Chapter I

So Let's Go Back to the Beginning

If anyone can say with any sort of certainty that there is something to believe.

Did you ever think that we'd be three steps from the ledge?

Contemplating awful things and thinking about the end?

Nobody mentioned that the pieces wouldn't fit,

You can rearrange them all you want, but the puzzle; it was rigged.

We swore we'd never stray,

right before we went our separate ways.

And now we're looking back,

we're second guessing all the choices that we made.

-With Any Sort of Certainty—Toh Kay

Steve was no stranger to nightmares. When he was a child, he'd wake up in a sweat from some unknown horror, breath catching in lungs that refused to function as they should.

His mother, who had something of a sixth sense when it came to his nightmare and asthma attacks, would be there almost as soon as he woke, rubbing menthol on his chest and singing to him until he went back to sleep.

When she'd died, he dreamed that she still lived. In those dreams, they still owned their brownstone home, his father was still alive, and the ills of Depression-era New York City were far away.

Steve would wake to find his parents were still dead, his stomach still grumbling from hunger, and his lungs still refusing to work.

In those days, living was the nightmare, and only sleep offered respite from the wearying routine of his daily life.

He'd dreamed for seventy years, but in those dreams, he never woke. He hadn't even known he was dreaming.

When he finally woke to the 21st century and could sleep again, he dreamed only of ice.

Since returning from Niflheim, he dreamed of fire, and death, and the Howling Commandos. He knew, intrinsically, that these were more than simple figments of his subconscious—it was his brain trying to make sense of the things he'd seen when he was dead.

But Steve did not care to remember the things that haunted him just beyond the periphery, so he took to wandering the halls of Stark's tower late at night, when the team was asleep. He tried to draw the things he remembered when he did dream, but his drawings frightened him. They were full of ghouls and skeletons and trees that could move and were then burned to death, the souls caught in them screaming as the fire charred what little of them was left.

He drew black rivers occupied by swollen corpses. In his dreams, he was caught in the oily water, and hands grabbed at him, and if he were caught, he'd be dragged down into the murky depths.

Through it all, the Howling Commando's were beside him, and so he drew them, too. Dum Dum was doing the sidestroke in the black river.

"I was best in my county at backstroke. Even made it to State!" He'd said in Steve's dream.

Steve hoped that if he walked until his feet dragged, if he drew until his hand ached and his eyes grew bleary and heavy, that he would be too exhausted to dream.

He was wrong.

Days blurred into weeks. The captain became so exhausted that he hardly had the fortitude to drag himself out of the room to grab something to eat. He began relying on protein bars he stashed in his room.

The team looked just as bad, if not worse, than he felt. When he came into a room they were in, their chattering would cease and they'd look at him and plaster false smiles on their faces and ask about benign things.

He was lonely, but he was weary of their false cheer; of the notion that he'd break if they said something wrong, so he stopped seeking them out.

It was on a Tuesday morning, several hours before dawn, and a month since their return, that Steve heard a knock on his door. He looked up from his sketchbook, occupied by black lines and black creatures, and stared at the door. Nobody had shadowed his door since the team's return, but he'd not realized it until now.

"Come in," Steve said finally, voice scratchy from disuse.

Loki entered, looking first at the captain before glancing around the room, his face pinching as though he'd eaten something unpleasant as he took in the disorganized state of Steve's affairs.

Steve had stopped making his bed; he'd taken to crumbling up and throwing the drawings of some of his more disturbed memories onto the floor. His trash had overflowed within the first week, but he refused to allow Tony's bots to come in. There was something about the way they moved that resonated wrongly in his soul, disturbed memories he wasn't ready to remember.

"Captain Steve Rogers, you are in a sorry state," Loki said, knocking one of Steve's undershirts on the floor before settling into the chair he'd come to claim as his own.

Steve looked around his room, becoming embarrassed by the condition it was in. He ran a hand through his hair and felt the oil glom to his palm. He reminded himself to take a shower, realizing he didn't remember the last time he had, and knew it was too long.

