"You've proven to be a difficult man to kill." Loki heard Loriel's voice behind him. Loki did not turn, continuing to watch the battle reach its conclusion.

"Not so. I died every day...only to be reborn with each new dawn and do it all over again. Like a vessel overflowing, I visited my suffering on everyone." Loki responded.

"The most exquisite suffering does not come from physical death, at least not for he that does the dying."

"For once you speak truth." Loki stated.

"Do you still not see? I am the truth...pain, suffering, loss, death...those are the truths of life, and they, like me, are eternal. You cannot kill me...as long as they exist, so shall I."

"Again, you speak truth. Is doing so not painful for you? I grant those things are satisfying when brought down upon those who are truly deserving. But there are far more than those things. I've been shown them... joy, love, that which one feels holding your child in your arms. I pity you for what you are."

"Those things serve only to make one weak. If I had truly loved Odin or Hela or anyone, I would not stand before you today the ruler of realms commanding an army as once you sought to do."

"I once commanded an army, knew what it was to have others kneel before me...and yet that emptiness remained. I know now I would have traded it all to simply pick flowers in the fields with her as we once did, to sleep again by her side."

"And that is why you failed, you lacked conviction." Loriel's words struck a chord in Loki. He had heard them before as he had conversed with the dying Coulson. Somehow the man had known...not the details of course, but he had been wise, particularly for a mortal, perhaps the one who's death Loki now regretted most of all. "Think how easy it was for me to destroy you, then through you bring about the suffering and destruction of others...all I had to do was take her from you."

Loriel took a step towards Loki. He remained standing, his back to her. He watched the army of the dead and their living allies continuing to put down her army. He saw his old compatriots, Volstagg, Fandral and Hogun battling as they had once done by his and Thor's side. He witnessed his mother, sword in hand, battle an angel as fiercely as she had Malekith the day she had died. On the far side of the field, Barton and Romanov once again partnered in defeating the foe. He heard Loriel again speaking to him.

"As I once did for Odin, I can remove that burden from you, that weakness. You will be as I am, there will be nothing to hold you back, I will give you back your Jotunheim, this realm, perhaps even others to rule in my stead. I set my sights higher, on bigger things. Nor will you lack pleasures, there are many kinds, those which even you do not yet know. I will show you all that could be."

"At one time your offer may have appealed to me. But now...I have seen all I could ever hope someday to be."

"It is true, the dead should remain dead. A pity you are no longer the man upon which Thanos bestowed a relic of such power."

"I am still that man. I will not hesitate to put to the blade or the flames those who have earned that fate as your Order of Jormungandr learned to their dismay. Some things will never change. I will always be the trickster, the God of Mischief..." Loki turned to face Loriel who now raised the sword she held in her hand. "I will always be Loki, of Asgard."

Loriel thrust her sword into Loki. As she did so, Loki's illusion instantly dematerialized. As it did, the blades of two daggers tore through Loriel's abdomen, the daggers in the hands held above her head of Solveigh, the child Loriel had led to her death in the sea. Loki stood behind her. Solveigh withdrew the daggers and turned, handing them back to Loki who returned them out of sight and then kneeling down, put his arms around the girl he had called back to take her vengeance on Loriel, Solveigh smiled at Loki and faded, returning to her rest in Valhalla.

Loki rose to his feet. Loriel began to laugh as the wounds inflicted by Solveigh began to close.

"Did you really think it would be that easy? How fitting that a fool such as Odin raised two just like him."

Loriel turned to face the real Loki. He looked upon her, horrified, as she glared at him, her eyes aflame with hatred and morphed into another form. Before him now stood Loriel, in her true form, the demoness, Her hair long, straight and black as the black darkness of her pupils, the black that ringed her eyes, her skin as white as a corpse, her hands claw-like, her teeth fangs.

"Perhaps as you yourself claimed to have been, I was too hasty. Regarding your generous offer...the pleasures of which you speak-" Loki said, as he feigned a grin, slowly backing away. Loriel laughed.

"I'm afraid that offer has expired, just as you are about to do."

Loriel again raised her sword. As she did, spinning through the air came Thor's axe, Stormbreaker embedding itself in Loriel's back. She stood stunned, her eyes wide. Sigyn descended quickly behind and to the side of her, raising her sword in both hands and swinging it, the blade slicing through Loriel's neck, her head careening through the air and then to the earth, rolling away. Thor appeared beside Sigyn, removing his axe from Loriel's back just as her headless body sank heavily to the ground. Loki relaxed, breathing a sigh of relief.

"What took you so long? Must you women always keep us waiting?!" Loki said to Sigyn.

