Winter felt the chill in his veins now that his heart was aflame once more. There was fire and ice dancing inside of him and he couldn't stop it; this titan had endangered his child, and for what?

Simple Madness.

The beastly creature had appeared just as they'd begun to lock onto a sound similar to Sarah's cries. Winter had the distinct feeling that the purpose was distraction, but it didn't matter because this meant he had a solid, present target for the turmoil inside of him. He walked up to Thanos like he'd done to all his targets before: he just walked over casually, pulling his left arm back, readying himself.

Thanos grinned, having said nothing but waiting to show the mortal just how weak he was, how futile his effort to rescue his child were when faced with the wrath of an immortal such as he -

Yet he didn't even know what hit him.

The titan staggered, eyes wide when he actually felt the blow of the metal arm. Looking up, Winter could see something swirling behind the madness in his gaze. "What are you?" Thanos ground out with anger and confusion.

"I'm someone you don't want to mess with."

"Are you a God? A Titan?"

Sure. Why not?

Hell yeah. I might as well be.

"You can bet your ass I'm ten times worse than any Titan you've met. Give. Me. My. Child."

"What. Are. You?" Thanos growled.

Nat's voice picked up, "The embodiment of Death."

Winter turned to her, giving her a look that said, 'What the actual hell, Nat?"

"Yeah. He's even got a scythe and all." She waved to encompass him, nodding confidently. When he mouthed 'what?' She shrugged.

"You...are death?" Now there was something very very different in those crazed eyes that made Winter's stomach churn.

"Yes."

"May I kiss you?"

"What?" Winter recoiled, "No- What? What is wrong with you!?" He shoved at the now advancing titan, "What the hell!?" The worst part of the entire encounter was that the titan seemed to have forgotten entirely why he was there and what was going on. He just fixated completely upon Winter.

The titan stumbled back as if struck across the face again, "Do you not know my love for you? All the sacrifices to your glory? Do you not remember our time together…? Those were the best years of my wretched life..."

"Uh… No. I'm sorry. Connection must have faltered between universes or something, you know… Science stuff - I have amnesia or something - Hey! Personal space!" He shoved the titan back again.

This time, Thanos's rage returned, "YOU HAVE NOT NOTICED ALL I'VE DONE FOR YOU?"

"Uh… No…" Winter twitched in pain, Thanos's voice breaching a sound barrier Thor's never would.

"THEN FINE. HAVE YOUR CHILD. HAVE YOUR FILTHY LIFE. I WILL DESTROY YOU." He raged and turned, "YOU WAIT. I SHALL COME FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AND TEAR YOUR WORLD DOWN TO SLIVERS AND ASHES." His form disappeared and they all just waited, watching the air with bated breath.

"What." Winter gave his companions a strange look, "The Actual Fuck."

"Sorry…" Nat shrugged, "I just thought, you know, 'what makes a titan scared?' So I guessed that death might be something to fear because they never experience it and might never want to… I didn't know he'd go berserk."

Loki sighed, "Natasha, The Mad Titan is called such because he is enamored with Death. You just 'tagged' Winter with the most insane and insistent stalker in all of time or space."

"Well…" Tony shrugged. "We're the Avengers. Nothing we can't handle."

Loki huffed as if the thought amused him, "We must hurry, Sarah may still be in danger."

They split up, searching, only to hear Loki's strangled cry echo through the catacombs moments later. Running to find him, Steve succeeded first, then Bucky.

The scene was strange. There was blood everywhere from Sarah's captors, bodies strewn across the floor, while Loki knelt in the pool of viscous red, careless for once of his clothes. He held a bundle to his chest, magic surrounding them in uncontrolled waves, while his shoulders rose and fell in sobs. A soft whimpering echoed through the room from his arms.

Steve frowned, and Winter felt ice overtake the rest.

If Sarah was whimpering - she was alive.

Right?

Steve stumbled forward, peaked over Loki's shoulder, and fell to his knees, the blood actually splashing around him. He could say nothing.

Bucky, terrified, let Winter take the reigns more completely than ever before. One foot in front of the next-

-and ice reclaimed him.

He knelt slowly, his flesh hand reaching out to touch the dangling mess of what had once been Sarah's right arm. His throat constricted.

Loki's magic was stemming the blood flow, keeping her together, his own blood trailing from his nose as magical overstrain took him. He rasped, "I will make Thanos long for something as sweet as pain…" His eyes seemed lost, staring at the red pooling around him on the floor, madness seeping into his gaze, turning him back into the maniacal creature Steve had met in Germany.

