Chapter 10: Unstoppable Forces and Immovable Objects

Nine paces fares the son of Odin,
And slain by the serpent, he fearless falls.

- The Poetic Edda (Völuspá/The Wise Woman's Prophecy)

It was laughable, really, that a son of Odin should meet his end at the point of such a pathetic weapon. It was laughable, even as it was grim, but Loki had always had it in him to laugh at grim things. Even lying there on the pavement, on his side, in the rain, Loki had that in him.

What he did not have was air.

Midgard was so heavy on him, where it pressed against him. The rain beat against him and hands jostled him relentlessly, tearing at his clothing. He could hear a voice, too — a meaningless clatter of words that pelted his mind but refused to stick.

Blackness ate at the edges of his vision, and it occurred to Loki as his thoughts begun to unravel that it might be the Void. Thanos had snatched away its prey and it had pursued him, like a great wolf, across the cosmos to this place. (Leave it to Loki to wax poetic about the process of losing consciousness, which was what some fast-fading part of him knew was really happening.)

Except that as the pressure of the Earth was replaced by the weightless drift of nothingness, the thought became less poetic and more literal. It was the Void, he was convinced, this darkness rising up around him until Midgard was nothing but a pinprick of light far above. There was no air in it; he couldn't breathe, couldn't speak. He was falling. Terror flooded through him in a last, desperate rise of clarity. He did what he'd done in the Void when the awfulness of it had first overwhelmed him — what he'd always done when he'd been afraid and alone and lost, wounded or dying in wilds and on battlefields across the cosmos: he called for help.

Loki didn't know if the watcher could recognize his name in the wet gasps he managed to push from his body, but when his darkened vision started to give way to empty whiteness, he imagined he was looking up at the stars and the Bifrost was rushing down to take him home.

Heimdall's Observatory was empty when the Bifrost threw Loki into it. Outside, it was raining, waves crashing hard against the rocks. A proper tempest — it only stormed like this in Asgard when Thor was in a mood.

So he must be, and he must be here. Out the archway, just across the bridge — a flicker of red like blood on the wind.

"Brother?" Loki called. Walking toward him.

"He won't stop," Thor said. "Not until he kills me."

Something was moving beneath them, amid the waves. Loki was reminded unpleasantly of the Chitauri leviathans. A long, lithe body breached the surface of the water — smooth pale scales ridged by huge, bladelike spines the color of rust.

The ground shook, throwing Loki from his feet. The massive body heaved itself up onto the bridge before Thor, and in the distance, where the head swayed, a pair of crimson eyes cut through the mist.

"Run," Loki said. Then louder, "Thor, run!"

Thor spun Mjolnir and lightning blazed across the black sky, playing across the serpent's scales. The tongue that flickered forth as it tasted the air was a brilliant, flashing silver. As silver as your own, Liesmith.

It hissed, and there were words in the sound, though Loki felt them in his bones more than heard them in his ears.

Mine is the fate of Odin's son, mighty warden of Midgard.

"He won't stop," Thor said again. "Not until I kill him."

The wyrm struck, and so did Thor. The fanged maw gaped wide enough to swallow the observatory, and a bolt of lightning crashed with enough force to shatter the bridge. The snake's head rose above the dust, but the lightning had cleaved straight through it like a great blade. It sank, trailing its venom in a fine acid-green mist, and slid from the bridge and back under the waves.

Thor was left standing at the splintered edge of the bridge. He coughed, shook the poison away, and dropped his hammer, turning back toward Loki.

"It's over," Thor said, the storm clearing. The brothers walked toward each other, and Thor made it half the way before he staggered and fell. Beyond him, a glow was building. Asgard was on fire.

Loki froze, and there was a sound behind him. He turned, and his chest blazed with pain.

"You are a destroyer, Odinson," said Heimdall, driving the sword deeper, until it was buried to the hilt in Loki's chest, but still it could not pierce as deeply as those golden eyes. "Wherever you go there is war, ruin, and death. In what world could you have ever come home?"

Loki grabbed the gauntleted wrists and felt the gold armor shatter in his grasp. He looked down to see his hands had gone the color of a frozen corpse, and from where they touched, frostbite-black overtook the brown of Heimdall's skin until the watcher collapsed, dead, taking his sword with him. Loki backed away, bleeding.