"You're looking well," Steve said, and he was. There was a bounce to Loki's step that he'd had never had before—his shoulders were a little straighter, his head held a little higher.

"For the first time since I was a child, I am free," Loki said. "And I have you to thank."

Steve laughed dryly, but there was no humor in it.

Loki frowned, and he glanced at the sketchbook laid open on Steve's desk. Pencils and charcoal were strewn across the surface, eraser dust prevalent. Steve had been in the middle of drawing the black cliff that he'd climbed. It had shifted and thrust blades of rock into his flesh, pulling muscle from bone, but if he fell, the hungry ghosts in the oily river below would've ripped him apart, so giving up hadn't been an option.

Jim had been there to see him through, and Colonel Phillips had waited at the top, urging him onwards.

"You are drawing your memories," Loki stated, foregoing any small talk, and Steve was thankful for that. He wasn't sure he could stomach talking about the weather or the fake platitudes his team was giving him, when he saw them at all. "You don't understand what you saw. It is coming to you in pieces."

"Every night," he admitted, "I remember more. None of it makes sense."

Loki nodded, looking at the sketchbook on Steve's desk. "I had hoped that your memories would never return to you. You would be better off for it, had they not."

"Yeah," Steve agreed, closing his sketchbook. He looked at the god. "Can you tell me what happened?" He pinched the bridge of his nose. There was a sharp pain that had developed behind his right eye, and the lid had taken to twitching. He rubbed it with the heel of his palm.

"Everybody's walking on eggshells around me, and Bruce is gone, but nobody's told me where he's gone to."

"Well—that part is easy. I am not sure of the exact mechanics, but Banner found a means to escape Niflheim to venture onto the branches of Yggdrasil. How he managed to leave or why Hel let him go is unknown. My mother is convinced that when he is ready to return, he will."

"Traveling the branches-like we did?"

"We traveled in distinct realms of each branch, worlds, you might say. But the tree is not a metaphor—it is a literal tree that connects the nine realms. There are places between those realms, and I suspect that is where he has gone. There is immeasurable knowledge to be learned from traveling those lands."

"You think he'll come back with the secrets of the universe?" Steve asked with a weak grin.

"If the knowledge doesn't break him-" Loki drummed his fingers on the armrest thoughtfully, "-then some of them, at least."

Steve sobered. He had not enjoyed his own travels, and he feared what Bruce was facing alone.

"You did this," Steve accused. "All of it. Bruce wouldn't be alone in the universe if you hadn't done what you did. The team wouldn't have had to travel in Niflheim and I—" he trailed off before starting again, leveling Loki with a glare. "Why did you leave me to die in that alley?"

He'd played that night over a thousand times in his head. He'd tried to suss out what he'd done to earn Loki's sudden aggression, but he'd not figured it out, and in a lot of ways, that was worse.

"Did you know she was coming? Skadi."

"No," Loki said. "Would it matter?"

"Yes," Steve admitted. "It would mean you did not leave me to be killed."

Loki's clear green eyes slid away from Steve's, as if he could not bear the weight of his gaze. "What do you remember, from Niflheim?"

"You asked me that a month ago."

"The question remains."

Steve nodded; relieved to talk about the things that haunted them, as if verbalizing them would free him.

"Just bits and pieces. There was a black river, filled with bloated corpses that reached for me. On the far side, there was a golden shore where my parents and friends waited. And there was a... a woman—" Steve shook his head. "But I don't know why she was there. They called me to come home, and I wanted to. I waded into the water and began swimming towards them, and the black waters opened up, allowing me to swim easily."

"Why didn't you cross over, then? I had not known gateways existed between religions."

"Just before I climbed onto the golden sands, I noticed a green light that shot out from my chest into the dark lands, and I knew it was you, and-" he trailed off. "I turned away from Heaven so I could find you. The Howling Commando's came with me."

"And what followed?"

