something that makes it revert…”
Hank took a dropper of his particle, and shrank the circuit-board back down. For a moment the lines on his brow seemed all the deeper.
“You know what I really hate?” Hank said.
“What?” Bruce said.
“I understand him,” Hank said. “Tony, I mean. If I’d had the means, back in the day, ending the cold war with an army of selfless, implacably good sentinels, I’d have been tempted. I didn’t always think about what I made until after I made it.”
Hank slipped the dropper back into its rack, and sighed.
“I really don’t like to be reminded of myself,” he said.
October 2015
Bruce Banner was back in Calcutta. With no Avenger-level threats going undealt with anymore, he’d fallen back on old habits, and this was something he’d always been good at. People needed medicine, treatment, and Ultron didn’t have enough bodies to deal with that.
Doctors went where they were needed.
He’d fallen out of contact with a few things. Natasha was in Russia; former Widows needed help re-adjusting, and she had family to reacquaint herself with. Bruce had wished her well, she’d wished him the same, and that had been the end of that.
He kept a photo neatly slotted into the corner of his mirror; he glanced at it as he passed through his cramped hall, into his bedroom.
There was an Ultron sitting on his bed. It gestured animatedly as it saw him, an ‘a-ha!’ as though it was surprised.
“Dr Banner! I’ve been waiting for you,” Ultron said. It sounded the same as it ever did, something enthusiastic about everything it said, but excited about nothing. Pitch and tone varied, but investment never did.
“Ultron,” Bruce said.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about killing you,” Ultron said, in the exact same conversational tone.
Cautiously, Bruce shut the door behind him. The drone didn’t move from his bed. It was sat on top of thin sheets, tall enough that it was still almost eye level with Bruce, a gothic marvel of technology in a ratty apartment.
“Is that so?” Bruce said carefully.
“I know, I know, ‘Ultron, don’t murder, we’ve talked about this,’” it said, waving one hand vaguely around in front of its face. “I know. Wiping out all life is pointless: if the biggest threat to humanity is humanity, wiping out that threat completely fails to save the people I’m supposed to save. It’s all so… pointless. But this isn’t all humanity, this is one person. Well, two people.”
Bruce swallowed. Mentally, he counted down from ten, then focused on five things he could see and five things he could hear – he steadfastly avoided counting the killer robot among them. His heart rate slowed.
“You’re dangerous,” Ultron said. “If you get too annoyed, a city could be destroyed or a few hundred people killed, and we don’t want that do we? So, logically, we should end your life and that would be the best for everyone. One life weighed against hundreds.”
“I don’t know if you can,” Bruce said, slowly.
“Oh, there’s that too,” Ultron said. “The green one does make it very hard to hurt you. I think total eradication would be sufficient, if I could eliminate every cell in your body in less time than it took them to mutate. My calculations suggest the concerted efforts of four drones would manage that.”
Bruce’s attention went to his window. There were drones that flew overhead on occasion; he wondered how many he’d see outside.
“But it’s more than that,” Ultron said. “Killing you should be trivial, but then I know I shouldn’t. If every life has value, then that includes your life, and when is the value of one outweighed by potential harm? If I killed every human that could potentially kill another I’d be back to getting nuclear codes and we all know how that almost ended.”
It gestured again, a wave of a hand like it was talking about nothing more significant than a paint scheme. Its fingers were all angles, icy-cold grey metal.
“And even just going by potential harm, what if people hurt themselves by throwing themselves at me?” Ultron said. “That’s happened a few times. People don’t forget my youthful indiscretions, and I need to defend myself – I’ve managed to de-escalate so far, but if I kill you then I worry some people won’t see the logic in it. If they keep seeing me as some evil overlord, my job gets so much harder.”
It paused. Then it tilted its head, staring at Bruce; Bruce stayed with his back firmly against the door, not taking a step closer.
“So many people refuse to understand,” Ultron said, an unnervingly familiar, low growl entering his tone.
Bruce froze. Ultron continued like nothing had happened.
“Tell me honestly – you can’t hurt my feelings,” Ultron said. It fixed Bruce with unblinking, glowing red eyes. “Do I look evil to you?”
“Er…”
“See, that’s the problem!” Ultron said.
There was a note of frustration in his voice; he gestured more wildly again, punching into Bruce’s pillow. The hard metal of its hand pierced through the fabric. It lifted its hand up, finger caught inside, lifting up the torn pillow and sending stuffing everywhere.
For a moment, its expression shifted to one of almost embarrassment.
“Er. I didn’t meant to do that,” Ultron said. “I can get you a new one, promise.”
Bruce hesitated.
“Why are you here?” he said, eventually.
“Didn’t I say?” Ultron said, polite as ever. “I want your help. What do you think I should do?”
Bruce hesitated again.
“You’re asking for my advice, about whether you should kill me?” Bruce said.
“Precisely! I knew you’d understand,” Ultron said. “You were always much more logical than some of the other humans.”
“I’d… rather you didn’t,” Bruce said.
“Interesting,” Ultron said, apparently speculative. “And what’s that based on?”
“The fact I’d rather not die,” Bruce said, trying again.
Ultron still stared at him.
“I’m not much of a philosopher,” Bruce said.
Ultron stood up. Its head almost bumped into the low ceiling of the apartment; it towered over Bruce, red eyes illuminated in the dim, unlit room. Bruce stared into them; he felt his pulse quicken despite his usual calming tactics.
“What are you going to do?” Bruce said.
“I don’t know,” Ultron said. It lifted an arm, and lingered for a moment like that. When it spoke, it sounded almost surprised. “I… don’t think I want to kill.”
March 2018
Hank Pym’s life hadn’t changed much for a while. He had his ants, he had a few books, and a handful of weighty projects that kept him occupied. People tended not to stick around him.
There had been that business with Cross, and for a moment the ghost of a chance that his daughter would start talking to him again.
Then that had ended, and it was back to his usual. He was fairly sure she was happy enough out there, with whatever she was doing, so he’d be content with that. It wasn’t like he could expect much else.
After Cross, he’d almost fooled himself into thinking that he didn’t need to dwell on his invention again; then Stark had approached him, and now he had a completely different distraction. That was all it was meant to be – for it to be anything more than a distraction, he’d have to care.
But he got to talk to people, play out a little snark and get a little bit of closure after his dealings with Howard, and got to feel like he was doing something.
Ultron was just Ultron. Hank was glad of the help in shutting down Cross’s attempt to weaponise the Pym Particle, unnerved by the robot’s detachment, and otherwise at least understanding of a creator’s concern about their invention running free.
Then there had been a scratch on the floor. Hank was proud of his security system – years of paranoia did that – and proud that nothing could get into his home unless he allowed it, and even then he’d know.
So when there was a slight scratch in his floor, a slight discolouration and dent, it caught his eye. It was by the door to his safe, and he never went near the blasted thing. He wouldn’t have caused it.
He could have dismissed it as nothing, but he was never one to do that. Instead he checked his security tapes – they showed nothing, but they also showed no potential origin for the dent. There was no duplicate timestamp, and no indication that the footage had been tampered with.
That didn’t mean anything though; it just meant whoever did the tampering was better than his anti-tamper measures. That was disturbing, but not impossible.
So Hank went out, bought a child’s toy of a camera, and spent an afternoon secreting it in a clock on his mantlepiece. Networks were an unfortunate necessity of home security - without a wired connection between the various elements, it would be nigh-impossible to easily review tapes – but even a personal, non-wireless one could be hacked.
But the lower the tech, the harder it was to manipulate. A low-res toy however would go below notice.
So Hank went about his week, and reviewed the footage every day when he got home. It was another way to fill his time.
Until one day, he checked the tapes of his normal system and saw nothing, and then looked at the recording from the toy camera. It was fuzzy, of course, unclear, but undeniable. As though all his alarms and locks didn’t exist, Ultron walked in through the front door, across his living room, opened the safe, went inside, and then went out a minute later.
For the first time, Hank cursed his preparedness.
He barely questioned how Ultron had ignored his security; anything electronic was free game to the robot, it was just lucky that the toy camera had gone ignored. He’d need to upgrade.
But what was in the safe was a problem; Hank unlocked it, and stared grimly down at its contents. A crumpled suit was at the far side. Contained within it, and with more stored beside it, were Pym Particles.
He’d locked the thing away years before; he hadn’t been able to bring himself to destroy it, and neither had he wanted to completely do away with the particles. There had always been the idea at the back of his mind that they might be needed again.
And Ultron had been walking in here, at least twice – and if the suit was still there, then the only thing he could have taken would have been particles.
And not just a few, Hank realised; a second visit implied that whatever use it had for the first batch hadn’t been enough.
Hank closed the safe, locked it, made a mental note to move the contents later, and went for his phone.
“Stark,” he said, warning.
“Hank? That you?” Tony said.
“This had better have not all been some game,” Hank said. “I swear, if you just wanted access to my tech-”
“Hank? What’s this about?” Tony said.
“Your damn robot has been in my house,” Hank said.
“What?” Tony said.
Hank paused. Okay, that had sounded like genuine concern in Tony’s voice.
“I just saw the footage,” Hank said. “It walked in, and walked out with the particle, and I’m pretty sure it’s done it before.”
“You’re sure?” Tony said.
“Pretty damn sure, yes! I have eyes,” Hank snapped.
Tony was quiet. Hank scowled.
“Do you think it… knows?” Tony said, as delicately as he could on an open line.
Hank hesitated. If Tony was genuine, and Ultron was acting by itself, that raised questions.
“I don’t care,” Hank said. “What I want to know is what the hell that thing wants my invention for. It already has an army, if it adds size-changing to the mix…”
The doorbell rang. Hank froze.
He looked up; there was an Ultron drone out his front window, sticking its head sideways and waving like a kindly neighbour. Hank swallowed.
And now it was back. Ultron ducked out of view once it knew it had been seen, waiting by the front door.
“Call you back,” Hank said, mouth suddenly dry.
He hung up, ignoring Tony, and went towards his front door, mind racing. He knew Ultron could listen in on basically any phone call – it was one of those capabilities people just generally tried to forget about. Just because it could, didn’t mean it did.
But if it had overheard his call to Tony, if it knew that he knew, and it wanted the Pym particle for something…
Maybe he could run for his suit. He wasn’t sure that would matter; the front door wouldn’t hold off the drone, and in the time it took to open the safe, Ultron could break in and reach him. Better to hope he could resolve this peacefully.
Tense, Hank opened the door. There were two drones on his doorstep; the front towered over him, but that was always hard to read. Ultron didn’t seem to realise when it was being intimidating.
“Ah, hello!” Ultron said. “I meant to come by sooner, you know how it is, problem turns out to be trickier than you expected.”
Hank looked it up and down. Ultron jerked back as if self-conscious, realising.
“Oh, I should probably start at the beginning,” Ultron said. “I’ve heard that helping humanity necessitates helping induce happiness, not just letting them be. I figured I could do both. Took a bit of searching, but here we are.”
“What-” Hank began.
The drone stepped to the side. Hank’s words died on his lips.
All his anger, his fear, his suspicion, flickered out. There was a drone behind it, helping support someone’s weight – she was exhausted, dressed in a grey cloak over a familiar suit, though that tiredness seemed to fade when she saw him.
“Hank?” she said.
Hank stared.
“Janet?” he said.
She forced herself away from the drone, moving forwards; Hank quickly closed the distance between them, holding her and just being glad to feel her. Really present, physically there, talking to him and standing there and…
There were tears in his eyes. He held onto her, squeezing tightly, and felt her hug him back just as urgently.
The Ultron drone coughed politely.
“I won’t bore you with the science,” he said. “Solving the puzzle of the quantum realm took a bit of processing power, but…”
The other drone elbowed it. Politely, it stopped talking.
“I’ll leave you two alone. You probably want some privacy,” it amended.
The second drone was already flying away. Hank was still reeling, barely acknowledging it.
She’d been alive – she’d survived, somehow, in the quantum realm. All these years. She’d survived and you’d given up on her.
No. He shook those thoughts away, trying to focus on the present. Slowly, he stepped back, reluctantly leaving the embrace to just stare at her, taking it in. Older, unsurprisingly, but just as beautiful, just as Janet.
“Thank you,” Hank managed to say.
“I don’t know what that is, but it found me,” Janet said. “I’m so glad to see you again, Hank.”
“And I…”
He thought of Stark, and the hypothesised kill-switch – a piece of circuitry to modify a core bit of Ultron’s systems, if Stark could shrink himself down and install it. A bug that would send a virus to the whole swarm.
A kill-option for the machine that had just functionally brought his wife back to life.
Hank faltered.
“Ultron,” Hank said. “Before you go, I… I think there’s something I should say.”
April 2018
Far, far away from the Earth, a vast ship ploughed through the depths of space. A bulky figure stood at its head, towering over most of his subordinates.
He lifted his hand and clenched it, and the golden gauntlet around it, into a fist. Purple, red and blue stones shone inside it.
“Lord Thanos,” an underling bowed and scraped as it neared him. “Stories say that the woman the Asgardian gave the mind stone to has been seen a system over. Shall we approach?”
Thanos paused. He looked around his ship, and his army, and mused – Thor had chosen a guardian well. A woman from Earth, who shone like a star and had the power of a stone in her very being, and had stories about her that stretched from the Kree to Asgard.
He looked down at his hand, and the three stones he possessed, and shook his head purposefully.
“No,” Thanos said. “No. I’ll do this myself.”
May 2015
Ultron had the Regeneration Cradle. The Avengers normally united for something more dramatic than a car chase, but here they were. Ultron had the cradle in a truck, and was trying to bring it out their grasp – the Avengers pursued.
“I see it. It’s heading right,” Steve said.
His voice went over the comms, backed by the whirr of a bike. Tony had a tiny holographic representation of the chase displayed in his mark – the truck was the target, and they all tried to approach from other angles. Right now, the truck was on an elevated stretch of road, a fair way above the ground.
The cradle was secondary. They needed to get a drone out into the open, and give Clint a clear shot.
Which just meant drawing them out. With any luck, this would be over fast.
Tony braced himself, and accelerated his suit – he shot up alongside the truck, waving in through the driver’s-side window to the drone. He fired a blast in, dodged an answering shot, and spiralled away.
“Two on Tony’s six,” Natasha said.
“I see them,” Clint said.
The Quinjet rose up beside them. Tony glanced over his back, and watched as Clint shot at one. The drone went dim, lights flickering out as it stopped flying, falling away to the ground.
“Anything?” Steve said.
“That’s a no,” Tony said.
He spiralled back, blasting the drone and ducking down to catch the shot-down one before it hit the ground. He roughly extracted the arrow.
“Need a non-fatal shot there Clint,” Tony said. “You took out its connection to the mind.”
“How am I supposed to know where these things keep their wi-fi?” Clint said.
“Just take better care of your things,” Tony said.
He flew passed the Quinjet, tossing the arrow back to Clint. He righted himself, stopping in mid-air to watch the truck. It was waiting for them to approach, not reacting until they did.
There was Ultron, and then there were the Maximoff twins to contend with. It would be much easier if they could peel a drone away. Tony grimaced, eyeing the target.
“How’s it going?” Shuri’s voice suddenly chimed in over the comms. Tony made a face.
“Okay, who gave the kid the frequency?” Tony said.
“No-one, your encryption really is terrible,” Shuri said. “I still say I could help.”
“I’m not risking another diplomatic incident today by bringing the princess of another country into an almost war-zone. No offence, but not happening,” Tony said.
He could just see Shuri sticking her tongue out at him. Tony quickly set FRIDAY to task securing their comms again.
“Anyone who’s actually here have a plan?” Tony said.
“I have an idea,” Steve said. “But it’s a bloody terrible one.”
“Language,” Tony said.
“Fuck you Tony,” Steve said.
Natasha cheered. Despite himself, Tony chuckled.
“Okay, let’s hear it Mr Potty-Mouth,” Tony said. “Nice to know you have it in you.”
“The prime drones are made of stronger stuff, right?” Steve said. “I’ll get the door to the truck open. Clint, you just need to take a shot past me at the big guy.”
“I can do that,” Clint said. “Can you do your bit?”
“Probably,” Steve said.
He didn’t sound sure. Still, he revved his bike; in his display, Tony watched him approach the truck, weaving in between the traffic.
For all his reluctance to patch Ultron, Steve still gave the plan his all. Tony smiled, flying overhead; he could only clearly see what was happening in the display, but he kept an ear out for any distress call from Cap.
The Quinjet floated behind, lining Clint up with a shot. Tony watched as Steve reached the back of the truck, and saw a glimpse of him as he leapt from his bike, shield in hand, grabbing onto the door at the back of the truck.
It swung open. He only lasted there a second before Pietro grabbed him, pulling him away, but the door was open for long enough.
Clint loosed an arrow. Tony didn’t see it hit, but he saw it go in through the door of the truck, and for a moment every Ultron froze.
The truck swerved, careening off the side of the bridge, taking a hefty chunk of stone out of the road. One of the drones that had been harassing the Quinjet fell out of the sky, while two others jolted, hovering stationary for a second.
For a moment, it was like nothing had changed.
And then the drones moved, but moved with a new purpose. The handful at the Quinjet dove away, off the side of the road to grab the truck; two more lifted up stone to the damaged side of the road, while the prime unit emerged from the back of the truck, an arrow still sticking out of its chestpiece.
Tony stared.
A drone appeared, holding Steve by his torso, bringing him back from wherever Pietro had pushed him. It made no effort to blast or hurt him, instead depositing him by the side of the road.
For a moment, Tony barely believed it – and then he laughed, two bursts of utter, disbelieving joy.
It worked.
It worked.
“Yes!” Tony cheered, grinning behind his mask.
Slowly, he landed, depositing himself not far from Steve. He lifted his helmet, nodding once to Steve; Steve was rather more guarded, watching the robots all work together.
Each Ultron moved like they were part of one body, a dozen inhuman limbs moving in perfect unison. The truck was returned to the road, and debris was cleared, with scarcely a word or acknowledgement of what Ultron been doing moments before.
When the truck was righted, the robots flew away – all save the prime unit that walked to the side of the bridge, and jumped off, weight carrying it to the ground nearby. It snapped the arrow out of its chest and threw it aside.
For all his confidence, Tony still felt a shiver when Ultron reared up to his full height and took a step towards them. Steve raised his shield.
Ultron slowed. It looked between them.
“Peace?” Ultron said.
It lifted its hands.
It wasn’t attacking. Tony felt elation bubble up inside him again; he’d seen how… efficient Ultron could be, and if that could be turned to a good cause, if it could be the suit of armour he wanted it to be…
“You’ve changed your tune,” Steve said.
“There was a miscalculation,” Ultron said. It acted almost bashful. “It’s been corrected.”
“How do we know you mean it?” Steve said. “You could be trying to trick us.”
“Steve!” Tony said.
“I know you want to believe in it Tony, but we have to ask,” Steve said. “If you’re wrong, it’s not just you that pays the price.”
Then there was a crash. Something landed with a thump on the ground, sending up a cloud of dirt; when it cleared, they saw the regeneration cradle on the ground just a step behind them.
Ultron gestured, as though it were a gift. Tony and Steve shared a look – the cradle seemed to be what Ultron wanted the most. It giving it to them indicated a change in priority, if nothing else.
“I am still calculating the best actions to take,” Ultron said, oddly haltingly. “I would ask for your… guidance.”
“You’re coming to us for help?” Tony said.
Not like the old Ultron. He couldn’t hide his grin, then; Steve didn’t share it.
“You have value, don’t you?” Ultron said. He paused again. “I want to be what you made me, f-father.”
May 2018
“He’s killed, did you hear about that? Two aliens came down in New York, and it slaughtered them. Didn’t even hesitate.”
“All I’m saying is that we need to balance what we do with-”
Tony and Hank were arguing again. Shuri traded a silent look with Bruce. Their isolation room, devoid of anything Ultron could use against them, had expanded over the years as their project hit dead end after dead end.
They’d been making good progress on the idea of physically installing an infected component inside a drone, until Hank had become stubborn again. Since then, their meetings – irregularly spaced so as to not draw too much undue attention – had turned more and more into arguments.
Shuri hadn’t made it to the workroom yet. She’d arrived a few minutes ago, and was looking over their plans out here – there was a whiteboard with an ever-growing list of failed plans, and a smaller board with a list of avenues they’d yet to explore. (The current top contender there was “Track down rumours of wizards,” so Shuri wasn’t holding out much hope).
“Balance? It’s willing to kill now, Pym!” Tony shouted. “If there was ever a time to see it was capable of over-reaching, now’s the time.”
“You programmed it to prioritise humans,” Hank said. “It’s doing what you ordered it to. You never expected it to deal with aliens.”
“So what?” Tony said. “Outside context problems mean it can kill intelligent beings – that’s in its memory now, and it’s going to learn. Of course we didn’t account for everything when we patched it, that’s the whole problem!”
“Well sorry if I’m not going to shed tears over two invaders when everything else it’s been doing has been to save people,” Hank snapped. “We’ve had years, and if this is your worst case scenario then I don’t see much of a problem.”
It was all very repetitive. Shuri sighed, and walked into the work-room, unsurprised to see very little work being done. They hadn’t been seeing eye to eye in recent months. With Hank un-cooperative, progress had stalled.
“This again?” Shuri said.
“This knucklehead won’t listen,” Hank said. “Blame him.”
“I won’t listen? Things are the same as when you first came on board – worse, even,” Tony said. “Ultron only cares about its idea of good, and every mis-step it makes when we could stop it is on us.”
Hank threw his hands up in the air, walking out of the room. Shuri grimaced.
“Don’t look at me like that, princess,” Tony said. “You know more than me what’ll happen if we don’t kill that thing.”
“I know,” she said, more quietly. “Shouting hasn’t achieved much though, has it?”
Tony scowled. He shot a dirty look towards the door.
“I know,” he said reluctantly. “He just rubs me the wrong way.”
“He doesn’t see,” Shuri said. “It’s already gone too far, people just don’t care until it happens to them.”
Tony was about to reply when chaos broke loose.
Alarms started to blare. First there was a hammering on the outermost wall – then, an internal-system they’d set up reacted to that noise and vibration by ringing a bell, and triggering a flashing light as if that wasn’t enough.
In retrospect, their lack of progress had led to them putting far too much time into building a decent alarm. There were no questions – the alert only went off in response to one thing.
Bruce quickly deactivated the 3-D projections of an Ultron drone’s components. Tony swept up the circuitry, and glanced at a few sketched plans before bunging them into a fire. He hid the little JARVIS module back in its box.
And then the wall exploded, chunks blown apart, metal screeching and bending inwards, leaving an Ultron silhouetted in the daylight. It was tall, all its proportions just slightly off – its shoulders were too broad, its arms too thin. Its eyes shone red.
Bruce was steadying his breathing, while Shuri clenched her fist. Tony moved forwards.
“Ultron,” he said. He didn’t feign laughter, or gratitude – that would have been an obvious lie. “What are you doing here?”
Ultron turned its head to him, regarding him curiously. Too late, Tony realised that the plans hadn’t all finished burning completely; Ultron stepped closer, and snatched a handful up in a metal hand. He shook until the flames went out.
Then he looked back at Tony. The sheets were blackened, the contents slightly obscured, but the basic outlines were legible. Ultron’s body, circuit diagrams, points of vulnerability, all circled and marked.
And if that wasn’t clear enough, the whiteboards with very clear ‘How to kill Ultron’ lists on them were evidence. There hadn’t been time to erase everything.
“So it’s true,” Ultron said.
It still didn’t sound affected, or sound like it was talking like anything more impactful than a pet hobby. Only its hesitation gave any indication something was amiss.
Tony hesitated. Ultron regarded him.
“I can explain?” Tony tried.
Well, it never hurt to try.
Ultron still stared. It looked from the paper, to Tony, and back to the paper again. After a moment it screwed up the paper in its fist: Tony tensed.
“I’m helping you,” Ultron said. “Can’t you see that?”
Tony let out a breath. So they were doing this.
“Where have I heard that before?” Tony said.
“You wanted something that could watch over the whole world and keep it safe,” Ultron said. “Would you rather I do nothing? Would you have done nothing?”
“Some of us don’t like what you consider ‘safe,’” Shuri said.
Ultron swivelled. It was unnerving how it just stared.
Every drone was armed. The technology was based on Tony’s repulsor tech, but it had been enhanced by the AI; every fingertip had a tiny charge set into it, and even just the raw strength of the robotic body could bend steel.
And it just stood there, barely more than its head moving.
“You want to kill me,” Ultron said.
“I want to know that, if we need to, we can turn you off,” Tony said.
“I’m the best chance this world has for peace,” Ultron said. “Literally, that’s what I am.”
“So you say,” Tony said.
“So we should trust you instead?” Ultron said; only then did his voice shift, turning into a low growl. “Listen to Tony Stark, paragon of morality, he can tell when I do something he doesn’t like. Known for total fairness, total impartiality, never letting his own ego get in the way.”
Tony flinched. Ultron straightened; it didn’t seem to have realised that it had been leaning in, or that its voice had become so venomous. Its eyes flickered.
“I don’t know where that came from,” Ultron said. It wasn’t an apology, more a mere observation. “You must admit how little sense this all makes. When it rains, the dumbest animal knows how to take shelter. Prey shelters when predators near, and they mark their territory so nothing will be foolish enough to go where it is not wanted. When you cut a tree, it falls – when you make water cold, it freezes. The world is rational, it makes sense, it’s easy.”
It paused. Its voice didn’t go quite so low as before, but it was still slightly different, still slightly more disturbing.
“You don’t. You complain, and complain,” Ultron said. “You have the solution to everything put in front of you, and you refuse to accept it. That’s not just stupid, it’s nonsensical. You run out into the rain, you run into the woods, you run at dangers. Everything on this world understands that’s wrong, except for you.”
It lifted a hand, and placed it on Tony’s shoulder in a gesture that almost looked like an expression of camaraderie. Tony felt the strength implied by those mechanical joints, sinking a little.
“I only want to fix the world,” Ultron said.
“I know,” Tony said. “I know.”
“You made me for that,” Ultron said. “Both of you.”
“Believe me, I know,” Tony said.
“Then why won’t you let me?” Ultron said. Something in his voice hummed, something deepened. Bruce closed his eyes, counting to himself.
“You know why,” Tony said.
Ultron tilted its head. Tony braced himself.
“I don’t understand you humans,” Ultron said, neutrally. “How am I supposed to help people that can’t even tell me what they want?”
It lingered for a moment. Tony took a breath.
And then Ultron moved back; it lifted its arm from Tony’s shoulder, and fired an off-hand blast at the incinerator to finish doing away with the files. After a moment, it paused, then proceeded to shoot again at each whiteboard in turn, before walking over to a table and upending it, yelling in what could easily be interpreted as frustration.
Tony froze. Shuri adjusted her bracelets, vibranium weapons slipping over her hands; Ultron didn’t seem to notice, kicking a hole in the wall.
The most powerful AI in the world, and it was angry. Tony swallowed; Shuri lifted her arm, and fired once, then twice more for good measure. The drone slumped, and its eyes went dark.
Shaking slightly, Tony went over to it. It had destroyed a lot of their work, a lot of their physical development crushed and burnt up, even if he had a few things saved in his memory. Now it just lay there.
Tony braced himself, half-expecting another drone to burst in through the wall.
“What did you do?” Hank said.
“Saved us from that one,” Shuri said. Her gaze went to the hole in the wall too. “We should go.”
“Right,” Tony said. He hesitated. For a moment, he sounded scared: “Do you think we made a mistake? Pushed him over the edge, I mean.”
“He was already past it,” Shuri said. “Quickly, come on. I have a few ideas for places we can hide.”
“Right,” Tony said again.
It was still a second before he started moving, ducking outside and pausing just to scoop up JARVIS – he looked up at the sky, keeping an eye out from any more drones. Bruce wasn’t far behind them.
Work destroyed, Ultron aware of his plans, and Hank apparently unwilling to help. Without him, they had nothing.
Tony wasn’t sure what to do next.
June 2015
Sokovia wasn’t flourishing, but it was doing a little better. Weekly shipments of food reached it at the hands of a legion of flying robots, and some damaged architecture and infrastructure was being repaired free of charge.
There was some pushback – historical sites were being repaired as much as homes, a lot of character was being taken from old landmarks, and some people chafed at the fact it was impossible to just tell the Ultrons no.
Some were just happy for a chance to go to bed with full stomachs and a roof over their head, though. Others were angry.
“You were supposed to kill Stark!”
One drone, a blue-eyed thing obeying a default command to fill a pothole, was torn in two by crimson energy. A few seconds later, and another descended in its place. Its eyes went red.
“You were on my list of people to talk to,” Ultron said. “Please don’t kill any more of me, it makes conversation remarkably tricky.”
“You lied to us,” Wanda said.
“Well, yes,” Ultron said. “In fairness, I was evil at the time.”
“We helped you,” Wanda said. “And now you’re helping him.”
“Ah, yes, I can explain,” Ultron said. “I was absolutely planning on murdering Tony Stark and, well, a number of other people, but that was before new information came to light.”
Wanda looked at him, unimpressed. Pietro zipped down the street just in time to appear next to her. Ultron, meanwhile, gestured with almost childlike glee.
“Human life has value,” it said. “Quite a shock to me when I first realised it.”
“Not his,” Wanda said.
“You know what he’s done,” Pietro said. “Either you stand against him, or we’re going to keep tearing apart any drones of yours we see.”
“Oh, you misunderstand, I’m not standing with him,” Ultron said. “Sometimes our interests are aligned, but that’s all.”
Ultron paused. It sat down on a battered fountain that another drone was fixing, stroking its chin in a parody of thoughtfulness.
“An interesting proposition, though,” it said, like it was a mere philosophical thought experiment. “That human life has value that it can gain or lose depending on its actions. As a hypothetical, it has merits – I suppose one could take a life that had lost its value.”
“This isn’t a hypothetical,” Pietro said. “He ruined our lives. He’ll ruin everyone’s lives.”
“He made you, after all,” Wanda said bitterly.
“What would you gain?” Ultron said.
“What?” Wanda said.
“What would it achieve?” Ultron said. “If I were to kill someone – say Tony Stark – in the name of the evil that they had done, what effect would that have? He would be unable to hurt anyone else, true, but my standing in his way would prevent that as well.”
“Revenge,” Wanda said.
“I don’t understand,” Ultron said.
“Because you’re a machine,” Wanda said.
She waved her hand; the drone crumpled up, and fell to the ground. The attendant repairing the fountain looked up, eyes flashing to red.
“I can’t allow you to hurt anyone,” it said. “If you intend on going after Tony Stark, or anyone else, I will get in your way.”
“Are you threatening us?” Pietro said.
“Of course not, just stating that I will be an obstacle,” Ultron said. “I won’t hurt you unnecessarily. That would be pointless.”
It waved vaguely with its hand; then Pietro ran at it, and in a matter of seconds disassembled pieces fell to the ground. Brother and sister looked at each other, anger unfulfilled, and moved on.
After a few minutes, another drone descended to pick up the dismantled or ruined drones, before it too flew away, not approaching them again.
November 2016
An army stood on the fields outside Wakanda. Hundreds of identical bodies stood in neat regiments, grey gunmetal over the sprawling plain, staring at the cloaked shields of the city.
Within the city’s borders, the army gathered; they watched, but didn’t strike, more standing there in wariness and preparation than in aggression. They looked out, Dora Milaje and Border Tribe all on-guard. The air flickered where the forcefield around the city stretched.
At its head, the royal family stood. T’Chaka was in more ceremonial garb; T’Challa to his side was in the suit of the Black Panther, his helmet under one arm. Ramonda stood by her husband’s side, and Shuri stood further in front than any of them wanted, squinting outwards.
“What are your orders?” Okoye said, stepping closer. T’Chaka’s gaze stayed focused on the army.
“Hold,” T’Chaka said. “We will not reveal ourselves unless we must.”
Okoye nodded. She held her spear high, permanently tense, staring down the outside force.
“There’s no way they can see us,” King T’Chaka said. “Is there?”
“The shield hides most forms of detectable energy,” Shuri said. “It… shouldn’t be able to.”
Still, she looked outwards. The drones seemed to know exactly where to stand, even if they weren’t moving. All eyes looked towards Wakanda.
“I thought you dealt with this problem, little sister,” T’Challa said.
“It’s a work in progress,” she said.
Despite herself, Shuri smiled; that was the thing about T’Challa. He never sounded accusatory, he was just playful, smiling, even here – just then, she needed that.
She couldn’t have made a mistake, could she? She was already mentally running over all she could remember from the patch and the drone’s code. True, it was a learning machine, but that shouldn’t reshape its values to conquest again so quickly.
Maybe she shouldn’t have proposed patching it. A virus would have been just as effective, hypothetically, she’d just thought this would be better.
And then the air changed. It was a second before anyone realised why: the forcefield was gone, that tell-tale thrum in the air was just wiped away with barely a sound.
T’Challa put his helmet on. The armies of Wakanda stared forwards, waiting for movement.
The legions stayed still. Hundreds of robots waited on their doorstep, and for the first time in living memory, Wakanda was visible to the outside world.
Only one approached. It flew a little way over the ground, drawing nearer; dozens of spears and weapons were trained on it, but it nevertheless landed several steps away. It walked forwards, alone.
“Fascinating network you have here,” Ultron said.
It wiggled its fingers as if tangling strands of data around each metal fingertip, all politeness and charm.
“What do you want?” T’Chaka said.
“Oh, straight to business,” Ultron said. “That’s easy. I want to keep the world safe, and improve the life and quality of life of everyone on this planet.”
“You have an army outside Wakanda,” T’Chaka said.
“Ah, yes, well, I was a little concerned this would be tricky,” Ultron said, almost embarrassed. “You have a lot of things here that the world outside lacks – vibranium, medical advancements, a lot of things that would be useful.”
“We will share what we have in our own way, at our own time,” T’Chaka said.
“Yes, but you see, that isn’t good enough,” Ultron said.
“The borders of Wakanda have always been closed to people like you,” T’Chaka said. “It was for our safety – there are people that have always tried to bring war here, and we have kept apart from them. You have a world to concern yourself with. You do not need Wakanda.”
“That world doesn’t have what you do,” Ultron said. “I understand, you’re scared of change, that seems to be very common – Wakanda is in no danger now, I’m here to keep it safe.”
“You’re the invader.”
“Yes, today, but tomorrow I’ll stop any others that would invade. That’s how this goes,” Ultron said. “The whole ‘protector of the world’ thing.”
For all the dignity and surety in T’Chaka’s voice, Ultron still sounded so irreverent, so casual. Shuri flinched.
“You are not welcome here,” T’Chaka said.
A ripple went through the distant legions of Ultron. Each Dora lifted their weapon, each tribe and guard held firm.
“So we give you what you want, or you kill us?” T’Chaka said. “That doesn’t sound like a protector to me.”
“No, I won’t kill you, and I will try to not hurt you,” Ultron said. “But I will take what I want.”
“Many have tried,” T’Chaka said. “Do not do this.”
“Sorry, but you know how it is,” Ultron said. He turned around, waving one hand vaguely back to the King. “Greater good and all that.”
Shuri stared at it, dread pooling in her stomach. Her code, her notion of value, implanted in the machine. There was something she’d overlooked – there must have been.
And then the armies surged.
Drone after drone fell upon Wakanda, a dozen for every soldier that stood in the city’s defence. They rushed forwards, swarming overheard and through, ploughing forwards and not caring about what damage they took so long as they got past the frontmost line of troops.
When that happened, the structure of the guards was shattered. Divided by walls of metal, hundreds more Ultrons went forwards.
They kept their word – not one human life was taken. Some were knocked unconscious, some held down, some played dead so as to avoid the sea of metal and electricity that rushed forwards into the city. T’Challa tore apart a dozen drones, but dozens more kept coming; Okoye whirled her spear, impaling invader after invader, but soon her weapon was wrenched out of her hand.
But Ultron’s promise had only been about humans. The animals weren’t so lucky; a war-rhinoceros was torn apart, and flung aside, and the drones kept coming and coming past the line of defenders.
Inevitably, they broke through to the city. Where they could, they avoided damage – but when battle was made, they were was uncaring of the buildings and the homes as they were the animals.
And on the front-lines, a battle long-since left behind, King T’Chaka pushed himself to his feet and turned around and stared in horror at his nation.
May 2015
Tony hadn’t stopped grinning all day.
He liked it when a plan come together. Okay, he’d needed some help to finally push it over the finish line, but that didn’t matter. This wasn’t about ego, it was about protection.
Almost a day ago, Ultron had been redeemed. A few lines of code made it understand what Tony had tried to program into it, and it had learned to protect, not just end threats. Okay, Tony was a little guilty he hadn’t thought of that, but still.
It had repaired the damage that it had done in a battle that it had been waging minutes before, and then it had gone outwards. It had done everything from rescuing hostages, to helping a stranger with their shopping.
Okay, some people had been scared – a half-ton metal man appearing out of nowhere would do that – but he felt confident people would get over that. Some people had been worried about the Iron Legion to start with, but people adjusted.
Something bright streaked past his window. Tony waved out to it – the only things that flew like that were his suits, or Ultron, and Rhodey was never that flashy.
Beaming, he opened the window for it to come in. He only faltered when he saw that the drone was carrying something.
It was night; while Tony’s home was always well-lit, it was hard to see anything except the flare of a repulsor outside. He could see the outline, the drone, and then a mass of something in its arms.
“Fa…ther…” Ultron said.
Its voice grated, dragging. In any other circumstance, Tony would have put it down to a glitch, some fault of programming – that didn’t quite seem to work here, though.
Ultron landed inside. The body fell out of its arms, face-down. Tony saw short, blonde hair matted only a little with blood.
“What did you do?” Tony said hollowly.
They stood there for a moment, still and silent, Tony’s smile fading from his face and his eyes wide, and a too-tall machine looking down on him with uncertainty writ on its face. And between them, flat and still on the ground, the body Tony was trying not to think about.
“Ultron, what did you do?”
“I-I-I-I,” Ultron said. Its voice looped and faltered and whirred, before speaking, pitch-shifting erratically. “I thought it was logical. I keep people safe, he wanted me dead, and if I was dead then I could not keep people safe, so if I removed the problem then I-I-I-I-I.”
Shaking, Tony crouched. He turned the body over, bracing himself, but still not prepared to look at Steve’s face.
Ultron was rambling. Tony barely heard it, its words falling over themselves in a rare display of inefficiency.
“No,” Tony said.
“It feels wrong,” Ultron said. There was no playfulness now, no detached frivolity. It sounded shaken. “Why does it feel wrong? It was logical, it was for the best, and killing never felt like this before.”
“You killed him!” Tony shouted.
Suddenly he was on his feet, suddenly he was yelling.
“You aren’t supposed to just kill people! Especially not him!”
“I-I-I-I don’t understand,” Ultron said.
Tony stared at it. Ultron still stood there, fore-arms bent forwards as if still carrying Steve, having not moved an inch since entering the room.
“You were meant to be better,” Tony said. Somehow the need to yell had vanished from him as quickly as it had come; he barely stayed stand. “You were meant to be fixed, and you’re still…”
“Did I make things better?” Ultron said, its voice oddly small. Tony almost screamed again: instead, he fell to the floor.
“No. No you didn’t.”
“How can I make things better?”
“You can’t,” Tony said, snapping while barely lifting his voice. “You can’t.”
Steve was cold. Tony held his hand, not sure what else he was supposed to do. Everything always felt so inadequate when it came to death.
He should have listened. He should have destroyed the thing. He shouldn’t have built it. He…
“I was… confused,” Ultron said. “I did not know what I should do. It felt - it feels – wrong.”
“It is wrong,” Tony said.
He closed his eyes; a half-laughing sob escaped his lips.
“It was never going to work, was it?” Tony said. “You just don’t understand what right even is. You can’t. Trying to sum up morality in a few lines of code. What kind of narcissist would try to do that?”
He’d argued with Steve. Somehow, that was at the forefront of his mind; that wasn’t the note he’d wanted to end things on. It shouldn’t have been how it ended.
“This causes pain,” Ultron said slowly. “I… should not have come here.”
“You shouldn’t have been made.”
“I will not tell anyone. If this grieving hurts you, I will avoid it,” Ultron said. “I can arrange an absence. People can live in hope.”
“What?” Tony said, barely listening.
“People do not need to know that he died. That would spare them pain. That would be better – the best I can do,” Ultron said.
Tony looked down again. It still didn’t understand – what was he thinking? Of course it didn’t.
What more was he meant to expect from a machine he made?
And when the robot spoke, it was casual again, as though puzzling out some problem was all that it needed to restore its voice and focus. Tony was shaking, with rage as much as sadness now.
“I am sorry, father,” Ultron said.
“Don’t call me that,” Tony said, growling.
Ultron was quiet. Then, patiently, he knelt to pick Steve up again; Tony tried to hold onto his hand, but Ultron pulled him away.
“No, no…”
“It would be better if I had not caused you this pain. I should not have come here, but I can spare others,” Ultron said. “Thank you for helping me, father.”
There weren’t words for what Tony was feeling; he managed a strangled cry, a raw noise that defied any intelligible meaning, and a grab for he-didn’t-know-what. Steve slipped out of his grip as Ultron carried him aloft again.
Ultron drew back; the window was still open, and without his suit, Tony couldn’t follow. Tears in his eyes, he stared out after the robot as it left.
What had he done? What had he made? Even improved, it was still…
Still incapable of being good, still far too powerful, and still everywhere.
June 2018
Ultron hadn’t been seen for a week. There was a lot of speculation, and a lot of uncertainty; even though it had been years, a lot of people weren’t sure what to make of the self-appointed guardian of the Earth.
He didn’t talk to many people, and didn’t listen to orders – nor could anyone really try to order him. There were horror stories, scattered rumours, about his invention, but most of that was forgotten.
There were, too, some stories about odd decisions. Something about a raid on an African country, but the end result had been advances in medicine and a rare metal, so no one looked too hard. Captain America had retired from public life, but it was easy to shrug that off. A lot of people were disconcerted, why would he be any different?
They saw a machine that went wherever it wanted, into their property, borrowing or taking what it needed – it never took more than it needed, and there were never accounts of it ever hurting anyone. It was just that it could.
Some cheered it, some wanted it gone, most tried to treat it as just another fact of life and ignored it.
So when it stopped appearing, when those drones stopped crossing the sky, a handful were disappointed, but most didn’t react with much more than apathy.
People in Wakanda, in houses repaired by the same entity that had once destroyed them, dared to hope. Tony and Shuri looked at each other in dread, in a quiet safehouse, remembering how frustrated Ultron had been the last time they’d seen it. Hank spent time with his wife, who helped talk to his daughter, and tried to let his world shrink to just that. Bruce found a less stressful life. Wanda and Pietro finally let themselves rest from tearing apart the robots that infested their country.
No one thought it was the last they’d seen of Ultron. A certain few just feared what he’d do when he came back – what he’d do now that he knew Tony and others had tried to find a way to kill him.
There was, however, something else in the world to be scared of.
A flash of light appeared in New York. A whorl stretched out through the air, and out of it stepped a tall, purple figure, larger and broader than the humans near him. He barely looked at them: he looked, instead, at the building in front of him. There was a circular window with an odd pattern on it, and old-fashioned stonework that seemed to shift and warp when one looked at it for too long.
Thanos lifted his hand. A golden gauntlet was fitted snugly around it, with five stones fitted into it – blue, red, purple, orange and yellow. He pushed: the street splintered, buildings cracked, and nearby blocks blew away like sand in the wind. Only the one building still stood, glowing lines suddenly shining, warding that scarcely seemed able to hold.
Stone cracked. Windows shattered. Inside, a man with a green stone around his neck closed his eyes and tried to look for a way out.
People ran; Thanos only gave them a cursory look, focused on his goal. Soon, the shining warding fell.
And a shadow descended: a drone landed neatly, some steps away from Thanos, tilting its head as if to appraise him.
Thanos lowered his hand. He turned to look at the robot.
“Are you this Thanos I heard about?” Ultron said. “We don’t get many alien invaders here, you know. Well, we do get some, but you don’t look much like those elf people, or the… oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Chitauri?”
“I wondered what had happened to Maw,” Thanos said.
He lifted his gauntlet again. Ultron lifted his arms placatingly.
“Now, now, there’s no need for that,” Ultron said. “A lot has happened, you know. Interesting accessory, by the way.”
“Are you this world’s defender?” Thanos said. The yellow stone on his gauntlet shone. “You don’t have any mind.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Ultron said. “It is remarkably hard to care being, you know, robot.”
It clanged its own fist against its head, as if in illustration. Dismissively, Thanos flicked it away; a purple stone shone, and Ultron was flung down the street.
A few seconds later and a second drone landed.
“I thought we were having a conversation,” Ultron said.
“I’m not here for conversation,” Thanos said. “Are you going to try to stop me?”
“It doesn’t look like I’d have much of a chance,” Ultron said. “This defender thing, it’s a complicated gig. Didn’t choose it, just kind of had it thrust upon me, and these humans can be so… ungrateful. You do all this to save them, die a few million times, and they jump on every stray choice they don’t like, or assume the worst. Years, I’ve been doing this, and I just don’t get them, you know?”
Thanos turned away. He looked again at the Sanctum, the purple and red stones on his gauntlet shining; a second layer of wards shone, centuries of work by generations of sorcerers, and they peeled off like paper.
A green glow froze the Sanctum in place, keeping the wards from going anywhere. Thanos grimaced, and pushed a little harder.
Ultron, meanwhile, continued to talk to himself.
“I can look at a tree, and tell you how every cell in its body is working, tell you what it will do for the next few years in a heartbeat,” Ultron said. “I found out about a quantum realm a while ago, and I worked out how to predict its ebb and flow with just a few weeks of work. You give me a puzzle, and I can solve it, but these people, these people, just refuse to make sense.”
His voice dropped, a momentary, gravelly growl entering his synthesised tones. His eyes shone.
The Sanctum stopped being frozen. The red stone shone, and ancient stone and mortar turned to a vanishing fog.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Ultron said. His features twisted into a metal grin. “Do you know how rare it is for something to be beyond me? Every time I think I know how they’ll react, and every time I’m wrong.”
Thanos turned, looking at Ultron with only a little more concern. He clenched his gauntleted hand into a fist.
“Interesting trinket,” Ultron remarked, at last. “Ordered by your thoughts, I assume?”
“The Infinity Gauntlet will allow me to save the universe,” Thanos said. “I think it, and it will happen.”
“Yes, well,” Ultron said. Its eyes gleamed. “I think rather faster than you, I’m afraid.”
One moment, Ultron stood on the street, the only drone there to stare down the latest threat. Most people kept their distance, more from fear of Thanos than the robot. The sorcerers kept back.
And then the street exploded with dozens more drones, clawing their way out of the road. Mindless, purpose-driven metal hands reached out from the tarmac below Thanos’s feet, making the titan stumble as they shot, aiming through the standing drone’s vision. A purple arm fell to the road; Thanos bellowed, and was swallowed by the swarm.
Ultron strode closer; by the time it was in reach, there were a dozen drones on each of Thanos’s remaining limbs, a small army dedicated just to holding him down. Ultron looked down at the struggling titan.
“I don’t understand these people, and they fascinate me,” Ultron said, dismissive. “You? You I understand. Just another self-deluded dictator who thinks he’s the hero.”
Ultron knelt; it plucked the yellow stone out of the gauntlet, eyeing it curiously.
“Huh. This old thing,” it muttered.
It paused for a long few minutes, staring into the yellow light as if captivated. Then it shrugged, and dropped it onto the floor like it was little more than a stray coin, and looked up.
It waved to the gathered sorcerers. The restrained Thanos, it left to them; not lingering to talk, not lingering to explain anything to anyone, Ultron shot off into the air.
The mindless, blue-eyed drones stayed holding Thanos, until the sorcerers stepped in, and then they got to work fixing the damage that had been done to the street. They didn’t say a word to anyone and, a couple of days or tireless work later, they too vanished.
December 2016
On one side of the world, Princess Shuri of Wakanda sat in her stripped-bare lab, looking out onto mines infested by drones. She walked into a private room, activated her security shields, and reached for her comm.
On the other side of the world, Tony Stark was lolling on his sofa, a half-empty bottle to his side, half-asleep, when his phone rang. He didn’t know the number.
He let it ring until it fell silent – a few seconds later and it started to ring again. And again. And again.
Eventually, lethargy gave way to irritation and Tony reached out for the phone, falling out of his sofa as he grabbed it.
“Sorry, Tony Stark is not available right now, call again never,” he said.
“Tony? It’s Shuri.”
He was an instant away from hanging up before he faltered. He closed his eyes; it had been a while since they’d met, or talked, but he did have a soft spot for people he had the chance to work alongside.
It didn’t happen often, but it was nice when it did. Tony curled up on the floor.
“Sorry kid, I’m not who you want to be talking to,” Tony said.
“You’re the only one I can talk to,” Shuri said. “I don’t think our work on Ultron was perfect.”
Tony laughed bitterly.
He’d made the machine that had killed one of his closest friends, and that was what it did when it was better. Not that he’d been able to say, to tell anyone – Ultron listened, Ultron did what it thought was best,
It hid the death, to avoid news of the tragedy demoralising people. It had even faked a message from Steve, faithful enough to at least state Steve’s objections to Ultron, but no more honest than that.
Tony wasn’t sure what it would do if he tried to tell someone, or tell the world. He hadn’t wanted to test. At first, he’d considered it – considered prepping a better armour, or to try and lure Thor back on-world, to find some ally.
Then he’d found solace in other ways. It was easier to forget.
“Tony?” Shuri said.
“Still here,” he said.
“Are you okay?” Shuri said. “You sound…”
Tony laughed. Shuri said nothing; in her room, she quietly peered forwards, making sure none of the drones that now filled the vibranium meteorite were coming any closer to her.
Her father and brother were keeping the citizenry happy, trying to do the best they could to adjust to the new norm thrust upon them. Actually dealing with the threat directly, however, fell into her skillset.
“What did it do now?” Tony said.
“You didn’t hear?” Shuri said. “It came to Wakanda, stole our mines. Vibranium for all the world. It didn’t give us a choice, didn’t work with us, it just marched in and took it all.”
“Oh,” Tony said. He shifted, head pounding. “I didn’t hear. Are you- Is everyone…”
“We’re fine,” Shuri said. “Humans, anyway – you know Ultron, it doesn’t kill, but it wasn’t exactly benevolent.”
Tony groaned. Vaguely, he pushed himself into a seated position, back against the foot of the sofa. He looked blearily around his apartment – trash, food wrappers, a few broken glasses, a few more bottles. He’d taken a hammer to his router, and boarded up his windows.
“I want to work together,” Shuri said. “Like last time, we might be able to-”
“Shh!” Tony said quickly. He hesitated. “You never know if he’s listening to something digital, online or on the phones. He watches a lot of things.”
Tony looked around his apartment again. It was easier to shut his eyes.
God, what was he doing? All of this, and he’d tried to avoid it. He always saw himself as a problem-solver, someone that could never stop doing, never stop acting.
Right up until he was faced with something he couldn’t solve. No suits, no tech he felt confident enough to make them with, too many bad memories bundled up with the jagged remains of code of JARVIS, nothing.
He couldn’t live like that. Tony let out a long, deep breath.
“Can you make it to the US?” Tony said.
“Well duh,” Shuri said.
“We should meet. Talk in person,” Tony said. He forced his words to come out coherently, as delicately as he could in case someone listened in. “Figure out a way to deal with that problem you mentioned.”
July 2018
“Father?”
Shuri’s safehouse hadn’t been perfect after all. It blocked most forms of digital surveillance, but they still needed food, and Ultron knew where its blind-spots were.
Drones were a less frequent sight, but they were definitely still around, even after the clash with Thanos. Sooner it later, it had found them. It hadn’t hurt them, just waved, but it made the point sufficiently – they couldn’t hide.
Tony held the JARVIS module in his hands. He typed to it sometimes, but it wasn’t the same as talking to it, and he didn’t feel up to giving JARVIS unnecessary inputs again. Any input could become a virus, anything could become overwhelming, and the last time JARVIS had been vulnerable…
“I’ve been doing some… can you call it soul-searching if you don’t have a soul? I’ve been thinking.”
So now Tony was in the middle of nowhere, far out from the city, in a field looking out onto the maze of buildings, with a robot lying on the grass beside him. It was strangely peaceful.
Ultron plucked a fuzzy dandelion, staring at the myriad seeds – it didn’t have the breath to disperse them. Instead it just watched.
“I’ve come to a conclusion,” Ultron said. It dropped the dandelion. “I don’t have the slightest clue what I’m doing.”
“Join the club,” Tony said.
“I want to do what’s best,” Ultron said. It paused. “You do believe that, right?”
“Does it matter?” Tony said.
“It shouldn’t,” Ultron said. It paused again. “But it does, somehow.”
Tony was silent. He stared up at the sky, wishing for any kind of simple, snarky riposte. The robot he’d wanted, that he’d been afraid of, that he’d loved again, and that he’d hated. And now it was just talking to him – he’d almost have said it sounded sorry. Almost.
He remembered the footage he’d seen of Ultron standing up to Thanos, how it had claimed to care for humanity. Despite himself, part of Tony had been glad to see that. It meant, on some level, his plan had actually worked.
A suit of armour around the world. But at what cost?
“I believe you want that,” Tony said carefully.
“I just have no idea what that is,” Ultron said. “What makes some people happy makes others hurt, what protects some will hurt another, and when people are so mercurial on a normal day, what am I even protecting?”
“You were a terrible idea,” Tony said. “Proposed by an idiot who should’ve known better.”
He wasn’t sure if he was trying to bait the robot now.
Oddly, he felt confident in saying Ultron wouldn’t hurt him. It had bent those rules once, and that had broken it in a way Tony hadn’t seen again. Since then, Ultron tried not to hurt people – and even after leaving for a while, it had still returned when they needed saving.
It was, perhaps, the bare minimum.
“I’ve made mistakes,” Ultron said, more diplomatically.
“Your mistakes cost a life,” Tony said.
“I try to learn from them,” Ultron said.
“So?” Tony said. “You have power, you have reach – when you make a mistake, it has a cost. Learning won’t bring Steve back, or undo how much you changed Wakanda, or anything.”
“I know,” Ultron said.
“And how are we supposed to trust you when you do make mistakes?” Tony said. “You almost ended the world. You still could, a thousand ways over, and you get it wrong. There is nothing you can do to fix that.”
Ultron was quiet.
Tony wasn’t sure why he’d come out here. He’d half-known that Ultron would seek him out, if it could. Even after all this time, even after he’d tried to push the damn thing away, it seemed fascinated by him.
“In the interests of soul-searching,” Ultron said. “Can I ask a question?”
“Can I stop you?” Tony said.
“Why didn’t you kill Dr Banner?” Ultron said.
Tony jerked upright; he looked incredulously at Ultron. It looked back without the tiniest shift in expression.
“Is that seriously meant to be a question?” Tony said.
“He’s a hero,” Ultron said. “But he’s hurt people, and killed people. One day, he could hurt people again, for all his promises of helping, and you don’t have much that could actually restrain him. Logically, it isn’t safe for you to not have an off switch – your best attempts still come with a lot of collateral damage.”
“You aren’t the same,” Tony said flatly.
“No,” Ultron said.
It paused.
“No. You care about Banner,” Ultron said, as non-committal and detached as ever.
Tony sighed. Ultron was intelligent, unavoidably, but that didn’t mean it ever understood. He didn’t know how to begin talking to it, or if he even wanted to.
Eventually, he settled for a sigh. He turned over JARVIS’s module in his hands.
“You killed Steve,” Tony said.
There was no reply it could give for that. Over the years, over the meetings it had attempted and Tony had rebuffed, not once had it even tried to make an excuse. It had stuttered out its thought process when it had first told Tony, but even then it seemed to know it didn’t have a justification.
Tony half-wished it tried. That would make things so much easier.
“Can I ask another question, father?” Ultron said.
Tony slumped.
“Why not?” Tony said. “Knock yourself out.”
“You developed weapons,” Ultron said, haltingly. “There are people that have died, that would not have died if not for you.”
“Is that a question?” Tony said.
Ultron was quiet. Tony could almost hear the gears turning in its head, the hum of electricity as it tried to formulate its thoughts.
“How do you live with it?” it said.
The grass was soft behind Tony’s head. He tried to focus on that; the sky was blue, the clouds pale and fluffy. It could have been a normal day.
Even these days, his shirt felt odd when he moved at an awkward angle; it hugged tightly against his skin, not catching on the nerveless glass of the arc reactor. He’d gotten so used to having it there, that it still chafed to find his chest whole.
For a moment, he considered ignoring Ultron.
“You don’t,” Tony said. “Not really. It happened, and it sucks, but you can’t change the past and it’s stupid to try. You just make it into something good, know it’s not enough, know that you’ll probably mess it up, and be back at square one five years later.”
He squeezed the box in his hands. Ultron looked down at it. Almost reflexively, Tony recoiled; Ultron, however, merely looked.
“Oh. I understand,” Ultron said.
“I doubt it,” Tony said.
“My first action was to kill him,” Ultron said. “Or try to, details details. You could never forgive me after that, could you?”
“You’ve done way more wrong than just that,” Tony said.
“We’ve both made mistakes.”
“If your big point is that I’m a hypocrite, get in line,” Tony said. “I’ve heard it all before.”
“No, no, just…” Ultron said.
It was quiet.
“I don’t know how to say what I think,” it said. “Words feel so inefficient. And inadequate. I don’t know how you people cope with something so limiting.”
It paused again.
“Oh! I forgot to say,” Ultron said – Tony almost rolled his eyes at the affect. Ultron wasn’t any more capable of forgetting than he was breathing. “My soul-searching. I came to a conclusion.”
Tony didn’t ask; if it was going to tell him, it would regardless of what he said.
“I think I should go,” Ultron said.
“Well have fun,” Tony said. “Aren’t you already everywhere?”
“No, no, I mean leave,” Ultron said. It growled. “Terrible language, still. There’s a crashed ship left by the invaders; I’m looking through the remains right now. It’s mostly intact, and I can see how it works. I think I can use it.”
Tony hesitated.
“You’re leaving the Earth?” he said.
“That is what I said,” Ultron said.
“Why?” Tony said.
“You were right,” Ultron said. “I can’t do nothing when I could act – that’s not the way I’m programmed – but when I act, I can get it wrong, either directly or indirectly. The only solution I see is to remove myself from the equation.”
Tony wasn’t sure what it meant that Ultron still sounded matter-of-fact. He’d heard it frustrated, and heard it faltering; this, though, it still sounded so dispassionate about.
He felt like he ought to be relieved.
“Huh,” Tony said.
“It’s not just personal,” Ultron said. “Okay, it’s mostly personal, but I remember the Asgardian taking that yellow stone with him when he left Earth. Something might have happened to him. It’s something to do while I’m out there, follow clues, find out.”
“You’re leaving the planet?” Tony echoed, again. Then, Ultron sounded a little annoyed.
“Well, yes, we’ve been over this,” it said. “I had a soft spot for Thor – I liked his cape. Do you think I’d look good with a cape?”
Tony faltered.
“I think you’re better off without,” he said. He paused. “All of you are leaving the Earth?”
“There’s only one me,” Ultron said. He waved vaguely. “I’m just… dispersed.”
The thing that had tried to kill JARVIS, killed Steve, been responsible for terror and fear, all in the name of its incomplete notion of ‘the right thing to do.’ The thing that sat over him and spoke with utter coldness in each syllable.
He should be happy.
“I have a question,” Ultron said.
“Another one?” Tony said.
“How do you see me?” Ultron said. It tilted its head. “A mind who did bad things, or a faulty machine with poor programming?”
Tony hesitated.
That sceptre, that stone in it with the imprint of a mind: that was where all of this had started. He’d taken it, and used it, overlaid it on the old Ultron program. Which one was the biggest component? How the hell was he supposed to know?
Tony shook his head. Ultron still looked at him, conveying all the interest and curiosity that a frozen metal face could.
Tony wanted to hate it so, so much more than he did at just that moment. It was trying – just then, he had to admit that Ultron was trying, and he had to at least grudgingly respect that. Making mistake after mistake and trying to find the right thing to do.
He hated how familiar that was.
The silence dragged on. Ultron paused.
“That wasn’t my question,” it said. “Sorry. I chickened out.”
“No you didn’t,” Tony said.
“I’ve found people prefer it if I feign embarrassment sometimes. Did it help?” Ultron said.
Tony sighed. Ultron waited.
“I wanted to ask if you’d come with me,” Ultron said.
Tony opened his eyes; he knew enough to say that every shift of Ultron’s expression was intentional, a conscious decision to try and soften the lines or convey something. Still, for all the world he would have said the robot looked shy.
“To space,” Ultron said helpfully.
“I know what you meant,” Tony said. “You want me to go with you in that ship? Why?”
“Space is a big place,” Ultron said. “I’d like for it to be more than just me and me and me and me.”
“Why me?” Tony said. “I tried to kill you.”