"If you hadn't noticed there's a battle going on! It's not like they were going to make way so I could go kill their Queen! Perhaps if you'd told me-"

"I didn't get a chance before you went running off! Why did you think I wanted her to see me on my feet?" Loki exclaimed.

"What about you? You could have done that as well as I!" Sigyn shot back.

"Of course I could have! I knew if I made you break your promise, you would never sleep, go wandering off again to ruminate in the middle of the night!" Loki told her.

"Well...you now know how to solve that problem!"

"The situation isn't quite the same."

"No, but the solution is. It would at least be worth a try."

Loki approached Sigyn, taking her in his arms. Thor looked on in confusion.

"I suppose that could be the solution to many problems...and could bring about a few as well. You must tell me if you find yourself with an overwhelming desire for Niffleberries."

"Niffleberries? I haven't had those since I left Asgard. The nearest I've found here is strawberries. I think I like them a little more, actually."

"Those then..."

"What do they have to do with anything?" Sigyn asked. Loki looked over to Thor.

"I'll explain later when we are not in the vicinity of such innocent ears."

"Wait...damn...you distracted me..." Sigyn said, pulling back from Loki and looking towards where Loriel's head had fallen.

"You're the one that introduced the subject." Loki told her.

"Loriel's crown, that tiara she was wearing...I need it!"

Thor strode quickly in the direction where Loriel's head had fallen and soon located it. He lifted it up by the hair. The circlet tiara was still attached around it."

"This?" Thor asked. Both Sigyn and Loki made a disgusted face at the sight of Loriel's detached head.

"Just the crown." Sigyn told him.

Thor pulled the tiara off the detached head and tossed the head aside and quickly carried it back to Sigyn. Sigyn detached the large crystal from the center facet and ran with it over to a nearby rock with a flatter top and laid it upon it.

"This is what allowed her to control them. Thor, can you-?"

"This weapon was made on Nidavellir by Eitri himself, it ended Thanos-"

"I don't need a history lesson. Do it!" Sigyn said hurriedly, cutting him off.

Thor raised Stormbreaker and brought it down upon the crystal. It shattered in a burst of bright light, the pieces lay scattered across the rock, now cloudy and dull.

Behind them on the field of battle, the sounds of armed struggled faded away as surviving angels ceased fighting, and appearing confused, surrendered, throwing down their scepters and swords. Those in the air slowly descended, looking equally befuddled. Quill, seeing the battle had ended, the angels he had shared the air with now making their way to the ground, jetted himself over to land near Thor.

"Did we win?"

"Against the odds we have emerged victorious."

"Alright! Good job! Yay!" he said, then looked over to see Loriel's decapitated body, making a disgusted face as Loki and Sigyn had previously upon seeing her head. "Ewwwww."

Sigyn took the Salom Stone from the pocket in her tunic and placed it in the now empty facets.

"I suppose this is mine now." she said, sounding unsure.

"Allow me." Loki said, taking it from her and placing it around her head,

"I should go talk to them." Sigyn said, looking towards those gathered on the battlefield.

The former battlefield was littered with the bodies of dead angels and Asgardians and peopled with the surviving living of both races and the resurrected Asgardian warriors. The surviving angels were already looking towards her as she stepped forward, they making their way around the living and resurrected Asgardians and the bodies of the fallen to assemble before them and then fell to one knee before Sigyn. The surviving Asgardians, along with their resurrected allies then followed suit, kneeling along with their former foes along with Dr. Strange, Wong, and the other Masters out of respect for Sigyn's new position.

Barton looked over to see everyone else on the battlefield kneeling. He turned his head towards Sigyn, Loki, Quill, and Thor standing behind and to either side of her.

"What the hell, never liked standing out in a crowd..." he said then fell to one knee, Natasha looking over at him followed suit.

"I...I don't know what to say...what do I do?" Sigyn said quietly to Loki as she looked out over the crowd of people before her kneeling.

"Be yourself. That's all you ever need do." Loki answered, then also fell to one knee, Thor and Quill followed. She looked to Loki on one side of her, then Quill and Thor on the other.

"No...no. Loki...you need never kneel to me..." she took hold of Loki's hand and raised him from the ground. "Thor...you either" she said going to him and raising him to his feet then stepped over to Quill, "Certainly not you, Quill." She raised Quill to his feet. She turned to the crowd.

"No one who fought with me this day will ever kneel to me." She called out loudly. "As for those of Heven, you are now free. She no longer has any power over you. Loriel is-"

Before Sigyn could finish, the body of a dead female angel warrior rose from the ground, three others, another female and two males, rose from various places behind her. Loriel's voice emanated from the former corpse. Everyone turned their heads.