"Loki." Winter took his shoulder, "You can't hold this spell you're casting much longer. Where do we take her to get her better."

It was an order. Not a question.

"Asgard." His eyes began to refocus at Winter's words, even as darkness visibly crept into the hollows under his eyes. "Quick."

Thor, who had been standing in the doorway, commanded them out, and through ringing ears Winter registered that Heimdall would take them where they needed to be.

"Odin… might refuse…" Loki wheezed as the startled Avengers helped him stumble his way to the surface.

Steve spoke up finally, "If he refuses, I will kill the one-eyed bastard."

"Not…" Loki's crazed laugh reappeared for the first time since he'd met Victor, "So easy…"

"But it'll be damn good practice for Thanos…" Winter muttered.

"It'll be fun." Loki's smile was demented, especially with blood starting to seep from his eyes and mix with his tears.

"Okay…" Natasha's features were pale as she helped Loki hold Sarah, walking backwards carefully as they moved along, "Loki, we're losing you, stay with us. Focus on Sarah. First her," Her voice was breaking and tears were slipping from her eyes, "Please make her your first priority."

Loki refocused, nodding, "Always."

Heimdall's bifrost came down before they could even call him.

The gatekeeper's arms were around Loki and Sarah instantaneously, startling Natasha from her position but necessary to assist Loki to the horses, being faster than the others were at the moment, and the ride was a blur to everyone involved. The wonders of Asgard meant nothing if their child didn't live to see it.

Frigga was nowhere to be found until they reached the throne room, where she was being held back by reluctant guards. She screamed when she finally saw Sarah and Loki, trying to get past her unlikely captors to reach the child.

"Frigga. Wait." An ancient voice filled the hall, "You know why Loki is so weakened by this task, I won't have you die to save the child as well-"

"Please, let me try." She struggled, giving a frustrated cry as she scrambled at the armor of her guards for some purchase, but they held her arms back. When Loki fell to his knees, the blow dealt by gravity only minimally softened as Winter and Steve lunged to hold him up, she screeched, "Let me try!"

"What is going on." Winter ordered. He wouldn't take this shit, not when his child was wounded like this.

"I am truly sorry for your loss, I am." Odin stood, eye downcast towards them, "You have done much for Asgard, but this we cannot do for you. Thanos's men have burned an infinity stone into your daughter's soul for safe keeping, one which we cannot remove from her without her death. And, unfortunately, to heal her in this state is to die yourself." His brow was furrowed, and Winter looked at the would-be king of Gods. He was old. Tired. Confused. And most importantly - scared.

He knew exactly why he shouldn't refuse them help, and yet he did it.

The only reason could be that he knew assistance was futile.

The God's eye fell to the floor in a way that spoke of his feelings of inadequacy, his failure, "Your child is lost. Loki knew this, and yet he fights to keep her alive with his very life force being torn from him to power the stone residing within your daughter." His voice broke, "Loki. My son. I know I have wronged you in the past, I know you seek to redeem yourself, but this is not the way. Your death will amount to nothing but a couple more minutes for this mortal child to live."

Loki's sanity seemed to be on the brink of something terrible, but he managed to sneer, his breathing so ragged it tore into his speech pattern so that after a few syllables his words would falter on rasping inhales, "Then the world will be all the better for a few minutes more, you coward. She is only a child, and yet you stand there, not even letting us t-try." He coughed, a fine mist of blood painting his lips, "To help." He took in a rattling breath, worse than the rest as his tears became more concentrated with blood, "You are more a fool than- than I would have…" He took another breath, his bloody tears falling into his mouth, the taste obviously unpleasant as he twitched the minute his tongue darted out to lick it from his lips, "Imagined."

"Father, please!" Thor's voice finally seemed to belong somewhere as it consumed this great hall. "Anything."

Odin's eye shone.

And he descended to stand in front of his dying son.

His scepter tilted, resting over the child's wound, "If I do this, the stone will most likely stay inside her - gaining power - till she dies."

They all nodded, though Loki was probably the only one who knew what that meant.

"You understand that this girl will be a living infinity stone, her life force sought out by the worst sort of creatures imaginable. Her existence will be hell."

"But at least she will live." Steve met Odin's eyes as he knelt by Loki, arm around his shoulders. "If this were Thor or Loki, if you were in our place, wouldn't you give them life?"

Before Odin could answer, Loki snickered, "The answer is yes. He gave me a life of hell, but figured it was better than being left alone to die. Or are you regretting doing so," he took special care to breathe for all the sarcasm he threw into his next word, "Father?"