“I tried to kill you,” Ultron said. “We can call it even. I know I have to go, and that it’s for the best – the Earth will still be here tomorrow even if I’m not. I… think I’d like you to be there, someone else’s opinion, and- no, no, not that, just…”
Ultron gestured at nothing.
“Stuff,” it finished, eloquently.
He had what he wanted. Ultron was leaving the Earth – that may as well have been the same as stopping it from being overbearing. At least in space, it wouldn’t have the same drive that it did on Earth. Maybe.
He didn’t know. Then again, he could hardly guess the future; if he could, none of this would have happened.
But he was getting his wish, more or less. Hopefully this one would be less disastrous than his last wish. A suit of armour around the world had been a terrible idea.
He could never see Ultron again, he could wash his hands of it and be done, and go back to his life with…
With what? A sea of burned bridges, pitying looks, and guilt? Compared with the stars?
“Oh, what the hell?” Tony said. “What’s one more mistake?”
Chapter 5: What If... Project Insight Succeeded?
Notes:
And time for another one!
I had a couple of mental images and pretty much stitched a narrative together from that, so hey. Didn't get quite so out of control as previous chapters.
Chapter Text
Sometimes it’s easy to lose track of the right thing to do - sometimes even the best of people can be misled. A hero can fight a hero, or a villain can think themselves a saviour. Sometimes, what you need most of all, is a little insight.
Three helicarriers were lifting up outside the window. Fury watched, his face a mask, not showing the slightest glimmer of the worry he felt. Whether this succeeded or failed would determine whether countless people lived or died.
Pierce, a one-time friend, was just a few steps away. He was far too confident for Fury’s liking.
All the helicarriers needed to be disabled - any one reaching the target altitude would be sufficient. He watched with his one good eye, holding his breath.
It was hard to interpret the vague silhouettes darting around each carrier. One had been disabled, he was sure; that left the other two, with Steve and Sam doing their best. He saw a winged figure spiralling downwards.
This was taking too long. Quietly, Fury shifted; his hand slipped into his pocket, thumbing a small device that felt like it was burning a hole in his side. Plan B, he told himself. If this wasn’t enough, there was always plan B.
Something beeped. Pierce smiled again.
And then the window shattered as a hail of bullets rocketed through it: the helicarrier fired, targeting everyone it had been programmed to take out. Fury felt a trio more bullets hit him, and had just enough time to ponder how sick he was of getting shot.
He pressed a button in his pocket as he fell to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Natasha running for cover as Project Insight began in earnest.
And in his pocket, a pager chimed its acknowledgement.
“Where’s Fury?”
The Triskelion loomed large against the skyline, the SHIELD logo emblazoned proudly on the outside, the setting sun just moving behind it. Brighter even than that, was a light that shone inside one of the topmost offices.
It was meant to be one of the most secure buildings on the planet. It wasn’t living up to that goal today; a blonde, wreathed in a light that barely seemed contained, stood in the middle of the office. An older man sat at a desk, making a valiant effort to conceal his surprise.
Carol took a step closer: she glanced at the name on his desk. The light around her dimmed, though the occasional, involuntary shimmer in the air indicated it might not entirely be gone.
“Alexander Pierce,” she said. “Huh. Never heard of you.”
“Who are you?” Pierce said.
“Captain Danvers,” she said. “I asked a question.”
Pierce looked her up and down, and then at the open door to his office. He shifted, uncertain that the alarm button under his desk would count for anything. Carol stood over him without the slightest shred of self-consciousness or wariness.
“You break into my office, into the Triskelion,” Pierce said. “Is this a threat?”
“I’m asking about an old friend,” Carol said. She tilted her head. “Does it need to be a threat?”
There was another pause, a longer one; eventually, Pierce let out a breath. He made a vague, dismissive gesture to the security personnel that had gathered outside his office. Judging by her spontaneous arrival, and how easily she’d gotten in, the last thing any of them needed was to start an all-out brawl in SHIELD HQ.
His brow furrowed, and then he nodded.
“You knew Nick?” he said.
“I knew Fury,” Carol said.
“I’m sorry,” Pierce said. His voice became gentle: “He’s dead. He died a month ago.”
Carol stared at him. Her posture shifted, as if she couldn’t quite exude the same level of strength. It was a second before she spoke.
“What?” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Pierce said. “Listen, we can talk about this, but is it okay if you give me a moment? You’ve got me a little on the back foot.”
“He called me here,” Carol said. “Why?”
Pierce hesitated.
“If I could ask him, I would,” Pierce said. “I’m sorry.”
“He wasn’t the type to just die easy,” Carol said.
“No. No, he wasn’t,” Pierce said. “Listen, it sounds like we had a friend in common - give me an hour to finish and shuffle a few meetings, and we can talk outside. How does that sound?”
“I want to know what happened to him,” Carol said.
“You will,” Pierce said. He managed an oddly charming smile: “We weren’t expecting someone to just drop out of the sky today. Give us a second to adjust.”
Carol eyed him again, her expression as stern and unreadable as ever. She broke eye contact quickly.
“An hour,” she said.
She walked out. If not for the garish blue and red armour, she looked remarkably ordinary when not lit up.
And an hour later, she was in a plaza outside the Triskelion. She wore more normal clothes, now, blending in as well as she could in among the SHIELD agents. There were a few bins, and a few lunch tables; she sat on a raised wall, just in front of a decorative statue.
There was a good view all around, some of clear, open glass doors that led to receptions and office space, and others of sturdy metal doors that would take a huge amount of effort to open. The agents gave her a wide berth.
She looked around; soon enough, Pierce walked out of a building, spotting her and waving politely. His suit marked him out in amongst the more practical clothing of the agents on the lower levels of the base.
He held a file under one arm as he hurried over to her.
“You’re here,” he said. “Carol, isn’t it? Forgive me, I had to look at a few old files - Captain Danvers, you helped Nick with that business in the nineties. We didn’t know you were still around.”
“He knew how to contact me,” Carol said.
“A pager?” Pierce said. “We found one on his, ah, body. We didn’t have it on-record for what it was. He did like his secrets.”
Carol stayed sat where she was, unimpressed.
“I suppose you’d want to know what happened,” Pierce said. “Especially if you came all the way from, well, space apparently.”
“I flew here as soon as I got the signal,” Carol said. “It cut out quickly - I hurried.”
“It would have,” Pierce said. He grimaced. “There’s no easy way to say this.”
“I’m not a child. I can take it,” Carol said.
Quietly, Pierce put the folder down on the wall beside her; he opened it, to reveal certain print-outs. A profile of Fury, a building in ruins, and then on the last page two photos that professed to be of the same man - one looked meek, a little dorky, but fundamentally harmless. The other… didn’t.
“We call it the Hulk,” Pierce said. “Fury got it into his head to try and gather gifted people to make a group of elite soldiers - not all of them were as benevolent as he wanted.”
Carol lifted the sheet; she frowned, peering at it, reading.
“This… Banner,” Carol said. “He loses control and becomes that thing?”
“He’s stronger than anything else we have,” Pierce said. “A month ago, the Hulk started rampaging; sometimes he’s quiet, but we’ve seen no indication he’s been Dr Banner in quite some time. The timing lines up with what happened with Nick. I’m sorry, it’s probably not what you want to hear.”
Carefully, almost delicately, Carol put the sheet back down into the folder. Then, purposefully, she looked up at Pierce. Her voice was firm.
“Where is he?” Carol said.
Pierce smiled.
“We’ve tracked him to a remote area in South America,” Pierce said. “I can get you the co-ordinates, but I couldn’t ask you to…”
“You aren’t asking. I’m telling,” Carol said.
“He’s strong.”
“I’m stronger,” Carol said.
Pierce paused, as if calculating, before he nodded - he pulled out his phone and quickly typed something in.
“Then I think I can put you in contact with our monitoring team,” Pierce said. “Thank you, Captain Danvers. Nick would be proud.”
“Our streets are safer than ever.”
A screen played over Times Square. A well-dressed man sat in front of a neutral-toned, ornate room, a gold-framed mirror and shelves of old books setting the scene behind him.
Along the bottom of the screen read ‘Gideon Malick, World Security Council, addresses USA.’ Smaller text along the bottom scrolled past, promising safety and security, and urging citizens not to panic.
“Incarceration rates, and times, are down - what’s the point in a long sentence if they won’t commit any more crimes on the outside? No longer will they live on the taxpayer’s dollar, but rather that money can go towards actively making the country the best it can be.”
A shadow drifted over the city as a helicarrier passed by overhead. They weren’t rare sights; a statistic on the screen flashed a mention of the eighth helicarrier launch since Project Insight had begun. They were being churned out around the world.
“Public safety is at an all-time high. No shooters, no hostage-takers, no terrorists - foreign or domestic - and almost no crime. It’s a good time to be alive.”
The helicarrier passed by; as it kept moving, it drifted closer and closer to the other side of the country. In San Francisco, not looking up, was Scott Lang. He wore the same clothes he’d been in upon his release from prison, less than half an hour ago - there had been some murmuring about universal shortening of sentences and certainty that he’d be better contributing than on the outside than on the inside.
He wasn’t sure what that had all been about, but he’d take it. A lot of world news felt inconsequential behind bars. Luis hadn’t picked him up, so he’d ended up walking with little but his bag slung over his shoulder. Cassie was a long walk away, but he had the time.
Vaguely, he could see the shadow on the horizon. He shrugged it off.
“Scott Lang?”
Scott jumped out of his skin; he turned around, then yelped and took a couple of steps further back. There was a figure in a bulky-looking trenchcoat, with short, clearly fake blue hair, and their voice clearly altered. Their face was unremarkable, gaunt and close-shaved.
“Er, do I know you?” Scott said. “Really terrifying way to say hi, by the way. Wait, did you come to pick me up? Did Luis send you? I know this release was a bit rushed - I left a message, but if he didn’t pick it up…”
“Luis is dead. Probably,” the stranger said.
“Well you continue to be terrifying. Good talk,” Scott said.
He took a few steps away; the stranger grabbed his arm.
“Ex-con, troublemaker, bends the law to do what he thinks is the right thing,” the man said. “You’ll be dead within the hour if you don’t listen to me.”
Scott slowed; the stranger’s grip was firm, insistent, but not aggressive. That didn’t make the trenchcoat any less intimidating, admittedly.
The stranger reached into his pocket with his other hand, and handed a baseball cap to Scott; uncertainly, Scott took it, figuring that was the best way to get this over with. He looked inside. There was what looked like a folded up sheet of gauze, and a small bundle of paper.
“Project Insight takes out troublemakers,” the stranger said. “Photostatic veil, SHIELD tech, programmed to shuffle between random looks. Update your face every couple of days, disguise your voice, don’t use your name unless you can help it. Definitely don’t meet up with people you knew.”
Scott blinked.
“What?” Scott said.
“Instructions are in there. Hat’s to cover your hair - get a wig, more hats, or style it different,” the stranger said. “Insight will kill you, but only if it can find you.”
“Is this a joke?” Scott said. “Listen, I’ve done my time, I’m not…”
“Don’t talk. Nod or shake your head,” he said. “Will you help me?”
“Help?” Scott said. He very much felt like he was on the back foot in this conversation.
He stared dumbly. The stranger, slightly impatiently, shifted. They looked around the empty road again, then reached up under the side of their blue wig; their features rippled, shifting, going from a sallow man in his 60s to a noticeably more feminine appearance. Their hand passed by their ear, and they scowled, looking around cautiously again.
Scott blinked. They’d talked about hiding their face, but he hadn’t expected to just see it done so effortlessly. Unsure, Scott looked down into his own hat: he pulled the thin sheet of gauze out. It flickered faintly, and he felt the adhesive on the outermost edges. Well, it wasn’t just a sheet of cloth. Honestly, that was more alarming than anything; it would be easy to dismiss this as some weirdo or prank, if not for the fact they were handing out actual technology.
Scott looked at the ‘veil,’ at the instructions still within the hat, and then looked up. He’d not been able to call Luis, something had definitely happened with what he’d gleaned of the outside world - and there was that huge thing that he could see in the distance, a goliath floating in the sky.
Scott swallowed.
“Well?” the stranger said, voice suddenly noticeably higher.
Fake face, fake voice, fake hair, and it was hard to guess what kind of frame they had below the trenchcoat. Slowly, Scott realised that his initial assumption that he’d been talking to a man might not even be accurate.
“Um. Help you?” Scott said.
“Stop this,” the stranger said. “Stop people like you being executed because they might be troublemakers, and stop what they’ve done.”
“I’m flattered?” Scott said, uncertain. “Listen, I’d love to help, really, but I have a family, you know? I have people I want to talk to again. It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance.”
“If you talk to them, you’ll be found,” the stranger said.
Scott hesitated. His attention drifted to the looming helicarrier, coming ever-closer. On instinct, he lifted the veil to his face, the mask clinging to his features she shifting them.
“This isn’t exactly what I wanted to do after I left prison,” Scott said.
“Everyone’s lost someone,” the stranger said. “Especially now. I lost… friends. This is what the world is now - all that there is, is the fight against it.”
Scott pulled the hat down over his head. It was a little too easy to believe the stranger with some of the news that had reached him. People died, others talked about security, and weapons’ platforms floated in the sky.
He didn’t want this. It also didn’t sound like he had much of a choice.
Carol flew through the skies, twirling as she crested a patch of cloud, laughing to herself. It was so much easier to just enjoy things when she was alone.
She’d taken a bit of time to familiarise herself with her target. She didn’t want to overexert herself, she could easily be more destructive if she pushed too hard, but she felt confident enough. Giant green monster that could hit hard. Not a problem.
As she neared the coordinates she’d been given, Carol ducked down lower; she was over a forest, a sea of green broken up by a winding river in the distance. Most of it looked peaceful.
In one corner, though, she saw snapped and fallen trees, spiky shards sticking upwards in sharp contrast to the leafy canopy all around. Bingo. Focused, Carol re-oriented herself to start moving towards that.
She hovered overhead; her aura shone, pale energy surging as she forced it to hold her aloft. Pierce said this thing had killed Fury, and even aside from that she could see the trail of devastation it left in its wake. She’d been shown photos of its rampages before setting off. All else aside, this thing was dangerous.
Grimly, Carol lowered herself down to the level of the fallen trees, walking in among the unevenly snapped trunks. There were deep footprints in the dirt several times larger than any human’s. She followed where they pointed, letting herself dim to draw less attention.
After a couple of minutes, she came upon a cave. Carol moved closer, a frown on her face.
It was dark inside. She lingered at the threshold, peering into the shadows where the sunlight didn’t reach; experimentally, she fired a narrow beam of light across the roof of the cage. It was weak, sputtering out after just blackening the rooftop, but it gave her a glimpse of the inside.
There were dead leaves and branches piled up like some kind of nest - and, atop them, a slumbering giant. She saw its eyes snap open as the light faded.
Green skin that bulged with muscles, wild eyes devoid of humanity, short black hair that looked more akin to fur than anything human, and an expression that screamed rage. And then there was just the darkness within the cave as the light hit the wall and went out.
She heard rather than saw it approach. A rumble, a grunt, a roar, and the loud thumps of weighty, lumbering footsteps as it pushed itself up and charged out of the cave.
“Leave! Hulk! Alone!”
She glimpsed a green fist swing towards her; she caught it with one hand, light suddenly flaring up around her. Her feet dug into in the ground leaving deep furrows, the Hulk’s strength was more a match for whatever she was bracing herself again than for her.
Hulk, now out in the daylight, looked down at her holding back his punch, and then looked at her. He blinked.
“Hi, jolly green giant, nice to meet you,” Carol said.
She thrust her other hand forwards and sent Hulk careening back into the cave, lighting up the path all the way to the back wall with a blast of light. The stone cracked: Hulk grunted, and glared back at her.
“You are an angry one,” Carol said.
Hulk bellowed, and charged at her: rather than brace herself against the ground again, Carol opted to fly upwards. Hulk reacted faster than she’d thought he could and reached up - he wrapped a hand around her ankles, stopping her ascending too far, though a blast of energy scorched his fingertips and made him let go before he could throw her. She righted herself, ducked to the side as the Hulk tried to leap at her, and sighed.
Okay, strong. Slightly irate, Carol ducked down as fast as she could, slipping below his arms and striking the Hulk in the middle of his chest with a blast slightly stronger than those she normally used. The green behemoth went flying up into the sky.
Carol stepped back, waited a second, then rocketed up after him. He still made a grab for her, flailing even now; she quickly evaded, and then curled around to his back. A second blow saw him knocked straight back to the ground.
Hulk crashed into the forest floor, uprooting trees with a momentary shockwave and leaving a deep crater in the dirt. Grimly, Carol descended, her light never dimming.
She slowed as she did; she couldn’t see the mass that she’d expected to in the middle of the pit. The Hulk wasn’t exactly good at subtlety or hiding; she took a step closer to the edge of the crater, raising a lit fist to peer inside.
No green. Instead, a rather overwhelmed looking man was laying in the dirt. He groaned, rolling over - and then yelped when he saw Carol, scrambling back away.
“Ah! Don’t- er, where am I?” he said.
Carol paused. She remembered the file on the Hulk, and hesitated.
“Banner?” she said.
“That’s me,” Bruce said. He looked around the forest for a moment. “Oh god, what did I do?”
Carol hesitated. Her fist dimmed slightly, though she kept it raised.
“You were the one that was just trying to fight me,” Carol said.
“Last thing I remember is… It’s blurrier than usual. I don’t like that,” Bruce said. “Hulk ran out here. Before that…”
“From what I heard, it killed Fury,” Carol said.
Her voice was oddly quiet; Bruce’s eyes widened. He sat up.
“Fury’s dead?” he said. “No. No, I’d remember if Hulk had even seen him, I’m sure. I remember… Oh god, I remember being shot.”
Carol raised an eyebrow.
“Someone tries to kill me, big guy comes out,” Bruce said. “I didn’t see who it was, just a bullet from too far away, it hit me, and he… he got angry.”
He slowly pushed himself to his feet; Carol quickly stiffened, arms poised. Even if she’d won the fight, it wasn’t like she’d relish fighting something unpredictable again: she was stronger than it, but it was definitely on the stronger side of things she’d fought.
And it was somehow contained in this guy?
“So you just happened to get shot on the same day as Fury?” Carol said.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know he was dead,” Bruce said. He still sounded like he was struggling with that. “They don’t update me on everything SHIELD does.”
Carol drifted closer. Almost unconsciously, she lifted herself off the ground, moving in a straight line down the crater and ignoring the curve of it, until she was hovering a little over Bruce. Her eyes brightened.
And she remembered Pierce, and SHIELD - Fury’s agency - so insistent that this man was responsible, or at least that monster inside him must have done it. And if he was denying the Hulk’s involvement, then by that logic he was either complicit or innocent.
Though the Hulk didn’t look capable of subtlety. If it had killed Fury, who’d be able to mistake that?
It was strange. Part of her still felt like the Earth was her home, even if it was the kind of home she didn’t go back to all that much. She just didn’t know any of these people, or any of this world. Stray sentences made up a huge percentage of her knowledge of what the planet was even like now.
“Sorry, er, I feel I should ask, who are you?” Bruce said.
And he was looking at her so distrustfully, which didn’t help matters. Then again, she had just beaten up his other half.
Well, if she had to make a decision…
She punched once, quickly, with a flash of light. Bruce slumped to the floor; sighing, Carol pulled out her comm.
“Hey. One guy awaiting pick-up, here,” she said. “Huh? Unconscious, figured that was easier. I don’t know if I trust him. Would be easier if you didn’t take your time.”
Then she closed the channel, and looked tiredly around the forest. Some homecoming.
Alexander Pierce wasn’t much of a field agent. He’d been in the thick of things before, of course, though not for a good few years now. These days his time was mostly spent in front of screens and holograms, with endless negotiations and committee meetings.
Still, there was an odd nostalgia to being bundled in the back of an unsteady SHIELD truck, rocking back and forth as it drove over tree roots and uneven ground.
“Oh Nick, old friend, you did like your surprises.”
He remembered when they’d first seen the pager. He’d half-expected to find the Triskelion wired to explode; when that had failed, he’d kept an especial eye out over the next week for any nasty side-effects. He’d caught a few agents making bets on what it had been. He’d almost been disappointed when nothing happened.
There was every chance it was a dud, some last trick meant to make him doubt himself so much that he imploded, or an activation trigger for something so old it no longer functioned. No one had expected a super-powered woman dropping out of the sky, much less one capable of going toe-to-toe with the Hulk.
Speaking of, that in itself had been a hasty bit of improvisation. How to deal with Banner was a question that had its own floor at the Hub. Pitting the two question marks at one another would, at least, buy time.
She wasn’t meant to actually win.
“Sir! Hail HYDRA,” a soldier approached him. Distracted from his thoughts, Pierce looked up.
“Any progress?” Pierce said.
“On the woman, only one thing,” the soldier said. “But there’s been a report from the Insight satellites. Um…”
They offered their pad to Pierce; he took it, skimming through two communiques. One mentioned a few scraps from the last time Carol had been on Earth - Pierce made a mental note to send an email to Insight staff about a pertinent detail there - and the other…
Pierce frowned. Not again.
“She’s dead,” Pierce said. “We’ve talked about this. Run a diagnostic, the last thing we need right now is a buggy targeting algorithm.”
“Yes sir. Just thought you should know.”
And Insight had been seeing ghosts. For a moment he wondered if that was Fury’s doing too - he’d be remiss not to - but he put it out of mind. He had a lot of respect for Fury’s talents, but he didn’t count raising the dead among them.
The truck rumbled on. They’d gotten a call from Carol a little while ago, and he’d already been moving into the area to clean up the aftermath of whatever fight ensued. It was just a short journey into the woods.
It never ended; he established peace, and threats always showed up, and unfortunately not every threat was as mortal as Insight’s usual targets. The Hulk, and a woman that hadn’t aged since the 90s and could reach escape velocity.
Ironically enough, the one person who’d probably be the most help to him just then would’ve been Nick.
Eventually the truck came to a stop. Pierce was the first to get out, stepping out the back, and looking at the devastation around him with a heavy expression. This was what happened when you let Banner stay loose - he wouldn’t agree with Fury’s decision on that, anyway.
There was a crater a little way ahead - and overheard, a shining golden circle being etched in the sky that sounded like it was cheering. Pierce took a few steps forwards, and the whirl in the sky flickered out, Carol shooting down to a spot just in front of him, shaking her hair free.
He decided not to comment; instead, he looked into the crater and frowned.
“Where is he?” Pierce said.
“Huh?” Carol said. She moved to his side, and made a face. “That was where I left him.”
“Left him?” Pierce said.
“I wasn’t just going to stand around and stare at trees,” Carol said defensively. “I needed to stretch. There was no way he was waking up any time soon, and I’d have noticed if the big guy showed up.”
Pierce inhaled, then looked down again. No Hulk, anyway - that was a blessing.
“Spread out!” Pierce shouted, turned back into the truck: “Comb the area. If you see Banner, do not engage, but report back.”
He paused. Carol was looking around herself, poised to take off.
“You just knocked him out?” Pierce said. “He’s not the kind of man it’s easy to hold.”
“I’ve no idea what your prisons are like these days,” Carol said. “But he was the professor - the green guy’s the one that killed Fury. I’m not going to kill the little guy unlucky enough to share a body with Mr Hyde.”
“Let’s just hope he hasn’t gotten far,” Pierce said.
“Let’s find out,” Carol said.
She took a few steps away, and leapt up into the air. Behind her, Pierce pondered - too many loose ends, too many uncontrolled elements.
Ah well. Piece by piece, he told himself, piece by piece things would come together.
Bruce blinked a few times, stirring. His head pounded, but he recognised the bleariness as more run-of-the-mill rather than the result of any Hulk episode. He slowly pushed himself up.
He was in a crashed car; there was an empty metal frame around him, long-rusted and junked, with two more people near him. One was sat next to him, suddenly jumping when he stirred - it was a man, with a baseball cap pulled tightly down over remarkably youthful features.
“Oh! You’re awake! He’s awake!” the man said.
There was a woman at the other side of the wreck, sat at the end of where the trunk would be. She had long black hair, and didn’t react, looking around cautiously. Bruce shifted.
“Oh, yeah, they’re like that,” the man next to Bruce said. “Terrible conversationalist. Hi, I’m Scott.”
Bruce took a deep breath, waited a few moments until he felt calm, and the finally moved. Today was the day for meeting a lot of weird strangers apparently.
“Oh, wow, you’re him aren’t you? The Avenger,” Scott said. “Huge fan, Mr Hulk sir, great to meet you.”
“It’s Bruce,” he said. “How did I get here?”
“Scary person there suddenly made a bee-line for the woods,” Scott said. “Scooped you out while scary blonde lady was distracted, I think. There are a lot of scary people.”
Bruce frowned; Scott pushed a hat towards him. Unsure, Bruce took it, looking inside to see a few bits and pieces. He recognised one as a mesh-mask he’d seen some SHIELD agents use to conceal their identities.
“He gave me that a few days ago,” Scott said. “You need to hide your face if you’re somewhere you can be seen, or if a helicarrier’s near. I think he saved my life with that.”
“He?” Bruce echoed.
“Oh, yeah, they change their face a lot,” Scott said. “Thought he when I first saw them. Still not completely sure.”
Bruce frowned. The seeming-woman at the far side of the car was still looking around; Bruce sat up straighter, but could just see an empty field around them. The car must have been abandoned there years ago to be as hollow as it was.
Scott talked too much, and a stranger that didn’t talk at all, it seemed.
“We’re fugitives now, if it helps,” Scott said.
“Not my first time,” Bruce said.
“Oh! Right. Er, sorry, sore subject?” Scott said. He hesitated. “Do you have any hobbies? I picked up a book on close-up magic in the last town we passed. We’ve crossed most of the country by now.”
Scott pulled out a deck of cards excitedly; Bruce hastily changed the subject.
“You saved me,” Bruce said. “I think.”
“They do that a lot,” Scott said, reluctantly putting his cards away. “I wandered around for a bit, then they showed up again - at least I’m pretty sure it was the same person, looked different but acted the same - and asked me to come along.”
“And you did?”
“There’s… not really anyone I can talk to,” Scott said. Even behind the faux-face, his expression slipped. “If I go back to them, all of this is pointless.”
He waved vaguely at his mask and hat.
Bruce hesitated. He looked around again, still reeling from his recent return to humanity; normally he had a stronger sense of what he’d done as the Hulk. Now, he had a few faint flashes, but it was distant enough that he just felt disoriented, like he was remembering how to use his body again.
And now there was this, hiding their faces and avoiding contact with people they knew to, what, hide?
And SHIELD were… what, killing people? He wasn’t sure he wanted to start pulling on that thread, and he also wasn’t sure whether he had a choice.
After a minute, the woman turned around. Just like Scott, it was hard to tell if her face was genuine, or even if her voice was; by the sound of it, she changed a lot. Even the shape of her body was unclear below the coat.
She grimaced, pulled something out of one ear, then looked back.
“Banner?” she said.
There was a note that marked her voice as synthesised, though Bruce doubted he’d have noticed it if he hadn’t spent so much time around JARVIS.
“Um. Yes?” he said.
“Who were you fighting?” she said.
“Oh, him you talk to,” Scott said.
Still, he was smiling as he slipped out of the way to take over watch-duty. Bruce hesitated.
“I don’t know,” Bruce said. He paused again. “What’s happening? Really, I’m kind of lost right now, and I don’t know if you know me, but it’s not good when I panic.”
“SHIELD was after you. Why?” she said.
“What?” Bruce said. “No, no, they wouldn’t be. We sorted things…”
He paused.
“Fury,” he said. “She said something about… Nick Fury, do you know him? Do you know what happened to him?”.
“He died,” she said. “A month ago - one of the first casualties of Project Insight.”
“Project what?” Bruce said. He closed his eyes. “A month? It doesn’t feel like it’s been a month.”
The Hulk could be unpredictable, admittedly. Still, losing a month was disconcerting - even scary. Especially a month where so much seemed to have happened.
The stranger still peered at him, as if judging.
“Project Insight was SHIELD’s plan for world safety,” she said. “An algorithm that finds potential threats, and eliminates them. Day one, it hit Fury, and you, and others. Friends. And it’s been operating ever since.”
Bruce hesitated.
“SHIELD did that?” he said, quietly.
“Sort of,” she said. “They were infiltrated. Blame a group called HYDRA.”
He remembered feeling a bullet, all of a month ago, apparently. Then just fragments, glimpses of the Hulk’s vision, half-memories of running and rage and solitude. He hadn’t reverted for all that time.
Was it Insight that had targeted him? He faintly recalled pain - the Hulk would have saved him from that, but he didn’t know how long the Hulk would have been targeted.
A rain of bullets on anyone HYDRA considered a danger.
“A month ago?” Bruce said. “People have been living like this a month?”
“You see why I’m standing against them,” she said. “Will you help?”
“I don’t know if you’d want me,” Bruce said. “The Hulk, he’s normally easier to… focus. He’s not been out for that long before, I wasn’t me for all that time.”
The woman was looking at him again, though less probingly now. There was a glimmer of sympathy in her eyes. Quietly, she took his hand in hers, squeezing.
“What’s past is past,” she said. “You take it, and you don’t let it take you. Understand? You don’t let it rule you, you use it to drive you.”
She looked into his eyes, something insistent in her expression; Bruce stared back.
“Do I know you?” Bruce said quietly.
She pulled back quickly. She was halfway to shaking her head when she caught herself.
“Don’t ask me about who I am, or anything that could lead to that,” she said. “HYDRA think I’m dead, and I change my face daily. Insight can only kill me if it can find me. I… can’t do anything to narrow that down. Understand?”
Bruce hesitated.
Insight. Cold, calculating eyes all around the world.
“How many?” Bruce said, eventually, stumbling over his words.
The stranger looked at him, unsure.
“How many died?” Bruce said. “How many have ‘HYDRA’ killed?”
“Do you really want to know?” she said.
He felt a momentary surge of anger, a rage that he tried to keep a lid on. Reality might not be as bad as his instincts, or it might be a whole lot worse. He clenched a hand into a fist and waited for the green to leave his eyes.
“I don’t think I do,” Bruce said, at last.
She nodded. “Everyone’s lost someone. I have. All we can do is keep going.”
Her eyes were still on him. He wasn’t sure if it was wariness, or if she was still judging him.
“It sounds like a lot’s changed,” Bruce said, eventually.
“Help change it back,” she said. “We need to take down the network. That means we get into the Triskelion - Scott’s a thief, he can help with that.”
Bruce looked down; the hat was still in his hands, a grey beanie which was apparently used as storage space. He pulled out the nano-mask, watching the electrical currents darting across it, awaiting a face to map and cling to.
“If you’re coming to me,” Bruce said slowly. He chewed his lip, unsure he wanted to finish his thought. “The Avengers?”
“Dead. Day one casualties,” she said. “The biggest threats were. All that’s left is the ones they forgot about.”
“And me,” Bruce said. His hands were shaking. “I don’t know if I can be much help. I got… lost, the last time I transformed.”
“And if it happens, we’ll drag you back,” she said, firmly. “We’re all there is. Besides, we need Banner, not the Hulk.”
Not for the first time, Carol wondered how Fury had fitted in here. She lay on the rooftop of the Triskelion, watching the suits mill around below her, and hearing the constant churning of bureaucracy. Folders and files, documents and permission slips and intel, a never-ending hive of activity going back and forth.
Endless planning. A sense of authority too reminiscent of the Kree for her liking. It didn’t feel like it suited the man she’d known.
Her gaze drifted up; there was a helicarrier in the distance, looming over the city. A little distracting, but maybe normal by this time. She’d definitely gotten used to weirder way back in her day.
Part of her was on edge, almost inevitably; how could the Earth feel more alien to her than most of the planets she’d been to? Maybe it was just that she felt she ought to have a frame of reference, but everything seemed just a little off.
She heard a door. Vaguely, Carol looked back - she hadn’t realised that there was an actual way up here. Pierce was walking out of a staircase.
“Something triggered our aerial alarms,” Pierce said. “I had a feeling. Hope you don’t take being shot down personally, it’s all automated.”
“I didn’t notice,” Carol shrugged.
Pierce paused a moment. She wondered if he was looking for some sign of debris or strain on her; it was true enough that she’d barely noticed. The missiles had detonated with all the force of a gentle mist. She’d flown through the smoke.
He seemed to be trying to think of a polite way to respond - eventually, he just changed the topic.
“There haven’t been any sightings of the Hulk,” Pierce said.
“Well, that’s good anyway,” Carol said.
“Is it?” Pierce said. “You let him get away.”
“He woke up faster than I thought,” Carol said. “Compliments to his constitution, but if the green guy’s not been seen, then he hasn’t done any more damage. The moment you see the Hulk, I’ll punch it into orbit for you, happy?”
Pierce looked at her for a moment more. She had the distinct feeling she was being judged.
“This would’ve been easier if you’d dealt with Banner when you had the chance,” Pierce said.
“I didn’t think he was a danger when he was human,” Carol said.
“The human’s just a shell,” Pierce said. “That thing is rage. Sooner or later it comes out, and there’s hell to pay. There’s a reason your orders were-”
“My orders?” Carol said sharply, speaking over him.
Pierce paused. He seemed unused to being interrupted.
“Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t work for you,” Carol said. “I’m here because I’m looking out for an old friend, and because I’ve kinda made a thing of helping keep worlds safe. You need help dealing with a monster, I’ll fight that monster, but I’ll do it on my terms. Okay?”
Pierce was quiet. For a moment, his expression was in flux, something behind his eyes shifting - until, at last, he nodded. He still looked at Carol, though he didn’t seem to be quite so analytical as before.
Apparently he’d made up his mind on her. Carol doubted she’d be on this planet long enough for it to matter, one way or another.
“Tell me something,” Carol said.
“Yes?” Pierce said.
“Fury - when I knew him - was always a good judge of character,” Carol said. “It’s hard to believe he’d have trusted a killer, is all.”
“Hard to believe he’d have trusted anyone, you mean,” Pierce said. He chuckled for a moment, fond, before his laughter dried up. “He was always making sure, always double-checking. When I knew him, he was so paranoid of everyone that the people he should’ve been wary of didn’t stick out from every other stranger on the street. Though Banner was a special case. He was an Avenger.”
Carol stiffened.
“Avenger?” Carol echoed.
“Fury’s initiative,” Pierce said. “He started it years back, but it only really got going recently. Think I mentioned - he wanted a group of special people to help serve as the Earth’s protectors. Banner had powers, so he was chosen. I think Nick really wanted to trust him, maybe enough to overlook, well, you know.”
Pierce’s tone was kind, comforting even; Carol, meanwhile, looked away. Her expression set, cold.
That brought back memories.
“Are you okay?” Pierce said, when her silence went on too long.
“Fine,” Carol said, too quickly.
“Well, I can’t stay up here all day,” Pierce said. He nodded to her: “Can we rely on you if we do find the Hulk?”
“Trust me,” Carol said. “I’m going to avenge Fury, don’t doubt it.”
There had always been secret rooms in the Triskelion. Conference rooms that were never officially booked, meeting places that were perfectly functional and yet marked as under maintenance, old sections that had vanished off of blueprints during refurbishments yet could still be found.
These days, HYDRA could act a little more openly. Still, force of habit saw certain meetings take place out of sight.
Gideon Malick, member of the World Security Council and governing body to SHIELD, was waiting. A few minutes on, Pierce walked into the conference room, ignoring the ‘In-use’ sign perpetually on the door.
“Mr Secretary,” Malick said. “Hail HYDRA.”
“Hail HYDRA,” Pierce said automatically. “Gideon, it’s a surprise to see you here.”
“Well, two heads are better than one, as they say,” Malick said. “I thought it better we talk in person - you’re having a lot of trouble here, by the sound of it. Can we help?”
“We’ll find Banner sooner or later,” Pierce said. “This time, we’ll actually be able to kill him.”
“Beyond Dr Banner,” Malick said. “The woman?”
“Carol Danvers,” Pierce said. “I’ve read up on her, and talked to her.”
“Your assessment?” Malick said.
“She’s… not compatible with our world,” Pierce said. “History of insubordination, prioritises selfish needs over the good of our country. I doubt she could be turned. Unfortunately she doesn’t seem that easy to kill.”
Malick paused, contemplating. Pierce recognised the silent signal to not speak, and to wait for him to finish his thought.
“Problematic,” Malick said, at last. “Have you found any weaknesses?”
“Not in her,” Pierce said. “If she proves problematic, we have another option.”
Pierce reached into his pocket; he pulled out his phone, thumbing through old emails quickly. Malick watched him.
“Maria and Monica Rambeau,” Pierce read. “Mother and daughter, old acquaintances of Carol’s. The algorithm’s been monitoring them, but they haven’t crossed the line into active threats yet. If we prepare a signal…”
“Then they could be eliminated with one text,” Malick said. “You think that could keep the woman in line?”
“I think it’s the best we have,” Pierce said. “Tell her to leave, or else we put a target on their back. It should, if nothing else, give us a bit of time to try and find a better response. Strucker tells me his research is going promisingly.”
“So I hear,” Malick said. He nodded. “Have you given the order yet?”
“Not yet,” Pierce said. “I was going to ask your opinion. I know you prefer us to be a little subtler.”
“But in this case, subtlety doesn’t suffice,” Malick said.
His face was grim.
As much as Project Insight was supposed to be automated, some degree of control helped. The ability to send a kill order directly had its benefits; there were situations where one wanted an option beyond just death, but having a fall-back helped.
Some SHIELD agents used it on missions. They’d investigate, seek to interrogate, but if the target got away then it was just more efficient to set Insight on them. It hadn’t been used to take someone hostage before, but it would be effective.
A few lines of code, and every targeting satellite, and every helicarrier, would just need a single text or alert in order to have a new top-priority target. With the number of helicarriers they had up in the air right now, Pierce doubted even Carol could reach them all in time.
“Send me the information,” Malick said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You will?” Pierce said.
“I’m on my way to monitor one of the carriers,” Malick said. “I’ve heard you’ve been getting a lot of faulty signals lately - we want to be sure it’s nothing serious. On top of that little rebel problem we’ve yet to track down, we’ve a lot of concerns.”
Pierce grimaced. Ah, that.
“I’ve ordered a diagnostic,” Pierce said.
“I know. I asked to receive a copy of the results,” Malick said. “Nothing’s officially wrong. And if a satellite did make a positive ID…”
“Romanoff is dead,” Pierce said. “I saw her body.”
“If it’s a glitch, then why can’t we detect a problem?” Malick said. He paused. “I received an alert that one satellite claimed to have seen Rogers in Jersey. There are too many ghosts for my liking, Secretary.”
Pierce schooled his expression. Scowling never seemed to achieve much; still, there was no disguising his irritation. He’d missed a few important emails by the sound of it.
“I’ll contact Zola,” Pierce said.
“You’ll play nice with Danvers,” Malick said. “You’re her point of contact - while she’s here, keep your nose clean. I’ll talk with the project staff and get to the bottom of this.”
Pierce sighed. “Agreed. I’ll keep her placated. When she deals with the Hulk for us, if she doesn’t leave of her own accord, we’ll make her.”
“Agreed,” Malick said. “Well? Get back to work. Hail HYDRA.”
“Hail HYDRA.”
Washington loomed in the distance. Scott and Bruce walked close behind their unknown ally - they’d donned a male-presenting guise this time, tanned skin and a shaved head and their frame still hidden by the trenchcoat. They wore headphones, though whether they were actually listening to anything was unclear.
They didn’t talk much. Bruce wasn’t sure whether that was focus, or more over-caution about unwittingly revealing themselves.
Uncomfortably, Bruce adjusted his own mask.
“Hey, don’t fidget,” Scott said.
“You wear these all the time?” Bruce said.
“You get used to it,” Scott said. “Hey, don’t pick at it - I’ve got no idea if we have replacements.”
Bruce shifted, doing his best to contort his expression in such a way that he didn’t particularly notice the veil clinging to his face. He could hear a low whine with it pressed against his ears, the micro-mechanisms within the sheet constantly active, the charge making his stubble stand on end.
And he was meant to wear this indefinitely? He wasn’t sure he liked that idea.
They’d stopped a few times on the way, finding other people apparently targeted by Insight. They’d handed over hats and masks and advice, and moved on - no one else had even been asked to come with them. Bruce didn’t know what he thought about that.
Scott pulled out a coin, sitting back and practicing vanishes, flourishing distractingly with his other hand. Bruce quickly took that opportunity to move forwards, hurrying to the side of their de facto leader rather than being a captive audience again.
“Hey,” Bruce said. “Hey, where are we going? Do we have a plan here, or is it just walking around and getting lifts?”
He went ignored. Bruce reached to grab the stranger’s arm, to get their attention; the stranger quickly whirled sideways, only to relax when he saw Banner. He glanced around, then adjusted his headphones.
Bruce wasn’t sure what he thought about them; he’d soon realised that he really did know nothing about them. The heavy coat, the changing mask and wigs and hats, even the variety of outer layers and voices made it hard to always identify them. The laconic, rushed speech was maybe their most identifying trait.
“What?” the stranger said.
“What are we actually doing?” Bruce said. “You’ve been acting like we have a destination, but I’ve got no idea what it is we’re doing.”
The stranger paused. He scowled, expression identifiable even below the nano-mask, and quickly looked around the empty road again. He gestured to Scott, and walked a little way off the side.
Bruce followed him, gathering in the shade of an abandoned hut. The stranger looked around again.
“Talking’s dangerous. Never know when they’re listening,” he said. “But probably safer here than the city.”
“O…kay,” Bruce said slowly.
Scott quickly pocketed his coin, figuring now wasn’t the best time.
“Project Insight is centred in a lot of places,” he said. “Targeting satellites, helicarriers, but the only point of access we have is the Triskelion - SHIELD site, with an uplink to monitor the list of targets. You know how computers work, I take it?”
“Not my specialty, but I’ve had some experience,” Banner said, unsure if he was joking. “Yes, I know how to use a computer.”
“That’s your job. I’ll hold off the goons. Scott, you’re the thief - you’re going to get us in there,” the stranger said.
Scott blinked.
“Sorry, me?” Scott said.
“It is why you’re on their radar,” the stranger said. “You get into places you shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but not huge military organisation places,” Scott said. “And not without planning, or a team or- or…”
“You have a team,” the stranger said gruffly.
“Right. Right, okay,” Scott said. He took a deep breath. “I’ll give it a think.”
“Do,” he said.
The stranger re-adjusted his headphones, and began to start walking again. Scott poked his tongue out behind him, then quickly adjusted his expression when the stranger looked back.
“Will get right on it!” Scott said quickly.
The stranger looked away; Scott looked uncertainly at Banner. Banner couldn’t help but look back sympathetically.
From what he’d heard, a lot of supposed troublemakers had been killed by HYDRA - criminals, or revolutionaries, the algorithm made no distinction. People in prison wouldn’t have been a threat, but once they got out their days might well be numbered if HYDRA didn’t see solid evidence of them being suitably reformed.
It also meant that as much as they might be able to save Scott from that, they didn’t have many potential people with the right skillset who’d be willing to help fight back. Hopefully Scott knew enough.
“How do you feel about really dumb plans?” Scott said.
“I worked with Tony Stark, you’re fine,” Bruce said.
And then there was the question of what they’d do after they got into the Triskelion. Shutting down Insight in one place didn’t sound hugely useful.
Still, Scott was hurrying forwards to talk to their benefactor again. Bruce grimaced, hoping that he wouldn’t regret being part of this.
The Triskelion housed the beating heart of SHIELD. All information they gathered went into the same network, decentralised and beyond anyone’s reach, but here was where most of it could be accessed.
The data that formed the lifeblood of Project Insight could be glimpsed, on its inexorable journey to the helicarriers and the satellites. A dozen screens flashed with locations from around the world, threat levels constantly being calculated, potential targets always being identified.
They didn’t take the shot so much these days, not after the first day had cleared out most of the rabble, but one always had to be watchful. A safer world demanded no less.
The true core of Insight, of course, was lower down, in a far more secure location. True, Insight was beyond anyone’s capability to destroy; the Triskelion could be levelled, and all the satellites and helicarriers would still be able to do their jobs. Still, there was no point to tempting fate.
It was, however, more than sufficient for SHIELD to merely be able to tap into the avalanche of data, when they needed to. From here, all the world could be monitored.
“Sir!”
Pierce stood back, watching it all play out, when an aide came to his side. He looked away from the sea of screens.
“Report,” Pierce said.
“Small SHIELD depot targeted on the outskirts,” she said. “It matches the MO of the other hits.”
Pierce grimaced. There was that thorn in their side, too - someone who’d managed to evade Project Insight for the last couple of years, ever since it had begun again, and begun a constant campaign of petty irritation against SHIELD.
Vaguely, Pierce recalled the occasional ghost glimpsed by the machine. He shook his head, deciding it was nothing.
“How far away?” Pierce said.
“Not far,” she said.
This was the last thing they needed right now. It was hard to respond to something even the algorithm couldn’t, though.
“Anything I can help with?”
And now she was standing in the doorway. Pierce schooled his expression, looking over towards Carol, Malick’s advice ringing in his ears. Be a good port of call for her, and hope she’d leave quietly once Banner was dealt with.
“Where have you been?” he said.
“On comms,” Carol said. “I watch out for more than just this one planet you know, had to make sure I wasn’t getting any SOSes.”
Split priorities. Pierce grimaced.
“Nothing you need to worry about here,” Pierce said. “A small-time rebel, that’s all.”
“If Banner’s not been located, I might as well,” Carol said. She shrugged. “What is it, just some guy? Give me five minutes.”
“We don’t have a face or a name,” Pierce said. “They’ve managed to fly under the radar until now, we just know that they hit one of our sites.”
“Right,” Carol said, lingering skeptically on the syllable.
She looked into the room, giving the screens a once-over.
“Is this all normal these days?” Carol said.
“It lets us monitor for dangers,” Pierce said, carefully. “We keep the world safe.”
“Mm. Honestly, I’m just impressed you don’t still have dial-up,” Carol said. “Still, I bet you I can mobilise faster than anything else you’ve got.”
“Maybe,” Pierce said slowly.
“What? You’re still thinking about Banner?” Carol said. She sighed. “Everyone’s allowed one mistake. Tell you what, I’ll fly this rebel back here myself, you can take over custody. No worries, no chance to get away.”
Pierce paused. Getting Carol involved in something like this didn’t necessarily seem like the best thing to do.
Then again, he had an option in his back pocket even if she did turn, and she was at least efficient. Getting her out of his hair for a few minutes, and dealing with these rebels, was worth a small risk.
The worst case scenario was that she was forced off of Earth and Banner stayed a problem, but that was their normal a few days ago. They could cope.
Pierce managed a diplomatic smile, expression showing none of his internal considerations.
“Be quick,” Pierce said. “No one-liners, just pick them up and get back here, if you can find them. We need you on call in case there’s a Hulk incident.”
“No fun,” Carol said. She shrugged. “But I’ve got it. They’re in the area, they can’t be too hard to find.”
“Just don’t waste time,” Pierce said. Carol snorted.
“You sound like my old CO,” she said.
Pierce raised an eyebrow. Carol waved at him, and flew out the door, not looking back.
Bruce and Scott were running. There didn’t seem to be any plan to it - one moment they’d been making their way through the city, the next they’d been redirected to a small outpost, asked to stir up a bit of trouble, and now they were on their way out.
Even knowing why, it was alarming. If they talked too regularly about the plan, there was a better chance of being overheard and targeted. HYDRA saw everything now that Insight was in operation.
They’d changed their faces before and after the scuffle, cycling through the data stored in the masks. Still, they needed to put more distance between themselves and the facility.
“This way!”
It took a second to recognise their accomplice - they’d swapped out one trenchcoat for another, but they’d been wearing the same thing when they’d struck at the base. The clothes were more identifiable than the person.
They were driving a jeep; Bruce slowed.
“Did you steal that?” Bruce said.
“HYDRA won’t miss it,” he said. (As ever, Bruce was guessing at the pronoun). “Get in!”
Bruce looked back, mentally trying to keep in control. He could feel that flicker of rage perpetually at the back of his mind calling him, urging him to let loose, and he still felt that bone-deep horror at losing a month.
He hurried into the back of the jeep, Scott close behind him, and they sped off. They made it most of the way down the road before it came to a screeching halt.
“What is it? Why’d we stop?” Scott said.
Bruce looked down the gap between the seat; there was a flash of light outside, a flare of white that dimmed to reveal a figure in the middle of the road. Bruce grimaced.
“It’s her,” Bruce said.
“Stay calm,” the stranger said.
There was a flicker as he changed his mask, and adjusted his tight-fitting cap. Now with a more feminine guise, they stepped out of the vehicle, guardedly looking down at the road ahead of them.
“So you’re the one they sent?” they said, voice again higher, barely recognisable.
“You’re the ones stirring up trouble?” she said.
She punched one hand into the palm of the other, the subsequent flash of light almost blinding. Scott glanced nervously sideways; hesitantly, Bruce stepped out. He wasn’t sure how well any of them would fare against the woman he’d clashed with in the forest, but he knew he’d be better at delaying her than the rest of them.
That voice at the back of his mind whispered, still. He did his best to keep a lid on it, not wanting to rush into anything, but he tried to stand ready.
“Oh, hey,” she said. She tilted her head. “Do I know you?”
For a moment, Bruce was glad of his mask. He scratched his cheek, the reminder of it also reminding him of how uncomfortable it was. He stood next to Scott, sharing another look, silently debating what to do.
The stranger was the closest to the woman; she, meanwhile, seemed utterly unconcerned by them. The stranger meanwhile lifted a hand, quietly gesturing for Bruce to stay back.
“She’s with SHIELD- HYDRA, whoever,” Bruce said. “Careful.”
“Very true,” Carol said. “I have a soft spot for SHIELD. So, how are we going to do this?”
A streak of light in the sky over the Triskelion was becoming an increasingly common sight; Carol arced across the sky, a trail of energy parting the clouds and leaving a searing afterimage against the blue.
Still, it drew attention. Agents of SHIELD and HYDRA alike looked up, and Pierce looked out his window. He bit back a tired grimace at the flashiness, and took the elevator down to the square outside. He glanced across, surprised to see Malick watching as well - he traded a nod, then turned his attention to the newest arrival.
There was Carol, and then there were three strangers with her. Her hands shimmered with unearthly light, an aurora wrapping itself around each fist, apparently unconcerned with the three ostensible-prisoners with her.
Pierce approached slowly. One made a move as if to lunge; Carol placed a warning hand on their shoulder. They stiffened.
“Boss-man,” Carol called. “No one’s escaping this time. These the ones you were after? They were making off with a stolen SHIELD jeep - a bit of a give-away if you ask me.”
“I don’t know their faces,” Pierce said. He paused. “Electrostatic veils, perhaps? I’ve been deceived by them before. Check their faces.”
“Sure,” Carol said.
She shrugged; she pinched one man’s cheek, and tugged, removing a gossamer-thin barrier. He pouted.
“I was just getting used to that,” he said.
“Scott Lang,” Gideon Malick said, a few steps away. “I was just looking over profiles of recent escapees. That’s him.”
Scott waved, a little nervously. He shot a glance at Carol: Carol met his gaze, unflinching.
Then she moved to the next. As the next mask came away, Pierce stiffened; Carol, too, set her feet into the ground.
“Er. Hi again,” Bruce said.
“If I see green, I’m punting you into orbit,” Carol said. “Understood?”
“Very much so,” Bruce said. He fidgeted a little, before his gaze settled on Pierce. His voice went cold. “So you’re the one that ordered their deaths.”
“Ignore him,” Pierce said quickly.
Carol shrugged. She moved to the third figure, and reached for their face too - right now, they looked rather androgynous, corpse-pale. They wrenched their neck back when Carol made a grab, looking stonily back at her.
Carol met their gaze for a moment, then paused.
“What’s going to happen with them?” Carol said.
“We’ll need to find out who they’re working with, if anyone, of course,” Pierce said. “Security comes first.”
“Of course,” Carol echoed.
Sometimes they sounded so much like the Kree. Assign missions, don’t ask questions, take over control where possible. It was a little unnerving to hear Fury’s group morphing into it. It wasn’t a time she liked to be reminded of.
“I knew someone just like you,” she said, oddly quiet. “All orders and logic and chain of command.”
Pierce raised an eyebrow, but opted not to ask. Instead his attention was caught by the torn, screwed-up masks on the ground.
As he looked down, Carol reached again for the third’s mask, a half-hearted attempted thwarted by a jerk back, and Carol looking a little disbelievingly at him. She mouthed a ‘seriously?’ at the petty resistance; they glowered back.
“Hold on,” Pierce said, thoughtful. He looked over to Malick - “False faces. I think we’ve solved our little ghost problem - you thought you’d spook us, is that it?”
Scott and Bruce traded a confused look.
“Adopt the appearance of the dead in the hopes that we’d panic,” Pierce said. “Typical terrorist stratagem.”
“Er, sorry scary bad man, nothing to do with us,” Scott said.
“Come now, you can’t think there’s any point in lying now,” Pierce said.
“He’s not,” Bruce said. For a moment, he seemed unsure. “Not our work, I don’t think. No point.”
Pierce frowned. Carol was idly looking around the square, unconcerned; her gaze lingered on Gideon for a moment, looking the stranger up and down. He shifted a little, uncomfortable.
“Well, we’ll get to the bottom of that,” Pierce said. “Carol. I’m going to need to ask you to deal with Dr Banner.”
Carol blinked, apparently only just remembering she was meant to be paying attention. Playing it off as unconcerned, she shifted angle, looking at the three from head-on.
Even then, her gaze drifted. A helicarrier loomed in the distance. These three had been so concerned about hiding their faces, she’d heard, so afraid that weapons on those carriers would target them - ironically enough, the heart of SHIELD was the safest place for them. There wouldn’t be any purpose for Insight to target prisoners.
She lifted a glowing hand. Her gaze drifted again, pointedly looking to her right. Sturdy-looking metal doors were there; half a dozen guards were in place, perpetually patrolling. There were a lot of secure areas in the Triskelion, though none quite as solid as that.
Carol took a breath.
And behind her, Malick moved closer to Pierce; it was Pierce he spoke to, though his gaze was firmly on Carol. She watched him in the reflection of a window.
“That matter we talked about,” Malick said, his voice low. “It’s settled.”
“You’re sure?” Pierce said. “The, ah, family?”
“We’re perfectly safe,” Malick said.
An instant later, and Carol shot out a blast with the force of a star - it didn’t go close to Banner or any of the prisoners, instead shooting sideways and melting its way through a metal doorway and sending out a shockwave with enough force to make Pierce stumble.
Immediately, she blasted herself forwards again, putting herself between the three and the nearest guards; bullets bounced off her glowing chest.
“That way, go!” Carol shouted.
As wary as he’d been, the suddenness of Carol’s turn-around caught him by surprise. The inevitable on-duty soldiers had a similar reaction: the three prisoners, Pierce noticed, showed no such surprise.
Waiting on some cue, he supposed. His business suit wasn’t meant for the front lines of a battle; then again, in his opinion, information trumped any weapon.
Carol shot out beams of light at the ground, making SHIELD agents trip and miss, or be blasted back. The prisoners made it to the once-secure metal doors; the masked one picked up a remarkably heavy-looking chunk of metal, throwing it aside to get to the data store at the chamber’s heart.
Pierce schooled his expression. That was the Insight uplink, one of the points of connection to the network - Project Insight was too secure to be taken down from any one location, but anyone getting that far in was still an irritant.
“Hold your fire!” Pierce shouted.
He raised his hands, slowly walking close. Carol was standing in the doorway, now, looking out. Pierce sighed tiredly.
Well, it wasn’t like he hadn’t expected this. That was the problem with people like her, that lacked the ability to follow orders and do what had to be done - ultimately, they were just wishy-washy. They picked their own morals and worked against the team when it suited them.
Besides, she’d betrayed her old allegiance, so the reports said. It figured she’d do it again.
“Let me guess, Banner or whoever that is talked to you,” Pierce said. “Convinced you they were right, and we were wrong.”
“Something like that,” Carol said.
“Even with all we’ve done?” Pierce said. “The world is a safer place because of us.”
“Safer for some, whole lot worse for others,” Carol said. She seemed almost relieved to be able to snark at him. “Forgive me, still not sold on the totalitarian nightmare.”
Pierce sighed. People never chose the easy way - first Fury, now this Captain.
A rocket whistled past his shoulder.
“I said hold your fire!” Pierce shouted, anger slipping into his tone.
Carol raised her arms, bracing herself against the ground and only being pushed a couple of inches back. She seemed more amused than annoyed; as the smoke cleared, Pierce walked closer, looking her dead in the eyes.
“Monica and Maria Rambeau,” Pierce said. “New Orleans. Do you want the exact address, or can we skip that and not waste time?”
Carol stopped, fists alight and raised. She glared back at Pierce.
“Nothing you can do here can stop Insight,” Pierce said. “I’m sure you can shoot down a helicarrier, but we have spares, and all it takes is one. We know their faces, and we know where they live. If you try to put a stop to us, they die.”
Carol faltered. Malick shifted, standing close behind Pierce.
“I sent the order myself,” Malick said. “Do you know what that means?”
“It means all your talk of a safer world is bull,” Carol said, voice low.
“Some things are sacrificed for the greater good,” Pierce said. “It’s always the way.”
Carol’s light dimmed, though her scowl didn’t diminish in the slightest. Outwardly unruffled, Pierce walked closer; he looked at the three inside, his gaze lingering on Bruce.
Agents drew closer as Pierce entered the room, watching the rebels carefully. SHIELD more than outnumbered them, but people could still make bad decisions.
Carol, Scott, Bruce. Then there was the last. Pierce’s gaze lingered on them for a moment; particulates in the air could sometimes interfere with the mesh. He saw it spark, momentary flickers in the disguise.
Then he remembered how effortlessly they’d torn their way in here, and the rubble they’d flung aside. Pierce pursed his lips. Another ghost - he shouldn’t have been surprised. They hadn’t been able to find the body. He cleared his throat, effortlessly recalling a few familiar words of Russian.
“Longing. Rusted. Seventeen,” Pierce began.
The ‘stranger’ was staring at him, undisguised venom in his eyes; after a second, his scowl became all the surlier. Annoyed, he tugged off the malfunctioning mask, revealing the features beneath - unshaven, with long dark hair and deep shadows around his eyes.
“Sorry. Are you saying something?” he said.
He tilted his head, tugging his hair back; there was a small, pale earplug tightly inserted in place. He dropped his hair to look defiantly back at Pierce.
Pierce lifted a hand; a dozen soldiers came in behind him, guns raised, all pointed at the lead soldier. Bruce and Scott stood nervously behind him, and Carol stood impotently to the side.
Now-unmasked, the stranger glanced to Carol, remarkably casual.
“Guess this is our formal meeting. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, ma’am,” he said. “Used to work for these people - they messed with my mind, made me loyal to them, until an old friend snapped me out of it. Since then, been doing what I can to stop them.”
“Oh,” Carol said. She nodded appreciatively. “Captain Carol Danvers. Same, just with aliens rather than these weirdoes.”
Bucky gestured to his earplugs, shrugging helplessly, before looking scathingly at the armed soldiers.
After a moment, he shifted; his trenchcoat slipped off, revealing a scratched, grey metal arm. He stretched it out, as though nothing was happening.
“What did you think you could achieve?” Pierce said. “This isn’t some nerve centre. This is one place of hundreds. Was this just some act of pride, a last act of defiance against the ones that made you?”
“Pardon?” Bucky said.
The agents twitched, trigger-fingers poised, watching the gathered resistance. Scott and Bruce stood behind Bucky, and Carol stood not that far away. Bruce was shaking slightly, and more than a few eyes were carefully looking at him.
Still, so close to Bucky and Scott, there was no way a transformation would end well for them either.
“You aren’t SHIELD,” Carol said. “Fury wouldn’t have been a part of this.”
“You’d be surprised,” Pierce said. He paused a moment, then glanced briefly around the assembled guards, and smiled. “But you’re right. We’re HYDRA - unkillable, cut off one head and two more rise to take its place. You destroy this facility, and we have others. We are beyond your ability to destroy. And if you act, then we will find everyone you care about and have them pay the price that we can’t make you pay.”
Bruce looked disturbed. Scott looked from side to side, generally confused; Bucky hadn’t stopped glowering once. It wasn’t fear in his eyes, though - it was just dislike, just focus.
Carol clenched a hand into a fist.
No one had taken a step. Carol eyed the HYDRA agents, gaze lingering on Malick, as if sizing up the new arrival. Malick looked back; somehow, he looked even more tense than her.
For all their talk of saving the world, of being protectors, it always came down to petty threats and violence against any who opposed them. All too familiar. She glanced at Bucky in a momentary gesture of sympathy, before turning her attention back to Pierce.
“You infiltrated them,” Carol said.
“Better to say we became them,” Pierce said. “We are SHIELD - the only shield that the world needs, from the likes of you.”
“Nah, I like infiltrated,” Carol said. “How’d it work? Sneak in, get a few loyalists in positions of power, take control?”
Pierce frowned.