"Once I'd turned away from the shores, the waters closed in on me. The dead tried to drown me, but the team helped me surface. There was a black cliff I had to climb, and with each foot I climbed, the black rock shot through my skin. I could still see the shores of Jordan and I thought about-" He shook his head. "-But Colonel Phillips was at the top, telling me to get my ass up there."

"Colonel Phillips—" Loki began.

"He was my CO," Steve explained.

"I know who he is. Was. I have never met such an infuriating and excruciatingly annoying man."

"You met him?" And Steve grinned briefly.

"So, you do not remember finding me? Our conversation in the cave?" Loki asked.

"No—after the cliff, there was a burning forest. By then, almost all of my muscle had been torn away, and I couldn't run fast enough to escape it. My body..." Steve could remember the smell of his own flesh burning away.

He'd tried to run as fast as he could, but it was though he was running through mud and he couldn't go fast enough. There had been faces in the trees, and they screamed as the fire climbed up the trunks of the trees, and then the trees, too, were howling.

"I don't remember a lot after that."

"Hel almost won you as her prize," Loki said. "You would've been lost forever."

Steve shuddered, his stomach shifting, and for a moment, he thought he might be sick, and he stared down at his hands. He moved them, if only to revel in the feeling of tendon and muscle sliding over bone and all of it exactly how it should be. He ran his thumb over the flesh of his palm.

In Niflheim, he'd not been sure he'd ever be whole again.

"I was a coward," the Jotunnsaid suddenly, and the captain looked up. "It became apparent to me that you had never mentioned in the Sagas of the Fates. I wrongly assumed you had died before the sisters three could care to add you. Instead of fighting my providence, I decided to be through with you so that when your time came to die, I would not have to see it. I did not know Skadi was coming. I..." Loki trailed off, finding sudden interest in the leather of his chair.

Steve digested the words.

He remembered with clarity his discussions with the Howling's Commandos. They could not understand why he'd turned away from paradise to trudge through the cursed realm of Hel's domain. At the time, he wasn't sure he'd known exactly why, either. Loki's betrayal was fresh in his mind, and he wanted to go to his mother so badly, to cavort with his friends forever on the golden shores.

He'd read the Sagas and he had seen the lost ghouls, and he knew that whatever Loki's reasoning for wounding him and abandoning him to face Skadi, he could not allow his bonded to face that damnable realm for an eternity.

If he had, he wouldn't have deserved paradise.

And Loki had come back for him when he'd lay dying; had taken him into his arms and carried him back to the Avengers. Steve didn't know what that meant, still didn't, but it didn't matter.

Loki had come back.

"You were afraid," Steve realized aloud. Loki prickled visibly at the words. "You think our friendship has made you weak."

"I have read the Sagas. I am to kill Heimdall and witness the murder of my parents and my brothers. I was meant to slaughter Balder. For a thousand years, I have sought to break myself free from those chains, but everything I did only brought me closer. I was Death in Tehran. I did not believe anything I did would change your fate."

"You met your destiny on the road you took to avoid it."

"Yes." Loki shifted in the chair. "But now I am free."

"You died because we are bonded."

Loki nodded.

"An act by your mother to ensure this would all happen."

Loki hesitated before nodding once more.

"So then, she is a woman deliberate in her actions."

"Yes," Loki agreed, his face freezing as he realized he'd stepped into a trap.

"So why did you lie to me?" Steve pressed, leaning forward. "You told me they adopted me purely for ceremonial purposes, but that's not true. I haven't known Frigga very long, but she doesn't strike me as the type of person to do things for the sake of ceremony."

Having been separated from his bonded for so long, Loki had forgotten how clever the man was. The Trickster was growing complacent, and if his suspicions were right, he needed to be more cunning than ever before.

But Steve had guessed things were awry, and Loki knew he couldn't face the future alone. What was more, Loki knew that he didn't have to.

"The sun is setting in Asgard," Loki said slowly. Steve's brow furrowed and he continued, "It is said that one of the first signs of Ragnarök is a long winter and the setting of the sun over the land. You may have noticed the land is in perpetual light, but upon our departure, the sun hung low in the sky."

