A/N: Surprise early update!
Thank you thank you thank you to lea_sommerregen on Ao3 (again) for being so patient and fixing my butchered German for me. I really couldn't ask for better readers, you guys. All of you xx
"What the hell is a Bragi?"
The next day, Steve furrowed his brow as Sam vocalised the exact same question he had asked Thor yesterday. Thor had explained briefly to him and Natasha yesterday, but today Natasha had called in the troops to her ops room. Sam and Bucky stood side by side in uniform by the holoscreens, confusion in their expressions, Wanda and Vision (who'd been restored to life with a combination of the Stones and Wanda's powers) sat with the analysts, the Guardians (who'd returned to pick Thor up) were packed in around one of the planning tables, and Bruce was frowning at Thor.
Natasha and Steve stood a few feet away from Thor and from Valkyrie, who had flown in yesterday night.
This was everyone who could come in at short notice. Steve, though he wasn't technically on duty, had stayed for this meeting as he didn't fully understand it all yet. They'd gone over the CCTV footage again, and Thor had once again made his pronouncement.
Thor, his face grave, drew in a breath. "Bragi is a who. An ancient Asgardian, as old as my father, though he was cast out centuries ago. He is the god of skaldship, which - you must understand, it means… sort of poetry, sort of… it's the very essence of music. It's hard to explain." He shrugged. "He has a harp."
Sam's brow furrowed even more.
"He was the best skald the realms have ever seen," Valkyrie chimed in. "Not only a gifted performer himself, but a sponsor and patron of the most talented skalds the realms over. It was his task to nurture music and poetry, to let it flourish. He was also a talented seiðr practitioner - a sorcerer, like Loki."
Gamora jutted her chin out. "And what makes you think this… music god has anything to do with that?" She pointed a green finger at the CCTV footage.
Thor scratched his head. "Okay, look. I was only a child when this happened, so I can't be truly sure - and the Valkyries had been defeated before all this happened - but… Bragi had a wife, Iðunn: the goddess of youth, his partner in all things. She used to grow these golden apples which Asgardians could eat for youth, health, and longevity. I shared one with my mother once, they were very nice." Thor sensed his audience growing impatient, and shook his head. "Anyway. Iðunn died, you see, and Bragi… well, he went a bit mad."
"A bit mad?" Wanda asked.
"Alright, very mad," Thor clarified. Valkyrie listened with a heavy brow. "I was protected from a lot of it, but I could tell my parents were concerned - not only did we not have Iðunn's apples any more, but Bragi was deep in grief. He turned inward. He stopped performing odes for fallen warriors to help them pass into Valhalla, stopped performing at court, stopped sponsoring other skalds - musicians - in the nine realms. He was obsessed with death, and afraid of it. And then…" a shadow crossed Thor's face. "I was in court one evening at a banquet for the solstice. When all of a sudden, the young Vanir musician performing for the court vanished in a flash of golden light."
Thor turned to the frozen still of Holloway's disappearance, his brow heavy. "I've never forgotten it."
Silence fell in the room as they all tried to comprehend this.
Bucky spoke first. "What happened?"
Thor drew in a breath. "My father knew instantly that Bragi had gone too far. He sent soldiers after him in his home in the apple groves. Bragi fought them, and killed many before they finally broke through. They made him free his captured singer, but in the confusion Bragi fled." Thor turned to face them all. "Stripped of his connection to Asgard and outcast into the darkest reaches of the nine realms, my father believed Bragi powerless and lost, and let him be." His brow lowered. "I am beginning to think that was a mistake."
Quill leaned back in his chair. "So what, you think he… kidnapped this Holloway guy? For what?"
"I don't know," Thor sighed. "All I know is that Bragi… took notice of talented skalds across the realms. When Valkyrie knew him," he tipped his head toward the armored warrior to his side, "that meant that he sought them out and supported them, helping their gifts flourish. But after he lost Iðunn… he turned to obsession and corruption. I cannot explain his mind, only that this kind of disappearance" - he nodded again at the holoscreen - "reminds me of him."