"You cannot kill me. You cannot kill us. We are eternal. The universe has not seen the last of me. That is my promise." After she had finished speaking, her and the other three demons, now inhabiting new bodies, produced transport cylinders and vanished into their pinkish-violet light.

"Have no fear. Hers are idle threats, at least for the time being. She will not return to Heven or Midgard any time soon. If she remains in any of the other realms, it will be for a short period only, to gather herself after her defeat, then she will move on, out into the universe. She is weak, it will take much time for her to pose any threat to anyone again. She is, however, correct. Though the body she and her fellow denizens of Hel inhabit can die, she nor they can be killed, only contained. The vessel necessary to do so is in the vault in the palace on Heven." Odin said having risen to his feet, Frigga standing beside him.

"Would this vessel happen to be an orb, perhaps blue, producing its own light?" Loki asked his adopted father.

"How is it you know of it?" Odin asked.

"Damn." Loki said quietly.

"My people, return home to Heven. Spread the good news of what has taken place here. I will soon join you and we shall heal the wounds of Loriel's reign together." Sigyn said to the angels. The angels rose and made their way back to the Ladder.

"How was that?" Sigyn whispered to Loki.

"I perhaps could have done better..." Sigyn stared at him as he broke into a grin, "You did very well...surprisingly well, actually." Sigyn smiled, then the smile slipped from her face as she looked down.

"This is what you always wanted, not me. I never expected it, even as a girl. My mother never believed we would ever return, let alone reclaim the throne. I'm not sure that bothered her all that much. I have no idea what I'm doing. I know I'll need to appoint ministers, advisers...you've done this before...but your people are here. You also now hold the throne of Jotunheim..."

"I will appoint a regent to govern in my stead, I would pass the throne to the kin closest to Laufey, but it would be far more advisable to keep them under my watch as allies. As for Asgard..." Loki looked over to Thor who had made his way to the resurrected Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandral, who all were greeting him with brotherly embraces and slaps on the back, and then to Valkyrie who, with tears streaming from her eyes, was embracing her fellow Valkyries as they gathered near their steeds in the field, then greeting one in particular in a long and loving embrace, "though they will surely not prosper as well as they once did when I held the reigns of power, I think they are in capable hands."

"You will come with me then, help me to make Heven what Asgard once was...more, to take its place...reign by my side..."

"At the moment, as things stand, I could only advise," he answered, "However...we must move quickly." Taking Sigyn's hand, he led her to where the Asgardians and their resurrected fellows had gathered and to Frigga.

"Mother..." Loki said, feeling the tears well in his eyes as he looked upon her as he had done so many times in life.

"Loki, my son." Frigga said smiling and embracing him as she had been unable to do that night on the shore, "We must again soon part."

"That's why I've come to you...and to ask for your intercession with father." Frigga smiled brightly at Loki and then looked to Sigyn.

"You do not need my intercession. I know what you wish to ask. He would be honored." Frigga removed her wedding band from her own hand and put it in Loki's own."Your father will be glad to do the same. Come." Frigga led them a few feet to where Odin was embracing Thor. Odin looked to Loki as father and son relinquished their embrace.

"My son, I congratulate you on your victory. Battles are not won merely by might of the body." Odin said to Loki.

"It could not have been won without all those gathered here. A call by the Horn of Naglfar does not require one to come unless they wish it."

"Just as you did when you were called to return by Lailah when Frigga informed her of your other's impending return. You made that choice. No one else could have made it for you."

Loki looked at his father, in awe of this new knowledge. It all suddenly made sense. With his physical body once again alive in that timeline, calling his essence back from Valhalla had led to its merging with his other self. For all his pleading with his mother that night to return with her to Valhalla, not only had Frigga known that he was needed there for the sake of Sigyn, but he had wanted, had chosen, to return.

"My king, your son has one last honor to ask of you..." Frigga informed Odin.

Barton and Natasha Romanov stood side by side looking towards the crowd of Asgardians, each with one arm around the other.

"Well...this was nothing like Budapest." Natasha said.

"Nothing will ever be like Budapest." Barton responded. "Nothing will ever be like this either."

"I have to go, you know that, right?" Natasha told him.

"Yeah..." Barton answered, looking to the ground.

"Don't follow me." she said.

"Can't. Got other things to stick around for. Looks like I got another project. Got a bike to fix up. I'll see you there soon enough. We don't stick around as long as these guys. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing."

"Meh...could go either way." Natasha responded. "Hey, is Steve's stuff still back there?"

"Yeah...we never touched it. It's just like he left it." Barton said.