"But it wasn't cold," the captain argued mildly.

"No," Loki agreed. "I am unsure what it means. In all of the stories, a three-year winter is the herald of the end days, so the setting may mean nothing at all. A simple anomaly."

"But you don't believe that."

"No," the god admitted reluctantly, "I do not."

"So, what do we do?"

"Perhaps nothing. The Sagas never mentioned the participation of humans in Ragnarök, but they have been erased, and so I no longer know what to anticipate."

"Loki—I am grateful you came here. But you didn't come to talk about Asgard''s weather. You've been beating around the bush all evening—why are you here?"

"It is true," Loki said. "I did not know how to broach the subject, but I suspect it does not matter. I will state it simply: while you have locked yourself away in your room, the team has begun to fall apart at the seams. You have the luxury of dealing with your memories incrementally, but they have no such reprieve. They remember everything and it's tearing them apart."

Steve looked down at his drawings. He had only considered the team abstractly, had barely thought of them at all while he was dealing with his nightmares. They'd endured so many things; he'd assumed they'd weather this, too. He'd been wrong, and guilt washed over him.

"I didn't know."

"They have nothing to focus on, no missions, no war, and so they're focusing on themselves. Romanov is feeling the loss of Bruce most acutely, I believe."

"I didn't know you paid attention to them." Steve began to wonder if Loki was just being observant, or if he'd begun to grow fond of the team. He thought it was probably the latter. The team had been distant in the beginning, but they'd given the god a second chance that his own people had never afforded him.

After all, the Avengers had come for them and rescued them both, and regardless of any outward expression of Loki's feelings on the matter, Steve knew it affected him more deeply than he was letting on. His people had known for a thousand years what his fate was meant to be, and there had been no mention of saving him from it.

"I have found her on the terrace every day since we returned, watching the horizon. I told her that Banner would return when he is ready. She continues in her activities regardless."

Steve digested the information, before he asked, "What about Clint?"

"As for Barton—he is building himself an arsenal of bows and ammo to match. He has become quite a bore: he can't be bothered for a game of cards."

"I imagine Tony has walled himself off in his garage."

"You imagine correctly."

"What about your brother? How's he doing?"

Loki looked pained.

"I believe his travels affected him more than he is willing to admit. He has a sickly look about him, and spends much of his time lounging in his room and watching soap operas."

Steve laughed before he realized his bonded was serious.

"Soap operas?" He echoed.

"Yes. He said he found them engaging."

"Well, we can't let that stand," Steve said lightly, pulling out a drawer so he could put his sketchbook inside. Leaning against the desk he crossed his arms and looked at the trickster god.

"I didn't know," he repeated again.

"Now you do." Loki stood. "So, fix them." He turned to leave.

"Loki," Steve called once the demigod had reached the door. "Why?"

Loki hesitated, his fingers drumming on the doorframe as he considered his reply.

"They bore me when they're so maudlin. The tower only has room for one brooding individual, and I am finding it cramped." He exited, leaving Steve alone in his room.

Steve stared at the door a long time, realizing that was Loki's way of saying he was lonely.

For obvious reasons, he was the only one that had come out the better in their situation, and Steve suspected he felt guilty for leaving Niflheim relatively unscathed. Whatever he had suffered for his brief stint was nothing compared to what he was meant to suffer, and Loki knew it, and was better off for it.

But he was the only one.

Straightening his room so it was marginally better than the chaotic mess he'd allowed it to devolve to, Steve made his bed, and thought about what he planned to say to Natasha.

Guilt churned in his soul. How could he be their leader if he couldn't be bothered to leave his room? Bucky had always been able to identify when he'd been about to sink into one of his bouts of depression, and a day spent in the art museums or watching war films had usually been enough to pull him out. He'd called the fits "moodiness" and said it was just as well—there wasn't an artist in the world that didn't know how to be melodramatic.

After Bucky had died, there had been no one to fill his shoes, and Steve had to be particularly mindful when he felt the tendrils of his moodiness washed over him.