Natasha cleared her throat, her eyes on the gathered Avengers. "It's the best lead we have yet, even if it is a bit out there." She looked over to her analysts. "Daisuke, would you tell everyone what you told me this morning?"
A mid-thirties analyst stood up, glancing nervously around at them all, and cleared his throat. He lifted a few sheets of paper. "I've been experimenting with our search parameters, and I found a report from during the Decimation. There was a violinist reported missing around about the same date as the Decimation, which naturally got buried at the time. His wife reported that he vanished" - he checked his notes - "'in a gold flash'. It was written off as being part of the Decimation, but here's the thing: that guy never came back. I thought I'd… mention it."
"Good," Natasha said with an approving nod, and the analyst collapsed into his seat. "Thank you."
Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose and spoke for the first time: "So what, you think it's related?"
Natasha shrugged. "I don't know. This is all… a little out of my wheelhouse. But I think it's relevant. And I definitely think we need to look into this."
"How do we even find this Bragi guy?" Sam asked.
Thor put his hands on his hips. "I don't know. I looked for him when I was searching for the scattered Asgardians after the Decimation, but I met with an acquaintance of his who told me not to bother him. Perhaps I could chase down that thread again." He scratched his beard. "I'll begin searching."
"Well we're searching with you," Sam said resolutely. "If this guy is snapping up people on earth, we need to stick with this."
"I'm coming too," Wanda said, standing.
Valkyrie twisted her spear in her hands. "New Asgard will go on without me for a little while. Lost as he may be, Bragi is still Asgardian."
"I'll help manage the search from here," Bruce added, nodding to Nat.
Thor nodded and looked to the Guardians. "We may need your ship."
Rocket rolled his eyes. "You could at least pretend to ask." But a few moments later, after sharing a few glances with the other Guardians, he shrugged. "Fine."
They began preparations, talking about flight paths and places they could search, and Natasha turned to Steve.
"How about you?" she asked.
Steve smiled weakly. "I'm retired," he reminded her. "But if you guys need help with anything, let me know. Keep me updated."
"Of course," she murmured. She cocked her head and opened her mouth, as if to say something else, before shutting it again. She smiled. "I'll give you a call soon."
Steve went back to his quiet life, but he couldn't help but keep track of the investigation into Hale Holloway's disappearance. It started with Thor, Valkyrie, and the others going on an expedition into space to learn more about where Bragi might have gone. On Earth, others joined: Hope Van Dyne, Clint, Rhodey, Doctor Strange, and Princess Shuri, each offering their individual expertise or offering to join the search party. Thor's team ran into Carol on Xandar, and she offered to make enquiries through her own connections.
Steve got updates from Natasha about everything they learned: Thor's first lead didn't actually know where Bragi might be, but knew others who might. So those on the Guardians' ship began travelling from star system to star system, following a centuries-old tale of grief.
Two weeks into the search, Natasha called Steve to tell him (in a very disgruntled tone) that it turned out Loki had somehow survived, and had been found by Thor in Svartalfheim. "There was apparently a lot of fighting, and crying," Natasha told him, "But Loki's agreed to help Thor search for Bragi. We could really use his help on the magic side of things."
As the others searched the Nine Realms, on earth Natasha and her analysts had discovered a worrying trend: there were tales of other musicians who'd disappeared following the Decimation with reports describing a sudden golden light. None of them had returned.
Finally, Steve got the call:
"One of their leads told them that Bragi hid himself in a 'pocket dimension'," Natasha told him, sounding exhausted. "And Loki thinks he's found a way to get into it. They're coming back to Earth tomorrow to prepare and plan."
"I'll be there," Steve told her, as he stood in the middle of his living room.
"Oh, I didn't - you don't have to-"
"I know how big this has become, Nat, and pretty much everyone else is involved by now. I'll be there."
"Okay then. See you tomorrow."
They gathered on the grounds of the old Avengers Facility, which was still rubble-strewn and scorched, though had been cleaned up a lot since the battle against Thanos's forces. Natasha's office spaces in Manhattan could have fit everyone but she wanted to keep their joining of forces a secret, and she also didn't have a landing pad big enough for the Guardians' spaceship.