He knew before he reached him that Thor was dead. He fell to his knees in the grass beside him anyway, and pulled his brother's head into his lap.

"Can I stop this?" Loki asked. He looked up at his father, standing serenely on a cliffside in Norway, looking out at the sea.

"No," said Odin, turning to him. "This is the fate of Thor. It cannot be stopped." His face was grim. His face was always grim.

"It cannot be stopped," Loki repeated. His fingers left smudges of dark blood on Thor's cheeks. Somewhere far away, it was hard to breathe.

"Fate cannot be stopped," said Odin. With something like a smile, he said, "And while you can run from it, I will tell you from experience: you will tire before it does."

Loki laughed, despairing. Indeed — he remembered that day in the vault. Fate had caught up with both of them then.

"What is Loki god of?" Odin asked him.

Some do battle, others just do—

"Tricks," Loki said bitterly.

o

The snake had not seemed overly interested in the little creatures scurrying around it until Peter had started bothering it, which he was now regretting. He swung over the bridge and under a coil of the monster's body and the head pursued him. At first, he'd hoped to tie it in a knot, but so far that hadn't worked.

Peter skimmed past the end of the bridge as he went to web up the entrance so no more cars — or people — could get on from that side. He darted immediately back over the bridge, glad that the monster was more interested in him than the fleeing civilians.

He swung wildly as the snake jostled the cables his webs were attached to. A huge talon rose out of the river and landed on the bridge with a crunch.

Okay, so not like a snake snake. That was fine. Peter was pretty sure it counted as a dragon now. He really hoped somebody was filming this. When Ned found out he fought a dragon, he was going to die.

The thing was so big, with so much to keep track of, Peter almost missed that it had drawn back its head. He swung across the cables, and when he felt that sense of danger, like static on his skin, he dropped a web to the bridge and yanked himself downward to dodge the strike.

It didn't come — instead, the serpent swept its head across and sprayed a stream of neon-green liquid that hissed as it hit the cables. Peter heard the pops and twangs of the cables breaking and the cracking of the bridge and the web he'd flung up to catch himself went nowhere. He fell, flailing, toward the falling edge of the bridge as the monster's fanged mouth closed in on him.

It snapped shut as a gleaming red-and-gold blur snatched his hand and pulled him away.

"Too close, kid," said Tony.

"I had it — I mean, I could have—" Peter didn't even need to see his face to know the look he was getting from behind the Iron Man mask. "Thanks, Mister Stark."

The dragon was no longer following him — it had been distracted by the Vision, who was shooting beams at it from his forehead. It snapped at him and he phased through the back of its head, turned, and resumed beaming it.

"Don't get hit with that acid, Vis," said Tony, "I don't know what it'll do to vibranium and I don't want to find out."

"Noted," said Vision.

"Hey, while you've got me, can you fly me up to the top?" said Peter, "I think I saw something on one of the towers — uh… Brooklyn side."

Tony flew them up over the fight and toward Brooklyn, where Peter could see the approaching figure of War Machine, similarly toting Thor by the wrist. Tony tossed Peter toward the tower and said, "What took you two so long?"

Peter missed the answer (or maybe interrupted it) as he flung himself up onto the top of the tower and said, "Hey!" he pointed, "That's your hammer, right? Muh... midge..." Everything screeched to a halt as Peter's senses went haywire.

"Mjolnir," said Tony, as the Vision yelled out a warning.

Peter reacted first, snagging Tony with webs from both hands and jerking him back out of the way. War Machine tried to dodge, but the spray of venom hit him and Thor both (it was glancing, Peter hoped as much as saw) and they dropped out of the sky.

"Rhodey!" Tony roared. He severed the webs with a repulsor shot and dove after them, but the snake got in his way. "Rhodey, talk to me—"

They heard sputtering (they must have hit the water) and — "He's all right, Stark. I've got him," said Thor. Then, "He says you guys have to have a talk about protecting the arc reactors on the suits better."

"Get him out of here," said Tony, sounding relieved for a split second before the snake caught sight of them in the water and started after them.

"Shit—" said Thor.

"I got it, I got it!" Peter webbed the back of its neck and swung around the tower but the thing was just too massive. The tower wasn't going to hold it. "I don't — I don't got it!"