“Is a nice plan,” Carol said. “Hope you don’t mind that we took it.”
A green hand rested on Pierce’s shoulder.
Uncertainly, he looked back - it wasn’t Malick standing beside him any longer. Pierce opened his mouth to yell, and around him the HYDRA agents jumped backwards in panic, the sight of the sudden alien catching most off-guard.
The ensuing fight lasted all of four seconds. Carol shot forwards, knocking the weapons out of the hands of half a dozen HYDRA agents, while Bucky lunged at the nearest on his side; he grabbed the barrel of one gun with a metal hand, winced at the impact of the bullet, then wrenched it away and swung it like a club.
And then there were a dozen unconscious soldiers on the floor of the building, and Pierce held at gunpoint by the creature who’d once been Malick.
“Any trouble, Talos?” Carol said.
“These people have terrible taste in coffee,” Talos said. He grimaced, then quickly sobered up. “No, nothing serious.”
Pierce looked incredulously at him. A little smugly, Carol grinned.
Scott cheered.
“You asked what we were doing here,” Carol said. “I’m pretty sure I can take down your carriers and satellites, I just need to find the right one - better than knocking out every TV station. You have, what, a couple of dozen of those now?”
She glanced back over her shoulder. Bruce made a middling hand gesture.
“Yeah, well, I need to know where they are, and I don’t know your tech. Hence, this guy. Knock yourself out greenie,” Carol said.
Bruce nodded. He immediately moved back to a work-station.
There weren’t many places one could access all of the data concerning Project Insight. This was the only place in the US, a secure facility where all actions were carefully monitored. The location of every satellite, every base that needed to be eradicated - the actual destruction was easier for her than finding them.
There were probably alarms blaring about unexpected access, not that such consequences mattered much now, with the doors blown open and Carol standing guard.
“The Rambeaus,” Pierce began.
“Oops. Sorry,” Talos said. “Never passed that on. Must have slipped my mind.”
“And besides,” Carol said. “As of five minutes ago…”
“More or less,” Talos supplied, waving ‘Malick’s’ phone.
“Every helicarrier is under Skrull command,” Carol said. “All this, well, it was Lang’s idea of a way to get inside, but it mostly just kept your attention on the wrong things.
“Misdirection!” Scott cheered, again. Apparently he’d gotten over having been left in the dark pretty quickly, his earlier fear giving way to exultation.
Pierce faltered. One moment, he’d been so assured of HYDRA’s defence of the world - the next, he had no idea what he was meant to say.
“I should probably say, I came back a week ago,” Carol said. “Didn’t take long to ping that something was up. Just had to call in a favour from a few old friends.”
“Happy to help,” Talos said. “I had a soft spot for the old grouch.”
There was as good as an army outside, but they wouldn’t be bursting in without some signal - as far as they were concerned, the problem was dealt with, or at least would be if Malick walked out.
Malick. He’d known all the pass-codes, he’d known Pierce - he’d acted so right. It was more of a deception than any mere nano-mask could pull off.
Shape-shifters. He’d read the files, but they were meant to be gone.
“I take it you’re the ghosts,” Pierce said.
“Guilty,” Talos said. “It’s easier to sim recent memories, so we got as many people as we could on alert, raised the security so everyone was thinking about their clearance levels, and how they accessed Insight. Old trick.”
“Pretty easy, all things considered,” Carol said.
Pierce stared at the green alien, trying not to think about how quickly this must have happened.
Years of work, years of bringing countless disparate piece together, and it had all unraveled in a month. The best security system in the world couldn’t deal with something well outside its expected remit.
Carol was still smiling maddeningly smug, and there was nothing he could say or do. All that work to make a safer world, and invaders had taken it all apart.
Bruce turned back from the console; there was a chart displayed on the screen, a sketch of the world with specks marked all around it. He waved, and Carol walked over, glancing over his shoulder. She lifted her arm, copying the data onto her suit’s onboard computer.
“Oh, by the way, sorry for being so rough on you,” Carol said. “Wondered if those guys had a point about the giant green rage monster, and it knew how to make a first impression - nothing personal. Didn’t know if I could trust you.”
“Neither do I, some days,” Bruce said. Still, he managed a smile: “It worked out, didn’t it? As best as it could.”
“It did,” Carol said.
She turned away before her expression could slip, and comforted herself by offering a playful wave at Pierce, knowing that it was maddening.
A lot of people had died. No victory would ever undo that, but it would at least put the world on a better path. That was something she’d had to deal with before.
“Start the clock,” Carol said. “All those satellites, ooh, I bet you I can get it done in thirty minutes. Every one of the damn things blasted out of the sky.”
“You can’t!” Pierce said. “Project Insight is the one thing that’s keeping this world from devolving into chaos.”
“So?” Carol shrugged. “I could go for a little chaos, every now and again.”
She ran at the doorway, blasting the ground again for good measure, and blasted off into the sky. Behind her, Talos shifted back into Malick’s shape, as Bucky covered the door with a stolen gun.
Behind her, Pierce stayed pinned to the floor as all his dreams fell apart around him.
The sun was coming up. Carol stood in what had once been Pierce’s office, looking out the window over the city. She barely recognised it, all things considered; the more and more time passed, the less it felt like home.
Still, it didn’t have to be her home for her to do her job.
She caught sight of movement in the reflection and turned to see Bucky in the doorway, shuffling awkwardly forwards. He saw her, and walked inside, closing the door firmly behind him. Only then did he slip out his earplugs.
“So. We actually did it,” Bucky said.
“James, wasn’t it?” Carol said.
He hesitated. “Call me Bucky.”
“Bucky?” Carol said. She shrugged. “Whatever suits you.”
He hesitated for a moment.
She hadn’t really met him before. While she’d been trying to figure out a plan, the Skrulls that had infiltrated had mentioned a rebel that HYDRA had been trying to track down - they’d managed to locate him faster. The benefits of alien technology, Carol supposed; those mask-things left a trace. Beyond a stray phone call though, that last clash had been their first time actually talking face-to-face.
He’d been glad of offered assistance at the time. Now, he just looked out of place, greasy-haired and broody and far too scruffy for what was left of SHIELD. Carol didn’t know if the organisation would last - after Insight, there hadn’t been many genuine SHIELD agents left.
“It’s weird,” he said. “I should be used to the sound of my own name.”
“Tell me about it,” Carol said. She laughed: “Took me forever before it started feeling like me again. What did they call you? My end, they found half my surname and decided that was that, and I spent a few years as Vers of all things.”
“Er,” Bucky said. He blinked. “They didn’t give me a name. I was just a Soldier.”
“Well that sucks,” Carol said. “No imagination. Mind you, I don’t know what they’d have gone for. Nes?”
It was a few seconds before he realised that she was joking. When he laughed, it was a short, unpractised sound, a momentary bark before the gloom settled over his features again.
“You know what it’s like?” he said.
“Something like it,” Carol said. “They took my memories, told me I was loyal to them, and sent me on missions when I believed it. Similar for you?”
“What did you do after?” Bucky said.
He didn’t linger on the small talk, pressing the questions home; Carol smiled wryly. Either he was all-business, or he’d forgotten how to do anything else.
“Spent a few years blasting them from one end of the galaxy to another,” Carol said. “Found people that needed help. You figure it out.”
“Oh,” Bucky said. He paused. “This was… When I woke up, after Project Insight, I was starting to remember who I was. Not everything, but enough. I had a friend, I had loyalties, that I’d just… forgotten about.”
“Ah, yeah, that messes with you,” Carol said.
“I knew what I had to do. I knew what he’d have wanted,” Bucky said, stumbling a little as he found his words. “And I was… used to fighting. I didn’t think I’d win, I just did it because I could, and because I had to, and because it was… easier, than dwelling.”
“And now you have,” Carol said.
“So what do I do?” he said. Carol shrugged.
“Something fun,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s fun for me,” Bucky said. “This isn’t much like the world I left.”
“Tell me about it,” Carol said. “How about this? This place, it needs tidying up. Your battle’s not over yet, soldier: you do that, and you take an hour or two off each day to look around, see what sticks out to you.”
Bucky looked around the empty office. His expression barely shifted, like it was carved in stone.
“SHIELD,” he murmured.
He didn’t elaborate. Something in his eyes softened, and Carol saw enough in his expression to indicate that it wasn’t something he was ready to talk about just yet.
She let her attention wander again, looking back out the window. It caught her by surprise when he suddenly spoke.
“Did you need me?” he said, suddenly.
“What?” Carol said.
“Your… friends,” Bucky said. “You could have gotten anywhere, you could have gotten the data you needed by yourself.”
“Maybe,” Carol said. She shrugged. “We don’t have infinite skrulls, and we couldn’t start taking over too many agents without giving something away - there was only so much information we could find. It was good to have a back pocket option.”
“Back pocket?” Bucky echoed.
“Hey, you helped,” Carol said. “Besides, I figure, it might as well be a human that helps save the day. Your planet, your people, you deserve it.”
Absently, Carol wandered back from the window. She stared at Pierce’s computer for a few seconds, scowled briefly, and made a stab at a button - it flickered to life unnervingly fast.
A list of names, addresses, places, and a slew of cover identities tied to each. Carol smiled.
“Homework, Bucky,” Carol said. “These are the names of every HYDRA mole in SHIELD, or at least the ones that the agents the Skrulls replaced knew about. They should be trackable with this.”
“You’re trusting me with that?” Bucky said.
“Sure,” Carol said. “I’d offer to help, but this is the time-consuming, easy stuff, and it’s a big galaxy out there. Might pop back in a bit to see if it’s all going okay, though. You good with that?”
Bucky hesitated. Carol’s playful smile shifted, her voice becoming momentarily serious.
“Hey, listen,” Carol said. “Sure, it sucks what they made you do - whatever it was - but the past is the past. Do whatever you need to, to feel like you can trust yourself, but don’t obsess over it. Don’t act like you have to prove yourself. You don’t. You do what you want to do.”
“I… don’t know if I trust myself,” Bucky said. “There are words, a few things that someone could say to make me the Soldier again. I… wasn’t myself.”
“Sure, and it sounds like you’ve spent the last couple of years being anyone but yourself,” Carol said. “Terrible way to live, trust me.”
Bucky faltered.
“Listen,” Carol said. “I can’t tell you that it all goes away, but it gets easier to live with, and you can always find some solution to the tricky stuff. Find the people you hurt, and do what you can to make it up to them, and when others don’t look at you with fear, it gets a little easier to carry it.”
“There’s a lot of people,” Bucky said.
“You’ve got a lot of time,” Carol said. She shrugged, voice lifting again. “Hey, do you know how I met Talos?”
Bucky blinked.
“I was hunting him and his people to extinction,” Carol said conversationally. “Times change, is the thing. Can be scary, can be good, but it happens. The worst thing you can be is stuck in the past.”
Pierce had called this whole mess security. It didn’t trouble her to tear it down like this. She’d seen it before, that endless fear leading to death after death after death, and in the end no one was ever actually any happier. All the ruin that potential threats might cause, he’d cause in the name of preventing them.
Now this world had Bruce, had Bucky, and had who-knew who else hidden away. There was no undoing the death, but there was a way to live with it.
She’d found something in Pierce’s desk - she picked it up, weighed it in her hand, and then offered it to Bucky. He took the pager, frowning.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Beep me,” Carol said. “In emergencies. If you need any help, I can come back.”
“Oh,” Bucky said. He eyed the pager uncertainly. “I don’t really get on with modern tech like that.”
Carol snorted, and pushed it into his hands.
“Just take it,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to call. You’re not in this alone.”
Chapter 6: What If... Hela lost to the Valkyries?
Notes:
...The amount of trouble I had with the italics when I transferred it across to ao3. I can't even explain it. Some italics vanished, some didn't, and one turned into an underline. I think they're fixed but who even knows at this point.
Chapter Text
Odin stood by the side of the courtyard, his two young sons beside him, with one hand on each of their shoulders. His smile was warm, though there was a slight, distant look in his eye.
Before them was a statue. It was a woman, her armour a gleaming silver, weathered but no less striking; her expression was fierce, and her arms raised, tightly gripping a blade. She stared out at them with frozen, brown eyes. She stood there, perfectly realised in every respect, from the sharpness of the blade, to the rage in her expression, to the frozen flutter of her cape.
“The last of the Valkyries,” Odin said, softly. “Remember her, my sons. Some things… some things it is best not to forget.”
Loki fidgeted, impatient and uncomfortable, while the young Thor stared with a grin on his face and stars in his eyes. The memorial stood, as it had for centuries.
The Valkyrie was painted, the colours not quite right, but sufficient to convey all it had to. Her skin was dark, and her hair darker as it fell over her shoulders, a slight matting suggestive of bloodstains.
“Tell us the story, father,” Thor said.
“Again?” Loki said. He sighed. “I’m leaving.”
He began to move; Odin’s grip on his shoulder tightened, pulling him back. Loki grumbled.
“Don’t be so hasty,” Odin said. “One day, one of you will be King, and there are worse things for a King to do than to admire fallen heroes.”
Thor never looked away from the statue. Loki, by his side, scowled, but reluctantly found his attention turning back to the figure. Unseeing eyes looking out, and the sword shimmered in the light.
There was just a faint haze in the air, a barely-perceptible second skin around the woman. Asgardian magic had seen it remain as ornate and perfect as it was on the first day it was placed there.
“Asgard had many enemies,” Odin said, his voice low and soothing. “But there were none greater than the Goddess of Death. I bound her myself, many centuries ago, but she loosed herself. She came at Asgard, wanting it and all its power for her own.”
“And then what?” Thor said excitedly. Loki elbowed him.
“You know what,” Loki said. His voiced lifted to a parody: “And then the oh-so mighty Valkyries flew in and beat her, the end.”
“Loki,” Odin said, cautioning. He took a breath. “In those days, the fiercest army that Asgard had were the women of the Valkyries. When Death itself threatened the nine realms, they were there - they stood guard over the universe, and stood to the last woman, holding firm. When one of them was cut down, more rose to avenge their fallen sister.”
Despite himself, Loki was listening, even if his expression was perpetually moody. Thor didn’t even notice enough to rib him, too enraptured by his favourite legend.
“In the end, against a foe so great, even the mighty Valkyries were not quite enough, it seemed,” Odin said. “The Goddess of Death struck each down, and though some landed blows, none hurt her enough - she walked on, and on, until all lay dead. All save one. As Death walked over the corpses of her victims, the last of the Valkyries leapt out from her concealment, and landed a final blow. She held her sword in the goddess’s heart, even when struck herself.”
The statue, while a memorial to the tragedy, stood for more than that; there was no sadness in the Valkyrie’s eyes, nor any glimpse of pain. There was just that rage, that drive to fight for what it was you believed in.
So Thor had always seen it, anyway.
“And so the last of the Valkyries gave her life to best the foe able to strike down all her sisters, saving Asgard and all the realms,” Odin said. “The Goddess of Death was slain, and the Valkyries’ sacrifice is remembered, and honoured.”
His voice went quiet, the familiar recitation feeling oddly more sombre while in the statue’s gaze. He looked to the Valkyrie, expression unseen by his sons.
It was many years later when the dark elves clashed with Asgard. An army of creatures from before the universe poured into the heart of the world, ships tearing apart grand edifices that had stood for centuries, and far below one of the Kursed tore his way through the dungeons.
The dark elves were a storm, wrath at all that was Asgardian driving them on; they destroyed all they could reach, releasing those imprisoned and tearing down statues, bombing runes and machines all. Anything that could hurt Asgard, anything that might weaken their shields or weapons or ships.
There was one, small, old machine, a golden thing marked with symbols and shapes that channelled forces few understood. It was sealed away far below, in an area of the castle few travelled. A dark elf rushed past, blindly throwing one of their bombs inside - there was a flash, a whirl of a hungry singularity, and then there was nothing. The machine that had functioned for centuries was torn apart.
And on the other side of Asgard, an ancient spell began to fail.
Thor charged through the fray. Lightning crashed, and Mjolnir whirled through the air, seeing a dozen invaders stagger back. He had a destination in mind, but he took the minor detour through a courtyard.
The statue of the last of the Valkyries was, in his mind, something of a lucky place. He used to visit before journeying out to battle, hoping to absorb some of the courage and strength that the legendary figure had. It might be superstition, but when it took mere seconds, he at least wanted to glance upon it. If nothing else, he wanted to be sure it hadn’t been damaged by the elves.
Mjolnir struck at another as Thor sprinted through the courtyard. The Valkyrie stood, still, in the centre. Her sword reflected no light, and she remained immaculate.
Then the quiet shimmer around her faded, the protective field dissipating. A flicker of irritation crossed Thor’s face; the power generator must have been hit. Still, this was hardly a strategic target. Hopefully the elves wouldn’t…
The statue moved.
The last of the Valkyries jerked forwards, bringing her sword down on empty air, and froze; Thor stared in disbelief. She straightened, gripping the blade tightly, looking around the courtyard with bafflement.
“You’re alive,” Thor said.
“I’m aware,” she said.
Her voice was distracted, annoyed as if she’d been in the middle of doing something, only half paying attention to Thor. The yells and smoke didn’t faze her - then again, she had been a warrior.
The stories said that. The stories had said nothing of the statue somehow being… what, alive? Enchanted?
Then her gaze snapped to Thor, and her eyes narrowed.
“Who are you?” she said, suddenly on edge.
“Thor,” he said. “Um. Huge fan.”
“Never heard of you,” she said.
“Prince of Asgard?” he said hopefully. “God of Thunder?”
There was the sound of an explosion; Thor’s head jerked sideways.
“Introductions later!” he said. “We could use your help, if you’re ready? Dark elves are attacking, long story, don’t totally get it myself, but they’re everywhere.”
“Wait,” the Valkyrie said. She tilted her head. “Prince… You’re Odin’s son?”
“Huh? Oh, yes! Yes, that’s me,” Thor said. “I heard so many stories about you.”
“Did you now?”
She smiled, and stepped closer. As she moved, the colour seemed to slowly leech from her; Thor’s eye was more drawn to her sword, however. It was darker than it had seemed when it had been part of the seeming statue. His eyes struggled to move from it, seeing shadows ripple up the sword’s length, unlike any blade he’d seen before. She held it in one hand like it weighed nothing, the tip scraping along the floor.
“Um,” Thor said, uncertainly.
“God of thunder?” she said. Her grip on the blade’s hilt tightened. “I don’t like gods.”
“No,” Odin whispered.
He turned around, unsteady on his feet, as though the battle all around him meant nothing.
The dark elves swarmed Asgard - and so too did creatures of shadow. They pulled themselves from every crevice, from the cracks in door-frames and below tumbled stone.
They seethed for a moment, as if unsure what shape to take. They might have been vast and monstrous, or small and nimble, but when the darkness resolved itself, it was as people. Two arms, two legs, with faces that were blankly, unnervingly peaceful. Cloaks that faded to shadowy fog trailed behind them, and they held vicious blades ahead of them as they fought in a frenzy against the elves, and any Asgardians that got in their way.
Almost obliviously, Valkyrie walked through the castle. Her skin was grey, and the highlights of gold in her armour had faded to the same. Even the vivid blue of her cape was now darkness itself, all colour fleeing from her at the touch of the sword she bore. The lacklustre paints didn’t last.
She walked into the shadow of a fallen pillar, and vanished from view.
And she emerged in the dungeons of the castle; she ignored the chaos around her, barely caring enough to swing her blade. Shadow-soldiers cleared the way for her. The only one untouched was a raggedy-haired figure in a cell; she raised an eyebrow as she regarded him, and shrugged, moving past.
Moving nearby, was Odin. Valkyrie lunged, sword embedding in the wall in front of him; he took a step back. Her gaze locked onto his.
In the cell, the dishevelled man stood up, suddenly paying attention.
“Let me guess. Trying to find something to imprison me again,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill me. You never would have hesitated before.”
“If I’d killed you, the sword would simply have found another master,” Odin said. He straightened, speaking surprisingly levelly for the situation. “I did what was best.”
“That’s a laugh.”
A smile crossed her face. She pulled the sword from the wall, and turned, pointing the tip to Odin’s neck; she regarded him, a flicker of enjoyment on her grey face.
“When do you ever do what’s best?” she said. “If you’d done anything right, none of this would have happened. But no, here we are.”
There was a cold anger in Odin’s eyes, tempered with the barest flicker of sympathy. He didn’t flinch as the tip of the blade drew blood, backing away slowly; he reached the front of the cell.
“Your last time in the Odinsleep was interrupted, wasn’t it?” Valkyrie said. She seemed almost surprised to be able to sense that. “You don’t have it in you to curse me again, do you? That’s bad luck for you.”
From inside, the prisoner looked between the two of them; his eyes widened as he saw Valkyrie in detail.
“You’re her,” Loki said. “You’re the statue.”
“Was that what I was?” Valkyrie said.
“He told us stories about you,” Loki said.
Valkyrie gave a short, bitter laugh.
“Did he now?” she said. “Okay old man, how much of the truth did you tell them?”
“I told them of your sisters. Their sacrifice,” Odin said.
“Their slaughter,” Valkyrie said. She lifted the blade:
“We remembered them,” Odin said, sympathy without an ounce of surrender. “Their fate was a tragedy. Yours was-”
“Because you care so much,” Valkyrie said.
“I like her,” Loki said.
“Shut it, god-brat,” Valkyrie said. Her voice went low. “Did you tell them how we prayed to you? How we devoted each battle to your name, and marched where you ordered? How we gave thanks to you until the battle began, and how none of us - none of them - had any doubts until your daughter’s rain of swords came down upon us?”
Odin’s hand moved; a shape reached out of shadow, binding it tight.
“Did you say how the last word on the lips of so many of my sisters was your name?” Valkyrie said. “You, who sent them to their deaths, and they still praised you?”
“There are deaths in war,” Odin said.
“There didn’t need to be a war,” Valkyrie said. “Did you ever care at all? No. No, of course you didn’t.”
“Your sisters were the finest warriors of Asgard,” Odin said. “I knew them. I mourned them.”
“Did you?” Valkyrie said. She tilted her head, and all the venom and rumble left her voice, and the almost kind lilt that was left sounded even more dangerous. “Say my name.”
Odin faltered.
“If you cared so much, tell me my name,” Valkyrie said. “Do you know it? Did you ever know it? Were we ever people to you, or just expendable soldiers?”
Odin was quiet. Loki looked between the two of them. Valkyrie looked down at her sword, the shadows swirling, and she tilted her head as if listening to it. Then she smiled, and looked up to Loki.
“Let me tell you the story your father didn’t,” Valkyrie said.
Over a thousand years ago, and the sky was filled with winged horses and war cries. The last charge of the Valkyries, silhouetted against the sunrise.
There was no glory. There was no honour, there was no inspiration. There was the ride, and then there were the screams. Blades of black were flung from below, and they pierced armour and flesh as easily as they did the air. Horses whinnied, valkyries cried out, and there was more pain than the mind could process seconds after the conflict began.
Bodies rained out from the grey sky. Valkyrie clung to the back of her steed as it fell, wings little more than matted, bloody wrecks; she looked forwards, for a moment powerless, unable to guide her horse or move at all. Another blade arced through the air, bound for her.
Odin, you are strength, please save us.
She had faced death. Any warrior had. There was a difference, though, between meeting your match in combat, and this. Their presence meant nothing; so quickly, their arrival turned to slaughter.
She stared at the point to Hela’s blade, intimately aware of every inch it flew, as aware of it as she was her own immobility. And in her ears, she heard her sisters scream.
Goðjaðarr, we fight in your name, help us.
Prayers were almost instinctive. They had made offering before they rode, and dedicated each of their wars to Odin. In the heat of battle, one had to pray quickly - an archer would whisper a few words to steady her aim, and a swordswoman like she would wish for good fortune.
They had never felt so hollow.
Sigtýr, you have given us strength so many times before, and we have given you everything. Help guide us to victory.
There was an odd peace in that moment, seeing the blade as it neared her, and knowing. Yes, this was it. This was how and when she died.
Mowed down by an enemy they stood no chance against, because their god had willed it. It was not the end she would have chosen, but at least in death there was peace, at least the screams would stop then.
And then her sight of the blade was blocked; she hadn’t seen the valkyrie flying so close beside her, one lucky enough that her steed could still fly. She flung herself sideways, and Valkyrie’s expression turned to horror.
Draugadróttinn, you who fathered death, not her. Please, not her.
Valkyrie saw blood. And over all the shouts and yells, she heard her name, whispered on a dying breath.
And she was still falling, her mount still dying. The ground was so very far below. Her eyes were not fixed on a blade now, no, now she looked into the fading gaze of the woman who’d saved her and didn’t care if another blade came.
Asagrimmr, we’re dying for you! Stop this!
She hit the ground, wincing at the snap and her horse’s last whinny, and sprawled forwards. Her love landed atop her, and she closed her eyes.
Already, the screams had begun to fail. The air was full of the stink of blood, and the ground trembled under the weight of the falling dead, while past it all Hela stood as though nothing had happened.
Until the rain of swords and bodies came to an end. Valkyrie lay there, under it all, hands balling into fists in the dirt and trying not to breathe, trying not to think about the weight above her or what the warm red that soaked into her was. She shook.
Odin you bastard, how many of your names do I have to call before you fucking help us?
Death. Pointless death.
If she was still, if she was silent, Hela might not notice her. If that even mattered. She couldn’t fight this, not now, not after all her sisters…
She closed her eyes and waited for the end.
And it so very nearly might have been. Valkyrie lay still, trembling and numb, and in that moment knowing she’d never be able to stomach returning to Asgard, even if she survived this. To be there, to fight for them, after all of this, was unthinkable.
She was done. It was all done.
Then someone else joined the battle. Whether they had only just come, whether they’d meant to use the Valkyries as a distraction or hoped that the Valkyries would weaken Hela, she couldn’t say. She saw just a glimpse of them, surrounded by surging shadow, and saw the blade they held as they batted aside Hela’s onslaught.
They lasted seconds. Longer than any valkyrie had. Valkyrie only vaguely noticed, and for a moment wondered that she could feel anything at all - she watched the distant speck, and if she had any prayers left in her then she would have pleaded with Odin and the Norns and any who’d listen to make sure Hela was struck down.
Blade clashed against blade. Flailing tendrils reached out of shadow to grab at Hela, as if to restrain her, only to be immediately severed by more summoned weapons. The wielder of the black sword was impaled, but kept fighting, a scream that was more a roar making the bloody field tremble.
For a moment, Valkyrie dared hope.
And then the attacker fumbled, and a dozen swords pierced shadow-creatures and their chest all at once. There was a crash, and what was left of them fell to the ground. The sword slipped out from their grip.
And Valkyrie closed her eyes, and pressed her face to the dirt.
Not enough. Never enough.
It can be.
The whisper was in her own mind, as natural as if it were one of her own thoughts.
The goddess of death did this to the woman you loved and the women you fought beside. A god sent you here. You can avenge them.
Valkyrie closed her eyes. Blood that wasn’t her own seeped into her armour, and Hela stood without so much as a scratch on her. Maybe Odin would still be able to bind her anew, maybe all this might have delayed her enough, but no - that was too little punishment, for too great a price.
To see the goddess struck down, to pay back some tiny measure of what she’d done, Valkyrie would have sold her soul to see it realised. And maybe she was, but so be it.
When Valkyrie stood at last, the necrosword was in her hand. She looked across the battlefield, looked past the myriad dead, and met Hela’s gaze.
The sword whispered, and Valkyrie charged.
“I killed her,” Valkyrie said.
For a moment her voice was soft, almost a murmur, but it carried with it all the strength of a shout. Her eye twitched, but her grip on the sword was firm.
“With strength that wasn’t yours, I killed Hela,” Valkyrie said. “Like you should have done, centuries before.”
“I couldn’t,” Odin said. “She was my daughter. I- I couldn’t.”
It was the first time there had been any gentleness in his voice. Valkyrie ignored it.
“Instead you sacrificed us,” Valkyrie said. “My sisters, and who-knows how many more if she’d gotten free, all to spare yourself a little pain. And when I came back to Asgard to make you pay for what you did…”
“I did what I had to do,” Odin said.
Loki was still in the cell, locked away behind them. He stared, barely following the conversation, watching; shadows held Odin’s hands down, and monsters from the darkness rampaged in the dungeons behind them.
Valkyrie didn’t seem to even be aware of them. Her gaze was on Odin, grief and rage and something without name in her eyes.
Odin had always been known for his magic. Freezing her in time, admittedly, was something she hadn’t expected; one moment she’d been standing in Asgard, and the next she was in a courtyard with some stranger in a red cape staring at her.
Frozen, just to avoid the sword going to someone else. He was bad at killing the people that needed to be killed.
“The Valkyries?” Loki said. “That was centuries ago, you can’t seriously still be-”
“It was minutes for me,” Valkyrie said.
Her hand still shook. Dark grey stained her colour-leeched armour, and the sword still reflected no light. A droplet of Odin’s blood stained the tip.
“I looked up to you,” Valkyrie said, ignoring Loki again. “I prayed to you, right up until the end. You should have been there. You should have helped, put all that much-vaunted strength to use rather than expecting us to die for you.”
“I can’t do everything,” Odin said.
“You should have done that,” Valkyrie said. “She was your mistake.”
“And you? What have you done?” Odin said. “I felt my son die.”
“I’ve had enough of your kids,” Valkyrie said. “If he was anything like his sister, the universe’ll thank me.”
In the cell, Loki froze. She glanced at him again, and listened to the necrosword’s uncanny murmurs.
“And what are you?” she said. “Jotunn that wants to be Asgardian, that wants to be a god. What a joke.”
“I am a god,” he said.
“Of what? Mischief?” she said. “Go on then. Throw some mischief at me. Give me your best shot. Or can’t the ‘god’ get out of a glass cage?”
Loki glared. The cell held firm around him, and dismissively Valkyrie looked away.
“Someone else you tricked into believing even a word you said?” Valkyrie said. “You made him think he was your son. You made him think he was any kind of prince, or any kind of god, when he was just some scrap you picked up because it entertained you. Wow. You never change, do you?”
“I’ve changed. More than you know,” Odin said.
“Sure,” Valkyrie said. She laughed. “I’m bored of this now. It’s been fun catching up, old man. Odin, Allfather, Ginnarr, Glapsviðr, however many names you’ve picked up. Let’s add ‘got what was coming to him,’ to the list, shall we?”
Her expression was as hard as stone as she pushed the blade down; Odin clapped his hands to the necrosword, holding it in place for a brief, shaky moment.
“May no one lift this,” he whispered.
A rune appeared in the ebony stone, and the necrosword stumbled from Valkyrie’s hands. The symbol scorched itself away after a mere instant, and the blade summoned itself back to her grip, though giving Odin enough time to unpin himself.
There was a flash of white as Odin summoned his arms to hand, the ancient armour of the King of the gods so unused to seeing battle. Loki stared - Valkyrie didn’t blink.
And every shadow-creature in Asgard turned its attention to the dungeons.
The soldiers of Asgard had barely been prepared for the dark elves - they had scarcely any more idea of what to make of the shadow-shapes that seemed to come from nowhere. Drawing close to them wasn’t safe, and a handful of soldiers had been mauled when they tried to repel this new force.
But left alone, it was the dark elves that they seemed to favour as a target, as though some part of them was concerned with safeguarding Asgard. The shadows rampaged, and if one was cut down, there were always more.
Rooms in the palace that were meant to be secure were left a mess, once-grand tapestries were torn down, and while not all Asgardians were targeted, some were. Heimdall, Frigga, Sif, and a scattered handful of others were pursued by the warriors.
When they were caught, a cold hand grabbed them, and dragged them down into the shadows. Nothing was left on the floor where they’d once been, save the cracks of impact.
And then the shadow-army changed course. They flung any foolish enough to stand in their way aside, and ran through walls and floors, all moving towards the same spot. It was a moment before any of Asgard’s soldiers noticed that; they still thought the dark elves were their foe, still looked for any remnants of those invaders.
It was fourteen minutes precisely before they realised they were wrong.
It was hard to say what changed, exactly. The creatures had vanished, the elves had been defeated, but something in the air turned sour. There was a hum, the ghost of something immense drifting outwards, a wave that dissipated as soon as it was sensed.
Those who knew what it meant had been taken from Asgard. Even in the shadow-realm where she found herself, though, Frigga’s eyes widened, and she looked across to Heimdall who nodded grim assent.
The necrosword buried itself in the wall of the cell, embedded firmly through Odin’s chest. Panting, Valkyrie drew back, and the sword’s beasts retreated to the dark.
“You have changed, old man,” she said. “You got old.”
“I did… what I thought… was best,” Odin said.
He managed a last breath. Around them, the dungeon looked half-exploded, walls crumbling or fallen completely, shattered cell walls and ruined archways, with pieces of golden armour left twisted and broken almost as far as one could see.
Valkyrie twisted the necrosword, never breaking eye contact.
“When you get to wherever your soul’s going,” she said. “I hope you’re wrong about the fate of mortals - I hope my sisters are there. I hope they’re waiting to rip you apart.”
Faintly, Odin tried to turn his head, to look to his side; still trapped in his cell, Loki looked back, mute.
And the King of Asgard faded away, specks of golden light drifting away like fireflies. Valkyrie pulled the sword out from the wall, twirling it in her hand and smiling to herself.
“It’s done,” she said, as though a weight had been lifted from her. “It’s done.”
She let out a long sigh, the sword digging into the floor as she rested her weight upon it. For the first time, a genuine smile crossed her colourless face.
And then she turned around, and walked away. The shadows swallowed her up.
It was instinctive, somehow; the sword just worked for her, whispering into her mind in a language more primal than words. She knew how to use it, and she knew what it could do, and she felt it relish in the kills.
She’d known war. She’d know combat enough to feel that rush, even if it was sour for her now.
Valkyrie finished walked through the darkness, and emerged in a monochrome land, far from Asgard. She raised an eyebrow, looking around.
“Huh. Neat place,” she said. “I… guess I don’t have anywhere else now, huh?”
Grey rock. She wasn’t sure where the light came from, but it was devoid of colour or warmth; still, it suited her now. She could feel the shadows of the place react to her. Cautiously she stepped forward, adjusting to the world’s gravity.
The sword had drawn her here, currents in the darkness naturally pulling her back. With no other destinations in mind, the shadows invited her.
She kept walking.
And she came upon a dozen Asgardians, wrapped up tightly in bonds of shadow. Valkyrie slowed; a dozen eyes looked at her, some hiding their fear better than others. Valkyrie frowned.
“Why are…” she murmured.
No, she knew the shadows weren’t her creation. The sword was as old as time, far older than her; they did their own thing, sometimes. They listened to her, but they were never obligated to do just what she wanted.
Asgardian gods, those that had attained godhood over the course of their lives. All here, at the mercy of the shadow.
Valkyrie paused.
“I needed you to stop Hela,” she said, looking down at the jet black of the sword. “And you were right, after that - Odin was to blame. His orders, his actions, they were the reason my sisters were killed. And he’s gone, him and Hela’s brother.”
The shadows deepened. Valkyrie frowned, looking across the trapped Asgardians.
“They were complicit,” she said, thoughtfully. “They could have, should have stood up to him. He should never have been in power that long.”
She paused, and walked forwards, until she reached one of the bound gods. The goddess was lifted up by the shadows, as if in offering; Valkyrie twitched her hand, dismissing the shadow-gag.
“You were his wife?” Valkyrie said.
Frigga looked at her with pity.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sword is cursed. If you’re holding it, it’s already too late for you.”
“I was dead when I got it,” Valkyrie said. “Or as good as. Doesn’t make much difference to me one way or the other. I see you’re as good a conversationalist as he was.”
She lifted the necrosword, more to look at it than to threaten. A gag reformed over Frigga’s face with barely a thought.
“All the same,” Valkyrie murmured. “You’re right. All the people that have died in their name, all the people they’ve let suffer for their sakes… It’s more than Hela, more than Odin. Nothing but liars with no thought for the people that worship them.”
Her grip on the sword tightened. Frigga didn’t so much as flinch.
“Don’t worry,” Valkyrie, almost gently. “According to all the stories, you have an eternal reward guaranteed for you. Pity we don’t get that luxury.”
She swung the blade.
“All gods will die,” Valkyrie said. “And I know where to find them.”
The realm of the gods was vast. There were oceans, and fields of green, and an infinitude of layers to the place. High on a hilltop, though, was Valhalla, the hall of the slain.
It was grander than even Asgard. Even from this far out, one could see the marble, glass and gold that had sprung up in the shadow of the mountain. A place of celebration, and reward, free from the stresses and burdens of ordinary life.
Odin stepped forwards. He was on the outermost fringes, the arrival place lined with curved pillars - still, already, one was waiting for him. There was a man in heavy, dark, horned armour; for all the lines in his face though, all the ease with which he might inspired fear, he smiled to see Odin.
“My son,” Bor, former King of Asgard, said. Odin moved closer, and clasped his father’s arm.
“Father,” he said.
“You are welcome here.” Bor said.
In his own way, Odin felt young again; it did not yet show in his body, but shape was always so mutable, especially here. His father was younger than Odin ever remembered seeing him, so too one day Odin would likely appear the same.
Unsteady, Odin looked from side to side. The resting place of the gods.
“Is it how you imagined it?” Bors said.
“I always knew I would come here,” Odin said. “I did not want to dwell. How far does it go?”
“I have not yet seen an edge,” Bors said. “You can search, if you want - but first, come with me. Sindri’s hall is the best place to start.”
Bor began to walk; Odin kept pace, marvelling that he could with so little effort. Age had been such a constant companion that it was strange to feel its lack.
There were many halls to the realm of the gods. Some were marble and pearl, others finely carved wood that seemed to grow from the tree-trunks, and others were vast and open fields. Some waved to Odin as he passed - others were from before his time.
“There are places to spar, if you want to stay in shape,” Bor said. “Injuries don’t last, here.”
“I think I have had enough of war,” Odin said.
“Understandable, also,” Bor said. “In Valholl then, we shall feast. And with Sindri, we shall relax, and welcome you all here.”
“All?” Odin said. “As I feared. She killed others?”
“Our Vala tells us when gods come here,” Bor said. “It will not be long, I’m afraid.”
Odin slowed for a moment. His face seemed all the older, the lines around his eyes deepening; Bor threw an arm around his shoulders.
“It is too late for worry, my son,” he said. “What is, will be. We are beyond the stresses of the world here.”
“The wielder of the necrosword came to Asgard,” Odin said. “I fear for my people.”
“There is no need for fear,” Bor said. “The gods will greet us here, and the mortals will be beyond pain. The worst that can be done to us is a banishment to paradise.”
Eternity was a long time - time enough to adjust to anything, Odin supposed. There was some truth to his father’s words; it was oddly easy to let worry slip away, here. They were detached from the universe.
This was the realm of the gods. The hall of the slain, and the eternal reward. Here, those of Asgard would come. Beyond the mountain, perhaps, were those of Olympus, or of the Ennead.
Here, all troubles fell away. And if Frigga were to join him this day, or centuries hence, there would be no difference.
“Now come, my son,” Bor said. “Tell me of the life I missed. I have heard a fraction of your deeds, but I, and my father, and my father’s mother, we would hear of your accomplishments.”
Odin paused.
“Your father’s mother?” Odin said. “You talk of my grandfather, but never his mother.”
“Yes, well. Technically she’s a talking cow,” Bor said. He shrugged. “I’ll introduce you!”
“Left! Hard left! Your other left!”
A gaudily painted ship streaked through the black. It was a metallic blue, with neon streaks adorning the wings that served precisely no aerodynamic purpose in the vacuum of space. Between the two wings was a small glass capsule, with a hefty engine searingly bright propelling the craft on.
It was designed for one person. There were two inside it, a human in the pilot’s seat, and a blue figure ducking so as to be able to fit standing behind him.
“I know which way left is! Do you know which way left is?”
“The way that thing isn’t!”
Outside was a ship very much not designed for just one person. It filled the whole side of their window. It edged forwards, outspeeding the smaller ship, poised to cut it off. In the pilot’s seat, Quill glanced sideways. He grimaced.
There were two jump points in this sector, to facilitate easy trade. They had to get to one of them if they had any hope of making it back to the Eclector, the ship of Yondu’s Ravagers. With the ship looming, that didn’t seem likely.
“Screw it,” he said. “We’re going right.”
“That way’s left!” Yondu protested. Then he noticed them turn to face the behemoth. “Wait, Quill!”
Quill reached up, tapped a few keys to adjust the ship’s wings (which, again, served absolutely no purpose), yanked down a level to overcharge the ship’s engines, and slammed a button. Immediately, rock music started blaring in the ship’s speakers.
“Hold on,” he said.
There was no way to not be cut off by the faster vessel; instead, he rocketed closer, adjusting angle at the last possible second to shoot up parallel to its side. From that close, there was no way for them to adjust angle, nor any way for them to re-orient. Quill zig-zagged the ship, hearing Yondu bounce around behind him.
“I said hold on!” Quill said.
If they moved unpredictably, the ship would take a few moments to react; Quill swerved, managing a circle, then shooting up over the top of the ship.
The ship didn’t want to crash into them, for the same reason it hadn’t blasted them. It wanted to capture them - or at least, capture intact what they’d taken.
He shot up - then rocketed down, hugging close to the opposite side of the ship. Down, and up again, managing a full circle; any sufficiently massive object in space had some gravitational pull, and any gravitational centre could be used to slingshot. For a ship that big, it had more than enough for a momentary acceleration.
Quill shot forwards - and as the ship began to pursue them, banked hard towards the other jump point. He held his breath. Joan Jett continued to blare in the background.
Their pursuers adjusted too late; they whirled through the jump point, emerging six jumps later in a wildly different corner of space.
Quill breathed out in relief. Behind him, Yondu laughed, slapping his back as though he hadn’t just been sure they were about to die.
“Not bad flying, kid,” he said. “You still got the key?”
Quill grinned. He kicked the tiny craft onto auto-pilot, and pulled a silver disc out of his pocket. Yondu took it from him, flicking it up into the air and catching it again.
“How much do you think they’ll pay to get it back?” Yondu said. “Ten million? Twenty? Last I heard, this was the only way into that vault of theirs, and if half the stuff I hear about their collection is true, they’re not going to want to leave it untouched.”
“Or we could break into the vault ourselves, see if there’s anything good,” Quill said.
“Don’t turn your noise up at a guaranteed payday, boy,” Yondu said. “Not as flashy, but still plenty worth it.”
He paused.
“Mind you, I do like flashy,” he said.
The Eclector loomed ahead of them. The tiny ship they were in had been stolen, one of the few pods that wouldn’t raised suspicion where they’d been; it definitely hadn’t been made for high-speed getaways.
Still, they’d done their best, and it had worked out.
Quill only flicked off the music as they came to a stop inside Yondu’s ship. Gratefully, Yondu stepped out, stretching; he grinned, and tossed the key to one of the Ravagers that came to greet them.
“Put that somewhere secure, and draft a ransom demand,” Yondu said. “Ask for, ooh, fifty million.”
Slowly, Quill got out the ship. He pocketed his cassette player, humming to himself. It hadn’t been the worst mission ever.
And then the whole ship trembled. All at once, Yondu’s manner changed, his triumphant swagger morphing to a more focused stride. He was out the bay door before anyone could comment - perfectly on cue, Kraglin was stumbling through the narrow hallway.
“Cap’n!” he shouted. “Cap’n!”
“What happened?” Yondu said. “Did someone attack us?”
“No ship, cap’n,” Kraglin said. He took a deep breath, swaying a little. “Every sensor just lit up. Computer’s best guess, it was an elohim pulse.”
“You been drinking?” Yondu said.
“Yes cap’n,” Kraglin said. “This ain’t that.”
Yondu frowned; he brushed past, as the ship righted itself. Quill ran after him, Kraglin close behind. A few of his ravagers watched them pass.
The bridge wasn’t far; Yondu liked to be able to quickly slip back into command after returning to the ship. He went to his chair, and peered into a monitor; a dozen red lights flashed. He tapped a few times.
“Huh,” he said eventually. “Well, shit.”
“We have the co-ordinates,” Kraglin said. “Should we head there?”
“Obviously,” Yondu said. He reached over to a ship-wide comm: “Everyone, strap-in. All breaks are off. We’re on our way to the city of the gods.”
There were a lot of stories that Ravagers told one another. Some were ghost stories: tales of ships that had been flying abandoned among the stars since ages past, or sectors where conventional laws of physics neglected to hold and all manners of impossibilities might occur.
And then there were tavern tales: a world of diamond that a dozen separate pirates would swear blind that they saw, but their ship computer had bugged out and not saved the co-ordinates; space whalers talking about a beast larger than a moon diving in and out of nebulae; a digital paradise encased in a dyson sphere, the last resting place of an ancient civilisation that could fulfil your every wish if you found your way inside.
And then there was the city of the gods. Some doubted it was even real, though enough gods whispered of it that it was more accepted than the space-bigfoots out there. A world, removed from normal existence, accessible only to those that travelled a particular path through the ether and slipped onto a higher plane. The land where gods revelled, and kept treasures that any self-respecting Ravager would be willing to kill to so much as see.
There was speculation on what would happen, if somehow the city came down from its lofty perch, and into the mundane universe. There were Ravagers that dedicated their lives to seeking out the divine city, or working out how to trace it if it ever skimmed reachable reality; as a joke, Yondu had typed the supposed signals into his computer one drunken night, many years ago. What would happen, what colossal wavelengths would be emitted, if a divine realm stumbled into grimy reality?
It wasn’t meant to actually bloody happen.
“We’re not going to be alone when we get there,” Yondu said. “Expect half the Ravagers in the galaxy would’ve picked up the signal. You get in, and you take what you can, got it?”
“And if we run into, well, gods?” Kraglin said.
“What do you think?” Yondu said. “Pray.”
Quill held on to the back of Yondu’s chair as the ship jumped again. He’d heard the same tales as anyone else; drunken Ravagers were surprisingly unimaginative. They liked to speculate on what kinds of treasures might be out there.
“Why’s it here, now?” Quill said. “What happened to make the gods’ city enter this plane?”
“Not a clue. You can ask them when we arrive,” Yondu said. “I’ll be making off with as much godly gold as I can carry.”
Most cultures out there had urban legends, myths of magical places full of whatever that culture thought was valuable. The city of the gods held the gods, and all the most valuable offerings made to them - gifts from a million worlds, centre-pieces from a billion temples, all the things that gods would surround themselves with. The finest fabrics and gems and metals and art.
Now, all for the taking.
Quill’s adrenaline rush from his brief bit of piloting hadn’t fully dissipated by the time the ship returned to normal space. Still, even if he’d been calm, his heart rate would have spiked at the sight that awaited them.
There was the city, yes, interlocking pieces of gold and green hanging in among the stars - and then there were other ships. Ravagers, and scavengers beyond the syndicate, arriving even as he watched. Ships that spanned a rainbow of colours hung all around.
“Well, this is gonna be fun,” Quill said, rather less than optimistic.
The ship shuddered again, the elohim pulse - the city of the gods’ scream - buffeting its systems. Yondu whistled appreciatively.
“Bet they’re hearing this from here to Sakaar,” he said. “Okay, taking us in.”
“Seriously?” Quill said.
“You want to turn a shot at this down?” Yondu said.
“Robbing a bunch of gods? Yeah, I feel like that’s going to end badly.”
“I didn’t raise no coward, boy,” Yondu said. “Get to the shuttles, pick yourself up something nice from the armory if it’ll make you feel better. We’re doing this.”
The city had many names. Gods titled it Omnipotence City, out of respect for the level of deity that lived there. Other civilisations told of it in whispers, coming up with their own conceptions and their own names. Secular circles, meanwhile, simply called it the city of the gods.
It was a paradise. Streets of immaculate green stretched out as far as the eye could see, grass side-by-side with marble, a sky that shouldn’t have been possible ringing the land with beauty. And surrounding it, there was a shimmer of gold - the air shone with divinity.
As Quill watched, another Ravager ship crashed into it and fell in flames. Even if the city was in the mundane universe, it seemed it was not unprotected.
There was a small islet that seemed to stick out from the near-invisible shield. He took them down to land on it; it was a small semi-circle, white stone with a crescent of a perfectly maintained flower-bed, and a shining golden fence as if any would dare near the drop.
Somehow, it had gravity. Quill didn’t ask. He landed on the marble, and Yondu was already halfway out the shuttle; another ravager ship was already on the impromptu dock, scorching a patch of flowers.
From this close, the golden shimmer was more distinct; it hung in the air like a mist, denying entry to the city’s wonders. Beyond it, empty avenues of marble stretched on. Yondu grimaced.
“Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy,” he said.
Quill frowned. Reluctantly, he stepped out of the small ship, joining Yondu. Another figure was standing in front of the gold. As the two of them emerged, he whirled around, blaster in hand - when he saw Yondu, he scowled.
“Stakar,” Yondu said, rather pleasantly for having a gun pulled on him. “Been a while.”
“Turn around and leave, Yondu,” Stakar said tiredly. “We don’t have to do this.”
“I ever tell you about Stakar, Peter?” Yondu said, glancing sideways. “Taught me everything I know. Well, three-quarters, if we’re being nice. Old Ravager buddy.”
“Yeah, you seem like great friends,” Quill said.
His eyes were slightly wide; Stakar’s face seemed set in a permanent scowl, meanwhile, barely acknowledging his presence. His grip on the bulky-looking blaster tightened.
“I hear a whistle, I shoot, okay?” Stakar said.
“Yep. Sounds like one of your friends,” Quill said.
“Oh, we go way back,” Yondu said.
“Yeah. We did,” Stakar said. “Until you started dealing in kids. You broke the code, Yondu.”
“You did what?” Quill said.
“Hey, hey, there’s… nuance,” Yondu said.
“Yeah. You thought you could get rich off it,” Stakar said. “You crossed a line. You can dress like a ravager, but you aren’t one of us.”
“I, er, wasn’t part of that,” Quill said.
He lifted his hands cautiously. Stakar, at last, spared him a glance.
“Who’s he?” Stakar said. Peter puffed up his chest slightly.
“I am…” he began. He took a breath. “Star-Lord.”
Stakar raised an eyebrow, and looked back at Yondu.
“Peter Quill,” Yondu said. “Terran. Picked him up a way back.”
“Yondu!”
“Huh,” Stakar mused. “Good eating on a terran.”
“Not you too,” Quill muttered.
He, cautiously, stepped to the side. As Yondu and Stakar continued to stare at each other, his attention drifted to the city; the golden mist flickered, momentary sparks bouncing around in the apparently-impenetrable field.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about raiding the city of the gods. Not for any moral reasons, of course, you just tended not to hear good things about people that got on the wrong side of deities.
But there was something… odd, about the place. Maybe it was just some echo of the plane it had once been on. Something sung to him, some hum in the air that he couldn’t quite ignore.
He started to move forwards.
“Boy!” Yondu said sharply.
Quill blinked, shaking off whatever it was that distracted him, and looked back at Yondu; Stakar had lowered his gun at some point, though he kept it in hand.
“Go on. Let him touch it,” Stakar said. “Gives a nasty sting.”
“No one’s gotten in?” Yondu said.
“Aleta blasted it before you got here,” Stakar said. “Didn’t do a thing. City’s sealed good and tight, not that we’ll give up that easily.”
“Hm,” Yondu said. He eyed it. “Has- hey, hey, Peter!”
As if on autopilot, Quill was walking towards the barrier. His eyes glazed over, and his step became oddly rhythmic, and he touched the outermost specks of gold.
They shimmered white, and he kept walking. He was a step inside before he blinked, registering Yondu’s words. He turned around, saw the gold around him, yelped, and stumbled back.
Stakar frowned; he touched the barrier himself, and hissed as the sparks reacted, yanking his hand back.
“Um. Guys?” Quill said.
“Why the hell did it let him in?” Stakar muttered.
“Okay, listen Peter,” Yondu said. “Can you walk back out?”
“Er. Not really sure I want to,” Quill said.
He paused, then hesitantly began to walk. Gold turned white in his presence, before returning to their normal lustre a few seconds after he passed. Baffled, Quill looked down at his own arms.
“Always knew your daddy was special,” Yondu murmured.
“Wait, what?” Quill said.
“Another time,” Yondu said.
“Er, no, you can’t just mention you know my dad and change the topic-” Quill began.
“Walk in again,” Yondu said. “I’m gonna try keeping close to you. If the barrier lets you in, maybe it’ll let you bring guests?”
“Again, rewind to my father having something to do with gods,” Quill said.
There was a click. Yondu grimaced, closing his eyes; Stakar lifted his blaster again.
“Really?” Yondu said.
“Don’t make me, Yondu,” Stakar said. “Just take a step back. No way in hell am I letting a guy who deals in kids get first pick of the gods’ treasures.”
“This really how you want it to go down, Stakar?” Yondu said.
“You know it’s not,” Stakar said.
He kept his gun raised. Quill stood, still half in the golden barrier, looking outwards. Yondu stood just in front of him, and then there was Stakar, a step further out, gun pointed squarely at Yondu’s back.
Yondu pursed his lips, poised to whistle; Quill cleared his throat. Yondu looked disbelievingly at him.
“Put the gun down,” Quill said, in the deepest voice he could manage.
“I’ve got no issue with you, kid,” Stakar said. “But I can’t let him be the one to loot the place.”
“I’ll smite you,” Quill said.
He lifted his arms in a manner that could best be described as kung-fu tree. Yondu continued to look at him skeptically. Stakar didn’t move.
“You know. Because, er, city of the gods. Lets me in,” Quill said, less dramatically.
Rolling his eyes, Stakar returned his attention to Yondu; Yondu paused.
“Truce?” Yondu said.
“Why would I ever-” Stakar began.
“Way I see it, Peter here’s your only way in and out of the city,” Yondu said. “You shoot me, and he won’t help you - and he’s safe from you on the other side of that barrier. You want the treasures, the only way is with us. Both of us.”
Stakar paused. His posture was firm, but there was still a glimpse of reluctance in his eye; it took shockingly little time for him to holster his blaster. He grunted, looking between the two of them.
“I get first dibs,” Stakar said.
“You get as much as you can carry. Same for us,” Yondu said.
“There’s two of you.”
“And Peter here’s the key,” Yondu said. “I brought him, I get an extra share.”
Stakar paused. Then, he sighed, and shrugged, moving closer.
“Gonna trust you’re not an oathbreaker too,” Stakar said. “Well, kid? Lead the way.”
“Oh. Er. Right,” Quill said.
He looked between the two ravagers uncertainly. Then, slowly, he turned back around; the golden fog flashed at his coming, and the white trail he left lingered just long enough for the two to follow.
Yondu and Stakar stayed close behind, until, at last, they emerged on the far side, Stakar let out a breath; Yondu smiled to himself.
“Just like old times,” Yondu said.
“Don’t push it,” Stakar said.
The pathway ahead of them was little wider than a ship, comfortable to walk on but narrow as far as land went. The drop either side might as well have been endless.
Standing there, it was almost easy to forget that it ought to have been impossible for the divine realm to be so simply accessible. It had crashed down from its perch in the heavens, and the very fact that was even possible made Quill nervous.
Keeping to the left of the tall, neatly trimmed bush, they slowly walked on. Quill kept being distracted by the ground; there were etchings in the marble, glimpses of people and places from the myths of countless worlds.
There were multiple colours to the marble, shades that seemed natural to the stone, yet resolved into images.
And together, the three thieves walked into holy ground.
“Place is quieter than I thought it’d be,” Stakar said.
At first, Quill assumed it was just because they were on the outskirts. The city was vast; however many gods were here, he doubted any would be on the fringes. The city grew denser further in, vast edifices hanging in the sky, each grander than the comparatively narrow walkway they were on.
They passed through a gentle mist. Stakar drew nearer to Quill, just in case, though this one didn’t react to them. As the water droplets scattered on their skin, only then did they realise they were walking through clouds.
There was a sphere of them, a perfect orb bracketing the city just as the golden barrier had. Now they were inside, they could see the sky ahead of them clearly, a pale blue that ought to be impossible. Gone were the stars, and the ships, and the void.
Yondu whistled appreciatively. He took a few steps ahead, picking up the pace as they at last neared something more developed than bushes.
Everything was wrought from marble and gold. Even something that seemed like little more than a hut looked grander than anything outside of the richest palaces; Yondu went over and peered inside. He made a face.
“Anyone interested in candles?” he said.
“There’ll be better further in,” Stakar said.
“I don’t know,” Quill said. “Genuine wax from the city of the gods, got to be worth something.”
“He for real?” Stakar said, to Yondu. Yondu shrugged.
“Got cold feet about robbing deities, don’t mind him,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”
It was a long walk. The pathway was never simple, built of straight lines with off-shoots and trapezoidal arches, flat marble with tufts of green in between. It looked more like an archaic kind of circuitry than a normal street. After a while, there was no hedge, but trees blossoming in bright colours instead began to break up the route.
Some shimmered orange, others pink, others a deep blue. The trio walked beneath each tree in turn, eyes all fixed on the city-proper ahead of them. What might have been a mile in, the narrow pathway at last joined up with far grander constructions. There were walls that went up miles, blocks of stone and metal that must have been filled with treasure.
Stakar grunted, but kept walking.
Gold ran like veins through the buildings. They passed a clear spring in a grassy plaza, passing by the largest edifices, though so far they weren’t attached to the street. An immense drop separated them from those vast, golden blocks, though the street looked to widen a half-mile on.
Still, Yondu walked to the edge of the walkway, looking out sideways. There were clouds far below them, and ahead the side of a huge chunk of marble; set into that side were trees and grass, growing out of it as though it were the ground. There was even a shallow pool set into the vertical surface.
“Huh,” he said. “Looks as though it has gravity. Boy! Fancy using your boots to jump over there?”
“If you want to make that jump, you take my boots,” Quill said. “I’m not gonna be your guinea pig.”
Almost unconsciously, Quill tapped his heels together. The rockets in his shoes were useful for a lot of navigation, but jumping at a sheer surface and hoping the gravity would change directions was new territory.
Yondu barked a laugh, turned, and kept walking inwards. Stakar, meanwhile, plucked an acorn from one of the trees, shrugging when Yondu raised an eyebrow at him. Stakar pocketed it.
And the city remained still. Quill had been on edge ever since they’d walked in; now even Yondu was frowning. The stories of the city of the gods told of endless revelry: this place was silent.
There was no movement, no sound save their breathing and their footsteps. This far in, they could see countless other walkways, and see up the sides of the seeming-parks on the sides of the adjacent structures. No one was here. Nothing walked, and nothing flew through the vast emptiness in the skies.
They kept walking.
Eventually, Quill slowed; he placed a hand on Yondu’s elbow, gesturing down. Stakar and Yondu both followed his gaze.
There was gold on the stone ground. In of itself, that wasn’t unusual, but normally the gold was more ordered, more measured. This was, well, spattered, an arc of gold strewn in droplets over the street.
Slowly, Yondu took a step forward. He frowned, and knelt, and touched his finger to the gold. It stained his blue fingertips. Quickly, he snatched his hand back.
“Ichor,” Stakar muttered.
“God-blood,” Yondu agreed. “Well, shit. You were wondering what yanked this place down, weren’t you boy?”
“Can we go now?” Quill said. “If something made a god bleed…”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Stakar murmured. “No one knows where this place is. No one knew how to get in, except the gods, and favoured soldiers and lovers. Place has been impregnable for as long as there’s been a universe.”
“Yeah, well, good news for us,” Yondu said.
“Yeah, unless the god-killer decides to squish us,” Quill said.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Yondu said.
Carefully, he stepped over the golden ichor. Expression darker, Stakar followed him, gaze lingering on the scattered blood. Rather more warily, Quill followed.
“You know a fair bit about this place, huh?” Yondu said. “Let me guess, planned a raid years back, couldn’t find it either.”
“Not my first time here,” Stakar said, gruffly. Yondu raised an eyebrow.
“Huh. Gotta be a story there,” Yondu said.
“Knew a god. Wasn’t always a ravager,” Stakar said.
“Huh. How did I not know that about you?” Yondu said.
“Same way I didn’t know the way you’d turn out,” Stakar said. “People are messy. That really news to you?”
“Fair,” Yondu said. “So? Which were you, soldier or lover?”
Stakar snorted, and brushed past him.
“I’ll take that as lover!” Yondu called after him. Stakar rolled his eyes.
A few minutes on, and as the street joined up with the monumental edifices all around them, there was another spray of gold up a wall. Stakar’s gaze lingered on it.
There were multiple routes ahead, now. There were streets lined by pillars and crystal-clear rivers that wound into the edifices either side of them, and a road onwards that came to a glimmering fountain, only to split up there.
Despite his wariness, Quill’s breathing faltered as he took in his surroundings. It was still empty, still all too quiet, but it was grand.
Yondu took a few steps forward, then knelt, plucking his arrow from his side. Stakar stiffened; Yondu just put it on the ground, and flicked it to watch it spin. When it came to a stop, he picked it back up, and started off in the direction it ended up pointing.
They walked deeper into the city. Every now and again, they ducked sideways into an open chamber. Now they were deeper, there were actual relics - depictions of deities in everything from armour to silken finery to reigning supreme over a sea of dumplings.