Steve showed up on his bike and instantly realized he was late. Everyone else had already arrived, gathering inside the makeshift operations centre that had been set up in an army-style command tent by the lake. He could see the Guardians' ship, the Benatar, parked a little further toward the forest, and a few other cars and bikes belonging to others. Tony's sleek Audi was parked haphazardly in the grass.
As Steve turned off his bike he heard voices from the tent. A cool breeze blew off the lake, rustling through the dry fallen leaves on the ground. The forest had turned brown and gold, and in a month Steve knew the branches would be bare. He drew in a long breath, steeling himself.
When he strode into the tent a moment later, he had to take a second to adjust to the cacophony inside.
The tent was packed with Avengers: Thor's search team, Natasha's research team from Manhattan, and several others who had theoretically gone their own way since the battle with Thanos. He spotted the sharp-eyed Loki at the far end of the tent with Thor, Valkyrie and Bruce, wearing a dark tunic. Steve's stomach twisted in unease, but then Loki said something that made Bruce laugh, and the feeling unravelled. Carol, standing with her arms folded over her chest, rolled her eyes at them.
The tent was loud with dozens of conversations: Strange and Wanda were in the middle of a heated conversation over what looked like a glowing astral chart a few feet away, Princess Shuri and her two Dora Milaje guards listened with bemused expressions as several of the Guardians described the firepower they'd brought along for the mission, Vision and Tony flicked through piles of notes stacked haphazardly on a planning table, and Bucky and Sam sat down with their feet up, seemingly content to wait for the individual discussions to settle down. Though it did look like they were squabbling. Hope Van Dyne and Clint were reviewing a list of confirmed missing musicians (Clint cast the occasional glance at Loki, but didn't seem outwardly furious. Natasha had told Steve that Clint and Loki had had a 'reckoning', though he didn't know the details).
"I swear half of them are here because they're bored," came Nat's voice from Steve's right, almost making him jump.
He turned to face her. "Well, maybe you'll have some new recruits for your organisation when all this is over."
Nat eyed him. "Why are you here, Steve?"
He opened his mouth, not quite sure what he was going to say, when suddenly Thor's voice rose above the noise in the tent.
"Alright, settle down!" he called, and everyone looked up. Thor's eyes roamed across the room until he spotted Steve, and he waved. Steve nodded in greeting and shuffled so he was towards the back of the tent, watching. "You see before you our strike team!" He gestured around at the colorful group in the tent, then set his hands on his hips. "So, we all… we all know the plan?" He raised his eyebrows hopefully.
There was a round of nodding and muttered assent, but Rocket spoke: "Yeah. Get on the ship, fly to the hidden pocket dimension-"
"It's actually a little more complicated than that," said Bruce with a pained expression on his face.
Rocket ignored him. "- kick the god's ass, get the Terrans back to Terra."
That kicked off a wave of additions and corrections from both the science crew and those who'd been on the search, but Thor just shrugged.
"That's the gist of it," he agreed. "Loki, Bruce, and Princess Shuri," he nodded to each of them in turn, "Have calculated our entry path, but we must be careful. We might know where Bragi is, but we know little else." The tent fell silent. "Bragi has been alone for centuries," Thor told them. "He was mad when he left, and I know not what he has become now. We must be prepared for anything."
The silence in the tent grew heavy. Steve saw a few people exchanging glances - this wasn't the first time many of them had come up against a mad alien, so they knew they were heading into the unknown. They'd all been so focused on finding Bragi that no one had really decided what to do when they found him.
Steve straightened his shoulders. "I'm coming too."
Every head in the tent turned to stare at him. He got a general impression of confusion, raised eyebrows, and concern, but kept his eyes fixed on Thor, who seemed to understand.
"Are you sure, Steve?" asked Nat, her brow lowered. "You got out for a reason."
"I always said that if something big came up I'd step back into the fight. Same as Tony." He nodded over at Tony, who sat next to Rhodey with his burned and broken arm in a vibranium exoskeleton, looking over readings for the pocket dimension entry point. Tony met his eyes and nodded.
Taking in another breath, Steve leaned down and reached into the bag he'd brought with him. When he straightened again, he held Mjolnir firmly in his hand. "I'm in."
