Hello hello!

If you're just joining us, the following is a warning. For all my lovely return readers, a little clarification. Here goes.

First of all, my fics have a habit of disregarding canon when it suits me as many fanfics do. However I would also like to point out that in adding Thor to their universe, Marvel did the same thing to Norse mythology. In all honesty if the Marvel versions met their myth counterparts in a dark alley...they'd all get their asses kicked nine ways from Sunday. With the possible exceptions of Sif and Loki. Sif because myth pretty much portrays her as a mannequin defined by her "fair golden" hair who has no issue letting her man-child of a husband Thor beat the shit out of whatever happens to be causing her grief as opposed to the (not married) Warrior Goddess we meet in the Thor movies who'd sooner rush upon her own blade than play damsel in distress. And bring up the hair thing, she dares you.

Loki only because he was made physically strong enough by Marvel to go toe to toe with Thor. The trickster persona, the cunning, the sass and him being the original Houdini are all true to his legend. Mythology's most epic rap battle titled "Lokasenna", starts off rather inexplicably and doesn't really end well for him but is basically 60+ stanzas of Loki airing everybody's dirty/sexy laundry just cuz he's pissed.

Everybody else is kinda screwed. There's also the fact that the Jotun aren't exactly terrible savages...

Yeah, anyhoo this chapter explains Heimdall's presence at the end of I#1 and lays a bit of ground work for Thor's explanation to the Avengers. Beware of shifting tenses. And yes, there is a difference in how our favorite bridge warden thinks and how he speaks.

*HO*

Heimdall, proud all seeing guardian of the bifrost, just didn't give a good god damn anymore. Why? Let's see.

Suggesting that the tattered remains of 10+ realities (the actual number is somewhat debatable) merge to produce a single stable reality doesn't make one wise. It means you had one good idea.

Wielding the most powerful of spears, Gungnir, did not make you all powerful. It began as your conduit after all. The real story behind it's elevation in status (your tripping, gouging out your own damn eye on the tip and thus sealing the realms to Yggdrasil [the only one NOT about to collapse, more on that later] by you flowing blood) by complete accident makes you clumsy but insanely lucky. You just as easily could have gained an air hole in your brain. It also makes you a wonderfully bold faced attention seeking liar to have proclaimed it your intention all along then bask in the adoration of your 'great sacrifice' that followed.

Sealing away the dark elves and taking not one but two precious treasures from the Jotun in order to defeat both did not make you all knowing. It made you capable of basic reasoning. And kinda a dick. The best way to get rid of people you can't exactly destroy lest the balance unravel who are trying to overthrow you? Make sure they can't get to you. How do you rub in the face of one of the only other rules able to match your power level that you are superior, nevermind such a rivalry only existed in your own mind as the Ice Giant couldn't be bothered to even acknowledge anything of the sort (he sort of had other shit to do...like write poetry*)? Steal his conduit and child thus turning his world into a wasteland and causing him and his consort unbridled grief. See? Diiiiiick.

Chastising your battle hungry firstborn for wanting to go to war with the Frost Giants so "they may know their place" doesn't make you a good king. It makes you a hypocrite seeing as that's exactly why you did it ages earlier. On the subject of poor royal decisions. As an afterthought, raising their stolen prince alongside your own son with the hope that as they grew so would something more than brotherly love so a marriage could be achieved and you had a face saving reason to return the Casket (because it finally occurs to you that having one realm off balance MIGHT be an issue) demonstrates a lack of understanding in matters of the heart. And common sense.

All of this does make you one being, Odin Borson. The insufferable prick Heimdall found himself in service to. Thanks to a technicality. It's all very simple really. Contrary to what mythology (and Odin's ego) would have one believe, Asgard is not special. Not even remotely. It is merely one of nine realms tethered to the branches not roots of Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree. Nor does the Bifrost connect only Asgard to Midgard but is the main throughway between all worlds. There are other ways of course but the major one is controlled by the gold clad sentinel and by extension Odin. What many fail to realize is this not bestowed upon him as some sacred duty. Nor was it some kind of punishment. The fact of the matter is Odin's guard dog is the one thing giving the great tree it's vitality and thus the nine realms bound to it's life giving branches. Most old enough to know this truth have long since perished, save the rulers of the realms who were in fact formerly guardians of their own separate realities like himself. And even a few of them have conveniently forgotten. Their subjects live blissfully unaware of delicate balance of their existence.