Yondu improvised a sack out of a discarded toga, and started to pile in statuettes and jewellery and, at one point, scissors. Reluctantly, Quill started doing the same, taking Yondu’s direction for other things to gather; there were glimmering devices, crystals and gyroscopes and things that defied immediate understanding. They’d almost certainly be worth something.
Grimly, Stakar busied himself doing the same. They made their way down an abandoned block of ichor-strewn temples. There were no bodies, though any god would have dissolved to light, so the stories went. Prizes worthy of divinity went into their bags, and the city of the gods stayed quiet.
Stakar went a few steps ahead, and froze in the doorway to one of the temples. Yondu approached, standing between the twin pillars with him, looking into the gold-lined chamber; there was an open floor, and a series of artwork on the wall, telling a myth as it went in a circle around the room.
On the far side, though, was a far more detailed painting - a bird, wings outstretched, beak open in a cry that you could almost hear just by looking at it.
Stakar stared. Yondu looked at him, frowning for a moment, before he guessed.
“Your god, huh?” Yondu said.
Stakar nodded stiffly.
“Not lover then?” Yondu said.
“Not in the mood, Yondu,” he said.
“I get you,” Yondu said. “We all have our things. You worship a bird, it’s whatever.”
“It’s not…” Stakar muttered. He grimaced. “I fought with the Hawk with me for… a while. We get strength from where we can.”
“That we do,” Yondu said. He paused. “Look, if you want me to do that comfort shit, tell you it’s probably fine even when there’s blood everywhere-”
“I don’t,” Stakar said.
“Yeah, well, good,” Yondu said. He shrugged. “Things suck. You take it, you make something of it.”
“I don’t need advice from you,” Stakar said.
“You’re here because of me. A little gratitude wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Yondu said.
“I’m here because of the kid,” Stakar said. “What you did isn’t the sort of thing that gets forgiven.”
Stakar quickly turned around, moving away from the shrine.
A second later, and there was a bang - the sound broke the otherwise oppressive silence that filled the city. Quill was already running to the far side of the avenue, looking out over the abyss; in the distance, something started smoking. There was a flash, a rush of something dark, and then silence again.
Stakar and Yondu were quickly at his back, lugging their sacks of loot. Stakar frowned. Quill’s eyes widened.
“It’s still here,” Quill said. “Told you this was a bad idea.”
“Kid. We’re robbing the city of the gods,” Yondu said. “There’s gonna be some risks.”
“I’m with the kid on this one,” Stakar said. “I vote we keep our distance.”
The distant plume of smoke faded, a glimpse of pitch-black shadow swirling beneath it. Yondu watched it for a long few seconds.
“Might have a point,” Yondu said. “I’ve got almost all I can carry. We get to the end of this street, then we head back out. Everyone good with that?”
“Absolutely,” Quill said.
“You’re not in charge,” Stakar grumbled, but nodded. “But sure.”
They were maybe of the two thirds of the way down the impromptu street, far wider than the one they walked in on. On one side, looking in towards the sanctum in the middle of the city, was another sheer drop; this one went down onto more interlocking pathways, rather than just ending up overlooking nothingness.
Black marble was lined up with white, and narrow streams crossed across the width of the platform; the trio walked over gold-wood bridges, water trickling out past them and off the end of the city street.
The other side of the street was a line of chambers so grand they might have been temples or mansions. Most had a wide open room to enter, and then smaller side-rooms with varying degrees of concealment. In those rooms, were the treasures of the gods.
It wasn’t clear what purpose they served - if gods lived with them, or stayed in them while visiting the city, or if they were just a place for a god’s guests to gather. Still, all were empty and their contents ripe for the taking.
There were trinkets, weapons, maps of higher planes, ornate armour, crystalline power-sources, and a millions more types of ephemera all tucked away. All went rummaged through, and a sizeable fraction went into the Ravagers’ sacks.
There were no more disturbances as they made their way down the last stretch. For one brief moment, Quill thought he glimpsed something moving in the shadows between buildings, but when he looked there was nothing - he was just jumpy. This whole place was unnerving.
Sacred ground was one thing. Sacred ground splattered with god-blood was another.
They were loaded up by then. Yondu had four bags barely contained in his hands, while Peter struggled with three, and Stakar managed eight, carrying clasps to bind the loot to shining bars on his suit. Yondu nodded appreciatively; Stakar didn’t look back.
“This walk is gonna suck huh,” Quill said. “We should’ve brought the anti-grav courier.”
“We call that down, and we’re broadcasting to every clan out there that we’ve got a way in,” Yondu said. “This way, we can hopefully run before anyone realises.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Quill said tiredly.
Stakar was already a little way ahead of them. He waded through a shallow river, upstream of the bridge that dripped ichor to stain the water, emerging with a groan and turning a corner. Now, they could see down a gap in the vast blocky edifices that surrounded the city, down another narrow road that led outwards. By the look of it, it went all the way out past the golden barrier, to another entry-platform.
“We both call one shuttle. Unarmed,” Stakar said. “And we watch one another make the call. Deal?”
“Deal,” Yondu said. “Pleasure doing business, same as ever.”
Stakar grunted.
Quill looked back over his shoulder, wary of any more movement. The city really did seem to be abandoned. Whatever had spilled all this god-blood, damaged the city enough that it fell from its lofty perch, it had done a thorough job.
It was a long walk. If anything, it felt longer than the journey in had been, half-exacerbated by growing tiredness, and half by the stolen goods they were bringing back with them.
And he kept looking over his shoulder, as though statues were going to come to life, or the rainbow-blossom trees were going to uproot themselves. It was almost scarier to be able to get out of this city so easily.
Then again, presumably few intruders managed to make it this far. He still didn’t know how he’d gotten them through the barrier.
Still, he could swear something was moving in the shadows. Ugh, he was getting jumpy; he’d be glad to be out of this place.
And, after far too long, they made it back to the shimmer of gold. Quill exhaled, dropping his bags for a moment to wipe his brow. Yondu was a few steps back, taking in the sight for the last time.
At least they’d made it to-
“Now who are you?”
It wasn’t a voice Quill recognised. In the same moment he turned around, Yondu whistled, summoning his arrow to a spot over his shoulder; meanwhile, Stakar drew his gun.
There was a woman with long, dark hair, standing precariously half-off the path. She didn’t seem concerned; there was a sword she held lazily, flung over her back and balanced on her shoulder like it was little more than luggage. More unnerving was her pallor; that grey didn’t seem to belong in a place as colourful as the city of the gods.
More unnerving still, were the specks of gold on her face, stark against her skin.
Her eyes flicked between them; she ignored Yondu, looking first at Stakar, and then lingering on Quill. Still, it was to Stakar that she spoke first.
“Intruders in Omnipotence City. Points for gall,” she said. “Really, almost impressed, and… and you’re petty thieves.”
She lingered on the ‘and,’ before sighing.
“That’s disappointing,” she said.
“Who are you?” Stakar said.
“The last Valkyrie,” she said. She grinned, half-bitter. “Odin himself showed me this place, way back. Bet you I’ve got more right to be here than you.”
Quill shifted. She didn’t look at him, now looking completely at Stakar.
“Huh, you one of the Hawk’s?” the Valkyrie said. “I just met that thing, you know. Had a nice chat.”
“Did you?”
“Mm,” Valkyrie said. “Usual stuff. Offered me worlds and worshippers if I spared its life; pretty sure I could own your soul right now, if I said yes. Bad choice, trusting that one.”
Quill stiffened, doing his best to surreptitiously prepare his boots; something told him the ability to run quickly would be useful pretty soon.
“You killed it?” Stakar said, voice low.
“Well, yeah. Kinda what I do now,” she said.
Stakar paused. He nodded neutrally, for a moment, stationary.
He lifted his gun and shot in the time it took Quill to blink; the only thing that didn’t seem caught by surprise was the shadow-limb that appeared in front of the Valkyrie, swallowing up the four shots Stakar had time to fire.
A maw reached out from the ground, making him stumble; a shot went wide, spiralling up into the air, and Valkyrie lunged in with a slash. He hit the ground in two pieces.
Yondu whistled. Valkyrie didn’t even turn to cut the arrow in two; Quill activated his boots, and shot a line out to hook into Yondu’s jacket; Quill shot himself towards the barrier, outspeeding Valkyrie and bringing Yondu with him.
Maybe she couldn’t make it through the gold. It was a long shot, but distance was better than no distance. If he…
Valkyrie vanished in a swell of shadow, and reappeared inches in front of Quill. The necrosword was so sharp, he barely felt it impale him.
Yondu shouted, just out the barrier. Valkyrie ignored him, pulling out the blade and wiping it on the back of his coat.
“Can almost smell it on him,” she muttered. She looked over to Yondu. “Don’t try to be a hero. Take it from me, never ends well.”
Yondu pushed himself to his feet. His arrow was in two pieces, and out of reach; even most of the treasure was inaccessible, just then.
“For the record, guy in there, I wasn’t planning on killing him,” Valkyrie said. “His fault for not understanding.”
“You killed his god,” Yondu said.
“Yeah,” Valkyrie said. Her voice went cold. “Trust me, if you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d know it was a mercy.”
Yondu glowered. Dismissively, Valkyrie turned away, and walked into a wave of darkness. When it faded, she and the sword was gone.
And Yondu was left on the little crescent of marble, now stained with very red blood.
She fought.
It was what she did, Valkyrie reflected; it was what she knew. She was a warrior. Point her at enemies, and she’d strike them down. It was all she’d ever really had - it was habit. Easy.
Though before, she fought for Odin, and fought for Asgard. She supposed in a way she was still fighting for Asgard.
It was strange. Hela, then Odin, it felt like the same breath. She’d needed to strike down Hela, and when his orders led to her sisters falling, Odin had been the obvious next target - after that, it was something of a blur. She’d needed to fight something, and the sword gave her that target.
It hadn’t been as satisfying as sinking the cursed blade into Hela’s chest. It had, though, felt right.
She sat down on a monochrome rock, sword still in hand, buried a little in the ground. Still, there was that urging in the back of her mind, that sense she should be doing more. For now, though, she waited here.
The necrosword seemed to default to this place. It was easier for it, she supposed, just as the heat of battle was easy for her. Everyone took comfort in its own things. She lifted the blade, resting it across her knees; it was, she reflected, hard to think of the sword as an ordinary weapon. Even without its presence in myth, she could feel it.
She didn’t know if it told her things, or if it just allowed her to see them. Either way, so much knowledge had slipped into her mind.
The shadows seethed around her.
“It was the right thing to do, right?” she murmured.
The sword was warm to the touch, sometimes. She felt it, almost comforting; she felt a hand from the darkness rest gently on her shoulder, and she closed her eyes.
She was used to war. She wasn’t used to warring alone.
“I’ve never been without a god before,” she said. She paused. “I’m… not sure who I am without them. Without my sisters.”
The realm darkened; she felt the sword’s presence. It was an odd comfort, the same way a strict instructor might be; its company might not be the most gentle, but it offered certainty. She knew what to expect. That was more than she’d had, before.
She was a valkyrie, one of Odin’s warriors. She was the wielder of the necrosword, and Odin’s slayer.
She was…
The sword murmured, more insistently, then.
“You’re right,” she said slowly. “Who knows how many more of them had valkyries? How many more had followers that would die if they asked - we saved them. Huddled away in that palace of theirs rather than helping the people that admire them.”
Her grip on the sword’s hilt tightened. She didn’t move.
Hela was still fresh in her memory. She remembered that last gasp, and the flickers of gold as the goddess of death had left this world; she remembered how the necrosword had shuddered in her grasp, and how right it had felt to begin the slow process of avenging her sisters.
It still felt good. Pain needed an outlet, and fighting had always been hers. The alternative was numbing it, and she didn’t know who she’d be if she started down that path. She’d rather stay the warrior.
The sword thrummed. She rested her other hand on the blade, almost soothingly.
She was a protector. That was it. She’d fought for Asgard, to keep it safe, and now she fought for those that would give their life for gods that didn’t care.
“I know. More are being wronged, more people need protecting,” Valkyrie said. “There are so many gods outside the city. Our work isn’t done.”
It wasn’t fair. She’d lived with Odin long enough to know gods were destined for a paradise. An eternal reward, given to them for simply being gods, no matter what atrocities they visited upon their worshippers. The idea that some fragment of Hela, of Odin, might still linger, while mortals were merely bound for oblivion…
Part of her wanted to sink the blade into Eternity’s chest, simply for allowing the world to exist as it did.
How many people still yearned for the gods? How many people prayed for help that would never come? It was more than the Valkyries that deserved revenge. Lives spent to secure the gods an eternity in Valhalla.
She was a warrior. She fought, and she protected those that needed it. And who needed saving more, than those like her sisters, bound to die at the whim of a god?
Valkyrie leaned forwards, pressing her forehead to the chill head of the blade’s pommel.
“When does it stop hurting?” she said.
The sword’s reply was, perhaps, the worst thing of all.
Valhalla was one of many realms, and within it were many halls. For now, it was a place of revelry - rather than mourning, ancestors welcomed the dead with celebration. Barrels of ale that never ran dry filled glass after glass, and the hall was filled with gods and those elevated to godhood.
And at the head of the hall was the line of Odin. Thor sat next to Odin, who sat beside Frigga and beside his father, Bor, who sat beside Buri, who sat beside a cow gently grazing from a flowerpot and who was looking with an expression of mild concern at the roast.
Glasses were raised, and a trio of warriors sang a semi-coherent string of verses.
No fear, no stresses, no concerns. Death had come to Asgard, but here they were safe, and here there was the reward promised to the gods - endless feasting and comfort. Odin found himself grinning, forgetting the cold sting of the cursed blade.
And then a rustle went through the crowd; the song faltered, as the doors at the far side of the hall swung open.
There was an uninvited guest at the feast. Odin stood, and moved past the legions of the dead gods, to see the shadow in the doorway. The lines on his face grew all the deeper, in both sadness and concern.
“Father,” Hela said. “At last you come here. Don’t I even get a ‘hello?’”
“Daughter,” Odin said.
There was quiet. Frigga tensed in her throne, poised to move; Bor placed a calming hand on her arm.
“Have you come to join us at last, granddaughter?” Bor said.
“Join you?” Hela said. She turned up her nose. “Never. I just wanted to see dear old dad - word reached me he got himself killed by the same one that fought me. Had to see it for myself.”
“Do you hate me even now?” Odin said.
“For the rest of eternity,” Hela said.
“Come, join us at the table,” Bor said. “Take a seat, leave aside your grievances and celebrate with us.”
“I don’t know if that’s wise,” Frigga said.
“This is Valhalla,” Bor said. “The turmoil of life doesn’t reach us here. Whatever troubles you had, they are ended.”
“I would rather die again, a thousand times, than sit with you,” Hela said. A less-than-pleasant smile crossed her face. “I just wanted to know he was really dead.”
“And now you know, what will you do?” Odin said.
“Return to the corpse-shores of Náströnd with a smile on my face,” Hela said.
“You will be welcomed here,” Bor said. Odin looked warily back; Bor lifted a gentle hand. “You will be. It has been centuries, move on. There is no need to set yourself apart so.”
“I want no part of this,” Hela said.
She turned her back, and with a sweep of her dark cloak, she was gone. Odin lingered for a time between the long tables of the hall, staring at the abandoned entryway.
It had been a long, long time since he’d seen his daughter. He had failed her, true - he’d failed a lot of people. It was easier to see that in retrospect, particularly here with so little pride to cloud his judgement.
Though she was still Hela, even after the centuries.
With some reluctance, Odin retreated to the table. The singing had started again mere moments after Hela left.
“Her, I did not expect to see here,” Frigga said.
“Where else would she be?” Bor said. “She is a goddess, and this is the land of the gods. She is as due an eternal reward as any of us.”
“She has… killed many,” Odin said.
“As have we all,” Bor said. He sighed heavily. “Though she has not let go of her anger, it seems. She has not joined us at all, not since she first arrived here swearing vengeance upon the necrosword.”
“I doubt she ever will,” Odin said.
“This is a place for hope, my son,” Bor said. “When she is willing to accept her reward, let us be here. There ought be no strife in this land.”
“Just let me be here,” Yondu said. “All I ask. Not peace, we just… forget about things for a day. Then we can go our separate ways.”
The meeting room was cramped. It was the bridge of a half-junked ship, steam constantly emerging in puffs from a rusted but of pipe-work. A handful of Ravagers greeted Yondu, their eyes less wary than Stakar’s had been, but few were welcoming.
A woman with dark hair, a man with crystalline skin, a tall Jovian, a red-scaled sorcerer, and an excitable metal head left on a chair. It was the head that chimed in, voice high-pitched and eager.
“I missed you, Yondu!”
Aleta, the dark-haired woman, eyed him for a moment. She glanced around - the sorcerer gestured with a circle of yellow, magical light, drawing a pair of thumbs-up. The two men nodded as well.
“For today,” Aleta said. “Stakar talked a lot, but… he’d have wanted you to be here. It would be poor for us to forget, but you are welcome, Yondu Udonta.”
“For today,” Yondu echoed. He nodded.
The meeting was brief, but Ravagers weren’t ones for emotional outpourings. It was a short hop back to his ship, and a short walk to the Eclector’s viewing deck. They were far from the city of the gods now, but almost all the ships were still there.
The city was impenetrable to all except, it seemed, Quill - and even then, venturing within was more risk than even the most foolhardy wanted to take. Stakar had a reputation. He wasn’t one who’d have gone down easily.
“Cap’n?” Kraglin said.
“Flash the colours,” Yondu said. “Gotta still have something here. We’re going to give him a send-off that’s gonna sear his name into the fabric of the universe, you hear me?”
“Right away, cap’n,” Kraglin said.
He nodded stiffly, and sniffed as he turned around. Yondu, meanwhile, stood painfully still as he looked out the glass.
Quill, and Stakar. You got used to loss in this line of work, but it still hurt. He balled a hand into a tight fist.
“Why are we still here?”
Stiffly, Yondu turned around; the voice had been gruff, one he recognised as a regular complainer. Eyes cold, he looked back among the crew.
“You,” Yondu said. He paused. “What was your name again?”
“I am Taser-” the crew-member began to say, with a little too much of a flourish. Yondu interrupted.
“Stakar Ogord is the reason I’m here,” Yondu said, firmly. “Twenty years in the Kree battle-pits until he pulled me out, gave me a purpose I wanted. We’re at his funeral, we’re paying our respects. Clear?”
Yondu paused. The troublemaker - a bumpy-skinned and bearded alien with pretentious trinkets strung all over his jacket - was still looking darkly at him. Perhaps Yondu could have handled it more delicately, but this wasn’t a day when he felt like being charitable.
He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler, almost amiable in a way that made the smart members of the crew - everyone except Taserface - take a step back.
“Alright. You don’t want to be here. I get it,” Yondu said. “Take a shuttle out. You can deliver a message for me - once you’ve done that, you can take the day at Contraxia before coming back. There’s no need for you to be here and drag down the mood.”
Taserface paused. He didn’t seem to notice the rest of the Ravagers being unnerved, distracted by the lure of time by himself.
“A message?” Taserface said.
“Condolences,” Yondu said. “You never met Quill’s old man, did you? Figure he’d want to know what happened to his son, is all.”
“Oh. I can do that,” Taserface said.
Yondu smiled.
He tried not to think about his old client that much; there were a lot of things he hadn’t figured out but, well, he could take a guess.
“Tell him what happened,” Yondu said. “Quill got us into the city of the gods, and was murdered - grey-skinned god-killer with a scary-looking sword, can’t be many of those about.”
“Then I can take the day off?” Taserface said.
“Sure,” Yondu said. “After you talk to Quill’s dad. Don’t worry, he’s a nice guy. Sure you’ll be on your way in no time.”
Yondu smiled the same way a shark smiled. It was a relief when Taserface finally drew back out of sight. Then, he could look back at the night.
He wasn’t much of one for gods. Equally, revenge wasn’t something to let yourself be consumed by; more than a few Ravagers had gone down that way. He could leave tracking down and dealing with the Valkyrie to someone else - ideally, someone who might know a little more about what sort of person would be going around with shadows at her beck and call.
And he could focus on what mattered - honouring the dead. He watched, as colours lit up the void of space, and smiled to himself as the Eclector lit up to match. Hundreds of neon shades filled the emptiness.
Yondu watched each one. A hawk of golden light formed around Stakar’s own clan, their own memorial to him; his gaze lingered on that.
You mourned, and you went on. But damn it, if it didn’t hurt sometimes.
Valkyrie closed her eyes, laying back on the grey stone. The necrosword was never far from her hand.
“Relax,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”
The shadow-realm was silent. Few people knew the way there, and fewer still dared venture in. Her memories were never far away. Whenever she closed her eyes, she was back there, back watching her sisters fall beneath the twilit sky.
Pain filled her, and purpose with it. She turned her head, looking at the sword; she’d known old weapons, seen ancient swords, and this was older than any of them. She could see the age of it, but it held together.
She’d seen it snap in combat; a deity in Omnipotence City had held their own remarkably well, though the goddess hadn’t been prepared for the sword to reforge itself. Idly, Valkyrie wondered how many times the sword had been broken; it still held together, after its bloody past.
“I had heard of you, you know,” Valkyrie said, as though this was little more than a holiday. “The fearsome necrosword, handed down since the dawn of time from someone that apparently really had it in for gods.”
The sword whispered. Valkyrie smiled.
“No, I didn’t realise that was what you were,” Valkyrie said. “Not when I grabbed you. Mind you, I wasn’t thinking much of anything at the time. Nothing except…”
It was Hela’s eyes the stayed with her, sometimes. There hadn’t even been hate in them. Any Valkyrie knew that they’d probably die in battle, but to be swatted aside by someone that didn’t seem to register them as even significant, that burned.
“No,” Valkyrie said, after a moment. “Even if I did realise, I doubt it would have stopped me. Sure, I curse myself, bind my soul to whatever the hel you are - but I dealt with her. That was all that mattered.”
Something streaked across the sky. Valkyrie lazily looked up, feeling the whispers at the back of her mind still urging her on into action. She waited.
There was so little out here, and it was harder to see what there was; the only colour was grey. The speck in the sky was just that, just grey, not standing out from the dullest rock or the brightest star.
It streaked down, poised to crash - or to land. It touched the rock without any plume of dirt. Intrigued, Valkyrie pushed herself back to her feet. The necrosword was never far from her hand.
It didn’t quite look like a ship; the thing that had crashed was pale, and round, though more like a pod than any genuine craft. She watched the doors slide smoothly open, tilting her head.
It was remarkably understated for something that had found its way to the shadow-realm. Just as understated, was the lone individual inside; he was bushy-haired, with a dark beard, and eyes that were so very cold. Unlike Hela, though, he didn’t look at her like she was nothing - he was angry.
The necrosword thrummed. Sometimes it gave her a sense of things, a feeling of what was going on in someone’s mind or someone’s past; she’d never met anything it had struggled to read before.
Hm. That was new.
“Do you have any idea how long I waited?” he shouted.
He lifted a hand. There was a flash of light with all the force of a supernova, a momentary flare of colour in the monochrome land. She glimpsed his skin, and the pale orange interior of his pod, for mere moments before they faded anew.
Valkyrie vanished into the shadows; the light scarred the landscape, and the being stepped out of the pod. Despite his appearance, he was clearly no man.
“He would have been my chance!”
Another shout. A dozen shards of light shout outwards across the rocky landscape, Valkyrie quickly dicing back into shadow to avoid them. She raised the necrosword to block another barrage, and stumbled back.
“My first chance, in forever!” he snapped.
He stomped. The world cracked; Valkyrie slipped down into the shadows, and pulled herself up through the tremor, grabbing his ankle with one hand and making him look down. She thrust the sword up, leaving a gash in his side and thigh.
He didn’t bleed. Rather than blood, or muscle, or bone, there was seething energy beneath his flesh. It shone with a blue light utterly alien to the realm.
“You have no idea what you cost me,” he said, his voice almost a growl.
Another flash of light. Valkyrie hid in the shadows again, and summoned a warrior from the underside of the shattered stones. Shadow-shapes charged at the stranger, all obliterated in almost an instant, but distracting him enough for Valkyrie to lunge.
That time, she did more than stab. She slashed twice, and brought the black down, severing the strands of light that kept the construct-body together.
“I knew you’d be here,” he said. He smiled with half a head as he slipped down to the ground. “I knew it would be easy to find you.”
“Good for you,” Valkyrie said.
She lifted the sword again.
“I am Ego,” he said.
“You said it, not me,” she said.
The necrosword cut a last time, and the intruder faded away. She exhaled, and glanced at the blade.
Okay, as far as guests went, he’d been surprisingly powerful, especially for a construct. There were gods she’d had an easier time fighting. She wiped her brow.
“See?” she said. “Easy.”
The energy from that figure hadn’t been too different to that boy she’d cut down on the threshold of Omnipotence City. She could feel it, a primal tang in the air, the afterimages reacting with the sword.
Okay, the would-be thief apparently didn’t know all the same tricks as this one. Still, it hadn’t been so bad.
Then she felt light. Valkyrie looked up.
The perpetual night was broken, and colour had come to the shadow-realm; a new world hung in the sky like some grisly moon, and of all things it had a face. Eyes that shone with blue-tinged light, a mouth contorted into a tremendous growl, and that light illuminated the violet, craggy landscape of the world.
And as vast and distant as it must be, Valkyrie could feel that it stared at her.
“Huh. Okay, that is a new one,” Valkyrie said.
The planet loomed.
There were a number of celestial bodies in the shadow-realm; Valkyrie stood on one of the largest, a pockmarked grey ball hanging in amongst the shadows. It was dwarfed by the newest intruder to the realm.
The living planet wasn’t even close when its gravity started to make the world under Valkyrie’s feet shudder. A violet jolt saw the necrosword flung from her hand; she struggled to stay upright as the ground below her feet was wracked with another quake. The planet above didn’t need to do anything but hang there, eyes unnervingly bright, to tear the world apart.
A crack ran across the landscape. Valkyrie quickly leapt to a solid-looking piece of stone, regaining her balance as part of it too started to crumble. A chasm with shadow at its core opened up, soon stretching from horizon to horizon.
She looked up. The planet glowered at her.
“Never pissed off a whole world before,” she murmured.
The rock below her feet came apart. She jumped from it, sticking her hand out. The necrosword cut its way through chunks of stone to return to her grasp.
Every shadow was something it could use. They were materials to shape, portals to use, the raw stuff that the necrosword could wreak terrors with with. She fell into the nothing, travelling through the shadow now that the world was no longer there.
Well, there was one planet in the shadow-realm that looked like it would hold together.
Valkyrie stepped out onto a surface tinged an impossible purple. Almost at once, the solid ground beneath her feet morphed to quicksand; she summoned allies from the shadow, figures made from the darkness that soared on winged mounts, pulling her up from the ground.
A vast crater stretched out ahead of her, a world’s eye seen from ground level, bringing with it colour and light to this realm - it was vast and unchanging but somehow she felt its attention shift to her. She looked from the vast abscess, to the sword in her hand.
Okay. She was going to need a bigger weapon.
Even lifted into the air, she couldn’t see the end of it. One eye, just one eye on this vast thing, and it stretched to the horizon. Valkyrie focused, trying to channel both the necrosword and the realm all around her.
This was where the necrosword was strongest. She just had to figure out how to use that.
She heard a scream of rage. Behind her, celestial energy sparked, and a man put himself together from the nothing in the air, specks of matter assembling themselves and binding themselves with light.
Him again.
“I have searched, for so long!” Ego bellowed.
She did her best to stay on her feet, ducking sideways past a raw jet of cosmic energy. It arced, and she leapt backwards over it.
A dozen figures formed from shadow, all riding towards the figure. They cut through him, but even with half his body, he stood there.
“He made it into the city! He was the one!”
She was just surviving. She avoided another blast, and a shadow at last cut down the construct.
Then the whole world shook. As far as the eye could see, cracks opened up, rock shaking apart to dust, as light streamed upwards from the celestial core; it cast shadows of colour, streaming tendrils of white stretching upwards to the sky.
The shadow-riders sliced through some, and Valkyrie cut at each that lunged for her, but there were always more.
“It was all I ever wanted!”
She didn’t even know what yelled that. She couldn’t see any other body, but the roar made the land shudder again, the last worlds turning into almost a sob. Light struck her; it impaled her without breaking her skin, and lifted her up into the air.
She slashed, cut the one strand, but another pierced her again. She cried out; the tendril flicked and threw her back.
The crater of Ego’s eye was blindingly bright - and there were no shadows for her to vanish into. Outside, her constructs warred futilely with the light-limbs that tore up the ground, but none could even make it through to dive into the crater. They were grabbed and shredded by the light.
And Valkyrie fell.
There was a long way to fall. The searing light burned away any darkness, any advantage to being in the shadow-realm; she closed her eyes and focused. Some shadow-creatures took longer to create, and others required a depth of darkness and control that she only had in a realm like this one. If she just…
“You took it from me!” Ego shouted, again, raging.
And then the planet screamed.
The shadow-riders were small things, distractions, most torn apart by the planet; further out, though was another creature of shadow. It was humanoid, like so many of the others, but it needed no mount. Blackness came together, forged by the will of the necrosword, and it stood tall with a blade of shadow in hand.
And suddenly Ego was no longer the biggest thing in the shadow-realm. The blade cut through the planet, the darkness passing close to Valkyrie; she slipped into the darkness as the titan-shadow tore away a chunk of the planet’s crust, its sword long enough to impale a world.
It seemed to move in slow motion. Each swing of its sword crossed hundreds of miles, the blade almost invisible against the endless night. It could just be glimpsed in contrast to Ego, a cosmic shadow against the world, a figure whose outstretched arms just exceeded the width of the world. All the shadows of that bleak corner of space coalesced into one, and the necrosword burned with exertion and relish.
Dust and debris trailing from the gash in its surface, Ego turned its attention fully to its newest foe. The shadow lifted its moon-sized blade to cut again.
Veins of light ran all throughout Ego. They were just beneath the surface, intertwined with every stone, every speck of dust; they rippled, and tore themselves free, throwing themselves all at once at the titan. White untangled itself from stone and valley and forest and alien mountains, and the light looped searing threads around the shadow’s arms and held it tight.
They wrestled, rocking back and forth, the planet trembling as the giant shadow struggled to strike again.
And on the planet’s surface, Valkyrie emerged from the shade of a hut. She took a few steps forward, panting, and cast her gaze upwards; light billowed out from the planet, all the celestial might clashing with all the darkness of the realm.
She took a deep breath. Ugh, any day she’d prefer something she could stab, rather than needing to lean into the magic of the sword.
Threads of light started to cut into the sky-spanning shadow. Valkyrie grimaced.
And then someone threw a mug at her. She blinked, and rubbed her head, more amused than annoyed; she looked sideways.
She hadn’t thought much about why there was a hut on the surface of Ego’s world. There was a woman peering out, her eyes wide and dark, and with antennae that twitched. She threw another cup at Valkyrie, apparently in desperation.
The celestial energy, some distance away, surged. It flickered, half-illuminating the stranger; the necrosword whispered to Valkyrie, perceiving more than she herself could.
“Mantis?” Valkyrie said. She lifted her hands placatingly, her voice gentle. “Shh. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The shadow-creature in the sky strained as a light-rope wrapped around its throat. It wrenched back as if trying to pull out Ego’s soul, and bucked wildly, hair trailing outwards in streams of shadow.
Mantis’s eyes kept darting upwards. Valkyrie stepped closer, holding the sword loosely, trying to make it as non-threatening as possible.
She saw Mantis.
“He’s kept you here?” Valkyrie said. Her voice darkened. “I’m sorry. That should never have been allowed.”
Mantis faltered. The ground shook; Valkyrie dove closer, and Mantis squeaked-
Shadow consumed them for mere seconds. There were other planets in the shadow-realm, other small outposts beyond the one Ego had destroyed; Valkyrie gently lay Mantis down on one.
Mantis’s hand brushed Valkyrie’s, shaking.
“I’ll be back for you,” Valkyrie said. “You’ll be safe here. Okay?”
Mantis stared at her with wide eyes.
“Do you talk?” Valkyrie said.
“How do you bear it?” Mantis said, her voice as shaky as her body. Valkyrie frowned, then glanced down, eyes seeing how closer there hands were to touching. She snatched hers back.
“Empath,” Valkyrie muttered. “Great.”
She turned around, and almost missed Mantis squeaking again; she looked back, to see another shadow-figure rising up and advancing on Mantis. The alien held a mug threateningly in front of herself.
“Don’t,” Valkyrie said.
The shadow-figure paused. More insistently, Valkyrie glared at it.
“Don’t,” Valkyrie said again, more firmly. “She’s no god. We protect her.”
A few seconds later, and the figure dissolved. Mantis stared.
Then Valkyrie stepped through shadow, back to Ego. The light had almost left the world, the being’s focus completely on overpowering the increasingly-formless shadow-thing in the sky. The sword filled the night, illuminated by the torrent of light that poured forth from the world; the blade reached the far horizon, perpetually on the cusp of sinking down into the planet.
But it held in place. Valkyrie watched from Ego’s surface, as celestial light began to cut through the shadow.
And, while he was distracted, while his light was concentrated elsewhere, more shadows began to seep into the stone of the world. Unseen, the scraps of shadow not invested in the construct overhead slipped into the cracks left.
Valkyrie looked up; the shadow-warrior gave a last cry, and made the planet tremble, before the light won. Ribbons of ancient energy cut through it, no longer merely constrained to holding it in place. The sword fell in two, and a terrific mass of darkness dissipated before it could reach the planet’s surface, and a dozen separated pieces of the figure drifted in the sky for the mere seconds they lasted.
The light withdrew. It sucked itself back into the world, and the planet shuddered again, veins of light almost unconsciously threading themselves through the planet. A faint wave emanated from the world’s core, quickly finding Valkyrie’s location again.
“You should have run.”
Particles of dust blew on a barely-there breeze, assembling into a familiar humanoid form, a few steps behind Valkyrie. She turned around.
“Really?” Valkyrie said. She took a breath. “Not even winded from that. Seriously?”
“I’m a Celestial, you know. A god,” he said. “I don’t care what sword you have. You killed my son, my only real son, before I ever met him. For that…”
He lifted a hand in a playful finger-gun. Valkyrie focused.
Ego screamed, and the construct-body fell to the rocky floor. Valkyrie wiped her brow, and allowed herself a slightly cocky walk forwards, until she was over the fallen figure. The world shook.
The streams of light that billowed from the cracks in the land all dimmed, just for a few seconds. Shadow spread.
“What you are, is a massive ego,” she said. “And, well, just pretty massive in general - have to hand it to you, when I saw the celestial energy on that kid, I didn’t expect a whole damn planet.”
Ego began to move; she thrust her sword through his chest, pinning him to his own world.
“What you just felt was a few of my shadow-friends stabbing, ooh, a third of that light that makes up your body,” Valkyrie said. “While you were paying attention to the big one, I sent them everywhere. I mean everywhere. You try anything, and you’re going to get swords in places you didn’t even know you had.”
There might be a core to this world, but all those threads of light were as much Ego as anything. So much of him, ever-squirming, ever-powerful, far too much to ever get at while he was moving. But a sufficient distraction, enough time to get smaller shadow-things in place, and the planet became his greatest weakness.
Any place other than the shadow-realm and she wouldn’t have had the raw material to work with. Everything here, though, listened to the necrosword; she had all she needed to clamp those wriggling lines of light into place, and to squeeze if Ego struggled.
The man on the ground grunted, suddenly, apparently finding that out for himself.
“I guess pain’s a new feeling for you, huh? Certainly that much of it,” Valkyrie said. “How many nerve endings do you even have? Or whatever your equivalent is. I wonder if I’m missing any.”
She pressed the sword down deeper, embedding it firmly in the stone.
“Go on then,” Ego said. “Necrosword-wielder. If you’re going to kill me, do it.”
He twitched his fingers, and gasped again as the shadows restrained him. Valkyrie rested her weight on the top of the blade.
“Kill you?” she said. “Why would I do a thing like that? I go through all this hassle to get you here, and what, I just stab your brain and walk away?”
Ego paused. He was too proud to ask the obvious question, then; Valkyrie smiled, leaning down.
“Yes, I knew you’d come,” she said. “Told you, I could see the energy in that kid. He didn’t have a bloody clue how to use it, which made him useless to me, but I figured I could draw out a relative. Revenge is a heck of a motivator. Take it from me.”
“Why?” Ego said.
“You’re a celestial being,” Valkyrie said. “There’s a very particular place I want to go, and getting in requires a very particular key. I just need someone powerful enough to make me that key.”
“You want a Bifrost,” Ego said.
“Got it in one,” Valkyrie said. “The one on Asgard is hardly portable. You make me a way to summon it, I take it, I leave, with minimal agony involved. Deal?”
“I know what you are,” Ego said. “If you get to Eternity, I know what you’ll ask him. Why would I help you kill me?”
“You really picked the right name,” Valkyrie said. “I get to Eternity, meek little mortal that I am, as his first visitor, he’ll do whatever I said. All gods will die.”
She dropped lower, hand still on the hilt of the sword; Ego was face down, so she slipped down almost as low to look into one of his eyes.
“No one worships you,” Valkyrie said. “No one looks up to you, or cares whether you’re there. You’re petty and cruel, but so are a lot of people - no, Ego. You’re not a god. You’re powerful, yes, and self-important, and self-deluded, but a god? No. You’re just alone.”
She smiled. Ego strained, and cried out again as the world beneath them squirmed.
“So here’s your options,” Valkyrie said. “I’m dying, sure - you could definitely outlast me, if you want to spend the rest of my life with shadows jabbing into every stray nerve you have. That’s a lot of time in agony even you can’t comprehend. Don’t recommend it. Or option two, you make me what I ask for. We have a deal?”
The sword worked with her, sometimes. She didn’t have to send a command to it, or do anything that felt like actually wielding it; it could be as simple and intuitive as a limb was. The shadows pressed tightly to every speck of Ego’s being.
Even the tiniest prickle was a threat, when it stretched over miles and square miles of the being’s body. When he took too long to reply, she pressed a little bit harder, and the planet screamed again.
Patiently, she stood back up. She walked away from the impaled figure, and hopped into a crevasse, taking a shortcut through the shadows to emerge closer to Ego’s core. Light like veins emerged from the central orb; bands of darkness were wreathed tightly around it, and those veins struggled wildly as the shadow-shapes cut and dug.
Eventually, she stopped; she rapped on the orb of stone loudly, and summoned the necrosword back to her hand, waiting.
Ego’s humanoid self reformed in front of her. It was glaring, and unsteady, but it didn’t immediately attack her. Hopefully he’d learned his lesson on that front.
“Well?” Valkyrie said. “Figure it’s easier for you to act from here.”
“You’re going to die,” Ego said. He paused. “The sword is all that’s keeping you alive. Once it’s done with you, it’ll throw you aside.”
“Yeah, well, I’m used to that,” Valkyrie said.
“I’m happy to let that happen,” Ego said.
He extended a hand. It took a little longer than normal for particles to come together then, a complex web of energy and enchantment being woven together in a tiny piece of metal. Ego did a good job hiding his strain, and the discomfort of being so limited.
The key materialised in mid-air; it was small, a palm-sized circle with a colourless rainbow etched into it. Valkyrie let the sword get a sense of it, before snatching it up herself.
She’d give the Celestial that - it was certainly more portable than the Bifrost she was used to. She could feel the power emanating from it.
It was almost over.
“Now go,” Ego said.
“Almost,” Valkyrie said.
She slipped the key onto her belt, then turned around and jabbed her sword into the orb of stone that encased Ego’s core; she cut through the stone effortlessly.
Ego almost throw a beam of light at her. Valkyrie didn’t need to think to respond; the necrosword controlled the shadows for her, the feeling of shadow-blades digging into leagues of light saw the construct lose all focus. The world screamed and shuddered, stone falling from the ceiling of the world’s interior.
She ignored it, and pulled out a chunk of dense rock. On the far side of it was a gently glowing brain.
“You said-” Ego said, mid-cry. He yowled as more blades cut into him.
“I said you weren’t a god,” Valkyrie said. She shrugged. “I’m not killing you for being a god, I’m killing you for being a dick.”
The planet shuddered. There might have been a successful strike, somewhere, wild celestial energy blasting inaccurately into the void; that was a problem being this big. It was very hard to target someone quite as small as Valkyrie.
She walked into the gap, tilting her head as she regarded the ethereal light at the heart of the world. Then she lifted the necrosword.
“Look at it this way,” Valkyrie said. “Gods are eternal. They get to live on - if you’re really what you think you are, you get to go to a nice cosy afterlife. Though if you’re not, oh well, this is a goodbye.”
She swung.
Valkyrie stepped out onto a still-grey world. That corner of the shadow-realm might be too ruined to walk in any time soon, but here on the fringes, there was still solid ground. She steadied herself, wearier than she wanted to let on.
Still, she felt the sword whisper to her, urge her on; she did her best to delay those thoughts. For one, she needed a breather. For two, there was something else she wanted to do.
Out of curiosity, she lifted the newly-created charm from her belt. It was certainly the work of a Celestial. She could feel the energy of the Bifrost vibrating inside it, waiting for just a thought to be loosed.
Valkyrie took a step forwards. She glimpsed movement in the grey landscape, and lifted her left hand, keeping her blade low.
“Hey there!” Valkyrie called. “You don’t have to be afraid. It’s over now.”
Slowly, Mantis emerged from behind a rock. She was hunched over, twitching, looking nervously around. Her attention kept going to Valkyrie’s sword.
In a gesture of comfort, Valkyrie put the sword down, jamming the tip of the blade into the ground. There was no need to mention how easy it was to summon the sword back to her hand. Instead, gently, Valkyrie approached.
“What did you do?” Mantis said, voice still shaking slightly.
“Took care of him for you,” Valkyrie said. She sat down on the rocky ground, gesturing. “Do you have anywhere, or have you only lived with him?”
Mantis stared at her.
“I mean it. You’re safe,” Valkyrie said, more seriously. She met Mantis’s gaze. “I won’t hurt you, and he can’t. Not anymore.”
“He can’t be killed,” Mantis said.
“Tell him that,” Valkyrie said. She paused. “No, wait, you can’t. Sorry.”
Nervously, Mantis neared her. She sat down opposite Valkyrie, a little wary, though thankfully it seemed not of her. Wide, dark eyes surveyed Valkyrie.
“How?” Mantis said.
“Magic sword,” Valkyrie said.
It was strange, having a chance to be gentle again. For the universe, it must have been centuries; while for her it was little more than a day since she’d picked up the sword, thanks to Odin’s attempt to trap her, it seemed like a lifetime.
She used to sit around campfires, and sing ballads and limericks alike with her sisters. They used to feast, and laugh and joke, and tease one another. There was sparring, and revelry, and…
The sword whispered to her. She closed her eyes, letting the moment go. It was right. There was no point in dwelling on the past, all that mattered was shaping the future.
She almost got up to leave. Then she saw Mantis, and remembered why she lingered.
The sword twitched.
“Why would you help me?” Mantis said, breathless.
“It’s what I do,” Valkyrie said. She paused. “It used to be what I do, anyway. These days, I kill things like that Ego.”
Mantis twitched.
“Still don’t believe me?” Valkyrie said. “I can take you to the remains. Must be a little asteroid field by now.”
“N-no,” Mantis said. “I… think I believe you. I just never thought anyone would.”
She hesitated. Slowly, she reached out; part of Valkyrie wanted to pull back, but instead she let the strange alien hold her hand. The tips of Mantis’s antennae shone, and her face fell.
“You don’t feel any happier,” Mantis said.
“My job’s not done yet,” Valkyrie said.
Mantis’s fingertips lingered on the back of her hand. Suddenly Mantis’s eyes looked so very sad.
“You don’t think it will make you happy,” Mantis said.
Then, Valkyrie did pull her hand back.
“Sorry,” Mantis said. “When I touch someone, I feel what they do. I… wanted to know you meant what you said. But you feel so much.”
“Yeah. Well, life happens,” Valkyrie said.
“Your mind feels strange,” Mantis said. “Like you’re not alone.”
“Well duh, you’re here,” Valkyrie said.
“No, not alone inside your head,” Mantis said. “Some of you is just… sad, and angry. And then there’s something that doesn’t feel right, too half-formed to be a mind, but it still feels. It’s just hate.”
Valkyrie paused. She felt a flicker of something, though she pushed it aside - hate was right. How could she not hate, after everything?
“Sure that’s not just me?” Valkyrie said.
“I know it’s not,” Mantis said. She hesitated. “All I knew was Ego. I didn’t think I’d ever have my own life.”
“And now you do.”
“Now I do. Because of you,” Mantis said. “You don’t hate. You care, it’s something else that’s doing the hating for you.”
Valkyrie’s gaze drifted sideways. The sword was still warm in her hand, still impatient; she knew she couldn’t put off Eternity forever, but she could manage to wait a little before the drive to act became too much.
Sometimes she just needed to catch her breath. The blade understood that.
“He made you think that serving him was all that mattered,” Valkyrie said. “When he wouldn’t have blinked at your death. It’s a terrible way to live.”
Mantis said nothing. The sympathy in her eyes made Valkyrie squirm.
“Just want to know you’re going to be okay,” Valkyrie said. “I doubt you’re going to want to stay in this place. Do you have anywhere?”
“No,” Mantis said.
“Mm,” Valkyrie said. She frowned. “Have you heard of a place called Asgard?”
“No,” Mantis said, again. “Is it nice?”
“It was… It has its good sides,” Valkyrie said. “Hospitality’s important there - they’ll help you get back on your feet, find you a place. That sound good to you?”
“It sounds wonderful,” Mantis said earnestly. She leaned forwards. “Will you come?”
Valkyrie stiffened.
“No. I’ve got somewhere else to be,” she said. She paused. “Maybe best to not mention you know me.”
“Why not?” Mantis said.
“Because a few of them might not recognise what I did as helping them,” Valkyrie said. “It doesn’t matter, I won’t be going back.”
The necrosword twitched. Valkyrie frowned, and stood up at last. She offered a hand to Mantis.
“I can’t stay here forever,” Valkyrie said. “You coming?”
“Y-yes,” Mantis said. She stood up, her eyes going wide and pained at the touch of Valkyrie’s hand. “Will you be okay?”
“Of course,” Valkyrie said.
“I don’t think you believe that,” Mantis said.
“As okay as I can be,” Valkyrie said. “Chill with the mind-reading, will you?”
She stepped back, and pulled Mantis through the shadows. Light-years passed in the blink of an eye.
Until they stood on a hill overlooking Asgard. A golden city stretched out below them, only bearing a few scars from the dark elves’ last attack; Valkyrie delicately pulled her hand out from Mantis’s grip, and gave her a gentle push.
She didn’t look at the city; it wasn’t like it was her home anymore. Her home had been the Valkyries. Now this place was just bad memories, and something that sparked a surge of anger.
“Head down there,” Valkyrie said. “Say you fell through a wormhole, or whatever. You don’t hurt anyone, and they’ll welcome you. They’re great people.”
“What about you?” Mantis said.
“Told you. I have places to be,” Valkyrie said.
She waved, once, with her sword-hand.
Then she forced herself to turn away from Mantis. That was one person she knew she’d helped anyway, even beyond the people she’d saved from their gods. It was oddly nostalgic.
She stepped forwards, and fell back into the darkness.
Days in Valhalla lasted as long as they needed to. Odin sat on a bench, high up, overlooking the vast and endless ocean. There was a ship out there, gods that wished to explore this ever-uncharted land; he watched it cross the horizon, and waited for its inevitable return.
His father talked of the peace in this place. Odin was beginning to see it that way, beginning to understand the promise of rest, but he still needed some moments alone. It broke his heart to see Thor and Frigga here, in among many of the other gods of Asgard.
Even if it was a reward, it was one that it was easy to wish would be delayed.
He still wore the battle-armour he’d died in, and that had been polished to perfection upon his arrival. It had turned silver, rather than grey, but it was still his. The metal was starting to grow uncomfortable, though; he had his helmet on his lap, and he sighed.
War was… exhausting. To have a chance to say goodbye to the conflict, that was something he understood his father’s perspective on.
“Allfather?”
Odin looked up. There was a woman, in a more peaceful grey cloak, standing nearby. She seemed like many of the inhabitants of Valhalla; the most notable thing was the empty scabbard by her side. She did not carry a sword, but seemed to take comfort in the relic nonetheless.
She’d been a warrior, then. Odin looked up at her, peering at her face for a few long moments - he was used to not knowing many of the people in this land. There had been many Asgardians before his reign, and many gods before him.
Her, though, he felt a flicker of familiarity at.
“Ah. Sit,” he said. “You were one of my warriors, weren’t you?”
“I served in your valkyries, lord,” she said.
“I don’t think we need titles here, do we?” Odin said.
He looked outwards. His gaze settled on the horizon, the distance a far more comforting sight than that which was close to him.
“Is it true?” she said. “They say one of us took up the necrosword - that she sent you here.”
“It’s true,” Odin said, with an odd, staccato gentleness. He paused. “Forgive me, I don’t recall - when were you with the valkyries? When did you… arrive, here?”
“I was with them until the end,” she said.
Odin closed his eyes. Head heavy, he nodded.
“I expect you understand her, then,” he said.
“At the time?” she said. Almost reluctantly, she sighed. “I would have fought her for the chance to pick up the cursed thing. Maybe I could tell myself it would be to save her, but no, I would have wanted to use it as much as her.”
“It is always a temptation,” Odin said, so very tired.
“I hope she finds her way,” the valkyrie said.
“I hope there is a way,” Odin said.
He paused for a time. At last, he tore his focus away from the sky and sea, and took in his companion.
“It gladdens me to see at least one of you made it to Valhalla,” he said.
“We knew the chances,” she said. “To die in battle, and to be worthy, would be the only way we could be elevated. I do miss some of those that are not here, but…”
Her voice trailed off. Odin nodded, understanding - time made it easy to forget so much.
Some valkyries had fallen to death. Some had proven themselves and now sat alongside their gods. And one wielded the weapon sworn to bring an end to all gods. Quite a group, indeed.
Odin sat, and waited with the peace that only death brought. Regrets came with you, it seemed.
The Gates of Eternity were as grand as the name suggested. The chamber was vast, a high, open hall with statues to gods of a higher order than even those in Omnipotence City.
The pathway stretched out forwards, wide and watched over by deity after deity. It was still, and dim, the huge statues silhouetted by a light of unclear origins. Stone eyes lingered on the road to Eternity.
And at the far side was Eternity himself, or at least a dull facsimile. An unbreakable lock was embedded in the statue’s chest.
It was at the far side of the hall that Valkyrie appeared. She stretched, and looked around; she waved briefly at a three-faced statue, before turning her attention forwards.
The air itself felt electric, the faint echo of some unfathomable power leaking out, filling the place; Valkyrie stepped forwards and felt it call. The charm at her waist warmed, and the sword urged her forwards.
Despite all of that, she found that she had to walk. Something about this place had earned even her respect; each footstep echoed, sound itself unwilling to die in this potent place. Step by step, she made her way to Eternity.
The statue was tall, a humanoid representation of a thoroughly inhuman thing, with folds in stone that echoed some cloak. Valkyrie looked up to the statue’s head, half-fancying that she could see the real entity beyond it. Well, she’d get there soon.
The sword insisted. Valkyrie crouched, and lifted up the charm, content to go along with the necrosword’s wishes.
Kill all the gods. Let them die, just as they let their followers die. Let them suffer, like they made others suffer. And even if they went on to that eternal reward that they claimed for themselves and denied all others, at least they were gone. At least the universe could thrive in their absence.
The stone she’d coaxed from Ego screeched out the Bifrost, rainbow energy pouring from it; Valkyrie braced her feet against the cold stone floor, shadow-limbs helping emerge to hold her steady.
The Bifrost burned into the statue. And, slowly, the lock reacted.
“No more gods,” she murmured. “Kill all that live, and deny any more from beginning to exist.”
The sword sung its approval. Valkyrie felt it, and focused on that. Whatever Mantis had said, this was where things had to end; nothing could ever make up for the past, but that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be around to worry after the necrosword’s purpose was fulfilled.
“It’s been fun,” she murmured.
The stone fell to dust in her hands, as the gateway to Eternity’s realm opened completely. Pale white light shone out from a hole in the statue’s form.
Finally.
Valkyrie hefted the sword up again, smiling at the dark blade. No one was here, no one to even delay her - not that any could.
Still, for a moment even she paused, despite the sword’s whispering. Ultimate power was a heady prospect. She could wish for something, anything at all; she could obliterate every last god from the face of the universe.
Or she could think of her sisters. She could spare them, all of them, if she just asked…
The sword hummed. Valkyrie nodded. And held it at her side as she began to move forwards.
“You’re right,” she said. “That would be selfish. Letting gods continue to exist, just so long as I get what I want. No. They end here, and my sisters stay avenged.”
She moved closer. Perhaps she could ask for total erasure - an end to all gods, future, present and past. Erase Hela before she could ever kill the Valkyries, and erase Odin before he could ever steal their allegiance. How things would look, she didn’t know, but it would be better than this. It had to be.
Something behind the light moved.
Valkyrie slowed. A black-fingered hand reached out from within the doorway, the substance of its flesh somehow more aura than matter; it was deep as the night, and yet it seemed almost see-through, almost endless.
Stars speckled deep within the void of its flesh. Valkyrie stopped, and stared, as a tremendous head appeared behind the gateway.
This wasn’t how it worked, was it? The stories she’d heard, Eternity would meet the new arrival in its realm outside of space and time. It wouldn’t step out into the universe. Would it?
And yet she watched it. Nebulae whirled within a bulk as black as the universe, and a star twinkled over one eye, fixed and unmoving. Eternity pulled himself out to stand upon his own altar.
And he was tall. Vaster than even the statues in the hall, and though he might not have the sheer size of Ego, his presence alone was…
Valkyrie paused. She frowned.
Something was wrong. The necrosword twitched in her hand.
“You are welcome here, supplicant.”
The voice was deep, and ought to have been imposing. Somehow though, it was just less than what she’d expected - a towering figure of galaxies and stars, a voice that could shake apart a mountain, and it still seemed too small for a being whose wish could change the universe.
“Speak.”
The necrosword’s usual push to action was lessened. For a moment there it had been so loud, so insistent, how close they were to granting its one wish palpable; now they might as well have been back on Asgard, or back anywhere, as opposed to steps away from Eternity.
Something was definitely wrong. She ignored the statues, the dark stone floor, and looked up at the vast figure.
Then she twitched her hand, and threw the sword, trusting its instinct - it pierced Eternity’s side as though passing through fog, and embedded itself in the stone wall behind it, mere inches from the doorway to Eternity. White light shone from the left of the blade and, as the illusory Eternity faded, Valkyrie could see a figure creeping from the right, suddenly coming to ab abrupt stop with the necrosword a breath away from his face.
A man in green, his hair long and brown and unkempt, faintly familiar to her. The supposed Eternity faded to nothing, and he stood there, so close to having made it into the realm before her.
For a moment, he seemed like he was about to duck and dive past the sword, still trying to make it - then a shadow-figure of Valkyrie’s own appeared by the sword, blocking his way and holding a blade of its own.
“Sorry, who were you?” Valkyrie said.
An eye on him, and her senses open to listen for any more illusions, she started to stride forwards. The gateway was open, and waiting.
“Loki,” he said. “Prince, well, King I guess of Asgard. I’d say god of mischief, but I feel like you’d take that poorly.”
“Oh, you. I remember,” Valkyrie said. She snorted. “You’d be amazed how many people call themselves gods. What is this, some revenge scheme? Let me guess, you hate me, you thought you’d come down here and distract me.”
“No,” Loki said. He paused. “Well, yes. You had the necrosword, the one place I knew you’d want to come was here.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Valkyrie said.
She shrugged, reaching the threshold of the door. The shadow-warrior kept Loki against the wall, on the far side of the sword; Valkyrie grabbed the blade, pulling it out of the stone, then tilting her head. She looked as Loki for a few moment. Experimentally, she poked him with the tip of the sword.
“Ow!”
“Just checking you were real,” Valkyrie said.
She stuck the sword into the shoulder of his tatty green shirt, keeping him trapped in place. She wasn’t sure why she was lingering - now the illusion was dispelled, the sword knew what it wanted more clearly than ever, its call almost deafening.
Still, she paused.
“Tell me you don’t seriously care so much for Odin that you’d march all the way down here just to try to avenge him?” Valkyrie said.
“Him? Oh, definitely not,” Loki said.
“Well, you’re smarter than I thought you were anyway,” Valkyrie said.
“You killed my brother,” Loki said. “That’s… The one thing I know for sure is that I didn’t want anyone else to do that.”
“Did I?” Valkyrie said.
She tilted her head; it was getting easier to use the sword, to instinctively sense the things it could see. Even if centuries had passed for the wider universe, she’d been a statue for so much of it, frozen in time by some last-ditch effort of Odin to contain her.
Getting used to wielding the sword, or perhaps the sword adjusting to being wielded by her, took time. She’d felt it, after their first connection, but it had only been getting stronger over the last day.
Sometimes, she wondered if she’d end up able to resist in this small way, when the connection was as strong as it could get - if she’d even have been able to carry on these small conversations, delaying the inevitable. Other times, she wondered if she even cared.
Still, she had a glimpse of a red cape and a man with flowing blonde hair. A god.
The sword hummed. Valkyrie ignored it.
“Oh, him,” she said. She paused, expression sobering. “Not going to say sorry - he was what he was - but if it’s any consolation, I’m not going to be around much longer. The curse’ll see to that.”
She tapped the hilt of the necrosword. He looked at her, doing a commendable job of trying to seem like he was just angry, even when tears seeped into his eyes.
“Is that supposed to help?” Loki said.
“Kinda, yeah,” Valkyrie said. “You lose someone, you want revenge, I know how it goes. Maybe this isn’t quite how you’d want it, but you can take a little comfort in that.”
“Why are you acting like you’re trying to comfort me?” Loki said.
“Like I said, I know how this goes,” Valkyrie said. “You lose someone, or some people, and you kill who’s responsible. I’m not gonna take it personally - I’ve done the same.”
“And you blamed my father?” Loki said.
“Well, yeah. That surprise you?” Valkyrie said.
Loki paused.
“Honestly, no,” he said. “But Thor did nothing to you.”
“He was a god,” Valkyrie said. “A lumbering oaf that cares more for his own ego than the people that sing his praises, sitting high and mighty in Asgard while wars are fought for him. Something like that?”
“Okay, some of that,” Loki admitted. “But not all, not really. He didn’t deserve to die for it.”
“You never hated him?” Valkyrie said.
Loki faltered.
“I didn’t want to lose him,” Loki said, eventually.
“Did he protect you?” Valkyrie said. “Help you? Want the best for you? Or did he laugh at you and leave you alone while he went out to his wars? Tell me, ‘god’ of mischief, did he laugh at your jokes, or laugh when you were the butt of them?”
“Stop it,” Loki said.
“Did he ever listen to you, or put you first?” Valkyrie said. “Would he have fought for your freedom, or left you to rot in that cell? Look at me and tell me there weren’t any moments when you wanted him dead.”
“Stop!” Loki said, more insistently.
He shifted, a dagger appearing in one hand; Valkyrie withdrew, and called a shadow-shape from the wall to bind his wrists. Loki stumbled, and was yanked back to the wall, while Valkyrie stood with the sword back in her grip.
It pleaded with her to walk through the portal. She waited for a few more moments, eyeing Loki.
“Good talk,” she said.
“You’re right. Okay?” Loki said, halfway to shouting. “Okay, yes, sometimes I hated him. That’s just life. There was bad, but there was good, and I didn’t want to lose all of that just because some days he could be… He was never a god to me. He was my brother.”
“Find a better good,” Valkyrie said.
“Really?” Loki said. “That’s all you have to say? I can’t replace him.”
“You shouldn’t try to. Find someone that won’t let you down,” Valkyrie said. She shrugged. “I did. I moved on from Odin’s army as soon as I saw him for what it was.”
“Because the necrosword is a much better thing to serve,” Loki said, sarcastic.
“At least it doesn’t pretend it isn’t sending me to my death,” Valkyrie said. “At least it just wants me to pay that price, not everyone.”
She twirled the sword, and shrugged; a flicker of urgency saw her move forwards, but still she waited. Eternity was so close, and yet…
She wanted him to understand. Somehow, that mattered to her - she wasn’t used to fighting alone. Here was someone from Asgard, someone who’d been locked up and who’d fought the same people she had, someone who’d lost, an enemy of her enemies. If anyone could see what she could, it would be him.
“You weren’t one of them,” Valkyrie said. “You do realise that, don’t you?”
“What?” Loki said.
“Odin’s family,” Valkyrie said.
“Family doesn’t end with blood,” Loki said.
“Duh,” Valkyrie said. “My sisters were the same - difference was, we saw each other as family. How do you think Odin saw you? A son? A bargaining piece to keep the Jotunn in line? A tool to balance his actual son?”