Loki had done what nobody since Bucky had done, and Steve didn't know how to feel about that.

0o0o0o0o0o0o

Steve found Natasha on the terrace, as Loki had said she would be.

His raised gardens lay fallow—they'd been gone five months by earth's time, and he'd missed the chance to put any spring crops in the ground. Though it was a little late for watermelon and okra, he was sure he'd be able to get a pretty bountiful crop, and he was just in time to prepare for his fall harvest. He set a jar of sun tea on his workbench to brew in the hot sun.

Although the summer solstice was still a few weeks away, it was already unusually hot. Natasha's eyes were squinted against the sun, and she wiped the sweat away on her brow.

Steve came abreast of her and shoved his hands in his pockets. He followed her line of sight over the edge of the building. They were too far above the street to make out the features of the tiny people below, but whenever someone drew close to the door of the tower, he could see Natasha tense.

They stood in silence for a long time, the captain marking the passage of time by the elongating shadows cast by the buildings.

Finally, Natasha glanced at him.

"I've lost a lot of teammates," she said. "And left more than a few behind. It was always my choice."

"Bruce isn't lost," Steve said, although he wasn't so sure. "He's journeying."

"What if he doesn't come back?"

"I think he will," Steve looked out at the city, "But if he doesn't, that's his choice. We can't make it for him."

"I don't like it," Natasha admitted. "It doesn't sit right, leaving him behind." She paused, and Steve could see the gears turning in her head. He remained silent. "You traveled Yggdrasil. What was it like?"

"It's what what could probably be expected of journeying anywhere foreign. There's a lot of danger and a lot of uncertainty, but there's beauty, and a million things to be learned. Both about the place you're in, and about yourself."

"Sounds like something Bruce would like," the Black Widow said. "But it doesn't sit right, leaving him behind," she repeated.

"Did we leave him, or did he leave us?" Steve knew what Loki's take on the matter was, but he'd learned Loki's version of things and everybody else's could be incongruous.

"He left us," Natasha admitted grudgingly.

"Well, then we've got to wait until he's ready to return," Steve provided.

"I was going to make this a Widow's Walk," Natasha complained lightly motioning to the terrace. Some of the tenseness had left her shoulders and there was a slight upturn to her lips.

"This is my garden, or didn't you know? Anyway, Widow's Walks are noting more than romantic ideals," Steve chided. "Haven't you ever looked Wikipedia's page on the matter?"

"Have you?" Natasha asked.

"Of course," Steve replied lightly, "how else would I know about the modern world?"

Natasha laughed.

"I saw you brought some tea out," she said, nodding towards the mason jar,. "Is it ready?"

"No, but I'll make you some tea of your own, if the lady desires?"

"The lady does. It's hot."

"Well then, let's brew some tea. It'll be fresh; I'll just throw some ice on it. This sun tea—this won't be ready until tonight. But it'll be the best tea you've ever had."

"I'll hold you to that," Natasha swore, following him inside.

"Count on it."

A/N:

A widow walk is a common architectural feature on 19th century North American coastal houses. Popular myth holds that they allowed wives of mariners to watch for their spoueses' return, often in vain, the sea having taken their husbands. In reality, they were standards features of Italiante architecture, which was popular during the Age of Sail.

I know it's been a bit of a gap since I posted the last arc, but in the meantime, I had a move, finals, got a black eye from a LtCol in my Marine unit (I was a goalie for "morale PT" and he kneed me straight in the face. BUT HE DIDN'T SCORE. BOOM), got covered in poisoned ivy, and finished off the year with a 3.9, and my husband suddenly got orders for four months in Miami. (Sad him, I'm sure) BUT, Val, my editor and I are wrapping up the last chapter for the arc and it should be more than ready when it's posted in the next few days.

Also: I know most people likely skip over the lyrics at the beginning, but if you do: take a second glance at them. I spend a lot of time agonizing over them, and they often provide clues to the insight of a character, or provide foreshadowing to either the story or the arc in general.