Oh, but Odin knows. He knows that since pretty much all of his power is now devoted to maintaining the tree (that isn't really a tree but the primordial reality of his own Heimdall never really got around to developing much for one reason or another), he cannot rise up and dethrone him. Odin knows he is too much of a bleeding heart to simply allow it to collapse and doom so many who are undeserving of such a fate. That his dear sister Sif would be heartbroken to know he were the cause of so many if he did.

So he stands. He watches. He waits.

Subverting that old goat at every turn.

It was he who let Loki into Jotunheim. Even in his weakened state, there's no way a single mage could imprison a Guardian. Or avoid his gaze. If the orange eyed warrior wanted to know where you were in the nine realms, he did because the realms were all APART of him. He told Odin that to rattle his chain.

He knew Loki was poisoned by Thanos' lust driven touch, slowly going mad. Something he had warned the Asgardian king of only to be dismissed as paranoid. Be told Loki must be held accountable for his own actions. "Thanos wouldn't dare such an affront!"

He let Thor and his band of hooligans pass into Jotunheim then to Midgard not by finding a loophole in Odin's orders. But because he damn well felt like it...but the loopholes helped. Doing whatever he could to hopefully draw his royal pain in the ass' attention to his 'son's' plight. Who responded by assuming Loki was merely jealous of his brother and arrogance (pot, kettle, black), no more no less, and that drove his campaign. Though he did concede hiding his origins might not have been the swiftest thing to do. Thor, whom he'd had such high hopes for not being a complete imbecile, just went with the flow once back in his father's good graces.

And our eternal watcher resisted the urge to bang his head upon the hilt of his own sword.

Repeatedly.

He is all seeing not omnipotent. So, he didn't foresee Loki's assassination of his biological father and the backlash it would have during all this. No not war, that happens all the time out of boredom. The issue of him having to directly support Jotunheim as it's anchor died thus being unable to keep the half crazed dark mage from falling right into Thanos' clutches from the bifrost. That backlash. Luckily Laufey did not perish outside his reality and with time could be reborn. His realm yes but the merger had made all worlds connected to the Tree one reality so...anyway all wasn't lost. Odin obviously remembered that as he didn't totally freak out over it once recovering from Odinsleep.

Then came the Chitauri invasion. Loki's insanity reached critical mass. And young Sagittarius, having had enough of not knowing where his lover was, appeared with no respect for the rules of etiquette and put Thanos in his place. One wasn't suppose to just traipse across realities as one pleased without permission or invite. Of course the golden archer didn't really care for Odin much either...

Now Heimdall found himself striding towards the throne room. Though he could be heard quite clearly from his post, Odin had requested all his nobles be present for an announcement. Though even as he approached, he could hear him speaking. The urgency must have been too great to wait for him. Perhaps he finally learned the lessons his sentry had been trying to teach him. That the Allfather wasn't exactly All-powerful nor always right. The proof of Thanos' taint was all right there, laid so plainly even Thor now understood his dear brother had been nothing more than a mad man's puppet.

"-nd these crimes cannot go unpunished. Loki has slain the Jotun king, lain waste to Midgard and attempted to usurp the throne of Asgard through patricide. Midgard's mightest have proven themselves unfit to apprehend, much less pass judgement upon him. It is the Allfather's decry that Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard be brought before me to stand trial."

And perhaps Múspellsheimr** had suddenly frozen over.

The sound of an armored boot scraping the floor as he used his forward momentum to swing his outstretched leg around and do an about face was a bit grating to his own ears but not nearly as those words

"I am officially DONE." he murmured, now stomping away from his original destination.