At that, Odin drew himself up. "I regret nothing. Especially not my being your father." And the scepter's tip touched Sarah's arm, the wound sealing, causing golden lights to flicker through her veins, illuminating the patches of Calico skin over her body. Now no longer weakened, her lungs filled up with air, and she let out a tortured wail.

It was the most beautiful sound Winter had ever heard, and he hastily took the child when Loki offered her to him. "I'm here, shh… It's okay, I'm here."

Sarah twisted, trying to find a spot through the heavy kevlar material to hear his arm. Without a care, Winter tore it off, letting her rest against the cool metal plating, the gears whining inside. Sarah calmed, hiccuping, the stub of her arm moving randomly in pained flails. He knew what that was like - the ghost arm that could do nothing but burn like fire.

"I'm here. I'm with you, Sarah, moy malen'kiy soldat… you've done so well…"

Odin cleared his throat, seeming to waiver on his feet, "It is unwise, as of yet, for you to return to Midgard… for now…" He sunk to his knees, his stance a parallel of Loki's, "Stay here…"

"Odinsleep?" Loki huffed in laughter through his sweat drenched hair that had fallen like a curtain into his eyes. "How nice for you…"

"Guards…" The elder god collapsed and Loki's laughter became hysterical, with small interludes of coughing and wheezing. Frigga was freed and Odin was carried off to wherever he needed to after she gave her husband and son a cursory check. Loki refusing to leave just yet, so she turned her attention to Sarah.

"Odin healed her fully, save the arm and the infinity stone…" She shook her head when she was finished, "Thanos has made a grave error. There will be no place I will not find him-"

"'There will be no crevice, no barren moon, where we will not find him...'" Loki's laughter bordered each word, this time more down to earth, which made the spoken quote all the more eerie for it.

"Loki..." Victor knelt and pulled his husband into his arms, "What, exactly, was your relationship to Thanos and his war...?" The question had likely been eating away at the poor man since they first saw how Loki reacted to the sigil painted on Sarah's window.

"Slave. Puppet. Plaything." Loki's laugh began to break in sobs and his eyes looked down at his own bloody clothes and seemed to lose themselves in exhausted hallucinations of half memories.

"Loki..." Frigga reached for him, but the sudden movement from his side vision, blurred with blood and horrific past flashing before his eyes, caused him to let out a terrified screech that startled everyone enough for them to back away. Sarah reciprocated the noise.

The ailing God pulled at his own hair, voice ragged as he screamed in multiple languages as if too confused to stick to one. Bucky caught enough words in various tongues to know more than he ever wanted to about some of the things Thanos and his closest assistants liked to do for fun to their slaves.

The worst was when Loki begged someone they couldn't see - as he was dragged, stumbling and shaking from the room - to kill the babies, to spare them the torture, to let them die as their races had before them.

Winter was violently shivering. He'd never felt the cold hurt him so, even as he clutched his precious child to his chest. When Natasha set a hand on his cheek, eyes worried, he realized he'd been rocking slowly, holding Sarah close, whispering for her to be quiet and telling her that everything was okay - in Russian - as he listened to Loki's fading ramblings.

All he needed was to share one look with Natasha's brimming eyes to know that she, too, had translated far more of those broken sobs than she wanted.

"Holy shit..." Tony muttered when the throne room fell silent.

"Stiff drink?" Clint croaked.

"Mmm. Yeah. Thor. Mead or whatever you have here. Now."

Thor made a motion and guards filtered from the shadows to lead them away, but he himself stepped forward, voice hushed, "Your babe should never have entered into the mess of our world. For these atrocities that have befallen her, I apologize, though I know my words mean little."

"She's apart of it though..." Steve brushed fingers through her bloodstained hair. "It's who she is... I only wish we were strong enough to protect her."

"We will be." Nat nodded, hand on Winter's shoulder, looking into his eyes. "There was a time, in a red room, where you told me humans rise to the challenge to survive. You told me that to be worthy of life we needed to gain the strength to fight the next challenge. I'll be damned if my life, our life, didn't set us up to fight these monsters for our child. And Sarah is our child. Every single one of us had a part to play in bringing her into this world and I won't let some sick, death-infatuated titan lay one more finger on her."

Winter receded, and Bucky gave a nod and a half smile. It was all the reply that was needed.

If the Avengers couldn't protect their baby, then there was no safe place in any universe for a child to live.

And none of them wanted to exist in that desolate cosmos.


A/N: Sorry, again, for all of this! But don't worry, I promise Sarah will be okay! (Also, sorry for the short chapters)