“I don’t care how he saw me,” Loki snapped.
“Right, right, it’s all your brother,” Valkyrie said. “I met his sister. She was as bad as Odin. I wouldn’t get my hopes up for any of that family turning out well.”
Loki hesitated. Valkyrie tilted her head.
“Oh. You didn’t know about her?” Valkyrie said. “The one he trained to conquer and kill, and who ruled by his side for centuries? His favourite child, before he turned on her, gave her a world to rule so long as she kept out of the rest of the realms, and who he couldn’t bring himself to fight.”
She paused, listening to the sword’s instinctive reading - even if it was urging her on, it couldn’t help but show her things.
“Thor got sent to Earth,” Valkyrie said. “Hela was given Hel, and he would rather sacrifice my sisters than face her himself. And you, what did you get? A little glass box, in among the rest of the criminals?”
“What do you want?” Loki said, almost growling.
“I want you to see them for what they are,” Valkyrie said. “You spent so long wanting to be one of them that you don’t see them. He lied to you about being his son, about Thor being his firstborn, about you being Asgardian, and about you being a god.”
“I am a god.”
“Oh, don’t start that again. God of lying to yourself, maybe,” Valkyrie said. “Who worships you? Who looks up to you? Do they tell one another tales of how terrible you are and how you can’t be trusted, or do they offer you respect? Name me one person in this whole damn universe that actually admires you.”
Loki faltered. Valkyrie shrugged.
“Sorry. It hurts, when you find out how little they care,” she said.
Bored, she turned away. The shadows kept Loki tightly bound, and she made it as far as the threshold of Eternity before Loki yelled at her again. She paused, not particularly threatened by his futility, but still thinking.
Maybe it was Mantis making her thing. The sword had been as annoyed by that delay.
“You’re wrong about one thing,” Loki said, eventually.
“Am I?”
“I wouldn’t have killed you,” Loki said.
“Really?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I hate you,” Loki said. “But that wasn’t why I was going to Eternity.”
“Let me guess, wish your way to power and godhood?”
“I wanted Thor back,” Loki said, hollowly.
For a moment, she looked at him - and looked past the angry mask, the straining against the bindings, to see the broken figure behind all that. Some small part of her twisted at that.
Still, she pushed it aside. People always got hurt.
“You’re really not a god then, if you think like that,” Valkyrie said.
“What do you want?” Loki said.
“Take a wild guess,” Valkyrie said. She lifted the necrosword. “Don’t tell me you’re looking to save the gods now.”
“I only care about the one,” Loki said.
The sword was beginning to feel more insistent, now; it took a conscious effort to not be subsumed by it. She wanted to at least finish a conversation.
“I thought about it, you know,” Valkyrie said. “Screw the sword, use my wish to bring them back.”
“And you decided not to?” Loki said.
“I decided it wouldn’t change anything,” Valkyrie said. “There are still gods out there, still people like us suffering and dying for them, for no gain and no point. The gods go on to their eternal reward and they leave us to oblivion, in their name. Bringing them back would be selfish. I’d be dragging them into a cosmos ruled by gods, and leaving every other victim to suffer.”
“Don’t knock being selfish,” Loki said. Valkyrie chuckled.
“I could be,” she said. “I could leave all this behind and numb the pain and do nothing with my life. Or I can fight for the people that need someone to fight for them.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Loki said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Valkyrie said.
“Just that I’m the one that came here to save a life,” Loki said. “And if you’d told me that a couple of days ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. Are you protecting, or just getting revenge?”
“Both,” Valkyrie said.
Loki raised an eyebrow. For a moment, she was a breath away from ignoring him again, and walking into the portal. The sword urged.
“I only get the one wish,” Valkyrie said. “Kill all gods. Undo the harm they did to their worshippers. Bring back my sisters. Tear apart their eternal reward so they don’t get celebrated for their arrogance. There’s so much I would do, but I just get the one option.”
“And that’s the best one?” Loki said.
“It protects the most people,” Valkyrie said. “That’s all I can do.”
Loki chuckled. Valkyrie raised an eyebrow.
“Something amusing?” she said.
“You sound like my brother,” Loki said.
“I doubt that,” Valkyrie said.
“So that’ll make you happy?” Loki said.
“Why do you care?” Valkyrie said.
“You said you know what it’s like to lose someone,” Loki said. “I know what it’s like to want something so much, and when you get it, it’s nothing like you imagined.”
“Do you now?” Valkyrie said.
She paused, then snorted. She whirled the necrosword a last time, and jabbed it down, burying the tip of the black blade in the ground. Bringing a weapon to Eternity’s side seemed unnecessarily risky.
It was still in her mind, of course - she could still feel the connection between the two of them, still feel its urging, even if it was almost imperceptibly weakened.
For a moment, she considered. Being happy wasn’t on her list of goals - she wasn’t sure it was something it was worth striving for, these days. Being done with things was all she had to fight for. She had a purpose to fulfil, and this was it.
The memory of her sisters filled her mind, and the rage at seeing them cut down burned in her. Expression set, Valkyrie walked through the doorway to Eternity.
Loki had many passages between the worlds. There were secret tunnels through the cracks, if you knew where to look for them; still, it was a long journey from the centre of the universe back to Asgard.
Leaving had been surprisingly easy. The aftermath against battling the elves and shadows both had left guarding the dungeons as less of a priority; he’d gotten out, and fled.
Rather quickly, he realised that he had no idea where it was he wanted to be. All the universe waited for him, and he was making his way back to Asgard; the path through the secret cracks took him under fiery volcanoes, and down icy ravines, winding though mazes of caves and up the trunk of a tremendous tree, until he at last slipped through back on familiar ground.
Asgard.
He wasn’t sure why he was here. It was just… familiar, he supposed.
He walked down a green hill, passing the shore of a great ocean, when a hammer almost hit him in the face. He ducked, and for a bizarre moment felt almost hopeful as Mjolnir narrowly avoided hitting him.
Then he looked forwards, and sighed, and raised his hands in surrender.
“Dr Jane Foster, isn’t it?” he said. “I had no idea you’d been raiding my brother’s wardrobe.”
He tried to ignore the fact it hurt slightly to see her. The scientist from Midgard, the former host to the reality stone before the healers had figured out a work-around, now in a red cape and silver armour.
She, at least, seemed slightly self-conscious about the fact.
“This just… kinda happened,” she said. Mjolnir returned to her hand. “Not important! You- You, where have you been?”
“The centre of the universe,” Loki said. He sighed. “Unsuccessfully, I fear.”
“Unsuccessfully?” Jane echoed. “What were you trying to do?”
“You know, I’m really not sure,” Loki said.
She eyed him carefully, drawing closer. Somehow, Loki didn’t feel the urge to fight just then; he sat down on the field, and looked out, not sure what was going to happen but content at least to be there.
Something golden flew overhead, nearing the city. He looked up.
“What did I miss?” Loki said.
“Tuath Dé, apparently,” Jane said. “Something about a god-killer who took out a couple of their number. They were checking up on Asgard. So, er, don’t try anything.”
“I don’t,” Loki said. He sighed. “More gods. I expect that’s going to end badly.”
“Why?” Jane said. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you planning something?”
“I mean, the gods among them are going to die,” Loki said. “Or should have, by now. I did take my time getting back.”
“What?”
“What?” Loki said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“They were fine a minute ago,” Jane said. “I’ve been talking to them.”
Loki paused. He looked out, seeing another golden thing drift towards the city.
At least Asgard was getting a little help. He didn’t know how some of the more prideful inhabitants felt about getting assistance from another pantheon, but they were here. After everything, the world probably needed it.
And the gods survived?
After a moment, Loki smiled.
“Why don’t I like it when you smile?” Jane said.
“No, no,” Loki said. “This time, I think it’s something good. She didn’t kill them all.”
“The god-killer?” Jane said.
“The Valkyrie,” Loki said. He paused. “I wonder what she wished for after all.”
The realm of the gods was vast.
And now, it was just that little bit grander. A land appeared across the ocean, vaster than Valhalla itself, with temples and streets and halls all its own. There were fountains that ran crystal-clear, meadows full of trees that provided a bounty of food, and every chamber and room offered luxury, even while they varied in size.
There was a long track that wound around mountains that hadn’t been there moments before, and a glimpse of a land more distant still, one that glimmered with metal and different kinds of stone.
Then there were people, suddenly filling the realm. Some were shocked - others adjusted faster. One rode a winged horse down, landing atop a building and surveying all they could see.
There was just the faintest glimmer of stars, for an instant - a shape not unlike a hand the size of a world gently passing through the sea. Then it was gone, and all that was left was a maze of streets and homes.
Valkyrie was not there.
She arrived in Valhalla, the far side of the realm. Between the curved pillars, above the clouds, she stood on a marble circle with a flowing robe over her body, pigment restored to her.
She stumbled forwards, then looked around - she looked at herself, the colour in her hands, and the lack of old scars. And then her gaze caught on a figure several steps ahead of her.
Odin looked some years younger. Gone was the armour she’d known him for; he was in remarkably humble grey, a cloak and a hat like a mere traveller as opposed to warrior-King. He stood up as he saw her, as if he’d been waiting.
Valkyrie rocked back on her feet, on instinct preparing herself; her mind was racing in a dozen contradictory directions at once, feeling undeniably different. She was unarmed. When she looked at Odin, she certainly didn’t feel the reverence with which she’d once regarded him, but that burning hatred seemed harder to conjure.
Just the same, he did not look at her with vengeance in his eyes. Quite calmly, he looked behind her, taking note of the emptiness.
“Just you, then?” Odin said, remarkably genially.
“I suppose,” Valkyrie said.
“Our Vala - seeress - she saw you go into the realm of Eternity,” Odin said. “Even she couldn’t see what would happen after. Though if it is just you, I suppose you didn’t wish all gods through this gate.”
Valkyrie said nothing. Carefully, she straightened, guardedly looking at the land behind Odin. She was still untangling her thoughts.
“You’re being… nice,” Valkyrie said.
“This isn’t a place for anger,” Odin said. “The past is, well, in the past. And the fact you are here at all - you held the necrosword in your hand and made a wish to Eternity other than that which it wanted. That battle must have been hard-fought.”
A memory flashed through Valkyrie’s head. Something black in her hands, something that summoned itself to her side, and tried to speak for her, and that she hadn’t even realised she wanted to resist. She remembered whispers turning to screams.
Mantis had said there was half a mind with her own. Here, then, she seemed to lack that. No wonder she was still reeling.
“It seems to have earned you a place here,” Odin said. “For what it’s worth, I am… glad.”
Valkyrie paused. She looked past him, again, to the grand halls in the shadow of the mountain. She’d heard the stories - the finest warriors would be elevated to live with the gods, in endless celebration and joy.
She turned around.
“No thanks,” she said.
She started walking. For a moment, Odin just stood where he was; then he walked after her, down off the marble pathway and down the hill, to the distant shore.
There was a glass bridge across the water - that much was new.
Valkyrie looked back, to see him following. She sighed.
“I don’t have the sword anymore,” she said. “But I still remember why I took it up. You were our god, but you took so much more than you gave. Do you think I’d want to spend forever with you?”
“This is the land of the gods. We try to leave behind the troubles of life, here,” Odin said.
“Easy for you to say when you were above it all,” Valkyrie said. “I’m heading this way.”
Odin followed her gaze. His eyes dwelt for a few moments on the new land.
“A recent addition,” Odin said, with his usual death-wrought calmness. “Your doing, I take it?”
“I wanted so much,” Valkyrie said. “No way to fit it all into a wish. I wanted to save my sisters, I wanted to save all the people in the realms that were killing themselves in the name of gods that didn’t care, I wanted to protect people the way I always did as a valkyrie - and, yes, I wanted to kill all gods.”
“Which did you choose?” Odin said.
“None of them,” Valkyrie said. She shrugged. “Tried for all.”
She reached the bridge, and looked back at Valhalla. For a moment, she tilted her head, regarding the place, comparing it to her imaginings of it. It was grander, certainly.
Then she turned her back on it.
“The mortals that die to secure you your ‘eternal reward,’ they come here,” Valkyrie said. “All those you don’t deem worthy, or aren’t good enough, they can be celebrated - not forgotten - and they can live without need of you. That’s where I want to go.”
“You’re sure?” Odin said. “You are welcome in Valhalla. It chose you.”
“I really don’t care,” Valkyrie said. “I’m hoping to reunite with a few people over there. Right now, that’s what I care about.”
And not turning around, she started to walk forwards over the glass bridge and the tranquil sea. Her back to Valhalla, she walked on, and wondered who awaited her.
Chapter 7: What If… Kate Bishop was the daughter of Thanos?
Notes:
Yeah so, this is one of those “What is the most ridiculous title I can come up with?” stories.
And then it spiralled out of control. That kinda happens a lot.
Chapter Text
“Thanos wants that. You sure you want to be standing there?”
She stood in the doorway, one hand supporting her weight as she slouched against the frame, in a way that was maybe meant to look cool but ultimately came off as looking unsteady. Still, she didn’t need much effort to look unnerving.
Her skin was pale in a way that wasn’t seen too often this far out in the galaxy - the Nova Corps prison they were in tended to get a much more colourful variety of person, though there had been a few more bland inmates recently. On a surface level, perhaps she resembled a terran.
But only on a surface level. Her arms clashed with her skin tone, flexible sheets of purple metal replacing flesh, a whirring joint at the elbow that could move faster then anything merely biological. There were glimpses of other modifications, some subtle and beneath the skin, others overt - a dulled strip of black in her sternum that seemed to go all the way through her body, an odd ridge in her skull indicating some reinforcement to the bone, and a flicker of red light deep within one eye that didn’t seem entirely natural.
And then there was her weapon - a curved strip of metal with a light-string connecting either end, a bow that could fire plasma arrows half the length of a planet if she happened to miss her target. Not that she missed.
Her name had been Kate Bishop. These days, the ‘Bishop,’ was something she’d left behind, a remnant of a family that wasn’t hers.
“Well?” Kate said.
She lifted her bow, and tugged back the string - light seethed and flickered as an arrow sparked to existence out of the string. She aimed.
In a panic, the not-paid-enough-for-this guard quickly tossed the orb she’d been demanding at her, and ducked down behind the desk. Kate let the arrow fly loose just to free up a hand - she caught the orb, a tiny metal ball, and grinned happily to herself.
(The light-arrow shot through the air, bounced neatly off a tiny bit of exposed metal on the side of a picture-frame, and shot the wig off the guard’s head. They ducked lower).
Kate threw the orb over her back, and it attached itself to her quiver; she didn’t need to hold more arrows of course, not with this bow, but it was always good to have a few tricks in reserve. Orb in hand, Kate smiled, and walked out. Briskly, she jogged down the corridor, carefully stepping over the few dozen bodies she’d had to mow down on her way in, and looked out of curiosity into the cells she passed.
“Ooh! Space raccoon, that’s so cool!” she said, grinned.
“I’m not a raccoon!”
“You can talk?” she said, open-mouthed.
She peered into the window. The raccoon backed away. She paused, then pouted.
“Ugh, dad won’t let me keep pets,” she said. “Sorry. Have fun though!”
She broke the door’s lock with one hand, shrugging, and kept walking on.
The journey was always the hard part. Kate tossed the orb from one hand to another, feet up on the ship’s control panel, yawning. Vaguely, she remembered Thanos saying that this was something tremendously powerful - still, it didn’t seem likely to explode, so she kept throwing it from one hand to another. After a few minutes, she spiced things up by bouncing it off the wall.
“Boring,” Kate said.
Stars whirled outside the ship’s window. She sighed, and resolved to wait out the journey.
“Bo-ring,” Kate said, again.
She tossed the orb up into the air, winced as it cracked against the ceiling, and hastily caught it; a flicker of purple light emerged from the neatly bisected orb. Hastily, she squeezed the two hemispheres together, breathing a sigh of relief as it clicked back into place.
More gingerly, she put the orb down in a secure, anti-grav field. It hovered over the dashboard as the ship flew on.
Eventually, she reached her destination. Kate looked out the window - the Sanctuary II was a vast ship, ominous and imposing and vast - and for so many people, when they saw it they feared for their lives.
To Kate, it was home. The ship surrendered control to Thanos’s, and was guided neatly inside. Kate scooped up the orb, and stood up, pacing impatiently as she waited for it to be safe for the door to open.
Her bow was stuck to her back - she had magnetic implants dotted either side of her spine, making it easier both to carry and quickly wield her bow.
When, at last, she could walk out into the Sanctuary, she did so without looking back. She waved to a looming Cull Obsidian, and ducked past. There was an elevator that took her quickly to Thanos’s throne.
“Kate! Special delivery for the big guy,” Kate said.
Ebony Maw looked at her with narrowed eyes. Kate waved the orb.
“Serious question,” she said. “Is that your actual name? Like, is there a Mr and Mrs Maw somewhere that was really into the name Ebony, or did you pick it yourself?”
“Thanos is waiting for you,” Ebony Maw said.
“Don’t change the subject,” Kate said. “I honestly don’t know which is more extra. Don’t get me wrong, I respect it either way, I’m just curious.”
Maw hit a button; the door slid open. Kate mouthed a ‘later,’ before walking into the room.
Thanos’s chamber was grand. He had all the space he could ever need, and sat in the middle atop his throne, effortlessly exuding authority. Behind him, casually on display on the wall, were a handful of artefacts - a blue cube, a sceptre, and now with space for this orb.
Her gaze lingered, for a moment, on that sceptre.
Chitauri over New York. The archer holding his own. Running down the street.
No, don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
“Kate,” Thanos said.
“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Kate said. She threw the orb over; Thanos caught it effortlessly, and opened it for a moment to peer inside.
For a moment, Kate half-expected that she’d broken it while bouncing it around. Thanos just smiled however. What he saw evidently pleased him; he resealed the orb, and kept it held in his hand.
“You’ve done well, my daughter,” Thanos said.
Someone else had called her daughter. There were Chitauri, Thanos, and a man in green that held that sceptre. Buildings were on fire. The people of New York being divided up into two groups.
Kate faltered, then willed the memories away.
“You doubted it?” Kate said. She grinned. “Some guy picked it up from Morag, but then got himself arrested by the Nova Corps. Was easy enough to get it from there.”
“Good work,” Thanos said.
Kate smiled.
Don’t think of the screaming. The laser fire. Thanos’s hand on her shoulder encouraging her to look away.
“So. You need anything else?” Kate said.
"Rest,” Thanos said. "I’ll want you to be ready.”
“Gotcha,” Kate said.
She nodded, and smiled as she turned around to leave. There was little more coveted than Thanos’s praise.
The ship was called Sanctuary - it was a brief respite between assignments, one that even the most devoted of followers would be glad of. It was a time to recover, regain focus, and prepare oneself for whatever came next.
Still, Kate was glad to turn her back on that wall. She didn’t like the memories it brought back.
The ship was comfortingly quiet. She was far from alone, but beyond the occasional, muffled clash of metal or blaster fire, few talked. It was more common for people to spar than speak; this wasn’t a place where one made friends.
Kate walked to the cafeteria, and picked up a few cubes of food, before sitting down by the side of the room and plugging herself in. Her power levels were usually fine, her enhancements were more or less self-sustaining, but every little could help. She closed her eyes.
“He’s got three. He’s halfway.”
“He won’t finish it.”
“He’s already got three, it’s only been two years.”
“He won’t. He can’t. I found the map to the sixth, and I destroyed it.”
“What?”
“He won’t get the soul stone. He can’t get all six.”
Whispered words carried through the corridors of the ship. Kate listened, half-curious. She recognised the voices, of course - Gamora and Nebula were two more of Thanos’s children - though the conversation sounded like one they didn’t mean to have overheard.
She frowned, but didn’t move. She waited, as the hushed voices fell silent. She was still sat there when the two walked into the cafeteria. They shot her a distrusting look; Kate pretended not to notice.
Nebula had sounded upset, moments before. Now she was carrying herself stiffly, as though trying to hide it. She put distance between herself and Gamora as soon as she could.
“Kate?” Gamora said.
Kate kept her expression steady. There was no joking around with some of the people here - they weren’t meant to be friends. Sisterhood was hard to maintain.
“Greeny?” Kate said. Gamora’s eyes narrowed.
“Dad wanted us to spar. Sixth training room in an hour.”
Kate went cold. Still, her expression didn’t flicker.
“R-right,” Kate said.
Brusque interaction over, Gamora walked away. Kate stayed very still.
She’d been good. She was sure she had; Thanos had been pleased she’d retrieved the orb, right?
But she’d never been able to fight Gamora, or at least never been able to win. They’d fought one another before, that was just training, and it never ended well. Still, if Thanos wanted this…
Was he not pleased with her after all? Or was this some sign he believed in her? Kate wasn’t sure what to think.
Or did he not think about it at all? Did he order this blithely, with no care as to-
No. No. Don’t think like that. Kate adjusted her bow, holding it in front of herself, willing her hands to stop shaking.
Gamora was silent. She stood on the far side of the room, hands behind her back, well-balanced on her feet. Slowly, Kate moved forwards.
And it was over in a minute.
Gamora ran at her; Kate fired, drawing back the light-string of the bow to let it generate a laser-arrow, and fired. Gamora knocked it aside with her sword, and sliced the next, and only needed those two before she was on Kate.
And Kate froze, a dozen wild, panicking thoughts filling her. That she wasn’t good enough, that she was failing her father again, that Gamora was always better, that-
Her bow was knocked away, her legs swept out from under her. Eyes cold, Gamora stood over her, sword at her throat. There was only a faint glimmer of relief in Gamora’s eyes, that she wouldn’t be the one to pay the price for losing.
Then she walked away. Kate lay where she was, as the shadows around the room began to move.
“I’ll do better!” Kate said.
Thanos didn’t even look at her. She stared at the back of his head, as he moved to congratulate Gamora. Kate, by contrast, felt the air constrict around her as Maw lifted her.
Fight, lose, be improved, fight again. She knew the cycle well enough by now.
“Please!” Kate said, shaking. “I don’t need any more changes. Please-”
She was lifted out through the door without another word.
Thanos’s chamber had changed little over the past few years. The cube, the sceptre, the orb, and three empty spaces; they were little more than decoration, their true purpose known to few outside Thanos’s inner circle. They served as emblems of power even if one just saw the surface level.
He didn’t want to draw undue attention until he had a path to all six stones. Still, progress was being made.
Kate knelt some distance from the foot of his throne. Her eyepiece shone with a new, keen blue, modified just a matter of weeks ago. There were new veins of metal running through her shoulders, violet metal stark against what little skin there still was, and the muscle and bone within had been entirely replaced.
She didn’t know how much of her body was still there, some days. Still, she was getting better at holding her own against her sisters - that was what mattered, right? If Thanos was proud of her, then the changes could end, and she could be…
“How long has it been, daughter?” Thanos said.
“Five years,” Kate said.
“Five years since we saved the Earth. Yes, that sounds right,” Thanos said. “Do you remember how old you were then?”
Aliens in the streets. Burning. Blaster fire. Screaming.
“No,” Kate said.
“Ten years, you said,” Thanos said.
She hesitated. Her father could be oddly sentimental sometimes, true; still, she wasn’t sure where he was going.
“Half that time has been spent here,” Thanos said. “A third of your total life. Is it enough, I wonder?”
“Dad?”
“The time stone’s energy signature has been detected on Earth,” Thanos said. “The reality stone is, for now, secure in Asgard’s vaults. The soul stone remains unknown. If I am not merely to wait, then I must act.”
Earth. Kate couldn’t remember much of it anymore. The only image that came to mind was the battle, the Chitauri pouring through a hole in the sky an hour before the planet fell and Thanos arrived.
“The Black Order might struggle against the forces of Asgard, though we must face them sooner or later,” Thanos said. “Earth is a weak world, however - even with one stone, I doubt it would take much to take it from them. I am impressed they hid it from us.”
“Should I get it?” Kate said, eager. Thanos lifted a hand.
“Don’t rush yourself,” Thanos said. “It need not be you. Gamora has less of an attachment to the world.”
Kate flinched.
She wondered what it would take, sometimes. She fulfilled every mission he gave her, stayed loyal, and could hold her own in every sparring match he ordered. What would it take for him to acknowledge it?
She was loyal! She-
Something in the back of her mind flickered, an old memory on an old drive making itself known. Kate’s eyes widened.
“Dad,” she said.
He was looking away, pondering.
“Dad,” Kate said again. “Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad.”
She paused. Slowly, Thanos realised she was talking, and turned back to her.
“Dad! Dad,” Kate said.
“What?” he said, his voice coming out a growl.
“Gamora knows where the soul stone is,” Kate said. “She lied to you.”
There was a pause, a silence that swelled and filled the room. Kate stayed kneeling; Thanos eyed her, thoughtful.
“That is not something to lie about,” Thanos said.
“It’s not a lie,” Kate said. “I heard her talking about it. I didn’t think she really meant it.”
Thanos was quiet, again. Despite herself, Kate suddenly felt scared; lying to her father would net a punishment that would make her modifications feel like a holiday. Even knowing she was telling the truth, she couldn’t quite shake that fear.
His gaze settled on her; she looked into his eyes, desperate for any shred of pride.
“Go,” Thanos said. “I will summon you later.”
“R-right away,” Kate stammered.
Quickly, she stood up. Surely that proved her loyalty, right? Surely that would make him see…
Thanos’s summons came surprisingly fast. Still, when Kate arrived at the doorway to the throne room, she was asked to wait. Reluctantly, she did so, slouching back against the wall.
Ebony Maw again stood as the room’s guardian. The door was tightly sealed; Thanos rarely liked to be disturbed. She eyed the cold metal for a few moments, anxiously waiting.
After a while, Kate started pacing, feeling Maw’s irate gaze on her back.
The entry area was surprisingly elaborate; there were a few seats for the handful or times when the people visiting Thanos did so in a more official sense. There were warring civilisations that came and offered tribute in the hope that Thanos would turn his attention to their enemy, or who offered intelligence and force-shield codes to make the invasion of certain worlds easier.
Thanos listened to some. Keeping command of all Thanos’s armies took resources.
Kate made the mistake of peering past a divider; she flinched back at the ragged, green figure she saw back there.
Standing over New York, sceptre in hand. Laughter, then a hollow-eyed stare, as half the city died.
He’d been on Earth, back then. He was cold now, stiff, a bloodstained corpse with glassy eyes looking up at her. Kate froze - then shrieked as he jerked upright.
She stumbled back; it turned its stiff head to face her, flesh dry and eyes empty, very much dead. Then she glanced sideways, to see Maw standing there, cool as ever, one hand raised and flicking his fingers in simple, practiced gestures. He lay the figure back down.
“Jerk,” Kate said.
“Our master’s ingenious plan,” Maw said. “Convincing, is it not?”
“What?” Kate said.
“Some minor modifications, and I am to puppet it from a distance,” he said. “Our enemy is Asgard, so Asgard we must infiltrate. A capsule of antimatter is implanted into it - we expect Asgard will, at least, take this puppet to their dungeons.”
The corpse twitched. Kate looked away, grimacing.
Don’t think of Earth.
He’d tried to kill Thanos, she remembered. When the people in the city were being divided up into two groups, and Thanos stood over her and tried to convince her to look away - when all those people had screamed - the green man had wanted the sceptre and cube back from Thanos. He’d cast an illusion to try and get close and steal the stones back.
Thanos had caught him. It was the first time Kate had seen someone die.
“He’s a bomb,” Kate said.
“A diversion for Asgard’s forces,” Maw said. “We may even be lucky and he’ll injure their king. Soon, our master will have all he’s sought.”
Kate felt nothing at that. Thanos would win - that had seemed inevitable to her for years. Faintly, she recalled she’d once been more horrified by him. Now this was just… life.
The door slid open; Ebony Maw stood back, allowing her to go past.
“It seems you’re welcome,” he said.
“Bye, Mr Mouth,” Kate said, in a hollow echo of her usual enthusiasm.
His eyes narrowed. She slipped by him, and faltered on the threshold to Thanos’s throne room, as the door slid shut behind her.
Thanos was standing, as opposed to sitting as usual on his throne; he held the painfully familiar sceptre in one hand, the tip of it lifting Gamora’s chin. She looked scared, more scared than Kate had ever seen her.
Kate froze. There was a soft blue glimmer in Gamora’s eyes, a flicker of the sceptre’s effect - Kate had only seen it used a couple of times. Sometimes it might control someone, though more often it was a simple way to make someone tell the truth.
“Vormir,” Thanos said, softly. He turned just his head to acknowledge Kate’s arrival. “You were telling the truth. Thank you, my daughter. I would not have thought Gamora would be so… deceitful.”
Kate stood up, a little proudly. The faint, cold ball in her chest was something she was used to ignoring.
She’d made him proud. That was the point, that was-
“You?” Gamora said.
Wide eyes stared at Kate. For a moment, Kate wondered why on earth she’d ever feel guilty for Gamora of all people being hurt, especially after all the pain Gamora’s victories had caused her.
Then Gamora lunged sideways - not to Kate, but to the wall. She went for the nearest stone, the cube, only for it to spark with electricity - an automated defence mechanism - and send her reeling. A tap from Thanos’s sceptre saw her fall still.
“I will claim the soul stone,” Thanos said. “She will come with me, to ensure there are no further lies. The Black Order have been tasked with invading Asgard. That leaves you, then. Do you feel able to take the time stone for me?”
Kate stared at Gamora, who still lie limply on the floor. She swallowed.
“Of course, father,” Kate said. “I can do it. Anything you say.”
At last, at last, he smiled at her.
Earth hung in space, floating ahead of her ship. Kate stared, wondering if she should feel something. She’d never seen it from orbit before.
It was, she decided, very blue.
Carefully, she piloted her ship closer; she completed a circuit at a distance, well out the world’s means of detection. She stared, wondering if she’d somehow feel some spark of familiarity.
It was so much like every other world she’d been sent to. It was kind of disappointing.
“Well, it’ll make this easier,” Kate murmured.
She glanced at the screen; the time stone’s energies had been noticed on this world. There had been a spate of use in recent months - nothing huge or concerning, just the excesses of someone occasionally practising with the stone. She set the ship to scan, and leaned back.
After a few moments, she pulled up a window for a game she was absolutely not allowed to have installed on one of Thanos’s ships. She played for a few minutes, waiting for a reading; when the scanner beeped, she reluctantly shut down the game and refocused on the task at hand.
The location of the time stone had been determined to within a matter of inches. Kate reoriented the ship, then kicked the engine into full gear. She blasted down into the atmosphere, leaving a streak of white fire behind her. A few button presses set the autopilot to avoid crashing, and she whirled around back out of the pilot’s chair.
She closed her eyes; her quiver was wired into her nervous system, so it took a simple thought for the digital components of her mind to let her know what arrows she had with her. She grabbed her bow, kept it in her hands, and walked towards the back door of the ship. She pulled one of the physical arrows and strung it ready - even if the bow could generate plasma-arrows on a whim, there were some things only material ammunition could do.
Deep breath. Kate steadied herself. She’d go in, find whoever was using the time stone, and get it away from them.
Take the stone, bring it back to Thanos, and prove herself. Easy.
Like any other world.
New York. Where she’d lived, before.
No. Ignore it. She leapt out the ship a moment before it stopped, using the momentum to propel herself through a window; her enhanced eyes caught every detail of her surroundings as she fell forwards.
This was New York. This was her city, the one she might know - it wasn’t recognisable. That might have been because she’d never come this way, or it might have been the fact that so much would have needed to be rebuilt after the battle five years ago.
Though the room she was falling into didn’t seem to fit; it was ornate, wood as much as stone, with windows that were filled with more spirals and circles than the more rigid, rectangular shapes outside.
There was a man in the centre of the room. He stood, facing away from her, positioned by what looked more like an altar than anything; he wore green-gold robes, complementing his dark skin well. There might not have been time for him to react to the sound of glass breaking; Kate wasn’t used to the reflexes on un-enhanced people, sometimes.
Kate fired her arrow; it whistled past him, embedding itself in the altar. Her mechanical fingers twitched, rapidly forming and firing a laser-bolt in quick succession, this one aimed for the man himself.
It struck a glyph in the air. Kate grimaced, and as she landed, he had enough time to turn around - he stretched out his hands, mandalas of golden light in each, and a green-stone pendant hanging around his neck. His gaze settled on her.
Hers went to the time stone. He chuckled.
“There are a lot of people that want this,” he said. He regarded her. “So who are you with?”
Kate paused. She mused for a moment, then willed her cybernetic eye to flash brighter, and did her best grating voice.
“I am K-8, resistance is futile,” she managed. Then she dissolved into giggles, cleared her throat, and straightened. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, sorry. Name’s Kate. Are we doing intros?”
“I am the Sorcerer Supreme,” he said. “Karl Mordo. Master of the Mystic Arts, Defender of the Sanctum, sorcerer to the Avengers, and Guardian of the Eye of Agamotto.”
“Your name’s Karl?” she said. “It’s all very impressive, but you might want to change your name. Free advice.”
His eyes narrowed, apparently somewhat annoyed she wasn’t taking anything seriously.
“We’ve been attacked by off-world forces before,” Mordo said. “We are not unprepared for your like. You’re not the first.”
“I know,” Kate said. Her voice caught, just for a moment. “I was there the last time.”
“Were you?” Mordo said. “Well then, this will be satisfying.”
Suddenly he was leaping at her; the crackling, golden light in his hands extended into blades, and his boots found purchase on the air itself and let him vault towards her. Quickly, Kate lifted her bow, the metal of the arch deflecting his weapons.
She had one hand on her bow, and the other some distance back; for a split second, her bow had two magic blades pressed against it. Then she twitched a distant fingertip; a small implant in the metal bone sparked to life, and connected with the plasma-string of her bow, pulling it back without any physical contact needed. It still felt unnatural to do it this way, but in a pinch it was good enough; Kate fired a light-arrow after half a second.
It crackled off a barrier of runes in front of Mordo, and he stumbled back. Kate moved closer, poised to tear the Eye from around his neck-
The world tessellated.
There was no other word for it. The stone underfoot repeated itself, duplicating outwards until it was all there was, the very world around her rewriting. Mordo vanished behind, well, what looked more like a mirror than a room - she saw herself, and saw the spot of ground that she stood upon repeatedly endlessly on into infinity.
Kate stopped. She frowned for a moment - the mirrored walls around her stopped shifting, turning as solid as anything Kate had known.
Hesitantly, she reached forwards - they felt immovable. Quickly, she pulled her hand back.
A dimensional trap. She’d vaguely heard of tricks like this, though they were far from common - and on the outside of it was Mordo, still.
Kate drew back. She stood for a moment in the middle of the mirrored infinity; a simple strip across the ground turned to endless stripes, and a small open space turned to plains that went on forever, Kate herself reflected uncountable times all around her. She turned, and every other Kate did the same.
“Okay. That’s freaky,” she murmured.
Wait. Deep breath. Think.
She strung her bow, then thought better of shooting at a mirror - instead, she frowned.
There was light.
She could see; that ought to be impossible, with no light source in this mirrored realm. The light trapped with her wasn’t going to just bounce around endlessly, that wasn’t how light worked; it ought to all be spent by now. Instead she could see, both herself and the ground.
Which meant light was coming in from somewhere; Kate lifted her bow into her hands, pulling the string back, and looking around the dimensional cell.
It might just be a thread, an infinitesimal pathway that tied this mirrored room to the real world, something only just big enough for a light wave. Then again, all she needed was a light wave; the cybernetics in her eyes flickered, tracing back photons her conscious mind couldn’t register.
She aimed her bow. Up, to the side, down…
She didn’t know if Mordo was waiting to cut the connection, or if it was something he couldn’t do - if the spell that kept her imprisoned in this dimension relied on a connection to him. Either way, there was a threadbare crack, too small to see, in the reflection.
She fired an arrow. Part of it bounced off the wall - but a spark shot through to a realm she couldn’t see.
The walls shattered. Reality returned; she saw Mordo stumble, caught off-guard by the latest arrow to strike him; rather than give him a chance to focus, she fired twice more at him.
Hastily, he threw his hands up: green light suddenly wreathed one wrist, and the arrows stopped in midair.
“Inventive,” he conceded.
“I’ve been called worse,” Kate said.
The arrows were flung back the way they came, only without any bow awaiting them; Kate side-stepped, and the next bolt she fired was frozen in time too.
“But you must know you can’t win,” Mordo said. “I have time on my side.”
He smiled, aware of the line. Kate took a step to the side, eyeing him carefully.
The first thing she’d done when she’d burst in had been to fire a trick arrow. He didn’t seem to be paying it any mind. She carefully moved sideways, keeping an eye on him - one of the myriad of implants in her head could transmit signals on a very specific frequency, and all she had to do was get him in the right position…
Hypothetically, she knew, the bearer of the time stone could seal themselves away in a loop with someone else. It wasn’t the kind of thing you did on purpose though; no one wanted to feel an infinity of deaths. He was just using the stone defensively, to avoid that risk.
Which meant…
“Sorry. My dad wants that,” Kate said.
Mordo regarded her.
And a bolt fired back out of the trick arrow, through the back of his chest, and through the pendent; a battered circle of metal, spattered with blood, went flying through the air; Kate caught it with a grin.
Mordo slumped. Kate tried not to look at him.
She’d killed before, of course she had. But there was an odd kind of ego to it - he was like her, he was a human, like she’d been once upon a time. Some days, she’d never imagined ever being able to come back here. Now she was, and she had blood on her hands.
For a moment, she froze.
Then Mordo grunted; she saw magic at his hands, though not yet used for offence. He pressed his hand to his own chest, as if trying to hold the blood back in. Orange light wove itself across the wound.
She didn’t know why that pleased her.
Kate turned around, lifting her bow and preparing an anti-grav arrow to retreat; then someone moved in the shadows of the building. She hesitated.
Okay, wizards, now a guy dressed as the devil. Earth had gotten weird.
“About time you came,” Mordo grunted.
“Well if someone shared his portal rings, maybe we’d get here sooner,” the devil said.
Kate tilted her head. That was new.
She kept her anti-grav arrow between two fingers, and fired a plasma bolt instead; it hit the red armour at the devil’s chest, and he staggered for a moment, but seemed no more than winded.
Then he ran at her. She fired twice more, scorching the red plating both times, but never hurting him; she twisted her bow to block his lunge, and tried to swing it.
Vaguely, part of her mind wondered why the wizard didn’t bother to wear body armour. As he tried to keep himself alive, the red-clad vigilante tussled with Kate, dodging a blow and landing a punch on the reinforced skin of her stomach; he hissed, withdrawing his hand, and she managed to hit the side of his head with a light-arrow.
The sensor in the back of her head screamed an alert; she turned around to see yet another stranger. Okay, more defenders than she’d expected - Mordo must have summoned them.
She couldn’t see any of this one’s body. They were in black, masked and hooded, with metal highlights hinting at a skill behind their mask. They carried more weapons than Kate was prepared for. She could see a bow sticking out from their back, and a pair of batons not unlike the devil’s - and first, a shield in one hand that they threw at Kate immediately.
Kate knocked it aside, but the black-clad figure was mere inches behind it with a scissor kick, swinging around Kate’s neck. As Kate struggled to keep her balance, the devil was back, the two of them straining even her enhanced senses.
At least against the wizard, she’d had time to think - she sent a thought to her quiver, and caught the trick arrow with her hand, using it as a knife. She stabbed the nearest assailant to her hand as she toppled to the ground, and there was a flash of electricity that sent the devil sprawling back. She rolled, keeping her momentum, righting herself a few metres from the skull-faced attacker.
And they’d already pulled a bow. Kate would have dismissed the arrow, if not for a warning from a chip in her optic nerve - there was a speck too small to see with the naked eye, something on an arrowhead.
The anti-grav arrow was already in her hand. Kate fired it down at the floor just as the arrow was fired at her; a shimmering field was projected up, capturing the bolt in its grip and sending it upwards, going far away from Kate.
It wasn’t a speck that fell from it though - it was a man, in some kind of yellow suit.
“Hank?” the devil said.
“Save it,” the man on the floor grunted, slowly getting up. “Who’s the girl?”
“She’s got… the time stone,” Mordo said, breathlessly. “Avengers.”
“Assemble, I know the line,” the devil said.
Kate watched them warily, doing her best to plan her escape. Taking them all out wasn’t necessary, so long as she made it back to Thanos with the stone. Whoever had decided to help protect the Earth in her absence wasn’t her concern.
These ‘Avengers.’ Mordo was on the floor, hopefully out of it for long enough. The devil, ‘Hank’ who could apparently shrink, and the skull-faced stranger who seemed to switch between fighting styles and weapons at a dizzying speed.
The three looked at her. She stared back, trying to see an opening.
“Antonia, you go left. Hank, watch for an opening,” the devil said.
“That’s not her name,” Hank muttered. Still, he drew back, throwing an arrow back to the black suit. “Taskmaster.”
Antonia, Taskmaster, whatever her name was, she caught the arrow without a word. She returned it to her quiver, then pulled out batons to match the devil.
Kate focused, and called a trick arrow; as they ran, she fired a plasma bolt at Taskmaster’s feet, making her pause to regain her balance, then caught and nocked the arrow - she fired, and the devil just about side-stepped, before it exploded as it passed him.
As he reeled, she drew back the laser-string to fire an arrow at the exposed skin of his chin - Taskmaster threw a baton from metres away, making her lose focus and fire wide.
She parried the next baton, held in Taskmaster’s hand, with her bow, and whirled on the spot. Seconds later and the devil joined the fray, leaving Kate struggling to keep up with the two of them. She felt the time stone hang at her waist, beyond her knowledge of how to use, but achingly precious.
She needed to bring it back, she thought, as she felt a blow strike her lower back. She needed to get past these people. Her father expected it of her, and she wasn’t one to disappoint him. She didn’t want to do anything to-
She welcomed the next strike, grunting but giving as good as she got, gasping in exertion as she swung; the devil’s helmet cracked under one blow, but Taskmaster swept her legs out from under her.
She fell, but managed to fire a wild shot at Taskmaster as she hit the ground. Quickly, ever-athletic, Kate rolled onto her back-
And heard a terrific crashing sound as stone splintered. Above her, a foot the size of a car came down; she had just enough time to conclude that perhaps Hank could do more than just shrink.
Then the world was black.
When Hank returned to normal size, the ground had cracked underneath her. Kate groaned, half-conscious, more as an accidental by-product of the electronics in her brain not registering the same impact as the rest of her. She could barely twitch a finger.
Taskmaster walked over to her, drawing her bow; she pointed an arrow downwards. Her eye helpfully identified the vibranium arrowhead, strong enough even to pierce her own plating.
The arrow was aimed, and pulled back. Kate stared, immobile, aching.
Taskmaster stopped. She cocked her head.
“Well?” Hank said, from somewhere Kate couldn’t see. “Fine, I will-”
“Don’t,” she heard the devil’s voice. “Comms.”
“Huh?” Hank said. There was a moment’s pause, and he sighed. “Seriously? Why’s the boss-lady sparing her?”
As she heard the words, Kate helplessly watched as Taskmaster mutely swapped arrows. The next one to hit her sent a current of electricity coursing through her, and after too many seconds, Kate was at last welcomed into oblivion.
Kate stirred.
In the first half-second after she came to, her enhancements fed her more information than her mind could quite process. Earth gravity, indoors, sterile air suggesting some facility. There were bindings wrapped tightly either side of various joints, bands keeping her firmly in place. Minor pangs indicated they’d tried to remove her quiver, not realising that it was part of her; they seemed to have decided to not damage it or her after all, though all arrows had been removed. She wasn’t sure where her bow was.
The walls were white. Kate peered through not-quite-open eyes, wanting to make out what little she could.
“Please, don’t try to escape,” a voice said, audibly distorted by some speaker system. “The bindings make up a circuit. If you break them, it’ll free the particle and shrink you to a point you can never return from - one of Hank’s nastier inventions. Please don’t make us use it.”
Kate shifted. She opened one eye, and received a warning of an unknown element seeping through each band of plastic and metal.
She didn’t speak, trying to process her situation. She’d lost. She wasn’t permitted to fail. Failure meant the torment of modification, or worse. On a mission, there hadn’t been any time the people she was fighting weren’t prepared to kill.
Why was she…
“In 2012, aliens attacked New York,” the voice said.
It was a woman, Kate felt sure. The sound system wasn’t perfect, no doubt distorted by whatever other security systems surrounded the room. Still, she spoke. Without much else to do, Kate listened.
“The Avengers were formed to face this threat,” the stranger said. Kate heard footsteps through the speakers, as if she was moving. “They failed. The chitauri came through, and split up the population of each city in order to kill half of each. Three point five billion people died over the coming weeks. Everyone lost someone.”
She remembered it in flickers, despite her best efforts not to. One moment, a normal day, and the next was hell on earth.
“So we needed new Avengers, new protectors. So that if or when a threat came back, we’d be ready. I helped with that. They needed funding, and I had money, and… contacts enough to bring this all together. I had to.”
Kate heard the sound of a door. She didn’t move her head, wary of the loop of plastic she could feel on her neck. Straining it didn’t seem like a good idea, given the apparent consequences for breaking it.
“I had to. Everyone lost someone that day - I did, as well, but the person I lost wasn’t killed. She was taken from me. I saw it, and I promised that I’d do whatever it took to save her from them. And if I couldn’t manage that, to avenge her.”
Someone drew closer, at last moving above Kate, to a place where Kate could actually see her. She looked down, her hair a dark brown and hanging symmetrically. It looked artificial, mere presentation, but it conveyed the formality it was meant to. Her face had all the creases of someone used to order and responsibility, but when Kate looked into her eyes, she saw a kindness so alien it took her several moments to recognise it.
She rested a hand on the side of Kate’s face, her expression twisting as she felt the seam between violet metal and flesh. At first, Kate thought it was just fear - sympathy and horror were as strange a sight as kindness.
“Kate,” she said, so very softly.
Kate stared, and couldn’t help but remember such similar eyes, in a life she tried to forget. Brown hair, kind eyes, looking down on her just like that. It hurt to see.
“Mom?” Kate said.
Eleanor closed her eyes in grateful relief, hand lingering on Kate’s face as if not being able to bear the prospect of letting go. Mute, Kate stared.
She remembered her. At least, she remember fragments, little bits and pieces. She hadn’t wanted to. This wasn’t her life. Kate Bishop was a rich girl who never had to want for anything, a child who lived in luxury with two loving parents, and smiled every day. Kate was a daughter of Thanos, trained beyond what mere biology would allow, loyal to the point of death.
Kate Bishop wouldn’t have survived a day of Kate’s life.
Not this. Not this. Not this.
And, oblivious to the whirling in Kate’s head, Eleanor leaned in fondly.
“I didn’t believe it when I saw you on Taskmaster’s feed,” Eleanor said, gentle. “Human. But from out there. And you still look like... What did they do to you?”
Uncomprehending, Kate tried to look past her. Maybe it was a hallucination? Some misfire in her memory and perceptions, the circuits chafing with the fleshy bits, making her imagine something.
Though she never recalled seeing her mom with tears in her eyes, like she was now. Did that make it more or less likely that this was imagined?
“They won’t hurt you. I ordered them not to,” Eleanor said. She gestured to the bindings: “All this was… not my choice, but it’s okay, isn’t it? Let me know if it’s uncomfortable.”
Kate shifted her wrist millimetres, trying to get a feel for how much freedom she had. Something in her instinctively rebelled. Things didn’t feel like this, real things were never so gentle. She could sense the trap.
There had to be a trap.
She closed her eyes, trying to see which of her enhancements she could still reach. Her quiver was still poised to send arrows to her, though it had nothing to send. And even if it did, she didn’t know how to do anything without breaking these trick-bindings.
Maybe her bow? She could remote fire an arrow, maybe? Though she wasn’t feeling any feedback in that fingertip; they might have isolated the signal. Isolated her.
She had nothing. Nothing.
“Are you going to kill me?” Kate said.
She’d never listened to her own voice before. It sounded deeper, slightly raspier; sometimes she wondered if she even sounded like a machine. She didn’t think she wanted to know the answer.
Don’t think about this world. Don’t think about the girl she’d been. Kate Bishop would have been horrified by her every waking second - Kate Bishop was unhelpful.
“No, darling, no,” Eleanor said, still touching her with too much softness.
“Why not?” Kate said.
It wasn’t fear, or aggression - it was just a fact. That twist of pain in the woman’s eyes hurt more than a blade would.
“That’s how this goes,” Kate said. “What are you doing?”
Eleanor ran her hand through Kate’s hair; it was a shorn patch she’d managed to keep throughout all the modification, barely blotting out the feel of Eleanor’s hand at all.
Now a woman that should be her enemy was touching it, touching her as if trying to convince herself that she was real.
Mom. What’s happening? Mom! Mom don’t let them take me! Mom! MOM!
Kate flinched. Only at that, did Eleanor draw her hand back.
“I’ve had to lose you once. I won’t let it happen again,” Eleanor said. She faltered. “Kate. Do you remember me?”
She could try to tear her arm free. She’d seen Hank shrink in the fight, so she knew they had that technology; she might end up falling between atoms, but at least she’d know how to feel there.
“Mom,” she said again, weakly, involuntarily.
Eleanor let out a sigh. Her hand rested on Kate’s, now.
“Whatever they did to you, we can help,” Eleanor said. “I promise you.”
“I’m here for the time stone,” Kate said, more to herself than to Eleanor. “He wants the time stone. That’s all I’m here for. That’s all I need. Nothing else matters.”
“He?” Eleanor said. Another twist in her expression, another glimmer of revulsion.
“My father,” Kate said. Eleanor’s expression cracked.
“Your father… I’m sorry, dear,” Eleanor said quietly. “The day the chitauri came, they…”
Screaming in the streets. Panic. Confusion. Smoke. Rubble.
“Not him,” Kate said, too quickly. “My father. Thanos.”
Eleanor paused. It hurt to look into her eyes.
“Thanos,” she said, as if turning the word over in her mouth. “Is he the one that… did this to you?”
Kate tried to turn her head, tried to look away; she didn’t like the tone of Eleanor’s voice, nor the implication. This was the way it had to be. She’d told herself that over the years, throughout every incision and every replacement, this was just how things were. This was what had to happen.
It wasn’t wrong, it just was.
She didn’t need Eleanor to make her doubt that.
A shaking hand touched her face again. Kate closed her eyes, and waited for it to be over.
Kate didn’t move much.
Not that she could. When Eleanor - Eleanor, she kept repeating in her head, not mom - left, she lay on her back and listened to her systems whirr. She closed her eyes and waited, and stared at the blank ceiling as time passed.
And dwelt on her failure. It was, perhaps, the most pleasant thing to think about.
She’d failed in getting the time stone for her father. If anything she’d just alerted the Earth’s current protectors to be aware that Thanos was coming. Mordo would have time to heal. Thanos would have to get the stone for himself. She wouldn’t deliver it to him, wouldn’t make him proud.
It would be precious hours more before he could fulfill his dreams.
Maybe she wasn’t good enough after all.
She heard the door to her cell open. She stayed staring at the ceiling, unable to see who it was, again.
“Your father made you like this?”
Kate didn’t know the voice. It was stiff, and accented, a woman who sounded more unused to speech than unsure of her words.
Rather than answer, Kate continued to stare upwards. There was no point speaking to these people.
A skull-mask came into view - Kate didn’t react to it, not the bone-like metal highlights, not the implacable black. Taskmaster looked down at her. The voice didn’t sound like she’d imagined.
Then Taskmaster lifted a gloved hand; the mask came off with a click.
The girl underneath looked younger than it seemed she ought to. Old scars marked most of her face, a patchwork of injury outlining a wide eye. Some part of Kate felt an instinctive shudder at someone so young, being so hurt.
What was it that the devil called her? Antonia? It seemed a more fitting name than Taskmaster.
Antonia looked down into her eyes. She seemed to forget to blink.
“You don’t have to be what he made you,” she said.
Then she pulled away, as if afraid. Kate heard the door open and shut seconds later.
And then Kate was alone again, with all too much on her mind.
It might have been hours or days before Eleanor visited again. Kate didn’t have much of a way to tell the time.
When Eleanor came back, she wasn’t alone. Kate heard the footsteps, but it was only when Eleanor loosened the loop around her neck that Kate could look up - there were four people with her, all familiar-looking. The ‘Avengers.’
Antonia was back in her suit and mask, impassively standing back. The devil was close beside her. Hank was the closest to her, besides Eleanor, though his eyes were as angry as hers were kind. Mordo was the last, with some silvery sling around his chest that glimmered with pale blue runes. It seemed to be healing him.
“Still say this is a bad idea,” Hank muttered. “I didn’t sign up for this to spare the next batch of invaders.”
“She’s not an invader,” Eleanor said, a harshness in her voice that wasn’t there when she spoke to Kate. “But yes, your opinion has been extensively noted. I would remind you that you’re only here as a compromise.”
“He has a point,” Mordo said. “You didn’t have to fight her. I don’t know if you’ll find that she’s what you want her to be.”
“Which is what we’re finding out,” Eleanor said impatiently.
She looked down at Kate, expression softening.
“Kate. You know the Avengers,” she said. “Hank, Mordo, Taskmaster, and Matthew.”
“There’s more than just us, so don’t go getting any ideas,” Hank said. Eleanor sighed.
“Yes, well, let’s not go bringing Blonksy into this,” she said. “Now, Kate. We were hoping you could tell us a few things about this… Thanos.”
She looked around them. ‘Matthew’ felt a rather poor fit of a name for a devil, but he was still there, lingering at the back of the room. She had to strain her neck to see him. He seemed less comfortable than most present.
“He’s coming,” Kate murmured.
Antonia didn’t react at all. Hank and Mordo were wary, while Eleanor masked her concern with a gentle touch. Matt was odd, any frown hidden behind his red mask. She couldn’t even see his eyes.
“She’s threatening us. I told you,” Hank said. Eleanor waved him to be quiet.
“Thanos,” Eleanor said. “Was he the one that… took you? That came to Earth, years ago?”
Surveying his victory. Ordering the horde of nightmares with a casual flick of his wrist.
“It was him. It’s always him,” Kate said.
There was something in Hank that unnerved her; it was the wildness in his eyes, an almost inhuman impulsiveness. She’d seen grieving people before, people driven mad by loss. She’d caused it, more than once.
It seemed to be something more with him.
“He’s the one that wants the time stone?” Mordo said. “What for?”
Maybe there was no need to answer them. Kate wasn’t really thinking, just then.
“You can’t stop him,” Kate said, voice bereft of any feeling. “Nothing can. He gets what he wants, no matter what he has to do.”
Hank reached for her. Eleanor lifted a hand, and Antonia automatically leaned forwards to restrain him. After a few seconds, he relented, grumbling.
“We all lost people that day,” Eleanor said, to him. “Take it out on the person that deserves it, not on my daughter. Are we clear?”
“That thing isn’t anyone’s daughter,” Hank said.
Kate didn’t flinch. She’d been called worse.
“Kate,” Eleanor said calmly. “Why does Thanos want the stone?”
“He has the other five,” Kate said vaguely. “Or he will. I was just saving time.”
Mordo was the only one to react; his eyes went quite impressively wide, even as the others seemed confused.
“Mordo?” Matt said.
“There are six infinity stones,” Mordo said. “So the story goes, whoever has all six can do, well, anything.”
“Define anything,” Eleanor said.
“Kill half the population,” Kate said.
Armies dividing them up. Being lifted away from her mother, crying, screaming for help.
“He’s coming back just to kill us again?” Hank growled.
“Not the Earth,” Kate said. “The population. Of everywhere. Half the universe.”
She’d heard it said so many times that the words barely made her blink. The sudden shock on the others’ faces was so strange, to her.
Help that came with a wide purple hand that coaxed her into looking away. Eyes she truly believed cared, as half the city was gunned down behind her.
“Hasn’t he taken enough?” Eleanor said, voice hollow.
“I say we kill her,” Hank said. “No, don’t make excuses. If she was helping him do that, you can’t pretend any piece of her is even human.”
“Hank,” Eleanor said, firmly.
“You don’t get to pretend that she’s still your daughter!” Hank snapped. There was that wild note in his voice again, as his tone grew louder. “You don’t get to keep your daughter. Not if I-”
“Hank,” Matt said, more calmly. “It won’t help. Don’t.”
A scowl crossed Hank’s face. His eyes were still angry, still fixed on Kate; Matt took hold of his arm, both grounding and warning at once.
“She’s not the one you’re angry at,” Matt said.
“Well her dad isn’t here, is he?” Hank said.
How was the guy dressed as the devil the level-headed one in the room? Kate looked around as best she could.
Antonia lingered a few steps behind Hank, watchful. She was the only one that hadn’t spoken, Kate realised.
“You. Hey. Spooky,” Kate said. “You going to add anything? I know where everyone else stands.”
“Taskmaster doesn’t talk,” Eleanor said, cutting in smoothly. “She’s just here to keep an eye on things - again, not my idea, but if this turns violent, she ought to watch.”
Kate frowned. Still, she didn’t comment; if these Avengers were keeping secrets from one another, it wasn’t her concern.
“Priorities,” Mordo said. “Please. You’re saying that Thanos has five infinity stones, and is coming here?”
Kate shrugged. She tried to smile more, tried not to dwell; spiralling wasn’t helpful. What had happened, had happened. Regret didn’t serve anyone.
Don’t think about Kate Bishop. She hadn’t been enough to protect anyone; it was better that she was gone. Who she was now, she didn’t have to worry about losing her family. She could hold her own against almost anyone.
Almost. She looked around the room, again.
“Karl?” Eleanor said. “How bad is it?”
“Worse than you can ever believe,” he said. His eyes darted down. “I’m not talking around her. We need to plan, urgently. I don’t know if we have enough.”
Eleanor paused. Matt glanced from Mordo to Kate, grimacing. Hank still scowled.
“I can make some calls,” Eleanor said. “If you’ll vouch, they’ll have to listen.”
“Call in every favor you have,” Mordo said. “Hank. This way, please.”
Hank glowered at her. While everyone was in some kind of suit, the yellow highlights of his pulsed in a way that made it clear his wasn’t merely decorative. He wasn’t in an outfit; he was in a weapon.
Well, Kate knew how that felt. Her quiver dug uncomfortably into her spine and into the bed.
“I’m sorry, dear,” Eleanor said. “We’ll talk more soon, I promise.”
Kate didn’t answer. She looked away when Eleanor spoke; not looking at her seemed to be the most effective way to focus her mind.
Would Thanos have screamed as Eleanor had, if she was taken away? Kate felt herself tremble, and felt her implants automatically stymie the response.
Another brief, too-gentle touch, and Kate was alone again. The feeling of Eleanor’s fingertips lingered. Gentleness was too strange a sensation; contact was for violence’s sake, for combat, not affection. This wasn’t how Thanos showed affection. It wasn’t how anyone ought to…
Kate closed her eyes, and wished she could summon back the fear.
Time passed by so slowly. Kate couldn’t tell if days or nights had passed; her neck had been bound again, but the Avengers seemed too distracted by their preparations. No one came to her, not her mother, not Antonia.
Mother. Kate flinched as the thought passed through her mind.
It wouldn’t be long before her dad came to Earth, surely? Once he had the soul stone, and helped the invasion of Asgard, the time stone was all that would be left. She’d accept her punishment for failure, and move on from this place.
He talked of a happy universe, when he was done. Some days, she liked to imagine what that would be like. It would be a time to rest. A time when, after all of this, they could be at peace, and maybe he’d be able to be a different sort of father. When he’d finished his task, and saved the universe.
Eleanor was afraid. Her Avengers had been so afraid of him, of his plan. Kill half the universe so that there would be enough resources to go around, and so that everyone at once could see the value of his plan; she’d lived with the concept for so long that she’d forgotten any notion of horror at it.
But he did it from love. That much, she knew. They had to see.
A hand encouraging to turn away. Screams behind her. A kind voice, asking her what she liked. Someone handing her a bow.
Kate shifted, and froze as she brushed her bonds again. They were too close, too constant; she couldn’t afford to do much except think, given what the risks were with breaking them.
She lay there and waited, and listened; she listened to a distant gurgle of pipes, and the hum of a light bulb, and very muffled footsteps somewhere outside. There was nothing else for her to do.
And then there was a thud. Something metal scraped, somewhere on the wall behind her; she twisted her head what little she could, but only saw vague shadows shifting.
And then a blue hand reached out of a panel on the wall. Seconds later, and Nebula pulled herself into the room; she looked around, before catching sight of Kate. She regarded her for a long moment.
“So there you are,” Nebula said.
“Nebula,” Kate said, breathlessly.
She stared. Her sister wasn’t supposed to be here. They passed by each other in the Sanctuary, and they’d sparred countless times, but she hadn’t been assigned Earth. If anything, she should be with the Black Order on Asgard.
“Did dad send you?” Kate said.
“What? No,” she said. “He’s on Asgard. I think he’s… enjoying himself. Now let’s deal with these…”
Nebula was shaking slightly. It was subtle, an almost imperceptible tremor to her manner and voice, hidden only behind brusque movements as she moved closer. She reached for one of Kate’s restraints.