"In his room, in the desk, drawer on the far left. Just hit play." Natasha said.

"So how is it you're here anyway? Stark didn't show up. Everyone else out there's Asgardian."

"It's how it works...must have been on your mind."

"You're always on my mind." Barton said, turning to look at her but she was no longer there, his arm around nothing but empty air. He slowly lowered it.

"See ya, Nat."

Sigyn hugged Thor, then Sif and Valkyrie as Loki stood beside his mother, looking on.

"There is something yet troubling you, though you haven't spoken of it." Frigga said. "You can put your mind at ease. Your father's work was thorough. When you held the Casket, the Gelid, when one of them touches you, it is like an echo. What you see now is not illusion, it is what you are. You are of Asgard. Did you not think your father considered that the day may come that you would marry, have children, as he did? That it was possible you would never discover your true origin and live out your life happily on Asgard as I wished for you?"

"He told me that day that he had hoped to use me to bring about an alliance, a permanent peace, would that not have precluded that?" Loki asked, surprised at this new information and puzzled.

"That was only one of many possibilities. You know your father, he always liked to keep all his options open. He could have reversed his magic, returned you to your original form at any time had you wished him to, but only if you had wished it. He never entertained the notion of it being against your will."

"But Sigyn...being sent here was not her will. All that she endured..." It was clear that Loki still held a grudge against Odin on that score, had not completely reconciled with it.

"That day in the woods, the pond. Heimdall knew they had ways around our defenses in small numbers, one or two, but that would be enough. There were always the secret portals, like the many I had shown you. He could not guard or close them all, even had we known of them, and there were ways to create them. You were in danger, Thor, all of you. Your father knew that her father would stop at nothing to save her regardless of their friendship, as any father would do, which was proven true. Had her father trusted your father, he would have soon learned that it was a ruse, your father had no intention of handing her or her mother over to Loriel. But his betrayal led to what Odin had been considering as the only option...sending them to Midgard and with my help to remain safe and disguised. When your father won the war but was unable to unseat Loriel from the throne, he knew that he could never recall her, that she must remain here, and with my spell upon you, as more time passed, he thought it better to let you both go on with whatever lives you had created apart from each other. He never understood what I had known since that day I first brought her home as a playmate for you, you who were also so different. Do you remember that day?"

"I was barely old enough to write my name, but I remember it as if it were yesterday."

"The visions I showed you, that can never now be as Asgard is no more. But there can be something like it, if it's what you both wish. Those were my hopes for you, you must live your own. The time has come my son, we must go." Frigga said, embracing Loki.

"Will I see you again?" Loki asked hopefully.

"I do not know. It is difficult. There are limits. If the need arises again, I will try to reach you in some way. Otherwise, the day will come when we will all be together but let it be in the farthest reaches of the future."

"Farewell, mother."

"I love you, my son. I have never rescinded the charge I gave you...protect her...be her shield as you have vowed, she will do the same for you." Frigga said, then as if she had never been there, was gone. The surviving living Asgardians looked out over the former battlefield where now only the bodies of the slain could be seen where they rested.

Sigyn made her way back to Loki who was still gazing at the spot where his mother had stood, putting an arm around him. He turned to her and wrapping their arms around each other, shared a kiss.

"So...now...what were you asking me?" Loki said to her.

"Will you come with me, help me, reign by my side?" Sigyn repeated her earlier question. Loki grinned.

"How could I possibly say no?"

Barton, instead of going home right away as he had initially intended, if they survived anyway, had requested Fury to take him to the Avengers compound. He had not gone into specifics as to why and Fury had not asked. Nick Fury was a perceptive man and knew that there was something weighing on Barton's mind beyond the mission, the one for which he hadn't made a different call, and that this trip was somehow connected to it and knew better than to question it. Barton would share whatever it was in his own time.

Barton entered Steve Rogers' former quarters and saw the desk along the wall. He walked over to it, everything left as it had been the last time Rogers had been there, just as he had told Natasha. He slid open the far left drawer and looking down into it saw what he had suspected he would find based on Natasha's directives, a small digital music player with earbuds attached. He picked it up and putting the earbuds into his ears, turned it on, unsure if it was still holding a charge. It was. He followed Natasha's direction and simply hit play. An old song from Rogers' time during World War II, one that even Barton, who would not be born for decades after it was recorded, recognized. ( watch?v=8Nzy1cfnKh4)

We'll meet again

Don't know where

Don't know when

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day

Keep smiling through

Just like you always do

'Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away

So will you please say hello

To the folks that I know

Tell them I won't be long

They'll be happy to know

That as you saw me go

I was singing this song

We'll meet again

Don't know where

Don't know when

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day