They barely all fit on the Benatar. But after some reshuffling and mild arguing, they were all aboard - even Carol, since she had to be inside the ship for Loki, Bruce, and Shuri's interdimensional portal to work.
Speaking of which…
"Are we sure this is going to work?" Steve murmured to Tony, who wore his Iron Man armor. Steve himself had changed into the dark uniform he'd worn to return the Stones.
Tony looked up from where he'd been going over the readings, and glanced at Steve. "What? Oh, yeah. I mean, probably." Then he glanced back down.
"Scientists," Bucky muttered, sounding resigned to his fate. He and Steve shared a glance.
"Alright, you all remember the rules!" Rocket shouted as he and Nebula began powering up the engines. "No vomiting, complaining, or damaging the ship, or I eject you into the vacuum of space!"
And with that the Benatar rumbled to life, rose into the air, and shot off beyond the Earth's atmosphere.
Their journey was short. Steve didn't know the science behind it all, but the way Bruce had explained it, Bragi's dimension wasn't in a specific place, but to get there you had to have a certain velocity, and frequency, and then do something with dark matter to open a portal…
Yeah, he didn't know. He was just hoping they wouldn't all be torn to shreds or obliterated in a black hole. But his madcap scientist friends had got him this far.
Still, when Bruce announced "Launching now!" and hit the big red button on the newly-built panel before him, Steve gripped his armrests so hard that the metal bent. He hoped Rocket didn't notice.
But then the star-speckled darkness through the front window blazed electric white, making everyone in the cockpit cry out in surprise. The Benatar shivered as if it had been doused in cold water, then lurched and shook like it was being pelted with rocks. The light grew brighter, brighter, searing Steve's retinas, and Steve saw Tony's fingers dancing over the holoscreen before him as if he were strumming an instrument, and then -
With a final shudder the Benatar fell still, and the light died.
After the shaky, bumpy ride they were suddenly sailing smoothly, in complete silence. The sudden darkness made spots dance across Steve's vision.
Bruce let out a breath. "Made it," he sighed.
Everyone in the cockpit leaned forward.
The world beyond was dark. Pitch blackness stretched above and below them. There were no stars. Steve could hear the Benatar's engines running, but for all he knew they could be completely still in the air, floating in darkness.
"Heading down," Rocket said, his voice low. Steve suddenly realised that those at the very front of the cockpit were looking downwards, staring at something Steve couldn't see.
Rocket brought down the Benatar, piloting hesitantly, checking his computer readouts. Gamora looked over his shoulder.
"This place is like… nothing I've ever seen," she said, sounding unnerved.
Finally, they touched down. On what, Steve wasn't sure, because it looked just as pitch black as the air they'd been flying through. But he wasn't focused on that, because he could suddenly see what the others had been looking at.
Ahead of them lay a lone source of light, a distant gold beacon like the centre of a star system. Steve couldn't make out any details other than the light, but he knew instantly that this is what they had come to find. The light reflected in the eyes of every Avenger on board the Benatar.
Tony looked from the golden light to his holoscreen. "Atmosphere check complete. The air should be breathable and non-toxic."
For a long moment, no one replied.
Steve wasn't the leader of this mission - wasn't even technically an Avenger any more, but he knew it was his time to speak.
"Let's move out," he murmured.
Thor, Loki, Valkyrie, and Carol, the most durable members of the team, were first to leave the Benatar. When they made it to the bottom of the ramp and gave a thumbs up, Steve and the others followed.
Steve strode down the loading ramp, unnerved by the pitch blackness stretching on for seemingly miles and miles. It messed with his perception. But the air felt… like air, if a little thinner than earth's atmosphere. He glanced back at the Benatar, its electric lights comforting him, before he reached the end of the ramp.
He hesitated a moment before stepping out onto the darkness. He could see Loki, Thor, Valkyrie, and Carol standing on a seemingly flat surface just a few feet away, but it still took a bit of willpower to make himself step out onto nothing but blackness.
Finally he did, and his boot rested on… it almost felt like sand, or soil: dark and shifting, giving slightly beneath his feet and yet supporting him. He took a few more steps, tense.