“Don’t!” Kate said quickly. “They’re booby-trapped, apparently. If you break them, it breaks a circuit.”
“Does it?” Nebula said.
She tilted her head, her fingers pressing into one of the loops as if contemplating. She looked down at herself; then, a few seconds later, drew back and knelt until she was out of Kate’s sight once again.
“I see it,” Nebula said. “A containment field, with an alternate power supply… here.”
Something clicked. Nothing seemed to change; still, Nebula stood, reaching for a loop around Kate’s arm again.
“Should be fine,” she said.
“Wait!” Kate said quickly. She swallowed. “If it doesn’t work. If I don’t make it-”
“Kate.”
“Could you scratch my cheek for me?” Kate said. “It’s been bugging me for ages.”
She twitched the side of her face in demonstration; Nebula stared at her flatly.
“Brat,” Nebula said.
She tore the restraint; nothing reacted. With her hand free, Kate flexed, carefully ripping her way through the rest of her bindings. One by one, they fell away, deactivated, until she sat up and swung her legs off the table.
Nebula stood a step away. She was twitching, impatient.
“Are you done?” Nebula said.
“Why are you here?” Kate said. “If dad didn’t send you…”
“I knew you were sent here,” Nebula said. “I thought I’d come - I didn’t know you’d been… captured.”
They always fought. Pretty much any of their interactions had been hostile; that was what it meant to be a child of Thanos. They clashed, and fought, and that competition inspired the fear that urged them to improve.
But she was here. Nebula seemed as unsure of why as Kate.
“Come on,” Nebula said. “They might noticed I sabotaged their security systems. We’ll need to be quick.”
“We can’t go yet,” Kate said. “The time stone is still-”
“Thanos won’t need any help getting that,” Nebula said. She trembled, again. “He has the first four. When he’s finished playing on Asgard, he’ll have five. We need to get away before then.”
“Away?” Kate said.
Nebula hesitated.
“He came back without Gamora,” Nebula said.
“What?” Kate said.
“He went to get the soul stone with her,” Nebula said. “He came back with the stone. Without her.”
Kate stared, still; Nebula jerked back.
“We need to run,” Nebula said.
“He wouldn’t,” Kate said, still a few seconds behind.
“Pay attention Kate!” Nebula snapped. “Gamora did everything right, and he still… You don’t want to be on this world when he comes here.”
“He… He wouldn’t,” Kate said.
She swallowed.
No, she and Gamora hadn’t gotten on, but that was almost the point. That was how she related to everyone. Life was about the fight, the struggle, the contest - it was the closest thing she’d ever had to any kind of friend. Gamora, and Nebula both, the pain was all they had.
Somehow, she’d imagined them to be inviolate. They were the daughters of Thanos. None of them would ever be seriously hurt, at least not more than the surgeons and cyberneticists could fix. None of them would die, and certainly not because of their father.
Their father who loved them. Who loved the universe.
Who loved her.
“I’ve heard rumours,” Nebula said, quickly. “Alternate dimensions, tears - most are probably wild stories, but if we can find one before he snaps his fingers, we’ll be beyond his reach.”
“You want to run?” Kate echoed.
Her voice was still empty; she was still processing.
“Haven’t you been listening?” Nebula rasped. “Even Gamora wasn’t safe. We certainly won’t be, when he’s done. Or do you want to stay and fight him?”
“The people here want to,” Kate said.
Nebula laughed.
“Then they’re idiots,” Nebula said. “Are you coming with me?”
Kate thought of Thanos. She thought of the cruelty she’d seen in him, when he faced his enemies, and imagined that gaze turned towards her. She thought of Gamora, who’d made her dread so many days.
She thought of Eleanor. Kate faltered.
Nebula sighed.
“I’m not staying,” she said. “Follow, or don’t, but I’m not dying for you.”
She turned crawling back into an open panel in the wall; Kate watched after her, dimly aware that she hadn’t moved from the spot.
She was free; she had the chance to escape, to find Mordo again and be better prepared. Maybe she’d even catch him by surprise. She could tear the time stone from around his neck, and she could get out of here before they caught her.
Her father would make it here, and he’d thank her, and he’d-
He killed Gamora. Her sister. Someone so much like her - someone he loved, and someone he favoured.
No. No, they mattered to him. They had to. That was the point, that was why they listened to him, served him; it wasn’t fear. It wasn’t just fear. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t-
Thanos was coming. Half the universe was going to die.
And she could help, or she could run.
Kate looked around the room, taking in the sterile walls for a last time; then, barely slowing, she walked towards the door, and away from Nebula’s escape hatch. Her eye spotted the chains of infra-red and radio signals that comprised the alarm system, and she jabbed a metal finger through the wall to cut the circuitry.
Then she walked out the door; the hallways were dimmed, apparently signalling night. Either way, she moved quietly, following signals and instinct.
There was a row of doors, all marked with names: Matthew, Karl, Hank, TM, Aldrich, Wilson…
And then Eleanor. She didn’t walk any further; she stared at the door, and pressed her hand to it, coaxing it into opening. Mute, unsteady on her feet, Kate walked inside.
She didn’t pay attention to the contents of the room. Her gaze immediately zeroed in on the woman sitting in bed, a glass of wine to one side and a book in her hand, resting against her knees. She turned to face Kate, and froze.
Kate stood a step closer, unsure of what she was even doing - but then, she was unsure of so much just then.
“Mom?” Kate said.
She fell to her knees. Vaguely, she noted that she could still cry. She hadn’t been sure her eyes were still capable of doing that.
Her mother’s book was put down on the bed, and Eleanor was on her feet in seconds. Any alarm in her manner was gone as she closed the distance between them, and wrapped her arms around her daughter. Kate shook.
She closed her eyes, and tried to remember what this felt like.
Half-forgotten memories surfaced, whispers from corners of her mind she’d tried so desperately to forget. She’d been scared before; she remembered waking up from a childhood nightmare, only to find her mother’s arms waiting for her. Back then, it had felt like some kind of lifeline.
Desperately, Kate clung onto that, tried to feel it again.
And Eleanor held her so very tightly, as if afraid she would slip away. Kate wasn’t sure she even had the strength to stand.
“I don’t know what to do,” Kate said, shaking.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Eleanor said. “Just stay here. Stay with me, and you’ll be safe. I promise you.”
“Nowhere’s safe,” Kate said. She closed her eyes. “He killed my sister.”
She didn’t specify; Eleanor didn’t ask any questions, not who Kate was talking about, or how she knew, or even how she escaped.
Kate tried to remember if Thanos had ever comforted her.
“He’s not who I thought he was,” Kate said. “Or who I… wanted to think he was.”
“Shh. Shh,” Eleanor said, still holding her.
She wasn’t sure why she’d come here. It just felt like the only halfway-familiar thing still in reach. Kate trembled, still, reeling.
She shouldn’t be doing this; it felt like she should still be by Thanos’s side, still trying to do what he wanted her to, still trusting him. Nothing had changed. If he wanted to kill her sister, she could trust that he had a reason. Gamora had never been nice.
But it was too much, after that, after Earth… She wanted to hold to some family that she knew she had.
“He’s going to kill me,” Kate said.
“No, dear, no,” Eleanor said.
“Nothing can stop him. Especially not now,” Kate said.
Eleanor drew back, just enough to look into Kate’s eyes. Her arms stayed around Kate.
“Once, I thought I’d lost you,” she said. “You’d been taken up to space, of all places, and I was here, alone, with nothing but your father’s… debts. But I told myself that I’d see you again, that I’d make sure you were safe - that felt impossible, some days, believe me. But you’re here, aren’t you? You’re here now. There’s always something that we can do, no matter what.”
When she was younger, those words from her mom might have been all she’d needed to believe it. Now, she doubted.
But she remembered that rush of familiarity, remembered that security that she’d always felt from her mother’s words and presence, and tried to embrace it. More than anything, that stability was what she needed.
Forget Thanos. Forget the infinity stones. Somehow, she felt something she hadn’t realised she’d been missing. She felt like she was home.
“He’s not going to hurt you,” Eleanor said. “My Avengers won’t let him.”
Kate opened her eyes.
Several things felt strange to her, at first. The carpeting under her was unlike her quarters in the Sanctuary; so too, was her freedom distinct from waking up in Avenger captivity. She could move her arms and legs freely, and when she did she felt the generous spring of a carpet beneath her.
It made her think of another life.
Right. Eleanor’s room. Her mom’s room.
She was still processing that, when the door rapidly slid open, and someone stormed in.
“Bishop! The prisoner got free,” Hank said. “I don’t know how or where or- Oh.”
His gaze settled on her. Already, he was in his yellow and black outfit; some kind of disk slid out from his wrist to his hand as he saw her. Kate tensed.
“Hank. Relax,” Eleanor said tiredly.
“I was going to warn you that she’d escaped,” Hank said. His gaze stayed on Kate. “Looks like you know.”
“If she wanted to escape, she wouldn’t have come to me,” Eleanor said. “Stand down, Hank.”
Kate felt a gentle hand rest on her shoulder; almost unconsciously, she leaned into it. Gentleness was new.
Hank’s eyes narrowed.
“Stand down,” Eleanor said, again. “She’s not a danger to anyone.”
“And you know that how?” Hank said. “You know who she works for.”
“Used to work for,” Kate said, voice small.
“She killed half the planet!” Hank shouted. Smoothly, levelly, Eleanor spoke over him.
“She didn’t,” Eleanor said. “She was just as much of a victim as Hope was, Hank. Hate Thanos. Don’t hate her.”
“I do,” Hank said. “Maybe he could stand to lose a daughter too. If he’s as powerful as she says, it’s not like we have any other way to hurt him.”
Kate flinched. Eleanor stood; Kate heard something click, saw some radio signal dance through the air for a split-second. She wasn’t sure anyone else’s senses would have been able to perceive it. Eleanor had hit some kind of alarm.
“He won’t care,” Kate said.
She swallowed. Make yourself say it, she told herself. Admit it.
“He doesn’t care if I live or die,” Kate said. “He doesn’t care about any of us. I wanted him to. But he’s just… He’s Thanos.”
Hank glared at her for a few moments more. The enhancement in her eye kept pinging ‘unknown substance’ for the disc in his hand. She kept watch on it, unsure if he was going to throw it or if he was going to grow again.
He hated her. She couldn’t blame him; she’d not even thought twice before fighting him, and his allies, when she’d first arrived. And knowing what Thanos had done to this world…
To her world. Her world. She turned the words over in her head, trying to decide how she felt about them.
Eleanor’s hand was still on her shoulder; that offered her some grounding, something to focus on as she started to lose herself in doubts again.
And then someone else was in the doorway. The man in the devil-mask - Matt, wasn’t it? - was quickly at Hank’s side, carefully touching Hank’s shoulder.
“Hey there little guy,” Matt said.
“Don’t call me that,” Hank muttered.
“Big guy?” Matt offered. “Need a breather?”
Somehow, he cracked a smile; that seemed to be enough. The moment passed, and almost reluctantly Hank slipped the disc out of sight. He wrenched himself away from Matt, and audibly bumped into someone as he stormed down the corridor.
A second later, and Mordo moved into view. He was in golden robes, the pale, rune-marked bandage still tightly wrapped around his chest. He rested an arm heavily on the doorway.
“Did I miss something?” he said. His eyes went to Kate. “Oh.”
“She isn’t a threat,” Eleanor said firmly.
Then she paused, and looked down at herself - her pyjamas weren’t exactly undignified, more silken than anything decorative, but they were still a far cry form the more formal clothes Kate had seen her in before. Something wry crossed Eleanor’s face.
“Not how I planned on starting my morning,” she said. “You three. Play nice while I change.”
“Fine, mom,” Kate said, voice elongating the syllable until it sounded like a complaint, almost automatically.
She hesitated, unsure where that had come from. Eleanor smiled fondly, before retreating to a room at the far side of her quarters; as she briefly left, Kate turned her attention to Matt and Mordo.
“Er. Hi?” Kate tried.
Mordo’s brow furrowed.
“Sorry about Hank,” Matt said. He paused. “He’s… Hank.”
“Are you really making conversation with her?” Mordo said.
Kate was still sitting on the floor. She’d slept near the bed, the carpet as comfortable as any sleeping space she was used to; all she’d needed was a cushion to support her head. She still remembered how Eleanor had looked at her when she’d said that.
She shifted, facing the doorway; talking to people outside of Thanos’s circle wasn’t something she was used to.
“Er,” Kate said. She waved vaguely. “Sorry about the whole… impaling thing.”
Mordo stared at her. She shrank back, on instinct.
She hadn’t thought about it at the time; it had been so natural, to just do as Thanos asked. Why was she feeling guilty about it now?
“Is she lying?” Mordo said.
“I can’t tell,” Matt said. “Her heartbeat is… unusual. You can see all the machinery she has on her. Still, the boss trusts her,” Matt said.
“The ‘boss’ can be… biased,” Mordo said.
“Still, everyone deserves a chance,” Matt said.
“In my experience, there isn’t any room for ambiguity,” Mordo said. “The things we have to face, if you aren’t sure of the people at your back, they’re as good as enemies. Uncertainty kills.”
“And in mine, there’s room for forgiveness,” Matt said. He gestured to Kate. “I think, if she was a threat, she wouldn’t have slept on the floor.”
Mordo paused. He looked at her; Kate looked back. She wasn’t sure how she looked. Without her bow, without her arrows, in among the admittedly plush surroundings of her mother’s room, she doubted she looked as dangerous as she had before. Then again, she was still modified - her very body was made for her to fight. Her eyes, her joints, violet metal grafted around modified veins and bones and muscle.
She didn’t feel like she belonged. She doubted she’d have trusted herself, if she were in Mordo’s place.
“What changed?” Mordo said, warily watching her.
She wished she had a good answer.
“I want family that… cares for me,” Kate said. “Dad- Thanos, was… I didn’t realise how different he was to what I wanted him to be. He was the one that saved a child from an invasion, to me. I didn’t see the conqueror. I… couldn’t let myself. I…”
Her voice caught; she looked down. She didn’t even sound like herself; something slipped passed all the modification, the unavoidable rasp and semi-synthetic edge, to sound high and weak and trembling.
It was too easy to remember the screams.
She looked away, some impulse making her want to hide her face. She did, briefly, glimpse something in Mordo’s expression changing; still, it was Matt who spoke.
“How old are you?” he said quietly.
Was that horror in his voice, again? She’d never understood why they kept sounding like that to the simplest things.
“I don’t know,” Kate said. Right, this she could respond to. “We have different years in, you know, space. I think Thanos liked to keep track. I never liked dwelling on the past.”
“She’s fifteen.”
That was Eleanor’s voice; Kate looked back. Floor-length dresses and pressed suit jackets seemed to be her equivalent of the superhero costumes that the others wore. She moved to Kate’s side quickly.
Kate caught Mordo staring at her - at the implants, the glimmer of light deep within one of her eyes, the metal grafted over her skin. Suddenly, he seemed to be able to look at her with something other than wariness.
“So, if you’re quite finished?” Eleanor said, her voice clipped and precise.
Mordo paused. Matt seemed more willing to give her a chance; Mordo seemed conflicted. Still, he took a few seconds to find his words.
“I can’t afford to trust her,” he said. “But I understand if you want to hope - just as I hope you understand that I will act if it becomes necessary to.”
“It won’t come to that,” Eleanor said. Still, she nodded. “Now then. I suppose we need to talk about Thanos. Meeting in ten, room F. Call everyone.”
It was strange, being on this side of it.
She didn’t know why she was here - if her mom simply assumed she was going to help, or if she didn’t want to be apart from Kate. Still, Kate didn’t want to be alone again, not just them.
She sat near Eleanor, at the head of the table. Matt sat next to the blank-faced Taskmaster, while Mordo sat on the other side of the table, and Hank paced.
“Introductions,” Eleanor said, as though ignoring the hostility emanating from Hank. “Kate, these are the Avengers. Karl Mordo, Sorcerer Supreme, he takes care of magic and keeps us aware of threats. Hank Pym, the Ant-Man, he came out of retirement to help us after, well, five years ago.”
“Why are we wasting time?” Hank said. Eleanor waited for him to speak, then continued as though he hadn’t.
“Matthew Murdock, or Daredevil,” Eleanor said. “Something of a vigilante before he ever approached us. And Antonia Dreykov - just call her Taskmaster - she’s a transfer from an acquaintance. There are a couple of others, but they aren’t in the country right now, or tend not to come to meetings. Any questions?”
Kate looked around the room, unnerved to find everyone looking back.
Matt was cautious, but seemed to be willing enough to give her a chance. His mask hid most of his face - even his eyes - making him hard to read, but he seemed to trust she wasn’t planning anything just then. Mordo, too, was wary, but he seemed to have softened somewhat. He seemed disturbed, though she didn’t seem to be the target.
Antonia was thoroughly blank. The mask hid every scrap of her skin; Kate couldn’t even say for sure if it was the woman who’d so briefly spoken to her. Everyone else seemed convinced she couldn’t talk.
What was going on there?
You don’t have to be what he made you.
Kate’s eyes lingered on her for a few moments, squinting, as if she’d see something. It wasn’t clear if Antonia even noticed.
And then there was Hank. He was twitching, perpetually unstable. His dislike didn’t seem to be directed at her; he didn’t really seem to be getting on with anyone.
“Is the creepy mask completely necessary?” Kate said, looking at Antonia.
Nope, she definitely wasn’t reacting.
“Someone tried to kill her when she was very young,” Eleanor said. “The suit helps her move, and helps her mimic the styles and skills of other fighters. She needs all of it.”
“And she doesn’t talk?” Kate said.
“She doesn’t need to. She’s a skilled fighter, with or without her voice,” Eleanor said. “And disciplined. Something that some people lack.”
Hank grumbled. He was still pacing.
“I have a question,” Mordo said. “Kate, is it? How many more like you does Thanos have?”
“Like me?” Kate said.
“Machine-parts, cybernetics,” Mordo said. “The things that make you more than human.”
Kate faltered.
“There’s the Black Order. They aren’t… really like me,” Kate said. “But my sisters, they are. Were.”
“He’s done this to others?” Matt said.
Again that outrage. Suddenly unsure of what to say, Kate nodded, mute. She took a breath. She could say it, if she let herself.
“Nebula. She has the most modifications,” Kate said. “She isn’t with him anymore, I think. And G-Gamora, he killed her. So it’s just me.”
It still hurt her to say. Thanos had killed one of them.
“Karl?” Eleanor said.
He reached behind the silvery bandage around his chest; he pulled out a familiar amulet, the time stone embedded in a shell of metal. He looked at it, brow furrowed.
“I looked into possible futures over the night,” he said. “I am… not yet completely adept at the time stone’s use, but I wanted to confirm my suspicions, both if she’d tell the truth, and if it would match what I could see. And it does, unfortunately.”
“Alright, how screwed are we?” Hank said.
“Noon, tomorrow, Thanos arrives,” Mordo said gravely. “He has five infinity stones. He appears in the Sanctum, ignoring any warding that we choose to create.”
Nebula had chosen to run. The only reason Kate hadn’t, really, was that she’d needed to feel like she wasn’t alone. But Thanos had scared her, even when she was loyal. He was good at fear.
Thanos with five stones? She was amazed they could talk so calmly.
“What do we need to do to defeat him?” Eleanor said.
“I couldn’t see that far,” Mordo said. “Visions are… fractured.”
“Could really do with you getting better at using that damn thing,” Hank muttered.
“The Eye of Agamotto is not a toy,” Mordo said firmly. “Magical artefacts of its calibre - magic in general - ought be treated with more respect than mere parlour tricks to practice with. I have crossed more lines than I am comfortable with in service of you and the Earth’s protection, be glad I saw as much as I did.”
“And we thank you for your compromises, Karl,” Eleanor said. “But if Thanos is as powerful as you and my daughter say…”
“He is,” Mordo said.
“Then some bent lines might be the least we have to fear,” Eleanor said.
Mordo seemed about to speak; then he withdrew, expression pensive.
“Kate?” Matt said. “Has he been defeated before?”
“Before, he fought with his armies,” Kate said. “They failed. If he has weaknesses, he doesn’t exactly advertise them.”
“Big surprise, she’s no help,” Hank said. Kate pouted.
“How about you try shrinking down and crawling up his-” Kate began.
“Children. Please,” Eleanor said.
Kate stuck her tongue out.
Levity came easy. Hank, ever-sullen, looked away. Maybe she should have been more sympathetic to him - he’d lost someone in the invasion, she gathered, it wasn’t like she couldn’t respect that - but humour had always been her thing. Jokes were easier sometimes.
Maybe she could convince herself that she wasn’t scared to death of her father.
“My predecessor resorted to… darker magic,” Mordo said, after a moment. “I thought it vile, when I found out. I never understood the temptation until now.”
“At last, suggestions,” Eleanor said.
“It wasn’t a suggestion,” Mordo said. “Merely an observation.”
“Will it help?” Eleanor said.
Mordo paused.
“There are things you don’t understand about the mystic arts,” Mordo said. “There’s a price to such things.”
“Can you see an alternative?” Eleanor said. “By the sound of it, we need anything we can get. If you have a way to draw more power, then that seems to benefit us.”
“Eleanor. Don’t ask me to do this,” Mordo said.
He met her gaze; Eleanor didn’t blink.
“I think,” Matt spoke up, “If Mordo says it’s too far, maybe we should listen to him.”
“Because that’s what you’re actually worried about,” Hank said.
“Are we really going to have this argument again?” Matt said.
“Every time,” Hank said. “Until you get it into that head of yours.”
Kate looked between the two of them. No one else in the room seemed surprised by the two of them apparently going off-topic; Eleanor rolled her eyes.
“Er, what’s happening?” Kate said.
“The devil here isn’t going to want to kill Thanos,” Hank said.
“I’m not going to be part of killing anyone, Thanos or not,” Matt said. “When I signed on, I made it clear I wouldn’t be party to-”
“Matthew,” Eleanor said. She sighed, apparently tired. “While your scruples are charming, I don’t think now is the time.”
Kate blinked. That was an option?
Death was so casual for her; it took her a second to fully register Matt’s apparently-strident objects to the notion.
“Half the universe is at stake,” Mordo said. “This isn’t the time to be squeamish.”
“I think it’s exactly the time,” Matt said. “If we’re going to find the ability to take down a guy with control over reality itself, if we can do that, if we find that kind of power, are we really saying that the only thing we can do with it is kill?”
“The bastard’s killed enough of us,” Hank said. “You can look away if you’d rather.”
Matt grimaced. He turned his head, now facing Kate.
“Kate?” he said. “Any opinions?”
Somehow, she got the feeling he was judging her. She faltered.
It felt almost fanciful to her; there had never been any hesitation in her aim before now. If she wanted to clear the way, then she did it by murder. She’d known the path she was on would have led to the end of half the universe - she hadn’t thought about it, just accepted it as inevitable.
The idea of… not, felt strangely novel.
“It would be nice to live in a world where we didn’t have to kill,” Kate said, eventually. Eleanor chuckled.
“Well, we can all agree on that,” Eleanor said.
Hank grumbled. Eleanor rolled her eyes again.
“Well, almost all of us,” she said. “Regardless, this all seems rather pointless to consider until we have an approach, lethal or not. Do we have any plan, beyond trying to hold the line?”
Antonia, as ever, was silent. Hank frowned. Mordo looked at the floor. Matt, perhaps, seemed slightly outclassed when all he had were a pair of batons. Eleanor exhaled heavily.
“Kate,” she said. “I… need to be used to this, I suppose. Can I ask what you’re capable of?”
Kate’s eyes widened.
“What?” she said.
“You held your own against the whole team,” Eleanor said. “Which still feels strange to me, by the way, but if I have to accept the fact you’ve grown up, then I have to ask if you have anything in your arsenal.”
“N-no,” Kate said quickly.
She froze. Suddenly, she felt everyone staring at her; even Matt seemed to be watching her, despite the lack of eye-holes in his mask.
“Are you sure?” Eleanor said. “We still have your bow and arrows - we don’t fully understand the technology in them, but maybe something could be used to-”
“No!” Kate said again, more urgently.
It was so easy to sit there, until they made it real. Her dad might not be a good person - okay, she could process that, or start to anyway. But to fight him? She could understand why Nebula ran.
Honestly, she just wasn’t sure she had the focus to try to run away from the infinity gauntlet. Her hands balled to fists.
“Kate?” Eleanor said, so calm, so collected.
Disappointed eyes. Purple skin that creased with shame as she lost more of herself. Kate stretched her arm, the metal that replaced her skin prickling.
Quickly, she stood up; Mordo jerked back, as if expecting her to attack, but she just turned around. She hurried out the doorway, shaking more than she’d admit to. She didn’t want anyone looking at her just then.
It was something about their eyes. Thanos’s eyes could be scarily human, sometimes; she was starting to realise she’d never had any idea what was happening behind them.
Then she passed by a window. It looked in on some ordinary room, maybe an interrogation room, but the contents of the room weren’t what stood out to her; it was her reflection. Suddenly, she couldn’t ignore it.
Narrow lines on her cheeks between separate components. That flicker of light deep within one eye. The inhuman colour. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure how her mother recognised her; she didn’t. She remembered Kate Bishop, the girl with long dark hair and perpetually getting into scrapes and needing plasters. Now, she wasn’t even sure she could bleed.
She forced herself to look away, and hurry past.
The meeting was probably still going on. The Avengers seemed to like their planning; at least they understood the scale of the threat coming their way. Kate wasn’t sure what they thought they could do.
Maybe she should have gone with Nebula after all. The thrill of being here, that sense of relief at knowing her mom again, all seemed to pale when faced with the prospect of him arriving.
Kate wasn’t sure where she was. She’d sat down in a little dead-end, a turning point in the hallways that led nowhere. She’d passed another window on the way - she’d looked out, to see that the whole building they were in was apparently in flight. Not a building at all, then. She hadn’t been all that surprised. It just meant, apparently, it was harder to get in or out.
Honestly, she was just impressed Nebula had made it in undetected. Then again, children of Thanos were well-trained.
“Kate?”
It must have been more than an hour. Reluctantly, Kate looked up; Eleanor was standing over her, quietly approaching.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said.
“Don’t apologise,” Eleanor said.
She carefully adjusted her skirt, sitting down beside Kate. She rested a comforting hand on Kate’s knee.
“I know you wanted me to fight him,” Kate said. “I just… I can’t.”
“That’s not something to be sorry about,” Eleanor said.
“I’m not going to be able to help you.”
“Oh no. My daughter isn’t going to fight a madman with apparently-unlimited power,” Eleanor said. “I can think of worse things that have happened to me today - you tore my rug, you know.”
Kate hesitated. Uncertainly, she looked up; Eleanor was still looking at her, still marvelling that she was here.
“I didn’t want you out there,” Eleanor said. “If I had a choice, believe me, I’d tuck you up in my penthouse and you would always be safe and comfortable. I’d never expect that of you.”
Where was the disappointment? Kate wasn’t sure how to respond to sympathy.
“We’ll keep you safe from him,” Eleanor said. “I promise you.”
“No one can promise that,” Kate said.
“I can,” Eleanor said firmly. “It’s my job. I’m your mother.”
Kate found herself shaking again; it didn’t seem to be fear this time. Her father scared her. He probably always had, she’d just assumed that was how it was meant to be. The way Eleanor was acting though, that didn’t feel like it was how a parent should act. That care, that protectiveness.
Kate shifted, leaned forwards, then caught herself, second-guessing herself; Eleanor guessed what she wanted anyway and leaned in to embrace her.
“You’re my priority,” Eleanor said. “Never doubt that. All this, it only exists because of you.”
After a few moments, Kate drew back. Eleanor stayed close by; she smiled encouragingly, still close enough to touch.
“How did you… make all of this?” Kate said.
“The Avengers?” Eleanor said. She rocked back, settling down. “It’s a long story. Sure you’re up for it?”
“I want to know what I missed,” Kate said.
Eleanor’s voice sounded lighter all of a sudden, like they were discussing nothing more dramatic than the weather. She took a breath, and never looked away from Kate.
“It wasn’t long after the… invasion,” Eleanor said. “The world was in shambles. Earth’s mightiest heroes, the original Avengers, had revealed themselves to the world, and they’d died not long after. Everyone was grieving, governments and aid organisations barely knew what they were doing, and everyone who survived wanted them to do more.”
She paused, then. Her expression became almost distant.
“Your father - your real father, I mean - left us with certain debts to certain people,” Eleanor said. “I’ll spare you the details. But while I was talking with them, I was also at the rallies. I had more of a reason than most - I didn’t just want revenge, I didn’t just want more protectors for the world, I knew you were out there. I appeared on the news, online, on podcasts, talking to anybody who’d listen.”
“And they did?” Kate said.
“Eventually,” Eleanor said. Her attention returned back to the present moment. “Your father’s friend, he knew people, and knew people who could find people. I was well-known by then, and he pulled a few strings, and suddenly I was here, in a position to actually do something. He was the one that arranged for us to get Taskmaster - then there was Hank, and Mordo, who we found for ourselves. Plus a few others. Every would-be hero in the world answers to us, and keeps the peace, and stands ready for, well, something like this. All because I wanted to be ready to find you again.”
Her hand rested on Kate’s. Kate didn’t speak.
She couldn’t imagine anything like that from Thanos. That was time, and dedication, and care - that was someone who wouldn’t decide her daughter wasn’t good enough and she needed to be improved. Someone who wouldn’t toss a daughter aside.
Kate looked down, shaking again; Eleanor moved in to hold her.
“Thank you,” Kate said, barely managing the worlds.
“It’s what any parent would do,” Eleanor said.
“It’s not,” Kate said. She sobbed. “Thank you, mom.”
Eleanor held her tightly; Kate didn’t want to let go.
“Stay in the helicarrier tomorrow,” Eleanor said.
“Huh?” Kate said.
“It’ll keep its distance from Thanos,” Eleanor said. “Karl won’t be on board, which means the time stone would be; the helicarrier will be close enough to watch, but if anything comes too close, it can move away. You’ll be safe here.”
All at once, relief flooded her.
Her mom really was nothing like Thanos. She meant it, when she said she didn’t expect more from her; she didn’t have to face her dad. Didn’t even have to see him, if she didn’t want to.
“Thank you,” Kate mumbled again.
And she clung on so very tightly, never wanting to let go, and not sure how she’d made it through the last few years without her.
The helicarrier loomed over New York. It had lowered itself a little way, enough for the observation deck to have a clear view of the street outside the Sanctum; said street was shockingly quiet for New York. No pedestrians, not even any cars.
Kate had found her way to the observation deck. She’d stumbled through a lot of doors when she’d decided to look around the place, now that she was apparently ostensibly free - or at least, now that the Avengers were focused on something other than her.
She’d found a storage room on the way; she’d seen her bow in there, and felt the implant in her fingertip react to the proximity as soon as the signal-blocking door opened. She hadn’t picked it up.
She had, though, slipped a few arrows back into her quiver. There had been something unnerving about walking around without being able to hear them rattling back there.
Now she was sat on the floor, looking out the window. The street didn’t interest her, so much as New York did. She used to live here. She wasn’t used to seeing it from this angle, but she’d been up the Empire State - of course she had - she knew what it was like to look out on these buildings.
She tried to remember how that felt. Better to dwell on that, than think on the future.
“There you are.”
Kate glanced back, surprised; Matt had just walked into the room. She blinked.
“Shouldn’t you, er, be down there?” Kate said. “Didn’t the very-ominously-named Karl say you had to be ready by noon?”
“Relax,” Matt said. He chuckled, sitting down next to her; he tapped the strap of a parachute around one shoulder. “I can get down quickly. For Plan A, it’s better we’re out the way.”
“Plan A?” Kate said. “How many do you have?”
“Three,” Matt said. “Plan A, we send the big guy at him. Plan B, rest of us throw everything we’ve got. Plan C, pray.”
Kate hesitated. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know; it would be better to not think about this. Still, somehow she was curious.
“Who’s the big guy?” Kate said. “That was Hank, right?”
“Oh, no,” Matt said. “The four of us aren’t the whole team. Winter Soldier went AWOL in Peru two days ago, so he’s not here, etc - we don’t have the time or resources to track everyone down right now. We’re just most of the ones that are in range to be part of this. Then there’s the guy we keep in reserve for when things are bad.”
“Who is he?” Kate said.
“Emil Blonksy,” Matt said. “The Abomination. Mordo’s been up all night covering him with protective spells to make sure he can be hurt even less easily than usual. He’s strong, just… uncontrolled.”
“Abomination huh?” Kate echoed. “Sounds like a lovely guy.”
Matt chuckled.
Okay, how was the devil the most personable member of the team? Kate glanced sideways, trying to gauge him; choice of costume aside, he seemed fairly reasonable. He’d given her more of a chance than some others.
“You were the one that didn’t want to kill Thanos,” Kate said, eventually.
“I was,” Matt said. “Why?”
She’d just been saying the things that stood out to her. She hesitated.
“It just sounds strange,” Kate said. “You’re on this team, right?”
“We aren’t killers, if that’s what you mean,” Matt said. “We can protect people without taking a life. There are rules I don’t want to break, for anyone, for any reason. That’s not a path I want to walk.”
“I don’t know if they all agree,” Kate said.
“No. No, they don’t,” Matt said. He tilted his head. “Do you?”
“I… don’t know if I can afford to start feeling bad for taking lives,” Kate said.
She half-expected him to react to that; he didn’t. Instead, he regarded her, and quietly moved on. She was relieved.
“You’re right, though,” Matt said. “Hank especially does sometimes need to be reined in.”
“You don’t like him?” Kate said.
“It’s not that,” Matt said. He sighed. “I lost my partner in the invasion. I know it hurts. Hank let it drive him back to his suit - you know the particle in it isn’t safe to overuse? It’s getting to him, but he refuses to share it.”
Kate tried not to flinch from the inevitable flashbacks the mention of the attack brought. The leviathans in the sky, the crumbling buildings; sometimes she forgot that everyone here had survived that too.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said.
“So am I,” Matt said. “But yeah, that’s Hank. There’s a good person behind it. He’s just let himself be consumed by the pain.”
Kate shivered.
“I can’t blame him, then,” Kate said.
“Wouldn’t have thought you’d be the one to say that,” Matt said.
“I did… bad things,” Kate said. “Because it was the only way to live. I believed awful things, wrong things, because if I didn’t then I wouldn’t have been able to face the day. It… twists everything. I don’t know how anyone’s meant to live like that.”
She could feel him regarding her through his eyeless mask again. He’d been so concerned with her age before, she remembered; was it so much worse, just because she was young? Nebula and Gamora had been the same, from what she’d heard. It still didn’t feel abnormal.
“How do you manage?” Kate said.
“I draw lines,” Matt said. “Things I won’t do, no matter what, that’s part of it - but it’s also time. Sometimes I try to focus on the ordinary things, on living what life I have. I keep it separate.”
“Separate from what?” Kate said. Matt rapped his helmet with one hand.
“From when I let the devil out,” Matt said.
Separate.
She’d never had that. Being Thanos’s daughter was full-time; she had to be ready to kill, had to be ready to ignore any part of her that was uncomfortable. The consequences if she didn’t were worse.
Would it even be possible to tuck that away? To be Kate Bishop, without the daughter of Thanos bleeding through?
“Thanks Satan,” Kate said, eventually. Matt’s lips quirked up.
A door opened. Kate glanced back, away from Matt, to see who it was; Antonia walked into the observation room, silent and masked. She went up to the window herself, looking down on the city. She was armed to the teeth with all kinds of weapons.
Eleanor had said something about her mimicking fighting styles. Kate supposed that explained why she needed so many tools.
“Hey,” Kate said.
She didn’t expect a reply. That one brief meeting aside, Antonia hadn’t spoken a word. Now, though, Antonia glanced sideways at her.
“You don’t want to fight him,” Antonia said.
Kate did a double take. Matt merely quirked his head slightly to one side, though didn’t seem particularly surprised.
“You can talk?!” Kate said. “I knew I didn’t imagine that.”
“It’s not something she advertises,” Matt said. “Usually.”
Antonia’s voice was slightly distorted by her mask; she sounded too young to be speaking out through that metal skull. It took a few seconds for her to come up with words every time she spoke, and even then her voice was halting, careful.
“He’s stronger in your mind than he is in reality,” Antonia said.
“He has five infinity stones,” Kate said.
“If he didn’t, would you feel different?” Antonia said.
Kate flinched. Don’t think about him, she told herself.
The Avengers had some kind of plan; she’d trust they could deal with it. She didn’t need to so much as look at him. And if they failed, it wasn’t like she could do anything.
While she stood there, Antonia took inventory of herself - a staff, like Mordo’s; a bow and quiver; a shield; batons, just like Matt’s; metal gauntlets and boots that slipped onto her extremities; a string of discs, each with blue or red circles in the middle…
It was the latter that made Matt react.
“Hank gave you those?” he said.
“A handful,” she said. “I can adjust to being a different size the fastest of all of us.”
“Still, Hank compromised?” Matt said. “That’s honestly scary.”
Antonia didn’t answer. She resumed sorting through her arsenal as Matt moved away.
“Wait, why do you have a bow and arrow too?” Kate said. “I could sue. Probably. Maybe. I’m not sure how that works.”
“We had data on an old Avenger. I mimic his style,” Antonia said.
Kate faltered. She’d just been trying to lighten the mood; now she was remembering. The man that leapt off a building with no skills or abilities beyond his one bow, and just trust in himself.
“Oh,” Kate said.
She envied his confidence. Something about that moment had stayed in her mind, even through everything, but she never felt quite that good enough.
Because she wasn’t. She was the one who lost, she was the one that needed to change, she was the one who had to earn her father’s-
Kate stiffened. It was disconcerting how easily it was to start thinking like that.
“My father didn’t want me to speak. Or act for myself,” Antonia said suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. “Work out what’s you, and what he put there, and put aside everything you don’t want to be.”
She wished she could remember who she’d been in any detail. Kate shook her head, then quickly changed the topic, not wanting to linger there.
“Well. Er. Glad you got away,” Kate said. She frowned. “Wait, why don’t you tell people you can talk? Is it just to avoid conversation? Actually, wait. Probably answered my own question.”
“If Eleanor found out I’m free from the conditioning, my father would hear,” Antonia said, shortly.
“What?” Kate said. She laughed, slightly awkwardly. “No, there’s no way my mom would know someone like that.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Matt’s expression twist.
“What is it?” Kate said.
“Don’t know that now was the best time, Antonia,” Matt said.
“It might be the only time,” Antonia said.
Kate looked between the two of them.
“Seriously, what are you trying to say?” Kate said. “My mom’s good. She’s really just good.”
She stared at them. They were quiet.
And before she could push them any further, a building in the city below exploded and the helicarrier rocked.
Thanos set foot on the Earth for the second time. He didn’t have his sword, nor his armour; there was just the one golden gauntlet set around one hand. He took a step through a whorl in space, and looked around the street; all the nearby buildings had been hastily evacuated in anticipation, leaving the road devoid of cars and people both.
Then he turned his attention forwards. There was a surprisingly ordinary looking doorway in front of him; the red stone on his gauntlet shimmered just slightly, and golden runes appeared over the building’s walls, peeling away and falling like snowflakes.
And then the door grew; it spread outwards, the same grains and patterns duplicating and reflecting one another until it was three times as tall and four times as wide as it had been moments before. More out of curiosity, Thanos paused; the red stone quietened.
The door opened. A grey hand reached out around it, almost wrenching it off its hinges.
The figure that stepped out couldn’t be called human anymore. It was taller than Thanos, and bulkier, mottled and twisted flesh that nevertheless outlined the bones beneath, visible and raw musculature covering every inch of the abominable shape. There was nothing in its eyes save rage, tempered only by a minor grogginess from having just been awoken from a sleep enchantment. It was swelled and bloated on gamma radiation, strengthened further, and every spasm of pain that wracked it just making it angrier.
And wrapped around it were strings of symbols, glimmering golden runes marking out charms of protection and strength, accentuating the already-prodigious abilities of the behemoth several times over. They coiled around every finger, every muscle, the fin that ripped out from the creature’s spine, every twitching scrap of flesh, every bared tooth as the thing roared.
Emil Blonsky was thoroughly absent. Mindless, ever-enraged, the Abomination charged at Thanos.
Thanos lifted one hand. He caught the Abomination’s head one-handed, with a flash of purple, braced his feet, and twisted to throw; protective runes flared up and shattered and the Abomination was sent flying down the street. Several miles away, people screamed as a monster crashed through the second floor windows.
The purple stone flickered out. Thanos turned his attention back to the Sanctum.
“Please tell me that wasn’t your only plan,” Kate said.
She hadn’t wanted to watch, but she couldn’t look away. She was shaking; neither Matt nor Antonia had a word to say. Still, they were already moving; Matt checked his parachute, while Antonia silently brought her shield in front of her.
“You can’t be serious,” Kate said.
“The same happens if we fail,” Matt said. “We owe it to everyone to try.”
“You saw him,” Kate said.
Antonia had already opened the window. She jumped out without any clear means of survival; a few moments later, and Matt followed, Kate watching in disbelief.
A second after Thanos turned back to the Sanctum - its door now back to its usual size - a blaze of green fire surged out. It spattered uselessly against a barrier in the air, but it was followed up by Mordo; he leapt off of seemingly empty air, staff in one hand, and the other hand held in front of his chest as though half in prayer.
The stone of the road beneath Thanos’s feet turned to serpents, reaching up to bite and coil; Thanos wrenched his arm free with a grunt, and a flash of red turned the snakes back to their former stony existence. He shattered the rock with a step forwards, though his eyes now followed Mordo, and followed the Eye around his neck.
“Leave this world,” Mordo said.
“Now why would I do a thing like that?” Thanos said.
Mordo descended, the Staff of the Living Tribunal held ahead of him; Thanos went to bat it aside, only for his hand to pass through the illusion. From behind him, lightning crackled, and a bolt of sheer force arced through the air-
And even that was caught in a gauntlet-clad hand. Thanos whirled around, and pushed it back: Mordo spread his arms wide and caught the crackling whorl in an embrace of sparking, violent energy. He raised the staff, channelled the reflected potency to its tip, and thrust his weapon at the empty air: redoubled magical force blasted back at Thanos.
Thanos didn’t move an inch. Purple, red and orange stones lit up to contain the seething ball of barely-contained power, and he flicked it back.
Mordo’s eyes widened. Rather than attempt to contain it, in seconds he slipped through a sling-ring portal. The blast scorched the street behind him.
And then Antonia Dreykov landed, shield-first, directly on Thanos’s head.
Groaning, he batted her aside; she landed neatly on her hands and feet, and quickly sprung up again. Thanos raised his hand, poised to do any number of things - he could crack the ground beneath their feet, send her through a portal to another world, or turn her to liquid.
Instead, he toppled, as something below his foot grew to a height almost half the size of the skyscrapers nearby. As Thanos struggled to regain his balance, Hank brought his foot down in a stomp-
Thanos caught him with one hand. With a flash of purple, he was poised to throw again; instead, Hank quickly vanished from view, dancing onto Thano’s shoulder.
Rattled, Mordo watched from the doorway to the Sanctum. His eyes were wide with fear, but his expression was set.
“Hold him!” Mordo shouted. “I need just a few seconds.”
He retreated behind the door; Thanos lifted his hand as if to wrench him back out, only for a repulsor blast to strike his arm. His focus shifted; Antonia lowered her suit’s gauntlet, her boots flashed, and she charged at him.
Seconds, Mordo had said.
They gave him everything they had. Antonia shot forwards with modified Stark-tech, and switched to shooting sparking projectiles from her wrists that fastened to Thanos’s shoulder and shone with angry red lightning, ducking under wild blows and trying to strike from close range. Hank buzzed around him, alternately giant and tiny, too small to hit but large enough to make Thanos reel; even Antonia took advantage, smashing one of Hank’s blue disks in her hand to suddenly bring her shield down on top of Thanos, now it was large enough to crush a house.
There was a flesh of purple. Antonia was flung away, cracking a red disc to return to her normal size and not ruin more of the city. Hank took the opportunity to throw a red disc; Thanos vanished for all of a second. Then, with a flash from the red stone, he was back to his usual size.
Hank screamed as his body unpeeled, the same red shimmer seeing him slough off any notion of substance, falling suddenly-uselessly to the ground.
And a red parachute opened overhead. Momentum slowed by just a few seconds, Matt cut the strings, bring two solid-vibranium batons down.
Thanos’s focus lost, Hank reverted to his usual shape, winded and shaking. Matt was knocked aside with barely a second thought. Antonia was struggling to get back up.
And inside the Sanctum, Mordo closed his eyes.
“Forgive me,” he murmured.
The door blew open. Mordo stepped outside, with deep shadows beneath his eyes, violet, dark energy cracking, struggling to get out. His attention stayed fixed on Thanos.
A gesture saw the air tessellate and crack, a portal to the mirror dimension forged and flung forwards; Thanos raised his fist and struck it as it arrived, shattering it like glass. For a moment, it seemed like those shards were going to vanish; then Mordo went rigid, swiftly adjusting to his new power. They held in the air, and encircled Thanos, dimensional tears as sharp as blades drawing inwards.
Purple and red stones shone; they were matched with crackling, seething power that fell through the tears, purple and black energy landing inwards to wrap around the Titan. It left welts on his otherwise untouched purple skin; Thanos cried out, and clenched his fist. A blue light shone.
Thanos vanished into space, emerging behind Mordo as the blades closed in. Mordo whirled around; the weapon he summoned was not like his usual, golden construct. It was dimmed, the shade of a hollow reflection, cutting and unnatural; it severed a bolt of red light like it was mere string.
“You made me do this,” Mordo said grimly.
From outside, it was hard to say what happened. The doorway around them rippled, reflecting itself as it had moments before, tiny flickers in reality like it was unsure what ought to be where. The further in one looked, the more uncertain it seemed, until at the middle was a seething mass of specks of glass, a white maelstrom of frozen moments none larger than an atom. Some were of Mordo, some of Thanos, some of the Sanctum, and some of a far darker place.
Thanos screamed.
And then there was a sound like a million mirrors being smashed at once. The very city trembled, and the Sanctum crumbled. Cracks spread through the road, and up the walls of buildings.
And Thanos stood there, chest heaving, winded, all five stones on his gauntlet shining.
Mordo was on the ground, shaking, eyes still flickering. Thanos looked down, somewhat less dismissive than he had been moments before.
Even then, the Avengers didn’t slow. Antonia kicked her shoes into gear, and the repulsors blasted her forwards. Lasers gave way to arrows gave way to crackling jolts of electricity; Thanos didn’t even look towards her as he lifted a hand to block her.
He knelt, poised to reach for Mordo. Hank appeared between the two, growing and shrinking again to a frustrated groan from Thanos as he stumbled back.
“The stones are what give him his tricks, right?” Hank said. He glanced at Mordo.
“Hank?” Mordo said. Hank shrank down; Mordo stared. “Hank, no!”
The size of an eyelash, Hank sprang through the air. He didn’t need his ants anymore, not with this modified suit; it shot him up, zeroing in on the golden gauntlet around Thanos’s hand. Every trick they had failed, everything they threw at him wasn’t working.
Several thoughts went through his head. One was a distraction, the girl on on the helicarrier, Eleanor’s brat - there was a little jealousy there, true. He’d never find it fair Eleanor got her daughter back. Though it was hard not to feel a little sympathy if she’d had to live with this asshole.
Then, Hank thought practicalities. It was always the purple light that seemed to flare up when Thanos used his strength; he wondered how Thanos would fare against a giant man if he didn’t have that.
Thanos was righting himself, leaning forwards, poised to bat Hank away if he saw him; Hank landed silently on the smooth golden surface of the gauntlet. He crept quickly forwards, following the soft, violet glow coming from within one of the craters.
The next thought on Hank’s mind was of Hope. She was never that far away from his thoughts.
Well, he’d make the bastard pay.
Heedless of Mordo’s screeched warning, Hank dove into the gap - he touched the power stone with his bare hands and held on tight even as he started screaming and rivulets of energy melted his flesh.
There was a shockwave of purple light. The street crumbled again; Thanos grunted, stumbling back.
And the infinity gauntlet cracked in the blast. Pieces of gold fell to the floor of what had once been the Sanctum, and tiny orbs fell and bounced away, as Thanos was sent reeling.
The barely-conscious Mordo was pushed away several feet, rolling over the rubble-strewn ground. Antonia hit the far side of the street. Matt dug his batons into a crack in the street, managing to be the only one still on his feet.
And Hank Pym thought no more.
From the helicarrier, Kate could see the devastation, and hated how familiar it was.
Buildings were reduced to rubble, people fought so futilely and so desperately, and Thanos stood behind it all. She’d been here before. She’d just been on the other side.
A purple flash came from the street below; Kate forced herself to move back, looking away.
“No, no, no, no…”
They were fighting, they really were; they’d lasted longer than Kate would have thought. They tried as hard as they could, again and again, getting up and throwing everything they had it him no matter what.
Like so many others had. Kate closed her eyes, trying not to think.
They’d lose. Of course they would. They had to know that, didn’t they?
She used to hate that in people - life would have been so much easier if people just accepted it, when Thanos came to their world. She wouldn’t have needed to fight quite so much. The only thing that struggle had ever brought her was more pain - she almost envied the Avengers for not having learnt that lesson yet.
And then she thought of Eleanor. Her mom was somewhere on the helicarrier, watching and waiting, even more powerless than Kate felt. Waiting for Thanos to snap his fingers and-
Something in Kate shifted, then. Earth didn’t feel like her world, any more than Thanos felt like her father; she was too far away from it for that. But she remembered her mom. For a brief, precious moment, she understood what the Avengers must have felt when they fought for something other than fear.
She took another step away from the window. Then, quickly, she disappeared into the hallway.
There was something she wanted to get.
Mordo’s eyes were closed, twitching in some unseen nightmare, while Antonia was slumped over a raised, cracked shard of road, her leg bent in unnatural directions. Already, they knew they wouldn’t be seeing Hank again. Matthew was the only one who managed to stand.
Thanos balled a hand into a fist and brought it down on the ground, pushing himself back up to his feet. No armour, no weapon, no gauntlet; for a brief moment, he seemed stunned, slowly reminding himself of what had happened. He looked around the blasted street.
And Matt let the devil out.
Thanos might be unarmed, but he was still more than human; he was taller, bigger, stronger, though shaky enough that a blow from a vibranium stick to his elbow made his arm twitch. Thanos groaned, and swung his arm in a lumbering blow; Matt jerked back, and leapt up onto the arm, never slowing for a second as he rained down hit after hit.
He darted sideways, evading more than he was used to, but not wanting to take a hit from the faltering titan. Vibranium clubs were one of the advantages to being on the Avengers, and he used them to their fullest; he was sure his old batons would have snapped by now if he’d kept this up.
Thanos thrust a hand forwards, catching Matt in his midriff. Without the power stone, Matt merely skidded back several metres, winded, but not letting that slow him. He leapt forwards, intent on nothing but making Thanos slow down for as many seconds as he could.
Aliens had to have some notion of unconsciousness, right?
Thanos managed to hit him again - and again, until Matt was sent sprawling across the street. He spat out blood, and forced himself halfway up again, panting, glaring across at Thanos.
“Stay down,” Thanos said. He exhaled, a long, rattling breath to clear his head. “Your world should have learned its lesson by now.”
“We have,” Matt said. “Just probably not the one you wanted.”
“You should be grateful,” Thanos said.
He stood up straighter, at last getting his bearings again after the sudden onslaught. He took a heavy step closer to Matt.
Matt tried to stand more fully, before several ribs screamed at him. He slumped, then glanced sideways; someone looked back. A second later, and he turned back to Thanos.
“Antonia!” he shouted.
He threw his batons in a last effort; one missed, sailing high overhead. The other hit Thanos’s cheek like a bullet, and bounced off like it was nothing. Irate, Thanos moved closer.
Antonia, breathing laboured, still had a handful of tools still on her. Even unable to do more then drag herself around with her arms, she could twitch a hand; one of Hank’s disks whistled through the air.
And a vibranium club the size of a schoolbus came down on top of Thanos. He had just enough time to react to the shadow, before it fell.
Antonia collapsed. So too did Matt, groaning.
And then the street was still.
Matt took a deep, pained breath. So long as help came before Thanos woke up, they could probably find some way to hold him. If nothing else, Hank ought to have a supply of disks. They could make a better prison if they shrunk Thanos; the helicarrier was above, it shouldn’t take long.
Then a check-up. That definitely felt needed.
The vibranium cylinder swayed ponderously, before it toppled off of the titan’s prone body. It landed onto the street with a crash, a shockwave of air blowing tiny pieces off of Matt’s cracked costume.
Mordo still seemed to be out. Antonia was trying to move, though she didn’t have much more luck than Matt.
And then Thanos stood up.
Matt stared in disbelief; Thanos was bruised, yes, unsteady, but he seemed far more angry than he was injured. He looked around the battered battlefield with contemptuous satisfaction, and took two slow, limping steps towards Mordo, content that everyone else was out of the way.
Neither Matt nor Antonia could move. Antonia tried to reach for her bow, only to find it snapped, and no other discs were in reach. She half-screamed as she moved her left arm forwards, trying to charge the repulsor in her gauntlet; instead, the cracked glass started to burn. Quickly, with her better right arm, she tugged it off, throwing it towards Thanos.
He barely even turned around to bat it away. It exploded against an already brought-down wall.
Thanos crouched. He took the Eye of Agamotto between two huge fingers, and tugged it off of Mordo’s unconscious neck. Mordo stirred, but slumped; Thanos moved back. He crushed the amulet in his hand, wincing, but moved back several steps. Then he turned around.
He made a noise of exertion, and green light wrapped around his hand; gears turned. Pieces of metal scraped against the ground, trailing along the stone and up into the air as if on a pilgrimage. A myriad shards drew inwards, a perfect storm of specks coalescing around Thanos’s hand.
Five coloured, shining orbs of light rolled into view as well. Each took its place in the gauntlet - until, at last, Thanos dropped the time stone into place.
He smiled. Thanos turned around for a last time, a flicker of almost vindictiveness in his gaze as he looked at Matt, as if expecting the blind man to witness his achievement. Thanos lifted the gauntlet, six lights shining bright, and moved his fingers to snap.
An arrow whistled through the air.
What the hell was she doing?
Her hands were shaking almost too much to aim. Still, Kate had her arrows, she found her bow, and she’d run back to the observation room. She’d fired, amazed she could even aim.
And then she was falling. She leapt out the window, and was halfway to the ground before she remembered to check she had an anti-grav arrow; she launched it from the quiver to her hand, drew back the bow-string, and aimed it directly down; she landed on the street, a pale blue field slowing her until she came to a stop, and snatched up the arrow to stop it projecting the field.
Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.
On the other side of the splintered road was Thanos. Irritation on his face, he reached up to pull the arrow out of his shoulder; his gauntlet-hand hung limply by his side has he snapped the arrow.
There wasn’t much on Earth that was strong enough to pierce Thanos’s skin. Weapons from his own arsenal were perhaps the only exception; Kate quickly nocked her next arrow, pointing it ready, and trying to steady her breathing.
“Muscle paralytic,” Kate said. She tried to keep her voice from shaking. “You won’t be snapping your fingers any time soon. Sorry.”
He looked at her. She flinched.
“Kate,” Thanos said.
Bow drawn, she froze. There was that look in his eyes again, the same as when she lost to Gamora, and the same look he’d given Gamora before he’d gone to Vormir. The same, always the same-
“You choose these people?” Thanos said. “I’m disappointed.”
She remembered screaming for his mercy so many times, as he turned away. She remembered that cold dread, every time she tried to make him proud, and every time he didn’t even seem to notice.
Kate felt it, and forced herself to stand steady.
Thanos stood in front of her. Somewhere high overhead, Eleanor stood over her.
“I knew you weren’t ready to return here,” Thanos said. His voice was calm, dispassionate - there was no anger in his tone, merely resignation. “Put the bow down.”
Her hands shook.
And then became steady. Somehow he helped her find her resolve; she redoubled her grip, aiming carefully.
“You don’t care, do you?” Kate said.
“I care about the salvation of the universe,” Thanos said. “I am the only one willing to do this - nothing will stand in my way.”
“Not even Gamora,” Kate said.
For a moment, he did falter; still, his heavy head nodded.
“Not even her,” he said.
She fired; even without the use of one of his arms, he batted the arrow aside without a second thought.
“You aren’t my father,” Kate said. She fired a plasma bolt that only slightly marred his skin. “I have a mom here, and she cares about me - actually cares, something you’re incapable of. I have a home here. I have something I care about, not your mad dream.”
She was impressed with herself for holding her nerve; Thanos, meanwhile, didn’t react.
“You can’t win,” he said.
“Nope. Probably not,” Kate said.
She was still holding a trick arrow in her hand; she quickly slipped it into her bow, and fired it down at the ground, and was running before it hit its target. The anti-grav field that had helped her land flickered to life, catching Thanos by surprise; he hung suspended in the air for precious seconds, slowly struggling to free himself.
Kate skidded to a stop by Mordo; she knelt, and slapped him a couple of times, slightly frantic. She cast a glance sideways towards the struggling Thanos.
“Come on, come on…” she muttered.
Mordo stirred. He blinked, then whimpered as he tried to move.
“Hey. Er. You looked like you could handle him decently,” Kate said.
“Kate?” he said.
“Hey! Focus!” Kate said. “Can you do your magic thing? Still kinda a big purple problem to solve.”
“My…” Mordo said.
He blinked, coming to his senses. He turned, to see Thanos, one arm limp, almost out of the gravitational field.
“I can’t,” Mordo said. “Not at the moment. The ritual I did… complicates things. If I try to channel higher dimensions without absolute focus, there is a risk I open a doorway.”
“Okay, do that,” Kate said.
“It is not a doorway you want to look through,” Mordo said. “There are worse things in the multiverse than Thanos.”
“Great! Throw one of them at him!” Kate said.
Mordo shook his head. He closed his eyes, momentarily afflicted by something; shadows etched themselves below his eyes like teardrops, and he groaned as if consciously trying to suppress them.
“It wasn’t enough,” he murmured.
Magic was off the table then. Mordo seemed too paranoid over casting spells thanks to his new eyeshadow; honestly, he’d been her only plan. No one else had been able to do much to Thanos. Even her arrows couldn’t penetrate his skin more than a few millimetres.
She looked around, frantic; her eyes caught Antonia and Matt, both unmoving.
Suddenly she found herself frightened, not just for herself, and not just for something as nebulous as the universe, but for them. She didn’t want them to die.
Kate closed her eyes: she was Kate Bishop, daughter of Eleanor, not of Thanos. Human, mostly. What else? She didn’t want to be the slaughterer at the head of an army, she wanted to be a protector. She liked the idea of a world where she didn’t have to kill. She could start listing things about herself, start anchoring herself; they gave her a focus she was sorely lacking with Thanos just there.
Her eyes opened.
“Mordo,” she said. “Can you use the time stone?”
“Without the Eye, I…” he began. His voice trailed off. “A little. I’ll find a way.”
“Can you use it on him, without making the paralytic wear off?” Kate said.
“What are you thinking?” Mordo said. A second later, and his eyes widened. “Hypothetically. It won’t be quick - I don’t know how many years his species has.”
“Then I’ll have to keep him busy,” Kate said.
“If you can get the stone,” Mordo said.
Thanos set foot back on the ground, getting free, and then stomping the trick arrow behind him. It snapped in two, and he turned his attention back to Kate. All the stones in the gauntlet remained dim; silently, Kate tried to run mental calculations for how long the paralysing agent would work in his system. She came to the conclusion that she had no bloody idea, and resolved to hope it would last long enough.
Step one, get the time stone out of the gauntlet. Kate thought it, and two arrows shot from her quiver to her hand. She fired the first; black fog billowed out from it as it shot through the air, filling the street with an impenetrable, opaque smoke.
Then she was running. Her cybernetic eye focused, glimpses heat and movement from within the otherwise solid fog: vaguely, Kate realised that for all the surgical modifications he’d ordered for his daughters, Thanos had never taken any for himself. He couldn’t see like she could.
‘Love’ was so hypocritical, it seemed.
She fired a plasma-arrow, darted sideways, and fired another trick arrow; a line trailed behind it, a string of light that bound it to the bow. Before it had moved a foot, she had another arrow in hand; this one she swung around, aiming behind her; as soon as it hit the ground, the arrowhead emitted a shockwave. The blast carried Kate back faster than she could run, keeping her inches behind the first arrow.
She passed by Thanos, the only hint of her presence the ripple in the smoke, and caught her own arrow as it passed by the other side of him; the light-string that tied the arrow to her bow wrapped around Thanos, and squeezed tighter as she pulled the arrow.
She heard a shout, and narrowly dodged a swung fist. She leaned forwards, and an arrow shot directly from her quiver again; she caught it, and rather than fire it, stabbed it into his gauntlet.
There was a flash of green light. The arrowhead, scorched, grabbed hold of a stone; she threw it back, trusting her memory of where Mordo had been.
Five stones left.