"Here!" Tony said, "Web it to this!"

"Are you serious?" Peter said, but he did it. The snake, which had drawn back for a strike, stopped mid-snap. He swung back and forth, reinforcing the straining webs. "Why did that even work?" Peter said, shaking his head at Tony in disbelief.

Tony cackled as the serpent struggled futilely against the stubborn weight of Mjolnir. "Unworthy," he said.

o

Stephen Strange was not surprised to be woken up at nearly four in the morning to the sound of his phone ringing. He was surprised when he picked it up and the first thing he heard was a woman's voice asking if he was a medical doctor.

"I was a surgeon, why?" he said, brain still fuzzy with sleep but quickly clearing. People who needed medical doctors often had medical emergencies.

"Loki's dying. He said you were a friend."

Strange dragged himself out of the armchair he'd dozed off in — he'd wake up faster on his feet.

"Where is he and why is he dying?"

"Larrington University. He's been shot."

How a bullet could even damage an Asgardian was a question for later. A few questions in (Was he conscious? Was he breathing? Shot where, exactly? Was there an exit wound?) and Strange had already decided he liked her. She was clearly shaken, but she was level-headed enough to give precise answers and she wasn't squeamish.

When he and Wong walked through a portal a few seconds later, she just said, "That was fast."

He nodded at her as he knelt beside them. "Doctor Stephen Strange," he introduced himself. "You are…?"

"Doctor Jane Foster," she said.

"Not a medical doctor, I presume," he said. Between the three of them, they managed to get Loki back through the portal — he was much heavier than he looked.

"Astrophysicist," she clarified.

o

"—practically black, Stephen! Blood is not supposed to be that color!"

"He's an alien, Christine. It's not human blood."

"Well, I mean, that does explain some things," said Christine Palmer, "Like why needles just don't work on him. So, great. I have an alien bleeding to death in my hospital. Thanks. This is it. This is my life now."

"A magic alien," said Jane, for no other reason than to impress upon her yet again the absurdity of the situation. (Darcy had been a bad influence on her, Jane decided.) Christine looked at her like her head was on backwards.

"I don't know how you got dragged into this," Christine said, "But I'm so sorry."

"Oh no, that's not, uh, Stephen's fault. His—" she indicated Loki "—brother flew out of a hole in space and crashed into my van. We dated for a while."

Loki shot up in the hospital bed, gasping. "Thor," he choked. Christine staggered back into Strange.

"Yep, that's the one," said Jane.

"Holy shit," Christine whispered. Then, "Is that it? He's fine now? He wasn't breathing for like fifteen minutes, he should have brain damage."

"Is that all?" Loki wheezed, voice shaky.

"It takes a lot to kill a god, I guess," said Wong with a shrug. He rubbed Loki's back as the Asgardian doubled over, coughing violently.

"How did you know he was gonna bounce back from that?" Strange asked Jane as Christine walked over very cautiously to examine Loki.

"Oh, I saw him survive way worse than this, I'm pretty sure," Jane replied. "But, you know, the bullet in his chest was new, I didn't know if that was gonna be a problem." To Loki, she said, "You're an asshole, by the way? I think I forgot to tell you that." Loki held up his hand in an "okay" gesture.

"If you're not human, I literally have no idea what I'm even looking for at this point," Christine said apologetically, taking his pulse.

"I do," Loki said.

Jane tuned out the resulting medical lingo (the gist of which seemed to be that if Loki was human, he'd be really, really, dead, so good thing he wasn't) and said to Strange, "You have no idea how bad I want to talk to you about magic stuff, but my equipment was stolen by an evil Asgardian Iron Man and I have to deal with that first."

Ah, there it was. Now that she could stop being worried, Jane was just pissed off. She was starting to understand why supervillains did their mad science covertly in secret bases under active volcanoes. People didn't steal your shit when you lived under a volcano.

"I'll help if I can," Strange offered, which was very nice of him.

They were interrupted when the door flew open and a doctor leaned in. "We need you in the ER," he said to Christine. Behind him, hospital staff were in a frenzy.

"A big accident?" she asked, following him out.

"A lot of little ones," he said as he left, "There's some kind of attack—"

Some kind of attack.

"Why is everyone looking at me?" Loki said, "I've been busy dying."