Fuck Odin.

Fuck Thanos.

JUST FUCK THIS.

Asgard could burn for all he cared. And probably would once the All-faker's shit finally caught up to him. Which by his estimates would be soon given the arrival of Gaia's third son. In the form of an army of mages, priests, priestesses plus their champions, all seriously pissed off to suddenly realize pretty much all their major problems have been his fault.

Did he mention that collectively they could obliterate an actual Guardian? Have done so?

Yeah. Time to bail on this dumpster fire.

"Brother! The Allfather sent me to find you! Where-" Sif began only to be silenced by a gentle finger. He was so engrossed in his own brooding he didn't notice her approach.

"Sister dear, would you like a respite?"

"Respite? From what pray tell? The attacks on Midgard can hardly be seen as battles to recover from. Especially since Prince Thor saw most of the combat." She blinked. "Is something wrong?"

"Now? No. Soon? Most definitely."

"Then we must warn the King!" She turned to walk around him and he seized her hand. "Brother! Odin must know of this! You do your duty a disservice."

"Sister, if Odin is unaware of this coming threat, then on his own head be it. I grow weary of this. Weary of serving a man who is incapable of owning up to his own faults and shortcomings. Who ignores my warnings. Who relishes holding those he deems lesser under his thumb while flaunting a power he did not earn and has not the decency to admit it. It is Odin who does all the realms a disservice."

"Blasphemy...have you gone mad?" She shook her head, preparing to draw her blade with her free hand. Loyal to the end, prepared to subdue her traitorous brother in the name of her fair and just king. A fine graduate of the Odin Institute of Bullshit and Misdirection. Poor thing.

With a roll of his eyes, the darker skinned god cuffed the back of her head and caught her as body lost all rigidity, sword clattering to the ground. A cheap shot he would admit but his sister was too young to know the depths of the danger their leader had put them all in. He had to protect her no matter what.

Sif was going to be angrier than a dragon robbed of it's eggs when she came to but once he could properly explain, she'd see reason. Devoted as she was, when faced with something that did not sit right, she was very good at putting the pieces together. Besides they weren't leaving forever, Yggdrasil would wither if they did; all he wanted was to not be here when company arrived. He'd even figured out the perfect place for them to spend sometime until this blew over. A place full of excitement and action, where a nice young man whom she could grow to love resided (seeing as Thor was a lost cause).

You know, provided neither she nor the interesting times in which he lived killed a certain wild horse first.

*HO*

*According to Norse Mythology, Jotun are the source of the poetic arts...which Odin stole then spat all over Midgard for whatever reason. Their race is also pretty easy going. When people weren't fucking with them.

**Muspelheim is the Land of Fires in Norse Mythology, where the sun and stars originate. It's counterpart is Niflheimr (literally Land of Mists) the Land of Ice where the river separating the living from the dead begins. The first beings arose from where these fire and ice world met.

And there you have it: a partial explanation the my Avengers-verse, the reason Heimdall was even mentioned in the interlude and your answer to "Hey, guess what character I don't like very much!". I'm not sure if Marvel has ever address this (comic or movie wise) but Sif and Heimdall ARE siblings. It's possible they have. Considering they may have mentioned a few of the um...more interesting aspects of Loki's lore and spent the last 40 or so odd year completely denying it. I have no proof yet but I do know both DC and Marvel are famous for some seriously WTF moments in history that make them rue the fact that the internet exists.

Also, here's how things work with my Chaos Mage concept:

Guardians rule over everything in their reality

Mages are their children

2nd tier mages or priests/priestess serve under Mages

Champions are mortals (anyone NOT one of the above) who get involved in matters generally reserved for Guardians and Mages

But of course there are exceptions to the rules...

Cookies to whoever figures out just who Big H has in mind for his lil sis to spend her time in witness protection getting to know.

Love it? Hate it? No strong feelings either way? Reviews are like hugs! Siresoundwave out!