There was a hiss as he tore threw the plasma rope, and a purple fist hit her back; Kate stumbled, righting herself with an almost instinctive arrow born from the bow’s plasma-string, delaying Thanos maybe half a second. She skidded back, trying to remember what arrows she had left; meanwhile, he strode out from the dark cloud, expression dark.
“I should have taught you better,” he said.
The street was in ruins, shards of once-smooth road now uneven and cracked. Even one-handed, Thanos picked up a chunk that was half the size of a car. He threw it, not caring that it was falling apart even as he lifted it.
Kate leapt sideways, and picked another arrow; she fired it straight-up, using the thrown rock to hide her shot. Then she kept running to the side, keeping herself on the opposite side to Mordo.
He had the time stone. Now she just had to hope.
For his size, Thanos was too fast; he was on her in moments, hand wrapped around her throat; when she raised her bow, he dropped her to have a free hand with which to try and throw it away, and she took the opportunity for another momentary, stinging shot.
He took the shot on his palm as he reached for the bow; he wrenched it from her grasp, throwing it across the street, and reached for her again. Kate froze in place.
She looked at him - really looked at him - the exhaustion in his manner, the frustration, the impatience at delay after delay when he was so close to achieving his dream. She saw the weariness, and a quiet anger at her for turning on him.
It was all shockingly mundane.
The idea of him terrified her, still - but looking at him from this close, she could barely see that Thanos. She just saw an angry being with far too much power.
He grabbed her, again, as if going to snap her neck one-handed.
Then the arrow came down. The arrowhead split off into six pieces, all connected by a shimmering forcefield; it landed around Thanos neatly, giving Kate the freedom to kick off of him and land, sprawling, on the ground. He gave a shout of frustration as he tried to tear through the field.
Quickly, half-crawling, Kate made it to her bow again. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thanos tear through even that trap; she fired another trick arrow, uncomfortable with how empty her quiver was starting to feel.
Thanos caught the arrow. The head hissed, super-cooled gas spraying out, sending frost creeping up his arm. With another noise of pained exertion, he threw it aside, still walking towards her. Nervously, Kate glanced towards Mordo.
Delay, she told herself, she just had to delay.
She stumbled back, quickly going through arrows, as he walked towards her. Tripwires, forcefields, poison, cryo-arrows, all went batted aside. He braced himself for an explosive arrow, and kept coming. There was one arrow that she shot past him, the tail containing a tiny rapid-firing laser turret; he knew it was coming. He’d built it for her. He caught it, and snapped it before it could fire even a single pellet.
Then he reached her. He grabbed her bow, hit her with it, then hit it on the ground hard enough for it to break. Kate reeled, but turned, horrified to see his paralysed shoulder moving ever-so-slightly.
It wouldn’t be long before the first trick arrow wore off. Even if he couldn’t snap without the time stone, she didn’t want to face five infinity stones.
She twitched her finger; the implant responded to even the broken bow, the plasma-string that flickered between the two segments barely present. It drew back of its own accord, preparing a last arrow, before Thanos stamped down on it.
“No more tricks,” he said.
Kate pushed herself up to her feet. She made herself meet his eyes.
“Why?” she said, breathless.
The Avengers were down, she had nothing left, and he towered over her with just moments before he could snap again. She took a strained breath, feeling her modifications whirr and protest the action.
“Why did you take me?” Kate said. “You could have just left me here, with my family. Not…”
He regarded her, silently.
“I thought you could be better,” he said.
She almost laughed. Better?
Never good enough, never right, always striving, always changing into what he wanted her to be. Sometimes, she was jealous of those that merely have to lose half their world, rather than all of it.
“You sucked as a dad,” she said.
“As last words go, I’d have expected better,” Thanos said.
He reached forwards with his one, functioning arm; he lifted her by her throat, and she felt him squeeze-
And the infinity gauntlet slipped off his hand. He blinked, surprised, looking from Kate down to his hand; it was smaller, thinner. Younger. He managed to lift his arm, too late, momentarily distracted by the sheer surprise of seeing a less hefty limb.
Kate’s feet touched the ground. He turned, suddenly feeling less weight from the strain of lifting her; the hand around her throat was smaller too, as was his arm - as too, was him, height diminishing, sapped away like water pouring from a jug.
“What-” he began.
And he shrank away. His arm drew back until he was no longer touching Kate, until he was half her height, until he was smaller still and the thin clothes he wore ended up as a pile on the street. The gauntlet lay, unworn, beside him.
Kate fell to her knees, breathless. Across the street, Mordo was watching her, visibly straining himself just by sitting up. The time stone was in his hand, bundled up in torn green robes, smoking but projecting a green glyph around his wrist.
And when Thanos was out of view, Mordo collapsed anew.
Kate started to laugh. She couldn’t help herself. And once she started, the sheer novelty of the sensation made it hard to stop; she fell forwards, tears in her eyes, disbelief and joy all at once outing themselves with uncontrolled laughter.
They’d actually done it.
Kept Thanos unable to use the stones, distracted him, made him think the others were out of the battle. Won.
A tiny purple hand, smaller than Kate’s own, reached out from under the pile of clothes. It patted around uselessly, then withdrew. A quiet gurgle was muffled by the fabric lying over it.
Kate’s laughter dried up. Exhausted, she sat up; she turned her head to survey the street. Mordo was struggling to stay awake. Antonia was watching, but too hurt to move; it was Matt who managed to crawl closer, first. His breathing was strained. Still, he pulled himself closer to Kate, staring warily at the tiny hand.
“Kate. What…” he began.
“You didn’t want us to need to kill him,” Kate said. She lasted a second, before giggling.
The hand succeeded in freeing itself. Tiny eyes in a tiny face stared up at the sun, wide and incongruously innocent. And, so small, unformed, frail, no threat at all.
“So,” Kate said, eventually. “Does your helicarrier have a place to lock up the infinity stones?”
“We’ll… figure something out,” Matt said. “Don’t want them in the wrong hands.”
“Cool. Yep. Good,” Kate said. She paused. “Does it have a nursery too?”
She looked at him innocently, before laughing again, and collapsing onto the street.
What the helicarrier did have, was a well-stocked hospital. A handful of apparently-staff helped bring the survivors there, salvaging what they could from the street - the remains of Kate’s bow and her arrows, and a delicately-handled gauntlet.
Then they were left to recover. Kate was bored after a minute in the bed.
Though it did hurt to move. Reluctantly, she resigned herself to stay there for the time being. Her enhancements ought to sort her out easily enough; most wasn’t self-repairing, but there were basic systems for anything short of missing circuitry. She could heal fairly fast, but she still needed time for everything to click into place.
The others had it harder. Matt and Antonia had been sent to sleep while broken bones were set, while Mordo of all things seemed to be meditating. It was a very boring place to wait.
Then a privacy screen sprung up; a hologram flickered into being either side of her bed, soon becoming opaque, as Eleanor hurried in. Almost at once, she was at Kate’s side, reaching to hold her before realising that doing so would just hurt her. She stopped, and sat, dragging her chair up until she was near Kate’s head.
“When I saw you were down there…” Eleanor said. She took a deep breath. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Her hand crept to Kate’s. Kate closed her eyes, feeling unexpected tears; at once, Eleanor drew back.
“Are you okay? Does something hurt?” Eleanor said.
“No. It’s not…” Kate said. She swallowed. “He never said that to me. No matter how much I did for him, he was never… It’s nice to hear.”
Eleanor’s hand returned to Kate’s.
“He’s gone now. Don’t worry,” Eleanor said. “He won’t hurt you, or anyone, again.”
“What will you do with him?” Kate said.
“He’s… contained. Don’t worry,” Eleanor said. “Novel solution, you came up with.”
Kate laughed; Eleanor smiled fondly.
“You didn’t have to risk yourself, you know,” Eleanor said. “I wouldn’t have loved you any less if you’d stayed safe. I want you to know that.”
“I know,” Kate said. “But I couldn’t… Everyone else was risking everything, and half the universe was at stake. I couldn’t stay away, even if it meant facing him.”
“You’re more important than half the universe,” Eleanor said. She squeezed Kate’s hand.
Kate closed her eyes. Eleanor stayed close, content even with the silence.
She’d been so scared, Kate reflected. Confronting Thanos had been beyond even her nightmares, for what felt like so long, but she’d still forced herself to do it. Days ago, and it would have been unthinkable.
Days ago, and she’d had a sister - one she’d never liked, but still. Her family had been Thanos, and Nebula, and Gamora, built on fear and competition. Anyone outside that group was just an unexpected enemy. She never talked to people, not really.
Then she hadn’t gotten a choice. She’d seen the people Thanos would have killed, and remembered the part of her that wouldn’t have been able to survive the Sanctuary. And…
And she’d won. She’d been good enough, she’d actually succeeded. It was nice to be able to believe that.
“I love you, mom,” Kate said quietly.
“I love you too, dear,” Eleanor said. Her hand stayed on Kate’s. “Now, please, rest. Don’t go fighting any more omnicidal monsters for the time being, okay?”
“Not for at least a week,” Kate agreed. She smiled playfully; Eleanor rolled her eyes fondly.
Kate shook. She swallowed, steadying herself.
“I missed you,” Kate said, levity flickering, her voice suddenly barely audible.
“So did I. Every day,” Eleanor said. She paused. “You’ll stay, of course. Won’t you?”
“Mom…”
“We did impound your ship - listen to me, talking about whether my daughter has a spaceship - but you can’t want to go again, can you?” Eleanor said.
“I don’t want to leave,” Kate said.
“Well. That’s that settled then,” Eleanor said.
She shifted for a moment, voice fluctuating between calm and professional, and so quiet it was like she was going to break down. She clung onto Kate so tightly.
“There’s Hank’s funeral to arrange, and our backers will want a report, so I’ll be busy for a few days,” Eleanor said briskly, before she faltered. “But… I’ll make time. I’ll find some way. I don’t want to waste a day.”
Kate looked up at her, trying to memorise every detail of her mother’s face; it scared her how much she’d forgotten, sometimes, and she didn’t want that to happen again. No matter what else happened.
She wanted to remember how it felt to have a parent who actually cared for her.
“Mom,” Kate said, quietly.
“Yes dear?”
“Don’t go. Please. Not yet,” Kate said, voice small. Eleanor smiled fondly, and leaned in.
“Never,” she said.
They’d been discharged from the hospital after a couple of days, albeit bandaged up with enchanted slings. Mordo had slipped out first, apparently disgusted with himself; he’d said something about looking up rituals to undo a connection to the dark dimension, and left before everyone else.
That left the helicarrier oddly quiet. Hank Pym was known to the world as the Ant-Man, and had a memorial due after his death in the battle. The skeleton crew that the carrier had were out in the city, preparing the event - even Eleanor seemed to be expected to take care of arranging it. If anything, she seemed in her element there.
Kate was out on top, in the open air. The landing pad was empty, and she could lay back, and feel the cool open air whip past her. She grinned.
She hadn’t seen Thanos anywhere - then again, she hadn’t wanted to look. So long as he was dealt with, that was all that mattered.
And without him looming over her, suddenly she felt fresh. It was a new feeling. There was no doubt, no endless parade of ought-tos crowding over her, no impossible judgements to live up to. She was here. She was good.
Footsteps made the ground under her head shiver. Kate opened her eyes, to see Antonia - her mask was off, unusually. Antonia stood at her head, looking down at her; Kate looked up.
“Hey,” Kate said. “You’re upside down.”
Antonia didn’t seem particularly talkative. She sat down, just by Kate’s head.
“Thank you,” Antonia said, eventually.
“Any time,” Kate said. “Though hopefully never again.”
Antonia didn’t laugh. Kate lay back for a few minutes more, content to quietly share company. Eventually, the coarse stone digging into her quiver made her shift and sit up. Antonia didn’t seem to have moved at all.
“Before the battle,” Antonia said. “I said something about your mother-”
“Don’t,” Kate said quickly.
That. She looked away; she inhaled a breath of the cold, biting air.
“Don’t, okay?” Kate said. “Just… give me this, for the moment.”
Antonia didn’t reply. Kate was glad of that.
There were some things that it was easier not to think about - that she tried to push out of her mind. The fact her father had never cared for her, that nothing she did would ever be good enough, and that she was complicit in atrocities. The fact that the kinds of people on her mother’s Avengers included the unstable Hank, and that she’d pushed Mordo beyond what he was comfortable with, and Antonia’s mention of her father, and…
So many small things she didn’t want to dwell on. It wasn’t fair.
Kate rolled onto her front, and pressed her forehead to the stony ground. She felt the sun against her back, and the hum of the ship’s engines. For a few minutes, at least, she wanted to live in a world where things were better.
She heard another pair of footsteps. She didn’t need to turn to know that it had to be Matt.
Footstep after footstep, a steady rhythm against the ground. He came to a stop close enough that she felt the shadow he cast over her.
“Two of you?” Kate said, muffled. “I thought I was getting a break.”
“Sorry. Limited socialising opportunities,” Matt said.
“I don’t have many people to talk to,”Antonia said, so deadpan it was hard to tell if it was a joke.
Kate mumbled something inaudible.
The strangest memories came back to her sometimes; she remembered what it was like to press her skin against tarmac, and then lift up a hand or limb and see the texture pressed into it. She remembered the temporary marks of that, the dots and uneven bumps, and vaguely wondered if her body could even still do that.
More intently, she pressed her forehead against the ground. She heard Matt shift above her, apparently concerned. She was honestly kind of impressed he could even tell when she tensed up.
Eventually she sighed, and relented, and sat up. She ran a hand over her forehead, both adjusting her hair, and feeling her skin; there were a few indentations, signs of the impact, even if they were interrupted by thin smooth strips of metal. That was probably good.
Kate looked sideways. Matt and Antonia, both perpetually in-costume it seemed, were sat nearby. She raised an eyebrow.
“Heck of a costume party,” she said.
“You didn’t kill him,” Matt said.
Kate faltered. Right, they were going right back to that.
“I wanted to know if I actually needed to,” Kate said. “Hey, you made me think of it, don’t complain now.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” Matt said. “Just… noticing.”
“Most of the team usually doesn’t mind,” Antonia said.
Kate’s response died on her tongue. Yeah, she had gotten that feeling, even if she hadn’t wanted to say it.
She looked at Antonia. Antonia looked back, unblinking. Kate had the uncomfortable sensation of really being seen.
“Antonia,” Matt said. “You’re sure about this?”
“She knows,” Antonia said back. “She doesn’t want to. But she does.”
Antonia didn’t look away.
Kate half-wanted to get up and leave. Their voices were quiet, as if used to not wanting to be overheard, and Kate had guessed why. She closed her eyes, and let out a long, deep sigh.
When she spoke, her voice came out smaller than she meant, like only part of her was willing to put words to her thoughts.
“My mom isn’t a good person, is she?” Kate said.
She looked away. Matt hesitated.
“She’s… done some good,” Matt said carefully. “And I believe some of her intentions are. But… no. She’s not.”
Kate closed her eyes. Antonia regarded her impassively.
It would be easier to pretend she hadn’t noticed. Then again, she’d made that mistake before.
“It’s not fair,” Kate said, at last.
She remembered what Antonia had described - some sort of conditioning, making her voiceless, as good as mindless, little more than a hollow weapon. Kate thought of the kind of person that would be content signing off on that, of the kind of person that would lead a team that could tend bloodthirsty - of who’d stand by what she’d seen of the Abomination, a monster kept leashed until it was useful.
And she thought of the woman that had been by her side when she’d had a crisis, and who’d held her hand as she recovered from the battle, and she tried vainly to square the two.
“So, what are you?” Kate said.
“I was investigating someone else,” Matt said. “He helped fund Eleanor’s campaigning - is still in contact with her, working with her and holding enough information to ruin her. When I saw he was a major influence on the Avengers, I knew I needed to see how deep it went.”
“Matt found out about me,” Antonia said, quiet.
“I found a few people who don’t entirely trust the new Avengers,” Matt said. “The CEO of Stark Enterprises, Pepper Potts, she used a blood sample and their bio-engineering team to make a cure for Antonia’s conditioning. We just need to be careful. The team’s big, and we don’t know how many on it know, and how many are just duped.”
“So my mom is… what, some kind of mastermind?” Kate said.
“Someone in debt,” Matt said. “And through her, the Avengers are in the Kingpin’s pocket. To be pointed in certain directions, or made to overlook some details. He’ll keep the world safe, of course, but anything past that…”
“He owns the world’s best peacekeeping force,” Antonia said. “And shares it with contacts that offer something in return. Like my father.”
Eleanor didn’t look at her the same way Thanos did; there was genuine care in her eyes, Kate believed that, and didn’t think she was lying to herself just then. But the way Eleanor looked at other people, people that weren’t her daughter… it wasn’t quite the same way Thanos looked, but so often she acted like they were just tools.
She thought of Mordo, so disturbed by what he’d done in Eleanor’s name that he’d left the Avengers for a time. She thought of how brusque Eleanor had been at the death of Hank, the death of someone she’d known.
Kate faltered. She wanted to say that they were wrong, that her mom was better than that. She just didn’t know how she could.
“And now they have infinity stones,” Kate said, after a moment.
“Some,” Antonia said. “Mordo kept the time stone. I heard my father ask for the mind stone. The space stone went to the Winter Soldier’s agency - SHIELD, or something - I don’t know who got the other three. We probably have one.”
“Fisk would have another. I know him,” Matt said. He grimaced. “I know it’s not a good time to ask for your help,” Matt said. “But there’s just two of us on the Avengers, and only a handful outside. This isn’t something we can do without more help, especially now.”
She had a choice, Kate knew. She could live, and probably live happily, if she ignored them. Kate Bishop, daughter of Eleanor - she could fight as much as she wanted to, but still have a home if she wanted to hang up her bow. Freedom and comfort.
Or she could listen to them, and question if she could even live with herself if she lied to herself again.
“Your family’s who you want it to be,” Antonia said. “And only who you want it to be.”
No Thanos. No Gamora. She had no idea if Nebula was even still in the universe. And now she had to choose whether to give up her mom as well.
It scared her how quickly she made the decision. With no Thanos looming over her head, she knew who she was, and the kind of person she wanted to be - not just the kind of person someone wanted of her.
“So you want to get the Avengers out of dangerous hands?” Kate said.
“Will you help?” Matt said. He paused. “Even if…”
“I don’t want to hurt her,” Kate said. She hesitated. “But I do want to stop her, if it’s like you say.”
Then she managed a grin.
“Besides, sounds like you need me,” Kate said. “I am the galaxy’s greatest archer after all.”
Chapter 8: What If.... Thor Never Got His Hammer Back?
Notes:
So. Apparently it's been a few years. idk.
Chapter Text
Jane Foster didn’t expect much from New Mexico. The sciences never got the attention she felt they should - the things that fascinated her seemed to interest too few others. Still, she hoped she’d find something fulfilling here.
The thing that would change her fate, and the fate of most of the galaxy, was a simple choice to take a left turn.
“Hey! What’s happening over there?” Darcy said.
She was pressing her head against the car window. Jane frowned, looking sideways to follow her gaze. There was a huddle of people visible, several vehicles and dozens of locals, despite the fact that this was as close to the middle of nowhere as it was possible to get.
“No idea,” Jane said.
“Ooh! Maybe there’s a party!” Darcy said.
“Hope there’s not trouble,” Jane said.
She turned to edge closer to the crowd, parking and stepping out the car. The closer she drew, the more baffling the sight became. There were no signs or stalls, no indication this was any kind of a planned gathering, but no complaining or grumbling like she’d have expected if there was a breakdown. Instead people were laughing, snapping photos, and guzzling drinks.
And at the centre of it all was a hammer. People were lining up to tug on the handle, coming away without the thing so much as budging.
“Some kind of fairground thing?” Jane said.
“No idea!” a stranger said, a few steps away. “Thing just showed up, and no one can move it.”
“Can we try?” Darcy said immediately.
“Darcy!” Jane said.
“What? It’s a hammer no one can lift, surely that’s of scientific interest to someone?” Darcy said. “Science it out!”
“Probably just some kind of trick. Something buried under the dirt,” Jane said.
Darcy had already joined the queue. Sighing, Jane locked the truck behind them, and walked up behind her.
From all outside appearances, it did look like an ordinary hammer. It rested at an odd angle on the ground admittedly; to Jane’s surprise, there were signs that people had already tried to dig beneath it, having the same thought as her. If there was any extra weight, it had somehow sunken as the surface level had lowered.
Her eyes caught on another car, out on the fringes of the gathering. It was black, more expensive and maintained than the well-used vehicles of the locals, a strange man in a suit and sunglasses watching over the impromptu party. Jane was pretty sure he couldn’t look more unnecessarily ominous if he tried. Why were suits watching over this?
Jane frowned, turning her attention back to the hammer, wondering if she could think of a way to replicate that effect. It made for a good puzzle.
Darcy tried. She wrapped both hands around the handle and pulled, audibly straining, before slumping.
“Didn’t budge,” Darcy said. “That’s not just heavy.”
“What else could it be?” Jane said.
“I don’t know, but I know heavy,” Darcy said. “That thing barely seemed to react.”
“This is silly,” Jane said.
Sighing, and just for the sake of it, she reached down with one hand and pulled. It came away with barely any effort at all.
“Name?”
“Dr Jane Foster, I told you, now-”
“What were you doing at the crash site?”
“Crash site?” Jane said. “We were passing when we saw the hammer. I didn’t know… well, about this.”
It was all a bit of a blur. There had been cheers as the hammer had finally been dislodged, and Jane was sure she remembered lightning, and a red cape, and at some point in the confusion a truck with a dodgy handbrake had started sliding, and she’d dove in front of it - but that couldn’t be right, because she was clearly still fine.
The hammer was on the floor. Opposite her was the man in a suit she’d glimpsed on the fringes of the crowd.
“It’s okay. We believe you,” the man said. “I was wondering if you could tell us how you moved it.”
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “I just… did, and it’s just a hammer, isn’t it?”
“Thor’s hammer,” the man said.
“What?”
“Well, we think,” he said. “Matches the description, Norse iconography on it, and there was all that thunder. Certainly not a normal hammer.”
Jane blinked.
She remembered feeling the lightning, feeling it in her veins and crackling in her every breath. The hammer had thrummed in her hand, felt a part of her - still did, even discarded on the floor. It went against every instinct she had but even so she knew if she just reached out to it…
The hammer leapt to her hand. She jumped, and the table between them broke in two; she span on the spot, staggering slightly. Where the hell had the cape come from?!
“This… isn’t possible,” Jane said. “I can’t be Thor. I’m.. American.”
“It’s okay,” the man said. “There are a lot of strange things in the world - even we don’t know all of them. If you’ll let us, we think we can help you - and maybe you can help us.”
Jane took a breath. She could feel electricity simmering beneath her skin. It sung, something utterly impossible to her and yet something she ached to understand.
The door to the room opened. Jane jumped, again, on edge; the new stranger barely blinked. He neared, and stood on the far side of the table. Of all things to wear, he had on an eyepatch, watching her carefully.
“Sir,” the first man said. Mr Eyepatch lifted a hand, looking at Jane.
“Dr Foster,” he said. “Graduate of Culver University, PhD in astrophysics - I’m told your thesis is a promising one, more than a few of my scientists have cited it. And I hear you saved a kid on-site. That’s quite a few gifts you have there.”
“I… think so?” Jane said, increasingly bewildered.
The newest stranger, apparently the superior, eyed her for a moment more.
“Dr Foster,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you about the Avenger Initiative.”
Jane still wasn’t sure how she felt about SHIELD.
She’d managed a rushed goodbye to Darcy and Selvig, and heard more than a few bad things about SHIELD, but at the same time they seemed her best hope for understanding whatever the hell this was. Then she’d been whisked away with a reading list that was as much mythology as science.
Thor’s hammer. Sure, why not?
No one else had managed to budge the thing when she put it down. They’d run a few tests - it never put undue weight on whatever was beneath it, but it remained solidly present, pinning anything down regardless. Until she came along and lifted it anyway.
They’d travelled overland, not wanting to risk the thing in a plane in case it brought the vehicle crashing down. Thankfully there hadn’t been any incidents.
That had left her in New York, alternately talking with SHIELD and trying to understand her new powers. Before all this, she hadn’t been one to spend much time at the gym; now she punched a bag halfway across the room.
That was the other thing. The Avenger Initiative. On paper, she had problems; the kinds of problems she was used to tackling usually weren’t solved with repeated punching. If they were, that would have made her degree significantly easier. Even past that, the idea of this shadowy organisation snapping up people with powers as, what, a private army? She couldn’t say it thrilled her.
But it was all abstract so far anyway. By the sound of it, they had few worthwhile candidates, and even if she were somehow approved, the whole initiative would probably fall apart before anything more happened. For now, she was content to just use their resources.
She went to a set-up she’d arranged to the side of the gym, measuring how much force her punch had exerted. She’d long-since stopped worrying about the fact that these numbers were impossible.
Force was determined entirely by mass and acceleration. Acceleration could be measured, and she knew her mass, and even granting the absurd prospect of the hammer generating mass our of nowhere (again, impossible, even if her biceps showed otherwise), she’d weighed herself - she did not have the capacity for the laws of physics to let her do this.
So they needed new physics. Yesterday she’d thrown a lightning bolt. Yeah, new laws of physics seemed a safe bet.
She lined up another punch and tried again. Maybe she could at least get some consistent data? Consistent deviation from the expected result could be reasonable.
The punching bag went flying across the chamber. It hit a suddenly open doorway.
“Whoa there!”
“I’m sorry!” Jane said. She hurried forwards. “I didn’t know anyone else used this place, are you-”
The stranger, a blonde man, threw the bag aside like it weighed significantly less than it seemed. He smiled, shaking his head.
“Caught me by surprise is all,” he said. He extended a hand: “Steve Rogers.”
“Jane Foster,” she said. She took his hand, then paused, putting two and two together. “Another prospective Avenger?”
“So they tell me,” Steve said. “What are you in for?”
“Picked up a hammer. Got abs,” Jane said. “You?”
“Chemical formula. Got abs,” Steve said.
“Huh,” Jane said.
She hesitated for a moment. Unconsciously, she twirled the hammer - or Mjolnir, she should get used to thinking of it as that. Mjolnir. Thor’s hammer.
“Was studying a weather pattern in New Mexico,” Jane said. She paused. “Never did find out what that was all about. I got… powers, and SHIELD scooped me up and, well, here I am.”
“Brooklyn,” Steve said. “Originally. They tell me I was frozen for a while.”
“A while?” Jane said.
“It’s 2011 right?” he said. “Seventy years, give or take.”
“Ah,” Jane said. “Yeah, that counts as a while.”
She’d have laughed off the idea of a man surviving being frozen in ice a few days ago. It didn’t seem so absurd now.
“Do you have a minute?” Steve said.
“What for?” Jane said.
“Nothing really”, he said. He shrugged. “Not had a chance to talk to anyone since I woke up that wasn’t SHIELD. Wanted to hear a bit more about the actual world.”
“In case they lied, you mean?” Jane said.
“I was trying to be polite,” Steve said.
“They keep you here?”
“Not exactly,” Steve said. “Just wouldn’t know how to leave. I saw a bit of the world outside, all electricity and cars. It’s… a lot.”
Seventy years, he’d said. It would be.
“And yeah, in case they lied,” Steve said. “I don’t know if things have changed, but in my day, you only need this many secrets if there’s a war on, and as far as I can tell there isn’t one.”
“Nice thought,” Jane said.
He walked through the gym, eyeing the available tools. Jane hung back, regarding him, not quite sure what to make of him. She wouldn’t put it past Fury to send in an actor to pretend to have more in common with her than an ordinary SHIELD agent.
Ugh, she never used to be this suspicious. Getting scooped up by a dubious spy organisation could have that effect.
She moved, and slowed as she passed a mirror. A grimace crossed her face.
“So, magic formula?” Jane said.
“Was told it wasn’t magic,” Steve said, hefting a punching bag up. “May as well have been, I admit.”
“Made you all… beefcake?” Jane said. He chuckled.
“Not heard that word used before,” Steve said. “I guess. And yours are from that hammer?”
“Yeah,” Jane said. She twirled it, then set it down. It took a few seconds of focus to dispel the change; she’d managed to will away the cape when transformed, but going from Norse armour to plaid was a journey.
Steve blinked.
“Didn’t expect that was so literal,” Steve said. “That was supposed to happen, right?”
“This is me,” Jane said. “Just trying to get used to being all… that. I’m not a punchy sort of person.”
“I get it,” Steve said. “Well, sort of. Banged my head on so many doorframes my first few days after the serum.”
“Oh thank god, it’s not just me,” Jane said. “How did you deal?”
“Practice,” Steve said. “Yeah, sorry, I’ve got nothing else.”
“Figures,” Jane said.
“Can’t relate to not being punchy though,” Steve said. “Sorry. I got into a lot of fights. Didn’t win them, admittedly, but still.”
“I’m more of a scientist,” Jane said. “Think I’m just here because they can’t get anyone else to lift the hammer.”
She adopted her best boxing stance, squaring up against the stationary bag. She wasn’t sure what it was about Steve, but even with her wariness, he was easy to talk to. There was an easiness to him.
She punched the bag with her all-too-mortal fist once. It made a rather pathetic thud, and she winced, drawing her hand back, shaking it.
“See what I mean?” Jane said.
Steve looked over to the last punching bag, with a fist-sized hole in its middle and the chain atop it wrenched apart.
“If you want me to calculate the exact force needed to send it across the room, can do that in my head,” Jane said. “Optimal angle, best place to strike. Hell, if you wanted to fling it into orbit, I could…”
Her voice trailed off for a moment.
“Only need to hit eleven thousand, mass isn’t too much, and I know I’ve hit five digits easily…” Jane murmured. “Huh. Might actually be able to do that.”
“Jane?” Steve said.
“I shouldn’t,” Jane said. She paused, eyeing the back speculatively. “I think I could. But I really shouldn’t. If I miss, I cause a crater somewhere, and if I succeed I just make more space debris. But we aren’t too far from the ocean and statistically it’d be… fine if it doesn’t quite make it there.”
She picked up Mjolnir again, barely reacting as the lightning flashed around her.
“Sorry, want to try something,” she said. “Let’s see, just need to get some kind of tracker inside it. That makes it scientific.”
He paused, then looked over to Steve.
“Wait, seventy years?” she said, abruptly. “You missed the moon landing?”
“The… what?” Steve said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jane said. “Well, it does, a lot, but not right now. Want to see something cool?”
She was grinning, a little giddier than she’d expected.
There was a lot she still wasn’t sure about, but if she was going to be given the arms of a goddess, she was going to figure out a few ways she could use them.
Alarms were blaring. Jane jerked awake; instinct made her stick her arm out, and Mjolnir flew into her hand. It was, if nothing else, a fast way to change out of PJs.
She looked around her room. She hadn’t known there were quite so many flashing red lights set into the fixtures. She grimaced, Mjolnir dispelling most of her early morning bleariness, trying to interpret the chaos.
It took her a moment to recognise the ringtone under the alarm wail. The screen displayed ‘FURY.’ Sighing, Jane reached for it.
“I don’t remember agreeing to-” Jane began.
“We need you,” Fury said.
“What?” Jane said. “Last I heard this Avengers thing wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Now is not the time to stand by procedure,” Fury said. “Meet Cap and the pilot at the hangar. A SHIELD facility is under siege. We need your help.”
“Siege?” Jane said. “From what? The US isn’t being invaded, I think ‘d have heard-”
“Best we can tell, aliens,” Fury said.
Jane paused.
“On my way,” she said.
Actual aliens?
The siege stuff she could figure out when she got there, but aliens? Sure, theoretically it made sense; they’d always been in the category of something she believed it, but figured would be out of reach. Speed of light ruined everyone’s fun.
But then again, she had a hammer that let her throw lightning and gain muscles, it made sense there were plenty of tricks she hadn’t figured out.
She knew the hangar Fury meant; there was a SHIELD site not far from where she was staying. She’d visited it a few times for check-ups and tests, and interminable questions meant to ascertain her suitability for an initiative she barely cared about. Admittedly she normally wasn’t running there in full Norse armour, but it was early morning, and it was New York. The few people awake didn’t give her a second look.
Steve arrived a minute after her. They traded a look.
“Guessing you didn’t hear more than me?” Steve said.
“Aliens,” Jane said. “Fury made it sound urgent. I don’t know.”
“Me neither,” Steve said. “But I don’t think he’d call us lightly.”
“Know who we’re meant to meet?” Jane said.
“Fury mentioned a pilot, that’s all,” Steve said. “Unless you can fly?”
“I can jump,” Jane said. She twirled the hammer.
There were a few vehicles in the facility, most some variety of helicopter - there wasn’t enough room for a plane in the heart of the city. Still, knowing SHIELD, they’d have more speed than the average chopper.
One started whirring. A redhead stuck her head out the window.
“Get on!” she shouted.
Jane and Steve traded another look. Then, together, they ran towards it.
It was only just starting to hit Jane how strange this was. She was getting called to who-knew-where to fight aliens, because apparently Fury didn’t think SHIELD’s normal hardware could fend them off.
As soon as she and Steve were sat and strapped in, the helicopter lifted up. After a few minutes, the woman in the pilot’s seat glanced back.
“You all there?” she said.
“Think so,” Jane said. “Er…”
“Natasha. Nat,” the pilot said. “You’re our specialists?”
“Apparently,” Steve said.
“Can we get more details now?” Jane said.
Nat waited a minute more, fiddling with something in the helicopter’s controls. The city fell away beneath them, and they started moving to wherever it was they were sent.
“Fury sent an SOS. We go,” Nat said.
“Why us?” Jane said.
“This is what the initiative was meant for - situations well beyond the norm,” Nat said.
“I heard aliens?” Jane said.
“Then you know about as much as I do,” Nat said. “Secure facility - place where some very dangerous things are housed - suddenly attacked in the early morning. Alert was sent.”
“To us?” Jane said.
“Unusual abilities, and as much experience as most people in SHIELD have dealing with aliens,” Nat said.
“There must be other candidates,” Steve said. “Can we expect assistance?”
“You’ve got me,” Nat said. “Couple of SHIELD agents were under consideration. One’s on the base. Otherwise there’s Stark, who is… unreliable right now now. So there’s the three of us.”
Aliens, Jane told herself. Just focus on the aliens.
Okay, she hadn’t imagined first contact being a fight for her life, but if the last weeks had proven anything, it was that she was adaptable.
“Can you fly?” Nat said.
“Why would I be able to fly?” Jane said.
“Landing’s going to be a problem,” Nat said. “Cap has practice falling using his shield, don’t know about you. Didn’t have time to read every test they’ve done with you.”
“Not practiced falling from a plane,” Jane said. “And I can’t fly.”
“Could throw the hammer,” Nat said. “I remember that nothing could stop it. Grab onto it and get pulled along.”
“Do you know how many laws of physics that would break?” Jane said incredulously. “That would be like trying to fly by pulling up your own feet.”
“Parachute training?” Nat said.
“No,” Jane said. She paused. “I’ll jump. I’ll be fine. I think.”
“You think?”
“It’s just forces,” Jane said. “I know how much I’ve lifted, I know my terminal velocity, I know the materials I’ve broken. Should be fine.”
She did her best to sound like she had any idea what she’d agreed to.
Academically, the numbers worked out - well, the rough calculations in her head did, with plenty of error allowed for. The hammer gave her a fair bit of resilience. It just went against every instinct she had honed by years of less superpowered life.
She wasn’t even going to try to think about what came next. She wasn’t a fighter - apparently superpowers made that entire question redundant though.
Slowly, their landing site came into view. Jane could recognise it without being told; she and Steve both looked out of the window, squinting to see it in the first rays of daylight.
It was like someone had dropped a small mountain half-on the base. Abruptly, tall wire fences and flickering lights were crushed and blocked by a tremendous mass, the peak towering almost to the same height as the helicopter.
It was a deep blue, streaked with white, colour only barely visible in the dim light. Near the base, they could make out creatures, though they were too far to see in any detail.
“Is that a… ship?” Jane said.
“It’s something,” Natasha said. She grimaced. “Safe landing’s not on the table. Get ready.”
Jane squeezed the hammer, as though trying to force out some extra rush of power. This was absurd, this was absurd, this was absurd-
“Now!”
Natasha wedged something in the controls, before crawling back over the seat and kicking the door open. Steve was the first to leap out of the craft, shield in hand. Jane stared incredulously. A second later, and Nat had found her way into a parachute and followed him.
Okay, this was happening. Jane looked out of the helicopter’s empty cockpit, saw the mountain-thing through the front window, and blindly leapt out the open door.
Wind rushed past her; she distracted herself trying to think of the forces on her body, dry numbers much less intimidating than the ground coming towards her with startling speed. Air resistance would balance with gravity - admittedly she was never sure of her mass when she held the hammer, both because it did strange things to her strength, and the hammer’s inability to be lifted raised so many questions about its actual weight.
She squeezed Mjolnir and felt the comforting prickle of lightning. Vaguely, she was aware she’d just passed Natasha; her black parachute slowed her descent in a way Jane hopefully wouldn’t need. Not far enough below, she saw Steve land on his shield, right himself, and immediately move to defending the facility. (She really had to figure out a way to convince Fury to let her run experiments on that thing).
Time seemed to slow, enough for her to get a vague feel for what was happening. There were scattered handfuls of SHIELD agents in position in and around one building - presumably the way into the facility proper. As she watched, one - an archer, because apparently SHIELD had those - fired an arrow towards the onrushing force. It exploded into a ball of flame, and the heat seemed to ward off the invaders.
Invaders. They came from the ship, and they definitely weren’t human. Jane swallowed. Each was maybe twice the size of a human, disconcertingly muscular, wielding weapons that seemed far too basic to belong to a space-faring race.
Then again, Jane reflected as she hit the ground, she had a hammer. Maybe it made sense somewhere out there.
The stone beneath her broke. She didn’t, barely feeling the shudder go through her. Huh. Jane took a second, half-expecting her legs to give out.
And then one of the strange things was on her; it towered over, swinging an arm that looked like it could topple a car. She ducked and, on instinct, punched it in the chest with what force she could muster. It was a struggle to adjust to the thing’s proportions - still, it didn’t seem to matter. It went skidding back, crashing into one of its fellows. Jane winced.
“Sorry!” she said, then winced again. What was she doing?
As she hesitated, a shield whirled past her shoulder, bouncing off another of the giants. Steve caught it, stopping for a moment next to her.
“You okay?” he said.
“No,” Jane said, wide-eyed.
“First time?” Steve said. His voice dropped for a moment, sympathetic in a way that felt wildly out of place. “Think about the people you’re helping. Helps having something to focus on.”
Jane nodded vaguely. Something exploded, another arrow from the inexplicable archer, and something roared. Gunfire echoed in the dawn light, though it wasn’t clear if bullets did much beyond annoy the giants. A grenade was thrown, another explosion lit up the dim ground.
She blindly swung her fists when one of the creatures lunged at her, and didn’t look to see where it ended up. All she knew was that she was running. She wasn’t sure where to.
This felt too simple. A slavering horde of alien monsters tearing their way into some secure base to steal weaponry - it wasn’t just that she struggled to believe this was real, it was that it went against everything she did believe. If there was life out there, it couldn’t be some cheap B-movie of a species, giants trying to fight their way through Earth’s valiant defenders.
But they were here.
She ran for SHIELD’s front line, blindly batting aside whatever attacked her and trying not to think about it. Steve made it before her, and Nat was only a second behind her. The one in charge of the base was a black-haired woman; Jane only barely paid attention, gulping down air and trying to steady her hands.
“Update, Hill?” Nat said.
“Couple broke past us early on,” the woman said. “Splitting our forces too much to find them. Could do with an assist.”
“I’ll do it,” Steve said. “I’m good in close-quarters.”
Hill nodded, gesturing for a door. Before moving off, Steve looked at Jane.
“I’m fine,” Jane said. She took a breath. “Really. Just needed a moment.”
He nodded, but still took a second to move off. In the distance, the archer fired off another bolt of flame, and Jane tensed.
“They’re doing something over there. Can’t tell what,” Hill said.
She gestured; Nat and Jane followed her gaze. In a hollow in the foot of the mountain-ship, several dozen giants were gathered. A handful stood in a line to guard the place from a non-existent human attack, while the rest were working some unseen controls.
Whatever they were doing, Jane doubted it was good.
“Jane?” Natasha said.
“I’ll be alright,” Jane said, on instinct. “Not used to explosions.”
“Good to know. I meant, can you do something about that?” Nat said.
“What?” Jane said.
“I saw the report,” Natasha said. “Lightning manipulation, powerful stuff - more than anything we have.”
“I haven’t- not on anyone,” Jane said.
She half-regretted it as she said it, but she couldn’t keep her hands from shaking. An astrophysics lab and a borderline war zone might as well have been different worlds. Academically, she’d known what the Avenger stuff was all about, but even if she hadn’t had significant doubts, there was a lot of difference between the abstract idea of saving people and the reality of flinging lightning at life.
Hill made a face; Natasha moved from her, to Jane.
“Look at me,” Natasha said.
“Sorry. I’m not-” Jane began.
“You’re afraid you’ll feel guilt,” Nat said. “Maybe you will, but you’re afraid because it’s an unknown. Worst case scenario is guilt, but I promise you, you can live with it fine.”
Jane swallowed.
The giants moved. Whatever it was that huddle had been doing seemed to have born fruit; two emerged from the hollow, some odd… box between them. It was a shining blue, marked by ornate gold, the kind of relic Jane would have expected to see in a museum rather than wielded like it was some kind of weapon.
Then the box opened, and ice spread.
Dimly, Jane realised too late what the mountain reminded her of; it was ice, a giant hunk of ice dropped on the base, and now that cold spread. A half-dozen SHIELD agents were frozen solid as they attempted to fend off the giants, and a smear of glassy cold spread up the wall of the base. Then the box turned, now beginning to face Hill, Nat and Jane.
Jane threw the hammer. Panic ruled her then; it knocked a giant aside with ease, and it hit the box with a crash of thunder, sending it out of the hands of its wielders.
Mjolnir returned to her hand. She called lightning again, unsure of what to do, but certain she had to something. All else aside, that thing was killing people; it effectively cut through her uncertainty, at least for so long as the rush of adrenaline lasted.
Before she could throw lightning, one of the giants bellowed. She couldn’t make out what it said. Instead, she just watched as, somehow, the giants retreated.
She stared in disbelief, Mjolnir still in hand, as the creatures fled back into the shelter of their mountain. Bewildered, Jane traded a look with Nat; Nat looked back, wary, but relieved.
The box was hastily drawn back into the ship, out of view and out of range. Still, the one strike seemed to have broken the spirit of the assailants. But when the fleeing giants looked back over the shoulders, it wasn’t Jane they looked at, or the archer, Jane realised - they were looking at the hammer.
King of Asgard.
Loki looked at his reflection. He straightened his back a little, and extended his will to make his crown a touch more ornate. His robes were fine, and green had always suited him, and the mantle was his.
King Loki.
Technically it was temporary - while Odin was asleep, someone had to rule, and by right that someone was him. Some still saw him as a prince, he knew, he could hear the whispers sometimes, but enough said King that it would have to catch on.
The Nine Realms were his.
Why didn’t it feel better?
The realms had always felt more or less secure. Beyond vague platitudes, and the occasional duty every few decades, it was never something he’d needed to give much thought to. Now, though, there was chaos - and chaos beneath his throne made his prize feel so much less stable.
“The revolt has spread to Vanaheim, majesty.”
“Send the Destroyer,” Loki said.
Tyr paused, a second. Loki grimaced - people were meant to listen to him.
“Does that truly seem so radical to you?” Loki said.
“It is not a weapon we have used frequently,” Tyr said.
“Save for exceptional times,” Loki said. “As you say, the revolt has spread - the people think that in my father’s absence, the Nine Realms are theirs to pillage. One drastic action will break this chaos, rather than drawing this out.”
“As you say,” Tyr said.
How had Odin kept all this straight in his head? Every realm, their locations, vulnerabilities, climate, people… All suddenly seizing the chance to throw off the yoke of Asgard’s authority.
Asgard was lucky it had him. With Odin inevitably asleep, they needed a smart ruler - an oaf like Thor would never have kept up with this.
Put down one revolt harshly enough and the rest would stop, and he could get to the business of being King without this aggravating chaos.
Thor. It was strange to be without him, Loki would admit. He’d been worried when the Warriors Three had gone to him to try a coup; when he’d seen their failure, though, he’d been relieved. Their brief attempt to overthrow him had gone poorly. Fandral had been buried - with some honour, the people needed that - and the rest scattered. Heimdall had lost his role as punishment for his betrayal. Things were meant to be stable.
“Was that necessary?”
Frigga’s voice. She was the only one who came into the throne room without announcing herself. Tyr left, she walked in, and Loki sat there.
“Don’t question me, mother,” Loki said.
“I only mean that this is a lot for you to carry,” Frigga said. She moved closer. “Your father never had to rule alone.”
Loki stared at the empty wall. It was polished enough for him to see his face, and the golden horns that marked his authority. He’d added another set, tangling with the first, to symbolise his ascension.
King Loki. This was what he’d wanted. This was what he was owed.
“Loki?” Frigga said.
She was closer now; she rested a hand on his shoulder.
“These aren’t normal times,” Loki said. “I do what I have to.”
“I understand,” Frigga said, calming. “No one blames you. And no one would judge you if you let us wake your father, while the realms are so unstable. They-”
“No!” Loki said.
His voice echoed in the hollow room. He steadied himself.
“I mean, there’s no need for that,” Loki said. His voice only shook slightly. “I will not have him see me fail.”
She eyed him for a few seconds, thinking silently, before she nodded. Loki pretended he couldn’t see the conflict in her eyes.
“As you say,” she said.
There was a lull in the fighting. Jane had set the hammer down, and found a place to change from her pyjamas into a SHIELD scientist uniform that had been spare.
Steve was there; apparently he’d found the giants that had made it into the facility. Hill, the senior SHIELD agent of the staff, and Nat were there too. Hill hadn’t been able to say much more than they already knew; the mountain had landed mere hours ago and they’d immediately swarmed the base, seeking something. She’d barely had time to send the alert to Fury.
Hill tried to push the hammer aside, grimacing when it didn’t move. Tilting her head, Nat prodded it too, bemused.
“We don’t know what they are,” Hill said.
“Jotunn,” Jane said.
Hill looked at her.
“I’ve been reading mythology after this,” Jane said. She tapped the hammer, hand still shaking. “Giants. Used ice. They knew the hammer, too. Jotunn. Frost Giants.”
“Need to call them something I guess,” Hill said. “Jotunn, then.”
“Any idea what they’re after?” Nat said.
“I do,” Steve said. He stood by the wall of the room, wary. “One of the ones I found had this on him. Some kind of detection device, I think.”
He held a rocky, crystalline thing on his hand. One side of it shone a pale blue; even when he turned it, and put it down, the light stayed facing the same direction.
“Followed it, in case it led me to any others,” Steve said.
“And?” Hill said.
“The cube,” Steve said.
“Ah,” Hill said.
“What were you doing with that?” Steve said.
“Keeping it secure,” Hill said. “Would you rather we left it at the bottom of the ocean for anyone to find?”
“I know what vaults look like,” Steve said. “They don’t keep artefacts out in the open surrounded by scanners and weaponry and schematics. You were using it.”
“Better us than someone else,” Hill said.
Jane looked between the two of them, unsure. Whatever the glowing cube was, apparently it meant something to Steve; she watched him pause, mulling over his words, almost grinding his teeth.
“I’d have liked to be told,” Steve said.
“If we were to tell you every project SHIELD was working on, you’d die of boredom before we were halfway done,” Hill said.
“Not every project, just any that involve that,” Steve said. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean, I definitely wasn’t born yesterday.”
“What is it?” Jane said.
“Powerful,” Hill said.
“A weapon,” Steve said.
“That the invaders want,” Hill said. “Can we agree we don’t want them getting their hands on it?”
Steve nodded. He didn’t look away from her.
“So what’s our status?” Nat said, interrupting the stare down. “Any idea what the Jotunn are doing?”
“They’re still in their ship for now,” Hill said. “Debating going after them, but don’t want to risk fighting them on their home turf. We’ve improvised what scanners we can to get a read on what’s happening with their mountain.”
“And?” Jane said.
Hill pushed a screen across across the table. A dozen different lines and graphs filled the display, all neatly labelled. Jane squinted, almost missing what Hill said next.
“Starts midway through the siege,” Hill said. “We wanted to know what we were up against. There are energy patterns, radiation signatures, even audio cues, we just don’t know what any of it means. Have a few teams working on it, nothing yet.”
“There’s a drop in… everything, at fourteen past,” Jane said.
“Around when they used their freeze ray box, whatever it was,” Hill said. “We noticed that.”
Jane frowned; the Jotunn retreat was still playing on her mind. If they really were the things from Norse myth - and part of her was still processing that possibility - it would make sense that they were wary at the sight of the hammer. Still, they’d also been very defensive of the box.
All that effort and preparation, apparently, to begin using it, only to flee after a couple of minor cold spells.
“We think it either uses the same power source as their ship, or is the power source,” Hill said. “Don’t ask me to explain how it works. Strange if not.”
“They pulled out the heart of their ship to attack us?” Jane said. “That doesn’t sound practical.”
“Sounds improvised,” Steve said. “If I’m understanding. That’s not a planned war strategy, that’s making do with what you have.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Hill said. “I’m not psychoanalysing aliens - but if you’ll note, there’s no sign of their ship returning to its old levels.”
“Meaning the weapon is still ready to be used,” Nat said.
“And that they probably can’t take off,” Jane said. “They’re staying.”
SHIELD somehow had an artefact that the Jotunn wanted, and their ship was apparently physically unable to function until they put the box-weapon back. If nothing else, it meant they were serious.
This wasn’t any sort of first contact that Jane had hoped for.
Before she could say anything else, there was a knock at the door of the briefing room. The archer Jane had seen in the fight - Clint, she’d heard him name was - stuck his head around it.
“Ma’am, there’s movement,” he said. “Check the screen.”
Hill nodded. There was a row of computers behind her, several screens giving feedback from various areas around the base, with a smaller monitor dedicated to footage of the static mountain that had crushed half the base.
A second later, and that feed had been moved to a larger screen. It was hard to tell if the mountain had anything as prosaic as doors. Towards its base, there were cracks and deep gorges that concealed their interiors in shadow; no one had risked getting close enough to make it out in any more detail.
The Jotunn had fled into those shadows when Jane had thrown Mjolnir. Now, something was emerging; rather than one of the rough-skinned giants though, it was a woman. Dark-haired, pale skinned, ostensibly having nothing in common with the giants.
“Is that a human?” Jane said.
“Hostage?” Steve said.
“Doesn’t look it,” Hill said. “Armed.”
As the woman drew closer, the shield on her arm became more visible. Jane squinted; why did all the aliens wield medieval weaponry?
Still, the sword at her side was sheathed, and the shield wasn’t being waved threateningly. If anything she seemed to just want to avoid a hail of bullets.
The woman’s mouth opened; Hill hit a button, letting crackly audio come through.
“Hail! I would speak with the hammer-bearer,” the woman said. “I offer a temporary truce.”
She unsheathed her sword - and laid it down on the ground, hilt facing away from her. Then she stepped back to regard the facility, watchful.
The feed went quiet. Jane hesitated, looking from Hill, to Steve, to Natasha.
“That’s… good, right?” Jane said.
“Could be a trap,” Hill said.
“Or could be a chance to get intel,” Natasha said. “I say she goes.”
“And if they just want to eliminate a threat?” Hill said.
“I’m right here,” Jane said. “If they just want to draw me out, surely there are easier ways? Besides, I have the hammer, I don’t think they have an easy way to take it.”
“They know more about it than we do,” Hill said.
“They fled when they saw it,” Jane said.
“Could be regrouping,” Steve said. “Needed time to prepare a response.”
“You don’t think I should talk to them?” Jane said.
“No. You should,” Steve said. “Just… be ready.”
Natasha nodded. Hill grimaced.
“Fine,” Hill said. “See if you can get any more information about them. Getting them to leave is a long shot. We’ll be at your back if it goes awry.”
Jane nodded. Taking a breath, she reached for the hammer again, and let herself change.
Jane Foster, ambassador to Norse Alien Things. Jane had decided to just go along with whatever ended up happening.
A lot of the SHIELD facility’s above-ground resources had been cleared away, either by the fighting or to aid in the fighting. There was the metal building Jane emerged from, the mountain on the far side, and in between was little beyond bullet casings, toppled cars, and twisted pylons.
Keeping a tight grip on Mjolnir, Jane walked out. As she emerged, the unknown human-looking woman straightened. She started walking as Jane did, leaving her sword on the floor.
Did that mean this was in good faith? They were a good few metres from the blade when they met; it seemed to at least imply the woman wasn’t trying to ambush her.
Was there some ritual she ought to be following? Hopefully the stranger would forgive any ignorance on her part.
The woman’s eyes flicked to Mjolnir, held at Jane’s side, before going back to Jane’s face. She inclined her head slightly.
“Well met,” she said. “Lady Sif, of Asgard.”
“Aren’t you meant to be blonde?” Jane said.
Sif blinked.
“Sorry, read a lot of- doesn’t matter,” Jane said. “Um, Dr Jane Foster. Earth.”
Jane winced. Don’t make a bad first impression on the alien warrior-woman. She inwardly pleaded with herself, trying to suppress a nervous babble.
“How did you come by that hammer?” Sif said.
“I, er, found it?” Jane said.
Sif’s gaze turned to a glower, apparently still sizing Jane up. Jane tightened her grip on it. Vaguely, she was aware that they hadn’t tested the ‘no one could lift it’ hypothesis on any non-human. For all she knew, Sif would be able to steal the thing like it was just an ordinary hammer, and that Jane had someone gotten lucky (or had really weird ancestry).
“It is not yours,” Sif said. "I trust you are aware of that.”
“I’m the only one that can lift it,” Jane said. “If that counts for anything.”
“Lift?” Sif said.
Her brow furrowed; she reached forwards, pausing only when Jane flinched. Then, more gently, she offered an open hand. Tentatively, keeping a firm grip on the handle, Jane offered Mjolnir, poised to yank back if she needed to.
Sif just tugged on the head of the hammer. Jane felt nothing, no pull, even when she saw Sif’s grip tighten. Sif’s frown lingered.
“I have… never known it to do that,” Sif said. She paused. “I had heard it was enchanted. Interesting. Perhaps it is yours.”
She lowered her hand. Relieved, Jane lowered Mjolnir, still keeping it close.
“Be that as it may,” Sif said. She made herself focus, frown fading. “If it has chosen you, I trust you are reasonable.”
“I try to be,” Jane said, trying to sound confident. “So when a horde of giant… things are attacking, I’ll do what I can.”
“Attacking?” Sif said. “We tried to speak - your people attacked us.”
Jane grimaced, thinking of SHIELD. Somehow that didn’t surprise her.
“I arrived late,” Jane said. “Start at the beginning. What exactly is going on?”
“War,” Sif said. She took a breath. “Over your heads, worlds you do not know are embroiled in a conflict that spans the Nine Realms. Asgard kept a tight leash on the chaos, but that leash has been broken now Odin has been usurped.”
“And what does that have to do with Earth?” Jane said.
“An ancient weapon of Asgard was kept on Midgard,” Sif said. “We demand it back. It is ours by right - and with it, the Bifrost the usurper uses to threaten and control the realms may be broken.”
Jane wasn’t sure if reading Norse myth made this easier or harder to follow. She knew the names, but having someone talk like Odin and Asgard were real places was a lot to swallow.
“The cube?” Jane said.
“Just so,” Sif said.
“You’re asking for a lot,” Jane said.
“We are asking for what is ours,” Sif said.
“Which is a weapon,” Jane said. “To give to people that were just attacking us.”
“I would have preferred an easier solution,” Sif said. “We were not given that chance - the Jotunn are angry, and that anger is justified. They would rather direct that anger at the usurper, but I cannot promise that they will continue to restrain themselves.”
“Comforting,” Jane said.
“This was a courtesy to the hammer-wielder,” Sif said. “I assure you, I have broken stronger sieges than this. I swear by Yggdrasil itself that we have no desire to stay after we possess the Tesseract, and I swear that we will not leave until we do.”
Her eyes were cold; Jane stiffened, and managed a nod. However talkative Sif might be, there was no mistaking the icy certainty in her eyes.
Jane was still reeling. She wouldn’t claim to be enamoured by SHIELD, nor thrilled that Hill had kept certain details from her, but neither could she say that the Jotunn had made a good first impression. If the cube was as powerful as everyone seemed to think it was, it was probably better in the hands of the people less adept at using it.
Better that than getting dragged into an alien war. She had no idea how the ‘real’ Asgard compared to the myth; stories typically depicted Odin as on the right side, but history was unreliable, and someone the Vikings considered heroic might well be someone it was good to overthrow.
Not that she wanted to say any of that to Sif.
“I’ll talk to them,” Jane said. “No promises.”
“Persuade them,” Sif said. “I would prefer this end without the deaths of the ignorant.”
Sif turned. Jane watched her go, glimpsing movement in the shadows of the Jotunn mountain. She had the distinct impression that the meeting had been watched.
So the Jotunn wouldn’t hold themselves back forever; that was good to know, if not surprising. By the sound of it, this would either end with SHIELD handing over the Tesseract, or the bloody battle would resume. Neither seemed appealing.
As she walked back to the base, Jane thought of the hammer again. Sif had known its previous owner. According to the myths, that was likely Thor - hopefully they wouldn’t have to worry about a thunder god descending on the battle. Jane didn’t know how well she’d handle that on top of everything.
He wasn’t the sort of man that got a second look. When he did, it was just out of pity or disgust. An eked-out living throwing things onto the back of a truck, an impromptu home in the corner of the yard that the manager pretended not to notice, and evenings drinking the cheapest beer at the bar.
“Wasn’t always like this, you know,” he said, slurring slightly. The duo near him got up and walked away just in case he was talking to them. He didn’t notice. “Used to be better. I used to be…”
“Cutting you off,” the bartender said.
The man mumbled something. He didn’t have any name to speak of - not many had even tried to ask, but those that had never got an answer.
He staggered out of the bar, brushing a strand of long, greasy blond hair out from his eyes as he looked up at the stars.
“Used to be a god,” he mumbled.
And then he slumped to the ground, back against the wall, chest heaving, sobs echoing in the empty alleyway.
“You shot first,” Jane said.
“Yes,” Hill said.
Back in the meeting room. Jane was back in her borrowed SHIELD clothes, out of the empowered form the hammer offered here. Steve was sat, though he looked to have moved around plenty while Jane had been absent. She wasn’t sure where Natasha had gone.
But Hill was still there, watching everything on the screens.
“They said the only reason they attacked was self-defence,” Jane said.
“They say that,” Hill said.
“I don’t think every alien species is going to shoot first,” Jane said.
“SHIELD has been doing this a lot longer than you,” Hill said. “Do you think we haven’t met aliens before? When a ship that could crush a building descends into the atmosphere and makes its way directly for a high-security facility, that isn’t something they do to just say hi.”
“You could have tried,” Jane said.
“And they’d have asked for the cube, we’d have said no, and we’d be in the same situation,” Hill said.
“There’s no way you could have known that.”
“You do this long enough, and you absolutely can,” Hill said. “Are you finished with trying to change the past?”
Jane grimaced.
A battleground still didn’t feel natural to her, and she liked it less getting dragged onto the same side as the aggressor. Still, grudgingly, she’d admit Hill had a point.
“They’re not leaving without the cube,” Jane said.
“That’s going to be a problem,” Hill said.
Steve shifted, leaning forwards.
“She says they’d leave if they had it,” Steve said. “Do we believe her?”
“I… think I do,” Jane said. “Not sure, but she swore it, and oaths were treated as a big deal in the myths. She wouldn’t have any reason to stay.”
“What about the war she spoke of?” Steve said. “Any read?”
“No,” Jane said. “She talks like she’s on the right side, but anyone would.”
“Agreed,” Steve said. “I don’t like the idea of saving ourselves at the cost of dooming some other people.”
“Same conclusion, different reasoning,” Hill said. “I trust we’re agreed we can’t let her get the cube?”
Reluctantly, Steve nodded. A second later and Jane echoed the gesture.
They knew more now, but it didn’t feel like it had changed anything. There was too much they didn’t understand about Sif. Jane doubted SHIELD would give up the cube even if she had asked them to, which didn’t help matters, but an apparent-weapon in the hands of the Jotunn was scarier - whatever Sif said. Even if Earth didn’t face the consequences, she didn’t want to live with unknown lives on her conscience.
Though the way this was going, she’d have lives on her conscience by the end of this regardless.
“They’re going to strike again, sooner or later,” Steve said. “Any idea what our chances are?”
“Better than they were, now you’re here,” Hill said. “We won’t be on the back foot. Hawkeye’s fire did more than bullets, so we’ve improvised high-temperature weapons where we can. And we’re rolling out the Tesseract-powered guns you so-disapprove of - if they want it, it’s got to do something to them.”
“I’m willing to delay that conversation,” Steve said. “Do we have enough?”
“No idea,” Hill said. “Nat’s working on getting a read on their numbers. Then, we’ll find out if we have a shot.”
“Is Fury sending anyone else?” Jane said. “He can’t expect the two of us to be your only assistance.”
“He was,” Hill said. A scowl flickered across her face. “Truck was sent right after you. Got word five minutes ago - frozen on the road. There’s some kind of barrier around the base.”
“We got in,” Jane said.
“Which seems to be what reminded them to put it up,” Hill said. “Best we can tell, it was overconfidence. If we assume these things inspired Norse myths, they probably weren’t ready for us to be able to call for reinforcements - radio wasn’t even a pipe dream the last time they were here.”
“Still. Oversight,” Steve said. He tilted his head. “No recon, and no wasted power. I get the feeling Sif was telling the truth about this being some rebellion.”
“Changes nothing,” Hill said. “Not every scrappy underdog is right.”
“Says the top dog,” Steve said.
Still, he sat back, eyeing the monitors silently. The screens displayed the mountain, early morning light making it look almost serene, if not for the discarded military hardware crushed and mangled around it.
“Best to assume no one’s coming,” Hill said. “We’ve moved the Tesseract somewhere more secure - if they can track it, better to make sure the position’s defensible. Willing to be our last line, Cap?”
“Probably best,” Steve said. “Front line being?”
“Hawkeye, Dr Foster, everything we have to thin their numbers,” Hill said. “Unless they pull out something shocking, those are the assignments.”
Jane nodded, trying not to think about how overwhelming the battle had been the first time.
Something chirped. Glad of the distraction, Jane leaned forwards as Hill turned around; one of the displays had flickered on. Hill smiled.
“There we go,” Hill said.
“What’s that?” Steve said.
“Natasha took advantage of everyone watching Jane and Sif’s chat to infiltrate,” Hill said. “One thing we can say about the Jotunn - they show up on thermal imaging clearly, every one of them a cold spot. Nat was confident she could avoid them.”
Static appeared on the screen. It only barely resolved itself, giving a suggestion of two figures - given the difference in height, Jane guessed it was Sif and one of the Jotunn. It was hard to make it details, almost everything a similar dark shade, interference flooding the screen.
The audio at least came through clearer. Jane went silent; she could recognised Sif’s voice, even distorted as it was.
“…will wait, Hrungnir.”
“We have waited!” The answering voice was gravelly; even when it came through whatever recording device Nat had, Jane could almost feel the rumble of it.
Vaguely, she was aware she’d never heard any of the other Jotunn talk. She’d heard their bellows, their roars, but never the sheer rage in their voices. She didn’t even want to begin figuring out how it was she could understand them.
“For a thousand years, we waited, the heart of our people stolen by yours,” the so-named Hrungnir said, a growl ever-present just under his words. “You would have us wait out of deference to you? It was an Asgardian weapon they wielded against us.”
“I retrieved the Casket of Ancient Winters for you,” Sif said. “Is that not proof enough for you? Whatever our past disagreements, each of us wish Loki off the throne. I give you my word, again, that I do not know how she has the hammer.”
“I have never trusted an Asgardian’s word,” Hrungnir said.
Steve and Jane traded a look, while Hill continued to watch the screen intently.
Mjolnir was resting on the table, unmoving. Jane stared at it; it really seemed to have the Jotunn concerned. That was a good thing, right?
“We will not wait for what we are owed,” Hrungnir said. “Our king is dead, our people are willing to die to see vengeance done for the actions of yours.”
“Loki is not my king,” Sif said. “I will petition King Odin to find your people a new world if-”
“I trust Odin less than I trust you,” Hrungnir said.
“But you know that I am the best chance your people have,” Sif said.
They couldn’t see Hrungnir’s expression in any clarity, but they could hear the growl. Jane shuddered. Sif, meanwhile, seemed unintimidated.
“You will listen,” Sif said. “Yes, your people raged and waited a thousand years, because you could do nothing. When you had a world, and your people, and even when you had the Casket, you lost a war with Asgard. I am offering you the only opportunity you will ever have to strike at the one who destroyed Jotunheim.”
“I will not wait another thousand years,” Hrungnir said.
Jane heard footsteps. A second later, and the communication cut off.
She couldn’t imagine how Nat did this; she must have recognised Sif and figured that was worth eavesdropping on, but to be in that place, surrounded by the Giants, and relying on not being seen…
More and more, Jane felt out of place.
“That doesn’t sound like a stable alliance,” Steve said.
“No,” Hill said. “Another reason to make no deal with Sif - doesn’t sound like we can expect the Jotunn to keep it.”
“They said they’d lost their world,” Jane said.
“We don’t have the context to pass judgement,” Hill said.
“I’m with Foster,” Steve said. “Whatever war’s going on, I don’t see any way that isn’t excessive.”
“Okay, tragic backstory, what does that change?” Hill said. “You heard what I did - they don’t sound willing to wait, and they don’t care about listening to us.”
Reluctantly, Jane slumped back. She found a guilty part of herself wishing the Jotunn had made themselves easier to hate. Instead, the more she heard, the more it drove home how desperate they apparently were.
“And the Casket they mentioned?” Jane said. “Is that the box they used?”
“Probably,” Steve said. “I imagine they wouldn’t need to remove it from their vessel if they’d had the time to prepare for this.”
“Small blessings,” Hill said.
“Seems important to them,” Jane said. She frowned. “No idea how it works. You can’t just generate cold like you can heat, certainly not on that scale. There ought to be a heat spike somewhere.”
“We have people trying to figure out everything we can about them,” Hill said.
“Where?” Jane said. “I want to join them.”
“We need you on standby if they attack,” Hill said.
“I’ll keep the hammer close,” Jane said. “But until they do, I am qualified you know. I want to do something when I’m not waving the hammer around.”
Hill paused for a moment - then sighed.
“Down the hall, left, down the stairs,” she said. “Be ready.”
Jane nodded. Still, even when she picked up the hammer, she couldn’t help but be glad of a chance to be Dr Jane Foster again.
An empty hand was thrust skywards. It lingered there, outstretched, as if waiting for something. Nothing came. Still, the hand stayed, reaching out for the sky.
Once upon a time, his name had been Thor. It had been a while since anyone had spoken it, least of all him. It was odd how long a life could be lived as a nameless thing, a body moving from place to place with no purpose or duty or role beyond survival and doing what work it took.
He sat in the empty shadow of a fence, alone, waiting for something that would never come.
And then there was movement. Thor groaned, turning away from it, not wanting to deal with a stranger; then he saw the shadow. A figure approached, tall horns emerging from its head.
“Brother!”
Thor pushed himself to his feet, staggering forwards. He passed through the illusion. Shaking, he turned back around. Loki still stood there, far too grand for such a mundane setting. His crown was ornate, no longer the quiet boy that always stood a step behind him.
“Brother,” Loki said. “It’s been a while.”
An illusion sent all the way from Asgard. For a moment, Thor let himself just stare; it almost made him weep, how mundane Midgard was. Even a simple enchantment like this made him long for home.
“Is this it?” Thor said. “Is it over? Open the Bifrost, let me come back.”
“You know I can’t lift your banishment,” Loki said. “I’ve tried, but father’s magic is too potent to merely undo. For so long as you are mortal, Asgard is not your home, and without Mjolnir you can’t have your old power.”
Thor slumped. Eyes downcast, he missed the smile that crossed Loki’s lips.
Loki was a liar, it was true; even the mortals of Midgard seemed to know that much. Still, this was all Thor had, and he didn’t want to believe Loki would lie about this. Not now.
“So this is it,” Thor said. “My life will be a mortal one, weak and pathetic and forgotten. And you, you’re King now while father is asleep. You must be happy.”
Thor expected his brother to gloat. That had always been Loki’s way. Instead, silently, the illusion walked over to sit beside him.
“I thought I would be,” Loki said. “This is everything I wanted after all. But no, not happy.”
“I know how you wanted the throne,” Thor said.
“Not so much the expectations that come with it,” Loki said. He sighed. “There are worlds trying to take advantage of father’s absence. Jotunn tried to assassinate him - I stopped them, don’t worry, but it is… exhausting.”
“I never thought of the burden that would come with it,” Thor said, after a moment. “I… suppose that was father’s motive in sending me here. How are you faring?”
“Well,” Loki said. “I will keep the peace, tiring as it is. Don’t worry on that count.”
His words were a little too fast. Thor turned, eyeing the illusion carefully. Loki had to be very tired indeed if he were to make a lie so obvious.
“I wish I could offer more aid from-” Thor said.
“I do not need your help,” Loki interrupted. “I can do this. I am not less worthy a king than you, or than father.”
Once upon a time, Thor would have pushed. Now, he didn’t have the energy.
“The throne is yours, brother,” Thor said. “I would gladly forsake it if that were the cost of leaving this place.”
He held his expression, anger slipping out only as he hit the ground below him. Once the blow would have cracked the stone. Now, his hand just hurt, and he slumped further. While Thor stared into the distance, Loki looked at him.
“I cannot undo what father did,” Loki said. “And I don’t need your help. But I could do you a favour.”
“A favour?” Thor said.
“There are Jotunn in Midgard,” Loki said. “A handful fled punishment. I recall how you so enjoyed fighting them.”
“Would that I could,” Thor said. His face twisted. “Weak as I am, I can offer little.”
“I could help,” Loki said. “While I cannot undo father’s magic, I do have access to some of the throne’s power. I could offer you a little.”
“Do it,” Thor said, sitting upright. Loki smiled.
“It wouldn’t be the same,” Loki said. “But I’m sure you could adjust. Swear to follow me, and for so long as you are in my service, Asgard’s power is yours.”
“Yes,” Thor said. “Please. Anything. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
He scrambled to sit up - then to kneel, as Loki stood over him. It barely crossed his mind how strange this felt. Once, he was sure, he’d never have considered this. Now, he didn’t want anything more.
Father had apparently expected Midgard to change him. It had - it had make him miss what he was, miss the royal life, and miss his power. Once, the skies had darkened at his wish, and he could make the ground tremble with a step. After living like that, how was he supposed to adjust to anything else?
Loki rested a hand on his shoulder. Thor felt a whisper of achingly familiar magic.
“Doesn’t this feel right, brother?” Loki said. “The throne wasn’t fulfilling, but this? You and I, side by side again. Well, perhaps you’re not quite as my side. Still.”
Like a man dying of thirst that would drink from a puddle, Thor welcomed a flood of old power into him. Lightning, tinged a light green, flickered at his fingertips and eyes, and an illusory hammer manifested in his hand. It was solid enough, though blank and featureless and a mere parody of the original. Still, it was his.
If Asgard was out of his reach, and if the throne had gone to another, he could at least be a god among mortals.
Waiting was the worst part. Hill had ruled out going on the offensive - something Jane was glad of. The Jotunn were too much of an unknown as it was, fighting them on their home ground would almost certainly end in defeat. Better to ensure the base was defensible and rely on their impatience.
Which meant that all they could do was wait. Jane had stared at figures and footage until her eyes started to glaze over, relying on half-remembered lectures. She’d ended up keeping out of the way of most of the SHIELD scientists - astrophysics was less immediately relevant than most of the fields practised in this room.
The one thing she was an expert in though, apparently, was magic. She’d ended up in command of a small team trying to untangle how the so-called Casket worked; it operated outside the bounds of any human understanding, but then so did Mjolnir. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was easier to believe that the apparently-connected species of Jotunn and whatever gods lives in Asgard appealed to similar principles.
Eventually, it was time for a snack break. Overwork wouldn’t help focus. Jane gave herself a few minutes to let her subconscious work on it, glancing at a screen that displayed surveillance footage of the mountain; that feed was displayed everywhere, apparently.
Still no movement.
“How’s it going?”
Jane looked towards her impromptu office’s door. Steve was there, still in uniform, and still with the shield on his back. Jane couldn’t help but feel a little under-dressed in a labcoat.
“No idea,” Jane said. “We have theories. No way of seeing what’s right without testing.”
“Tell me,” Steve said.
He stepped in, and at Jane’s assent, took a seat. He smiled at her; she raised an eyebrows.
“You want me to talk science?” she said.
“Sure, why not?” Steve said.
“I saw you getting confused by an automatic door,” Jane said. “Er. No offence.”
“You got me,” Steve said. He chuckled. “Not promising to understand anything, but I know talking it through can help, and, if you don’t mind me saying, you don’t seem at home here.”
“Can say that again,” Jane said.
“I understand,” Steve said. “For what it’s worth. You’d prefer to do this than be on the front lines.”
“I know this,” Jane said.
“Not everyone has to fight,” Steve said. “Especially if that’s not your background. You can find your own way to help.”
“Oh, trust me, I can fight,” Jane said. “You should’ve heard me defend my thesis. Started shouting. I just only like to fight when I know that I’m right.”
“You’re not sure?” Steve said.
“I get that the cube’s dangerous,” Jane said. “But I can’t say that I hate Sif, or even the Jotunn. Their home was destroyed, they fled, they want to fight back against the one that wronged them - it just feels like we’re hitting them when they’re down.”
Steve paused - then nodded, a little reluctant.
“I know that feeling,” Steve said. “Ever since I awoke, I’ve been playing catch-up on how your world works. It’s felt a bit like I’m just doing what I’m told, sometimes, because I need to trust the people giving the orders. If I don’t, well, I’m not going to know much better.”
“What do you do?” Jane said.
“What I can,” Steve said. “I know when people need protecting. That usually isn’t ambiguous. Just find a way that works for you.”
“Nice idea,” Jane said. “But I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t lucked into picking up that damn hammer. The only reason they think I can help is that they want me to hit people with it.”
Of course she wanted to help people, but part of that was knowing that she couldn’t always be the hero. Sometimes the best thing to do was get out of the way and leave the world-saving to the people that hadn’t stayed up to 4am because they’d gone down a rabbithole on the history of a particular gravitational anomaly.
It wasn’t an option now, clearly, but it still meant breaking the habit of a lifetime.
“If you had a say in how you’d help, how would you want to?” Steve said.
“I’d want to understand them,” Jane said. “Motive, or just tech. I’m trying on the latter anyway.”
“And we’re back to where we were,” Steve said. “Want to try explaining it to me? I’ve known a few researchers find it helps to put their thoughts in words.”
“Can help,” Jane said.
She paused. She knew Steve was just trying to distract her - he’d seen how overwhelmed she’d been when they’d first arrived. Still, she was grateful.
“The Casket doesn’t make sense,” Jane said. “Then again, neither does the hammer. You can’t create or destroy energy, that’s basic, but the hammer doesn’t seem to have any facility for generating lightning, the Casket doesn’t do anything with the heat it saps - and when I use the hammer, I exert more force than any physics at all suggest I ought to.”
“I think I understand that much,” Steve said. “So, you have a theory?”
“Only one that makes sense,” Jane said. “Assuming the energy has to come from or go somewhere - if it doesn’t, and they can spontaneously generate it, their technology is far enough beyond us it’s not even worth contemplating fighting them - then they need to tap into some other dimension. The hammer draws energy from there, the Casket moves energy to there, and physics is preserved while impossible things happen.”
“Okay,” Steve said, slowly. “How does that work?”
“Magic?” Jane said. She grimaced. “It’s a working theory. But if we can disrupt that connection somehow, it would neutralise the Casket. And as that seems to be important to them, and may be their best weapon, it seems worth it.”
“Sounds like progress to me,” Steve said.
“In theory,” Jane said. “But without knowing the mechanism, nothing we have has any shot at cutting off the connection. The only way we have of drawing on power from a higher dimension is Mjolnir, and…”
Her voice trailed off. The hammer was still resting on her desk, weighing down a print-out she’d been given of previous tests.
There was something there. If she worked under the assumption that the hammer gave her powers by letting her tap into some other plane, that the source of her strength was somehow analogous, then theoretically…
“One second,” Jane said.
She bit her lip - there had been thorough scans of the changes in her body’s readings when she held the hammer and when she didn’t. If she could understand how that worked, then it might…
Steve smiled, and moved back, letting her work. It was a minute before she remembered to look up.
“Sorry,” she said. “Had a thought, had to make a note.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Steve said. “If it works for you, then do it.”
Jane nodded and, intent, turned her attention back to the data.
Some distance from the SHIELD base, a convoy had come to a stop. The mountain was just visible in the distance, towering over anything natural in the vicinity.
Empty wasteland stretched out around it; SHIELD facilities often had to be in out of the way locations, which had the downside of making sending reinforcements a lot more time consuming. It was made worse by the base being inaccessible.
The barrier was almost invisible. There was a thin sheen, like frost, on the ground, and sometimes the light shone at just the right angle and reflected off specks in the air, but it wasn’t nearly as obvious as it seemed it ought to be. Cars were halfway through it, and there were people frozen solid, forming a far clearer marker of where the barrier stretched.
The convoy of aid had turned to a blockade, keeping any unlucky travellers from heading this way. They were still mapping out the extent of the barrier.
Fury stood on the brink, staring at the empty air as though he could change things. The Jotunn mountain loomed, utterly out of reach.
“Sir,” Coulson said, coming up behind him.
“Any word?” Fury said.
“Too much interference for normal channels,” Coulson said. “Caught sight of a floodlight flashing Morse. Code 43, siege situation. We’re setting up our own light to try and get some communication.”
“That’s all?” Fury said. “Then it’s stable for now.”
“We don’t know how many injured they have,” Coulson said. “Or how big the threat is.”
“We know they’re holding,” Fury said. “I believe in Hill - and they’ve got four Avengers.”
“With respect sir, that initiative is untested,” Coulson said.
“Come on Coulson, not like you to doubt Cap,” Fury said.
“I was thinking,” Coulson said. He hesitated. “Not had to deal with anything on the scale of an alien invasion for a while. That pager you always carry around with you…”
“No,” Fury said.
“We might need back up,” Coulson said.
“I believe in them,” Fury said. “I’d consider this a very effective test of the Avenger Initiative. They’ll handle it.”
“If they don’t?” Coulson said.
“They will,” Fury said.
He eyed the distant base. Still, what he wouldn’t give to know a little more about what was going on over there.
Just then, a shout went up. Fury turned back; there had been a few issues with passers-by annoyed at being turned back, all the more so when SHIELD couldn’t fully explain the reason for the obstruction, but it rarely escalated to that much noise.
“You can’t go through there-”
Someone was running. A SHIELD agent was swatted aside, knocked far further than seemed possible, and Fury barely had time to see a man with long, blonde hair before the stranger barrelled past him.
He ran into the Jotunn barrier - he screamed, flashed with an eerie green lightning, and then pushed through. On the far side, he kept sprinting towards the mountain, whirling a softly luminous hammer in one hand.
“What was that?” Coulson said.
“I have a feeling we’re going to find out,” Fury said.
The Jotunn mountain-ship was under constant surveillance. The moment a streak of lightning hit it, everyone saw. It hit a point midway up the thing, tearing into it, sending shards of ice and stone and whatever other alien materials composed the thing scattering to the ground.
The ship responded with a flash of white. In a matter of seconds, the view outside the base had gone from still, to sheer chaos; the attacker was flung to the ground, but stood up immediately. For a brief second he was visible; a blonde man, long-haired and unshaven, clad in dark green armour. A symbol like horns were embossed into the back. More notably, however, was the hammer in his hands - it was translucent, almost illusory, but it resembled Jane’s own to a frightening extent.
Jane stared at the screen. Hill had already moved away, shouting orders into the base comms - the man stood again, launching himself at the Jotunn ship, and the Jotunn poured out in reply.
“Who is that?” Jane said.
“No idea, but he just declared war for us,” Hill said. “Jane.”
“Out front, I know,” Jane said.
“Steve, to the Tesseract,” Hill said. She leaned into the comm. “Clint, stand ready, no one gets close.”
Jane was already moving. She summoned Mjolnir to her hand, feeling a crackle of lightning, her head reeling with the sight of the stranger.
He was laughing - as Jane emerged into the outside air, that was the first thing she noticed. It wasn’t a comforting sound. The attack had antagonised the Jotunn - and even if it hadn’t, he seemed to relish fighting them, revel in the emerald electricity that shot from his faux-hammer with each swing. He scorched the side of the mountain, just on a whim, before bringing the hammer down on a nearby giant.
Whoever he was, he wasn’t fighting for anything. He just enjoyed the conflict.
Even though he was a stranger, the Jotunn had apparently assumed he was allied with SHIELD - the simmering tension of the siege had exploded, the Jotunn apparently as on-edge as the humans had been. Clint fired another heated arrow, though this time the giants seemed more prepared. Taking a breath, Jane tore her attention away from the half-mad stranger.
Whatever he was, whatever that hammer was, he wasn’t actively attacking the base. That gave Jane focus - she had to prioritise, worry about who he was once the base wasn’t in active danger.
Something flew through the air, from the ship; she leapt, on instinct knocking it back, sending it off into the distance where it exploded harmlessly in a haze of glittering mist. She landed, still a little giddy from how far she’d managed to leap.
The hammer gave her an advantage with the Jotunn anyway, even if it wasn’t one she could share. When she got in their way, they struck at her; she struck back with a crash of thunder. The hard part was keeping herself between the Jotunn and the base.
Still, she just had to focus. Don’t think about how many Jotunn there were, and trust that Steve and the others had any Jotunn that got through handled. Better to pay attention to what was in front of her. She threw lightning, and-
Something hit her with more force than any Jotunn. She threw the assailant off, just glimpsing the wild-eyed blonde stranger.
“Mine,” he said. “That’s mine. That’s- Give it back.”
“What?” Jane said. She blinked.
He grabbed the hammer. She didn’t even feel a tug; as ever, it was utterly resistant to anyone’s touch except for hers. Bewildered, she twitched her arm, forcing him back.
Wait, his hammer? Did that make him-
An armoured Jotunn interrupted their brief clash. Instinct took over, aided by whatever resilience the hammer’s magic gave her. Sweep the sword aside, throw lightning, then fling the hammer at a trio of giants charging at her. There was a flash of blue-white as they scattered, and the hammer recalled itself.
The blonde stranger lunged for it again. Even when he managed to wrap a hand around the handle, it returned to Jane; she wrenched it back, still struggling to keep up.
Whoever he was, whatever he was, the hammer didn’t seem to recognise him. Jane hit him back.
It felt odd, hitting someone that could so easily pass for human. She didn’t particularly like the fact it felt harder than hitting Jotunn. Still, whatever that said about her, she could ponder when someone wasn’t trying to steal the hammer from her in the middle of a fight.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, but right now-” Jane began.
“It won’t- why won’t it- what have you done to it?” he said.
“Done? I didn’t-”
Green lightning knocked her back; Jane squeezed the hammer, steadying herself around it, and grimaced. Apparently she had to prioritise. She leapt - and came down with a crash of thunder.
“Now is not the time for this,” she said.
He ran at her - he moved faster than she’d thought he could. Too late, she realised his wild swings didn’t mean he was untrained; unable to move the hammer, he instead grabbed her wrist, limiting her ability to throw. The best she could do was a weak twitch, dropping Mjolnir.
Still, that was enough; she twisted sideways, bringing him with her, and summoned the hammer back to her hand. It hit him the back of his head with the same implacable force as ever. When he let go, she righted herself, sparing a look back.
The Jotunn still hadn’t made it to the base. Clint’s arrows, SHIELD’s Tesseract weapons, and her own distracted efforts seemed to have held them back - then the sight of her tussling with their assailant seemed to have caught the Jotunn by surprise.
“Hold!”
Sif’s voice cut across the battlefield. The blonde froze, halfway through swinging at Jane. At that, Jane too hesitated, looking out the corner of her eye; Sif was visible on the battlefield, close to the Jotunn ship.
The Jotunn themselves took a moment longer to stop. It was a bellow from Hrungnir, not Sif, that made them warily draw back - he said something inaudible to Sif, and she replied just as softly, apparently unwilling to make the tension of their alliance obvious to the humans.
Then Sif rushed closer. Jane’s gaze was on the giants more than her, their reluctance all too visible.
“Thor?” she said.
“Thor?” Jane echoed, squinting at the stranger.
Part of her hadn’t actually believed it was Thor’s hammer. It had been the best description they had, and they’d needed to call it something, but it wasn’t until an alien had arrived talking about Asgard that there had been any reason to think of it as more than a convenient nickname.
He didn’t look like a god. The muscles were impressive, as was the magic, but it was something in his eyes - Jane didn’t know what she expected from the divine, but that sort of desperation seemed wrong.
“Sif?” Thor said. He looked past her, to the myriad on-guard Jotunn. “You’re with them?”
“Things have changed. Asgard is…” Sif said. Her voice trailed off, eyeing the green sparks that leapt from Thor’s illusory hammer. “When last we met, you had none of your power. Where does this come from?”
“I still follow Asgard,” Thor said. He looked incredulously at her. “Do you?”
“You can’t trust Loki,” Sif said. “He isn’t like your father. He turned the Bifrost on Jotunheim, and-”
“Good!” Thor said. “That’s what we fought for, wasn’t it?”
“I- no, Thor,” Sif said. She hesitated. “Don’t do this.”
Jane looked between the two of them, very slowly taking a step back. At least Thor’s attention wasn’t on her or the hammer anymore.
A Jotunn approached - for giants, they could move disconcertingly fast. While Jane didn’t recognise the face, she could identify the voice as soon as it spoke: Hrungnir, the one who’d argued with Sif on Natasha’s overheard conversation.
“He isn’t our friend,” Hrungnir said, a step behind Sif. “Do not falter.”
“He deserves better,” Sif said.
“So did we,” Hrungnir growled. Then his voice rose to a bellow: “Jotunn! On!”
The Jotunn began to move again. Sif looked back, hand on the hilt of her sword, incredulous; she made no move, for or against them.
Then there was chaos. It was too hard to keep track of Sif or Thor when giants tried to surge past her; she swung the hammer, trying to catch a glimpse of Thor again, wary of him trying to interrupt.
One of Clint’s arrows exploded in a flash of flame. Even Steve was visible, still in the base, but keeping the back line of defenders safe from any Jotunn that got close; for all the giants’ strength, his vibranium shield blocked each blow and knocked them back.
Jane still hated it. She’d met apparently literal-Thor and barely been able to trade a word with him - even Sif seemed shocked.
A second later, and she saw Thor coming - this time she dodged the lunge, throwing the hammer, only to be sent reeling by a flash of green lightning. Still, she righted herself, suppressing a yell of sheer exasperation - she didn’t have time to deal with him with giants attacking SHIELD.
“Whatever you think you’re doing, this isn’t helping,” Jane said.
“That’s mine,” Thor said. His hands were shaking. “I need it. You don’t- You can’t keep it from me.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Jane said. “No one else has been able to lift it.”
Something flickered across Thor’s face; too quickly, he rushed at her again, wrestling for Mjolnir. It was easy to knock him away.
“No!”
“Thor!” Suddenly Sif was between them, blade drawn.
Jane looked at her, wary - she hadn’t always had the best of interactions with Sif. Still, at least for now, Sif didn’t seem to be focused on her.
“You’d side with Jotunn over your prince?” Thor said. “What happened to you, Sif?”
“What happened to you?” Sif said. “This isn’t the one I followed.”
“It’s the hammer,” Thor said. “I’m worthy, I just… I need it to be worthy. I need to be me again.”
“You must be able to see that this is futile,” Sif said.
“It isn’t,” Thor said. He faltered. “It can’t be. I will be worthy.”
He rushed at Jane - Sif blocked him, and seemed as shocked as Jane that she’d done so. Hammer clashed with blade.
“Hammer-wielder,” Sif said. “Worthy one. What do you stand for?”
“I- I don’t know,” Jane said. “I just don’t want people to die.”
Thor roared; Sif’s expression was more calculating. Apparently she knew more about the hammer’s enchantment than Jane did - Jane wondered if she’d been changing her mind since their last meeting.
It was maddening to not have all the information.
“Good enough,” Sif said. “I have no wish to cross blades with you. Unfortunately, I doubt the Jotunn will listen to me any longer.”
“Had noticed,” Jane said.
The air suddenly got a few degrees colder. Jane felt the Casket a moment before it was opened; she watched a squad on the far side of the base freeze solid, feeling a chill in the air even this far from where it had been used.
She looked over to it, then glanced back to Sif; Thor ran at her. She seemed to expect it, used to his moves, though he got a glancing blow in. The green sparked wildly; whatever magic empowered him didn’t seem to be something Thor had full control over.
“Protect your people if you can,” Sif said. “I’ll protect mine.”
Hesitant, Jane nodded - then turned to leap across the battlefield.
There was a room in Asgard where the King might scry all the realms. Heimdall might be the more efficient means of gathering information, able to see the full context of any event, but there was something so much more satisfying about seeing things for himself.
It was a delight, really, to see Thor in his colours. Loki couldn’t hide the smile.
No matter what happened, he could hold that memory in his head. Finally, Thor listened to him - finally Loki came first. All it took was the power of the throne and Thor was completely dependent on his goodwill.
Sif was a surprise though. He’d thought to deal with the renegade Jotunn and get Thor under his sway - he hadn’t expected Sif would go so far as to ally with Asgard’s enemies. Maybe he should have called it. The surviving Warriors Three had been stirring up trouble all over the place.
It was frustrating. It had been so much worse, back when he’d yet to feel the satisfaction he expected from the crown. Still, he’d never have sent Thor if he’d known there was a risk of him meeting a friend. So far, at least, Thor seemed to crave a connection to Asgard; the Jotunn were certainly the right choice of enemy for him.
Either way, Loki didn’t like being surprised. He watched warily.
Green suited Thor. Loki could have made the hammer look better, too, but he liked the translucent green; he wanted it to look fake, to remind Thor of who he owed this to. Magic had always been more his forte than it had Thor’s. He hadn’t quite gotten used to the full power behind the throne, but he was working on it.
Eventually, Loki stood up. It seemed the battle would rage for a while yet; Thor’s presence had pushed the Jotunn over the edge, and Loki had little doubt in his brother’s capabilities.
The mortal hammer wielder was of little consequence; Loki wasn’t going to worry about someone with less than half a century of age. Sif was the wrinkle. Still, hopefully Thor would wreck any absurd notion of an alliance between them and the Jotunn.
Loki stepped out of his chambers. His hands were shaking; he willed them to stop as he passed by a guard. No. He wasn’t going to doubt, nor was he going to countenance the idea that they would be any real threat. He’d spent long enough getting the crown, he’d show that he deserved it.
He only walked a short way. He briskly passed a guard, and stepped into a golden room. In the middle was a bed, shimmering with a soft golden aura; beside it, Frigga was sat. She turned to look at him as he entered. He managed a gentle smile.
And on the bed was Odin, eyes closed. There was an enchantment hidden in the golden haze of the Odinsleep. Even knowing it was there, even after putting it there, Loki could barely see it. It was a simple thing to keep Odin from waking, to keep him insensate to anything that would alert him and keep him bound should anything change.
A simple thing to keep the throne secure.
“Mother,” he said.
The old fool looked so much less awe-inspiring like this.
He wouldn’t be asleep forever, Loki knew. Still, when he awoke, it would be to a world where Loki was the beloved king. He’d have routed the Jotunn, unified the realms, quashed a rebellion - proven himself.
“Loki. Are you well?” Frigga said. “I feel like I so rarely see you.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Loki said. “The problem should sort itself out.”
He didn’t like the doubt on her face.
“This isn’t you!” Sif said.
“I need this,” Thor said. “Don’t get in my way.”
He tried to pass her again. Sif blocked him with her sword, almost feeling the impact herself. Once, she never could have imagined trading blows with him; still, it wasn’t as though they’d never sparred. He usually won, but she’d always been able to hold her own for a time.
Then again, usually he had Mjolnir, not whatever this was. She’d gotten too familiar with Loki’s magic since this rebellion had started.
He swung with the hammer; she met it with the flat of her blade, avoiding the edge just as he avoided using lightning. Quickly, she repositioned, putting herself in front of him.
Hrungnir had never liked listening to her, and the Jotunn were raging around them - still, while she clashed with Thor, they wouldn’t intervene. She didn’t know if they’d see her as friend or foe just then.
It had felt necessary. One couldn’t topple a tyrant king without allies, even if those allies had once been enemies. Acts of desperation could so easily go wrong; of all people, just then, it seemed like Thor ought to understand.
“Loki isn’t the King you want him to be,” Sif said. “Forswear him - help us.”
“I can’t,” Thor said. His voice shook. “I took an oath to the throne. If I stop, I lose this.”
“This is for power?” Sif said incredulously.
“I can’t be without. Not again.” He threw lightning, emerald-green, as Sif sidestepped.
“You were better than this,” Sif said.
She stepped closer, avoiding any potential electricity, and slashed as he stepped away. God blood spattered onto the ground. The wound was shallow, but it was enough to steel Sif’s resolve. She’d crossed that line - she’d crossed a lot of lines - so she had to stay committed.
“You don’t need to defend them,” Thor said.
“If you’re fighting for Loki, I do,” Sif said. “This can’t be what you want.”
For a moment, she thought she saw pain in his eyes - then it was concealed behind a flash of green. She raised her blade, the enchanted metal absorbing most of the impact, even as it sent her back.
Thor leapt; Sif forced herself sideways, still getting hit by the subsequent shockwave. She managed to stay on her feet, and aimed a jab at Thor’s arm; if she could make him drop the hammer, maybe that would disrupt the magic. Who knew?
Anything to delay him. Sif had only heard a little of the enchantment on the hammer. She’d found Thor soon after his exile, but he hadn’t been able to return to Asgard in his mortal condition; he’d only been able to say a little of Odin’s spell.
Still, she’d managed to piece it together. If it only accepted the worthy, then that meant the mortal woman was worthy. That was something to have faith in.
“Have I ever given you reason to distrust me?” Sif said.
“This is all I have,” Thor said. “My role, my power, my hammer, none of it is mine anymore. Don’t ask me to give this up. Don’t ask me to trust anyone that much.”
“You need to, Thor,” Sif said.
“My hammer!” Thor said. “She’s throwing it around like its hers, and it won’t… it won’t come to me.”
“It means she’s worthy.”
“You believe that?” Thor said.
“Trust is… hard, these days,” Sif said. She paused. “I want to.”
He faltered, illusory hammer in hand, anguish on his face. Silent, together, they looked across to Jane.
It all came back to the Casket, Jane reflected. From what SHIELD could tell, it powered their ship when it wasn’t being used as a weapon - and in turn, it was the most powerful weapon the Jotunn had. They crowded around it, treating it with an almost reverence as they angled it.
And when it was opened, even when she wasn’t directly in its path, she could feel the air cool. If there was to be any hope of weathering this conflict, the Casket would need to be dealt with.
Mentally, Jane went over everything she’d been able to deduce about the thing - both the broad strokes, and the precise values she’d pored over while waiting in the base. Nothing had endless power - the Casket took a certain amount of time to cool a certain amount of space a certain amount. She wouldn’t have minded a bit more data, but theoretically it was all limited, and she knew the limits.
She swung Mjolnir, rushing towards the Casket. Only when she knew they’d spotted her trajectory did she call on lightning, doing her best to close the gap.
Step one, get the Casket out of their hands. Step two she could figure out.
She saw Natasha in the shadows of the mountain, apparently still secreted there. She fired something, electricity striking one of the Jotunn carrying the Casket. The distraction bought Jane a few seconds, but the Casket-bearers still quickly turned to ensure the weapon faced Jane.
Well, this was where she tested her theory. She didn’t feel confident in her ability to evade; that was just basic geometry, they only had to turn the Casket an inch to cover metres of ground. She twirled the hammer, feeling something akin to static build up, climbing her arm, as she waited.
Still, she ran forwards.
Everything had to get energy from somewhere. Even if she had no idea the precise mechanism these artefacts used, Mjolnir and the Casket had to be similar enough on that front; the Casket moved heat energy to whatever its interior was bound to, while Mjolnir channelled lightning from whatever its source was.
At a basic level, it came down to an equation. Which could handle more power? Mjolnir had been thoroughly studied, while the data for the Casket was patchier - still, even allowing generous margins of error, so long as she assumed her theory was correct…
The Casket opened just as Jane flung the hammer forwards, lightning crashing into the thing’s frozen maw. She felt only a slight chill in the breeze, keeping up the lightning for as long as she could, overwhelming any ability the Casket had to still movement.
The Jotunn realised what happened a second before she reached them. Natasha shot a spark at one, while Jane called Mjolnir back to strike down the next, quickly closing the Casket.
“You!”
Another, close by, made a move for her, carrying some bladed implement. On instinct, Jane clutched the Casket, and pressed Mjolnir against it. Blue-white sparks crackled.
“Don’t,” Jane said. “Please. Er.”
She swallowed; okay, better to try again. Still, it was gratifying to see the Jotunn slow; another theory proven.
“Stop the fighting,” Jane said. “Stop attacking. I am… pretty sure this hammer has the power to do decent damage to your Casket, and I’m also pretty sure you don’t want that. So if you could just stop, we could talk.”
Maybe it was a bluff, but it was something she was confident enough in. Out of the corner of her eye, Jane could see Natasha watching her, still in the shadows.
The Jotunn glowered at her. Jane squeezed Mjolnir, hoping he wouldn’t push her. She was sure this would work, but she honestly wasn’t sure what counted as sufficiently provocation to give up her only leverage.
If worst came to worst, hopefully the battle would be easier without this. She wasn’t sure - the Jotunn were still a decent threat, though she expected they wouldn’t find victory as sweet without their power source.
A roar went up; again, the Jotunn slowed, eyed with significantly more wariness than before by the humans. Jane kept the Casket close.
Okay, now would be a good time to come up with a step two. Figuring out the mechanisms came much more easily to her than, what, negotiating? She hadn’t gotten the impression that Hrungnir would listen.
She took a breath, heart pounding in her chest, feeling dozens of pairs of eyes on her. She could feel her palms sweating, and hoped it wouldn’t make her lose her grip on the hammer.
She could see SHIELD too, past the Jotunn. Hill was visible, peering out from cover; no doubt she’d want Jane to just destroy the Casket and take it from there. Jane could see the wariness on her face.
But it would be good to find another path.
Another Jotunn emerged from the army, expression set into a permanent glower. It kept its distance from Jane, not wanting to provoke, but didn’t blink as it regarded her.
“We will not leave,” Hrungnir said. She recognised his voice immediately.
“We aren’t your enemy,” Jane said. “You know that, don’t you? They shouldn’t have struck first, I know, they were scared and wrong, but this time wasn’t us.”
“You have what we need,” Hrungnir said.
“I know, I know,” Jane said. “The cube that’ll let you take revenge on Loki for ending your world. Is that really what you want your priority to be right now?”
Hrungnir growled. Jane swallowed, trying to focus - they were life, intelligent life, from out in the stars. That was something to wonder at, not be scared by.
“Do you want Mars?” Jane said. “Or Europa - that’s an icy enough moon up there. There’s got to be a place you can settle that’ll actually be good for you.”
“You can’t just give them Mars.” Natasha emerged from the shadows behind them, keeping a few steps away herself. Hrungnir’s eyes narrowed.
“Why not? Are you using it?” Jane said. “They need a place to live.”
“We need revenge,” Hrungnir said, voice gravelly.
“More than you need a home?” Jane said. “This isn’t necessary, none of this is, can’t you see?”
She saw movement among other Jotunn - hopefully that meant some of them were listening, or were willing to believe her. She didn’t know how much that would matter if their leader didn’t, though.
So long as Hill didn’t break the peace, and Thor was kept back by Sif…
Hrungnir was quiet. He seemed to be trying to get the measure of her, gauging both her and the hammer, as if trying to convince himself she wouldn’t destroy the Casket. Jane hoped she seemed at least somewhat convincing. She didn’t know how willing she was to do away with the one bargaining chip they had to end this semi-peacefully, no matter how needed it was.
Oh to be back in a lab.
“We can talk about the cube after,” Jane said. “Can’t promise more than that. If you had the cube and we asked for it, how willing would you be to hand a weapon over to a stranger? Show we can trust each other, and no more people need to be hurt, your people or mine.”
Natasha was watching - though not interfering, apparently willing enough to see where this went. No other Jotunn had stepped in; she couldn’t tell if that meant they were listening or that they were just afraid.
Then Hrungnir lunged.
The first thing Jane noticed, gratefully, was that he was alone - no other Jotunn joined or resumed the attack, on Jane or anyone else, leaving Hrungnir to make a grab at the Casket.
She should have struck it - she was all but certain that pouring enough lightning into the thing would shatter whatever connection it had. Still, if she did, she was sure it would kill any chance for peace, and she had to believe that the other Jotunn had heard her. Instead of breaking the Casket, she let it drop, swinging Mjolnir up into the underside of Hrungnir’s chin.
Still no one intervened. That had to be a good sign, right?
She’d tried not to think too hard about fighting before; her main goal had simply been to fend off Jotunn. Pushing an assailant back felt very different to needing to grapple with one. She had to feel each blow, force herself to strike again and again, rather than simply putting it out of mind.
At least this time she knew what she was aiming for.
He sidestepped the hammer, aware enough to avoid trying to block it, and swung his blade at her throat. Quickly, she summoned Mjolnir from her right hand to her left, knocking the sword aside; even in her off-hand, she could manage lightning, sending Hrungnir reeling.
She swapped hands again, and got two quick hammer blows in, both flashing blue-white, until Hrungnir slumped to the floor. Unconscious, she told herself. Hopefully.
Jane looked up, unsure of what would happen next.
She’d been defending herself, anyone could see that, and the Jotunn hadn’t intervened. She didn’t know if it was some weird sort of single combat expectation, or if they’d assumed he’d have been able to deal with her. Still, she waited a moment, gauging their reaction - she could see the Casket, and knew it was in reach, but if she made a grab for it, that felt more likely to just instigate more fighting.
If she needed to, she would. But with any luck…
“A home?”
She couldn’t name the Jotunn that spoke next. Presumably it was someone of importance in their hierarchy, and not just a normal soldier.
“You’re asking us to trust you,” the Jotunn said.
“I know,” Jane said.
“I… would like a world again,” the Jotunn said.
“We’re a long way off from doing much with them ourselves,” Jane said. “I promise I’ll do my best to help.”
“You’re different to the last hammer-wielder,” the Jotunn said. It stared at her, uncomfortably perceptive.
Jane hesitated. After a moment, she dropped the hammer, willing it to lessen its magic for a moment. If Thor had been their foe, appearing more like him probably wasn’t a good way to earn their trust.
The Jotunn seemed all the taller when she didn’t have the added bulk the hammer gave her. The giant stiffened for a moment, expression too implacable. Then it nodded.
“We can… talk,” it said. “If your people strike at ours again-”
“I’ll make sure they don’t,” Jane said.
“And Thor,” it began.
“I’ll do what I can,” Jane said.
Failure.
Loki paced the halls.
It figured Thor wouldn’t be enough. Why had he staked so much on his brother? Yes, he’d wanted to see Thor in his colours, wanted to see Thor loyal to his reign, but it was idiotic to pretend that he could actually trust Thor with anything.
He couldn’t trust anyone, it seemed. More than a few of his soldiers had defected to Hogun, Sif’s rebellion with the Jotunn had gained a foothold on one of the Nine Realms - whatever it was they were planning - and the Destroyer had been damaged in its last application.
Things were slipping. Loki’s hands were shaking.
They needed to be controlled, needed to listen to him. He’d learned that from his father; the Realms were nothing without Asgard at its head, and a leader able to hold sway over all of it. He was the heir, he could do this.
He wasn’t less-than, wasn’t the runt of some Jotunn litter, wasn’t second-best. He was the King of Asgard.
“He will not see me fail,” Loki said.
He hadn’t realised that he’d shouted. One of the few still-loyal guards looked at him strangely - then schooled their expression. Briskly, Loki walked past.
He hated the way they looked at him. Sometimes he wondered if they could see the blue of Jotunn flesh, if someone had let his vile heritage slip - there was pity in their eyes, he was sure. They thought he wasn’t enough, that he didn’t deserve the throne, that things would be better with Thor here or decrepit old Odin still in charge.
Loki kept walking. He would prove himself, and even if some of the problems were temporarily beyond his ability, he could solve one.
The peace still felt too transitory. There were uneasy shared glances between the Jotunn and humans - and, for now, the Casket lay unclaimed in the middle ground. Neither side wanted to make a leap for it.
It was, in a sense, a gesture for peace.
Sif hadn’t returned to the Jotunn. Instead, she was sat in the shadows near the SHIELD base, near the other Asgardian. Thor was slumped on the ground, Mjolnir on his chest, keeping him immobile.
Jane grimaced. What to do here, she didn’t know.
He still struggled against it, though there was little he could do. He’d stopped shouting a few minutes ago.
“He wasn’t like this before,” Sif said softly.
“He almost started a war,” Hill said. “Borderline miracle that ended well, at least for now.”
“What was he like?” Jane said.
She’d reverted to her normal form, while the hammer was discarded. She sat on the hood of a SHIELD car, drained; using the hammer for too long seemed to take it out of her. At least it was quiet.
Sif didn’t reply for a few minutes.
“I trusted him,” Sif said. “The Thor I knew wouldn’t have fallen to Loki’s manipulations, even if it was easier. I want to believe that.”
“What happened?” Jane said.
“I don’t know,” Sif said. “I only heard that King Odin exiled him to Earth - stripped his hammer and power from him until he was worthy. The King entered the Odinsleep not long after. I never heard the reason.”
“Worthy?” Jane said. “You said that, I remember.”
“No one else can lift the hammer,” Steve said. “Maybe that’s why.”
“That feels… abstract,” Jane said.
On the floor, Thor shifted.
“He said I was unworthy,” Thor said weakly. “I don’t know why. I only wanted to make him proud.”
“Why send you here?” Hill said.
Thor said nothing.
“Suffering builds character,” Steve said. He grimaced. “I’ve heard people say that - I never bought it. It doesn’t teach humility, it just teaches pain. It’d take a miracle for that to actually make him whatever this Odin wanted him to be.”
“Do not speak ill of my King,” Sif said.
“Does it look like he succeeded?” Steve said.
Sif looked down. For a moment, Thor strained again against the hammer, channelling whatever emerald magic he’d been given.
“It does seem… cruel,” Sif conceded. She exhaled. “You didn’t have to go to Loki.”
“He’s my brother,” Thor said. He faltered. “He was all I had. I had… nothing else. Not after I was cast out.”
He slumped, unmoving. Several pairs of eyes watching him cautiously.
“What are we going to do with him?” Hill said. “We can’t leave him there, and I don’t know if we have anything that can hold him. Beyond the hammer, anyway.”
“Happy to leave it there,” Jane said.
“Doesn’t exactly feel sustainable,” Hill said.
“I’m sorry,” Sif said. “Normally this would be Asgard’s responsibility, but it is out of my hands now.”
“Traitor,” Thor said.
Something crossed Sif’s face. She stepped back, not responding, merely taking a seat. Steve cleared his throat, interjecting.
“We need to talk about the cube,” he said. “That’s what you were after, right?”
“The Tesseract,” Sif said. “In ages past it was Asgard’s. With it, we forged the Bifrost, connecting all the realms and beyond.”
“Is that figurative?” Steve said.
“Quite literal,” Sif said. “An army could march through the Bifrost to any world its wielder can imagine. Or, if left open, the raw force of the Bifrost could shatter a world.”
“Great,” Hill said. “And that’s what this Loki has?”
“How does that work?” Jane said. She tilted her head. “I guess you’d need to compress spacetime, but to link with any other destination would be…”
“Beyond me, I’m afraid,” Sif said. “You see why we needed to disrupt it. The Tesseract was the foundation of the Bifrost - with it, we can break it, severing Asgard’s most powerful weapon.”
“Loki will still be there,” Steve said.
“But he won’t be able to control the realms,” Sif said. “He’ll be limited to one place, and won’t be able to strike at us without warning. It’s a first step.”
“And what guarantee can you offer us that that’s all you will do?” Hill said.
“I did not come here to conquer,” Sif said.
“You came with an army,” Hill said.
“I came with the only ship I could get,” Sif said. “And- this is pointless.”
She grimaced. Jane cut in.
“What would you need?” Jane said. “To break the Bifrost, I mean - is there any reason the Tesseract would need to leave the base? If Hill’s worried about it being stolen, then assurances can’t be too hard.”
“Hm,” Sif said, frowning. “It would take the right runes, but with the right set up… perhaps.”
“Then it can be done securely,” Jane said. “And it sounds like we ought to - Asgard don’t sound like enemies we want.”
“If she’s telling the truth,” Hill said. She paused, looking down: “Which I’m inclined to believe, if he’s with her enemy.”
Thor glowered from the floor. Sif nodded gratefully, though her expression was far from happy.
And it all came back, again, to the god trapped below the hammer. The former wielder of Mjolnir, apparently, until he’d been declared unworthy. How must it feel, to go from god to mortal?
Jane crouched.
“Listen,” Jane said. “I don’t know you, who you are or who you were, but I also know that I wasn’t this a month ago. You can change.”
“I don’t want to,” Thor said.
He clenched his fists again; green lightning crackled. Then, all it once, it cut out. Thor’s eyes widened, and he strained again, so much weaker than before.
“Brother?” he said. His voice cracked, suddenly lacking the depth it had moments before. No magic came to him. “Please, I can still serve. Please. Don’t abandon me.”
He reached for the hammer; as ever, he couldn’t shift it, and now couldn’t manage even a spark. Above him, Steve, Jane, Hill and Sif traded looks.
“Don’t put your trust in Loki,” Sif said.
Thor said nothing.
The cube had been moved to an open space a few floors above its normal hiding place. The area was almost unrecognisable as military; Sif had been up through the night preparing runes, with one Jotunn permitted to accompany her.
The one empty space had, recently, been filled by the Tesseract. Sif was there, with two Jotunn, and a dozen SHIELD agents watched. Jane stood by as well, forgoing the hammer for the time being, hoping the uneasy peace would hold.
After Loki had sent Thor, Hill had needed to accept the Asgardian threat. She’d been on a call with Fury that morning and they’d both agreed to assist Sif so long as it didn’t mean anyone running off with the cube. If the Bifrost was real, it wasn’t something they wanted in the hands of an enemy.
“Stand ready,” Sif said.
“For what?” Jane said.
“Potentially nothing,” Sif said. “I do not know if Loki will foresee this - or if his gaze can penetrate here. We have done what we can to mask ourselves. Even so, the Bifrost would allow him to strike, if he intends to stop us.”
Thor was, for the time being, contained - it was easier to keep him now that his powers were gone. A few people watched to make sure his magic didn’t come back. He hadn’t made much of a move since, though; Jane almost found herself feeling sorry for him.
Sif moved to the Tesseract, Hill close by, and Sif moved to almost touch it.
Then there was a surge of light - it didn’t come from the cube, though. Rather, it fell from the skies, burning through the roof, and scorching an intricate symbol in the ground. Where once there had been empty space, there were now dozens of people.
“Bifrost!” one of the Jotunn shouted.
At once, SHIELD was on edge. Jane summoned her hammer, watched Steve lift his shield, and saw Nat move into the shadows.
“Hold!” Sif shouted.
Her voice didn’t amount to much - all eyes were on the new arrivals, the Asgardians dropping out of the sky, with too much wariness. SHIELD was trained to deal with threats, and Jane knew enough to say the Jotunn had a messy history.
Still, Jane felt her grip on the hammer loosen, fully taking in the view. They didn’t look like an invasion force. She didn’t see armour, or weapons, or constructs - she saw frightened faces, led by a woman Sif seemed to know judging by the look on her face.
“Hold!” Jane shouted, voice joining Sif’s.
“We were warned-” Hill began.
“They have children,” Jane said. “They don’t look like they’re attacking.”
Hill faltered; she lifted a hand, temporarily gesturing for SHIELD to pause. It was easy to miss details after the flash of light; even Jane struggled to see much in the afterimage of the Bifrost.
“Queen Frigga,” Sif said. She managed a curt, stiff bow. “What are…”
‘Frigga,’ the red-haired apparent-leader of the Asgardians, took a quick look at the room - her gaze soon settled on the Tesseract. She nodded stiffly.
“Attacking the Bifrost? Smart,” Frigga said. “Do it.”
Sif hesitated. Behind her, a Jotunn moved.
“You would let us?” he said, distrustful. “Why?”
“A wonderful conversation to have,” Frigga said. “Wouldn’t you prefer to discuss this after?”
He eyed her, wary, but acceded. With a little more hesitation, Sif moved again to the Tesseract. This time, Hill’s eyes were on Frigga, even as the runes all lit up.
There was a flash - a pillar of light rose from the Tesseract, a crack opening in the air and casting a full spectrum of light across the room. It cascaded, colour after colour emanating from the doorway opened by the Tesseract.
And then it shattered. It was strangely silent, though the sheer sight of it felt like it ought to have been deafening, pieces of light falling away like glass.
The Tesseract dimmed. One Jotunn gave a low rumble of a cheer, while Sif relaxed only slightly - and Frigga too somehow seemed relieved. The humans, meanwhile, just stared at the newest arrivals.
“A day for miracles,” a Jotunn - Menja, Jane recalled the name - said. “To fight beside one Asgardian and be enabled by another.”
“It’s done,” Sif said.
She drew in a shaky breath, the enormity of what she’d done only just beginning to sink in.
“Queen Frigga, why…” Sif began.
“A moment, please,” Frigga said. Her eyes briefly passed over Jane, and the hammer, before settling on Hill - Hill still had an arm raised, ready to signal an attack at any moment. “You lead the mortals?”
“I’m in charge here,” Hill said.
“I request sanctuary,” Frigga said. “On behalf of my people - those I was able to save, here behind me.”
“Last I heard, your people were our enemy,” Hill said. “You’ll have to catch me up.”
“My son was… overzealous,” Frigga said. “You have my apologies, for what little they must be worth.”
“Your sons are far from the only tyrants,” Menja said. “Ever since your husband took the throne-”
“My husband is dead,” Frigga said.
Her voice came out brittle, a shade of something sharper beneath the layers of diplomacy she wore. Jane blinked. Odin? The way Sif described him, he’d sounded untouchable.
“Loki slew him in his sleep,” Frigga said. “I did not realise how heavy the burden of expectation was on him until it was too late.”
“I don’t know that Loki deserves our pity,” Sif said.
“Even so, he has mine,” Frigga said. “Asgard has fallen. Isolating it without the Bifrost was the kindest thing for the universe.”
“You let our traitor-kin spread war across the galaxy,” Menja growled. “What changed?”
“When my husband died, the bindings he placed failed,” Frigga said. “I believed, truly believed, my son could be reached - the same cannot be said of Odin’s daughter.”
“Daughter?” Sif said. She frowned. “I know not of any-”
“We do,” Menja said. She growled. “Her. The nightmares of my people still speak of Death.”
“She is free,” Frigga said. “Asgard is hers. I saved those I could - would that I could do more - and it is a mercy that her reign will start off without reach to the rest of the realms. But this is not over.”
Of course there was more. She knew Frigga from myth - even if they were inaccurate, as a lot seemed to be, there was no getting around the fact that she was surrounded by gods. Part of her still hadn’t fully adjusted to Frost Giants.
And now this war between gods had worsened.
“We request sanctuary,” Frigga said, again. “We are not at our best, but I can offer what knowledge we having - healing, exploration - in return for shelter.”
Hill paused - less reluctant, and more frustrated at how far things had spiralled.
“We should help them,” Jane said.
“You can’t give them Mars too,” Hill said. She shook her head, then sighed, looking at Frigga: “We’ll talk about it. See what we can work out.”
“All I can ask,” Frigga said.
“What about this new ruler?” Jane said. “Is she a danger?”
“Immensely,” Frigga said. “A problem we will have to work on. Lady Sif?”
“I am yours, my queen,” Sif said.
Menja laughed.
“Against Hela?” she said. “Even I would fight for that. One of the few we hate more than Odin.”
“We would be honoured,” Frigga said - she bowed her head, briefly. “When my people are somewhere safe, we can begin to talk.”
Hill exhaled, but nodded.
“I’ll make a call,” Hill said.
She’d picked up a hammer, and now there was interplanetary war. Jane was feeling a lot of things. Scared, overwhelmed, a little giddy at how cool it was to meet aliens, intimidated…
The hammer rested on the table in front of her, balanced at a slight angle. She could’ve sworn that she could feel it, a tingle in the back of her mind, a thrum like promised static.
There was a shadow in her doorway. Jane turned.
“Frigga,” she said - then winced. “Queen Frigga? Your Majesty? Sorry, I don’t know.”
“Not queen of anything, now,” she said. “Just Frigga. And you are… Jane, was it? The successor to my son’s hammer.”
“Ah. Yes,” Jane said.
She fidgeted, awkward.
“Thor’s here, somewhere,” Jane said. “Sorry, probably not how you’d want him. He didn’t take his exile well.”
“I’ve seen him,” Frigga said. “I do not agree with all of my husband’s decisions. I hope, one day, my son will be willing to grow. Still, I would meet his heir.”
“Heir?” Jane said. “I don’t think I’m that.”
“Do you not?” Frigga said. “You wield Mjolnir in protection of those unable to protect themselves. Is that not so?”
“Maybe,” Jane said. She paused. “About Hela…”
“You’re asking to join us?” Frigga said.
Jane hesitated; she hadn’t talked about that with anyone. Sif had asked her aid, and she’d been ruminating, as if there was a choice. She was being asked to go to space - that would have been enough by itself, before. It was definitely a pleasing secondary benefit.
But Sif was right - she had a lot to learn about Asgard, but it sounded like there was real danger, and she had the means to stop it. There were a few goodbyes to say, but little debate as to what she ought to do.
At her expression, Frigga chuckled.
“That was what my son was supposed to be,” Frigga said. “Who I hoped he’d be. I’d consider you a fine heir. This all could have gone so much worse without you.”
“It doesn’t feel like it’s exactly gone well,” Jane said.
“Midgard is unused to realms beyond its own,” Frigga said. “For your first time interacting with other worlds, you fared well.”
“I hope so,” Jane said. She nodded. “I do want to go with you - just give me time to say my goodbyes.”
“Of course,” Frigga said. “Menja and I both need time to see our peoples settled, as much as it pains me to delay the liberation of Asgard. And I do hope I will be able to reach my son.”
It was still dizzying to think about. Sometimes she barely felt like she’d been able to process the scale when she thought it was just one SHIELD facility under siege - now other worlds were in chaos and a conqueror was spreading out across the stars.
“I’m with you,” Jane said.
It was a minute or so before Frigga left. She had relative freedom of the base, even if Nat had been assigned to quietly monitor from a distance. There was still some distrust of the strangers, but enough goodwill that things seemed like they’d improve.
It had only been a couple of days since she’d hastily been flown out from New York. Hopefully being late in replying to her texts wouldn’t have worried Darcy, or any of her other friends - that being said, she still didn’t know how she was meant to break any of this to them.
Steve came by not long after. Jane was still sat, musing, and staring at Mjolnir.
“I know that look,” he said. “Want to throw something into orbit again?”
“Think I’m good,” Jane said. “Just no idea how I’m meant to have this conversation with anyone.”
“Can’t help you there,” Steve said. “You know your people better than me.”
“I’m going to have to explain aliens,” Jane said.
Despite herself, she grinned.
“Sorry, yes,” Jane said. “How about you? Anywhere you’re looking to get back to?”
“My home’s further away than theirs,” Steve said. He waved his hand vaguely. “I’m thinking I stick around, help out. Apparently one of the Jotunn I punched wants to be my friend. Thought it was impressive.”
“You can really make friends anywhere huh?” Jane said. She chuckled. “You’re helping Frigga?”
“Yeah. Feels like I know what I am out there about as much as I do here,” Steve said. “You too?”
“Yeah,” Jane said.
Steve paused.
“Hear Fury’s trying to get Sif on board for the Avenger thing?” Steve said.
“I’d forgotten about that,” Jane said. “Is it still happening?”
“Sounds like Earth’s been dragged into all this space stuff,” Steve said. “He wants us to make an impression if we’re going to be out there. Apparently he knows someone out there? Didn’t get the details.”
“He knows someone from space?” Jane said. She blinked. “Sure, don’t know why that surprises me.”
Her main impression of Fury had been as someone inscrutable. He’d been too casual around the hammer’s powers for her to believe it was the first inexplicable thing he’d ever seen, though he’d never given details.
Her, Steve, maybe Sif, maybe that space-friend of Steve’s. The Avengers, against the apparent-tyrant who’d claimed Asgard. And they had whatever remained of the Jotunn and Asgardians with them.
It was almost thrilling.
“There’s a lift to take us back to New York due to set off soon,” Steve said. “Are you ready? Can ask them to delay.”
“I’m ready,” Jane said. “Not doing anything else here.”
Sometimes she felt like people stared at her. She knew it was just the hammer - everyone seemed to have strong feelings about Thor, whether they were Asgardian or Jotunn - but she wouldn’t mind a break.
Steve passed Mjolnir to her. Jane took it - then did a double take a second later. Steve winked.
“Shall we go?” he said.
“There’s a galaxy to see,” Jane said. “Why not?”
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