When he'd reached the others Steve drew in a deep breath. The air smelled like ozone and something rich, earthy. He blinked, and then realized that he could hear… music.
"Can you hear that?" he heard Wanda whisper to Vision. Vision nodded silently, his head slightly cocked.
Standing in darkness, illuminated only by the white lights of the Benatar and the distant golden beacon, the Avengers listened to the strangest song they had ever heard. It was faint, ethereal, more like the sound of a breeze shifting through tree leaves than any kind of music Steve knew of. There were voices, indistinguishable, and instruments, though he couldn't name them. The song seemed to move through the darkness, permeating out into nothingness. It shifted over Steve's skin, sending goosebumps rising along his arms.
This wasn't a song that any of them could sing along to or replicate. The music was like an element: unquestionable and unstoppable, a very part of the air. And yet still so faint, just brushing against their ears and on the edge of their senses.
"Let's get moving," said Thor, his clear voice strange after however many moments they had all spent listening to the impossible song.
Carol led them, her hands glowing by her sides and her strides sure. They all followed. Steve fell into step beside Sam and Bucky, who clutched their weapons nervously. The golden light gleamed in their eyes.
No one spoke.
They walked for several minutes, the golden beacon seeming to grow larger as they approached, though it was nearly impossible to judge distance in this place. The light seemed to bloom, taking up more and more space, rising above them and separating, becoming something more complicated than a single unified light. Steve noticed that the ground beneath their feet had become slightly uneven and bumpy, as if there were ropes beneath the surface. One of the Dora Milaje stumbled.
"They're roots," Carol said, her voice carrying in the strange air. And Steve, feeling the uneven shape of something long and tubular under his boot, realized that she was right.
He looked up, and suddenly the golden light resolved itself. His mouth dropped open.
They were walking toward an enormous golden tree. But the tree itself wasn't gold, Steve realized: now that they were close enough he could make out a massive black trunk, darker than ebony, as thick as a skyscraper, with arching dark branches that soared up into the black sky. The branches crisscrossed overhead, their color incrementally lighter than the pitch blackness beyond. Dark leaves shifted in the canopy, rustling together.
And on the branches was... they looked like orbs the size of beach balls, glowing gold so brightly that their light was almost blinding. They hung from the tree's branches on glowing strands, like… like fruit.
The Avengers had found themselves under the reach of the tree's branches almost without realizing, each of them staring up at the canopy of gold.
The song didn't tantalise the edge of the senses here. The air was thick with music like humidity in the middle of a New York summer, thick like smoke in a speakeasy. The music was so beautiful it felt overwhelming, hitting Steve in a rush: every song that had brought tears to his eyes or broken his heart, amplified a hundredfold and worming itself into his very soul. Voices weaved with strings, piano, woodwind, a symphony of music.
Steve drew in a shaky breath and felt himself breathe the song, felt it clogging his throat and lungs like honey. His head spun.
They had all realised what they were looking at by now. Silently, the Avengers continued walking toward the massive trunk of the tree, having to be careful not to trip over the roots. Steve saw Groot reach out with one leafy limb and stroke a dark root, his eyes curious. The tree seemed to stretch tall above them, it's dark branches draping over the sky, and the glowing orbs drew their eyes, illuminating their faces gold.
Steve knew that the music was emanating from the tree. From the orbs.
"Look," someone whispered, almost inaudible over the music, and Steve dragged his eyes down from the dark branches to the base of the tree.
As one, the Avengers stopped walking.
There was a grey figure amongst the roots. At first Steve thought it was a corpse: an emaciated, skeletal corpse. But then he saw its chest rise and fall.
The figure was a tall, rail-thin, ancient-looking man lying tangled amongst the roots, his limbs sprawled and his head tipped backwards, looking up at the branches. He looked utterly wretched: his long, straggly grey hair and beard had grown over his bare chest, his nails were long and yellowed, and the only clothing he wore was a dirty, torn tunic reminiscent of the fashions Steve had seen in New Asgard.
Without speaking, the Avengers broke apart: some of them hanging back, providing cover, others shifting apart to break up the single target they posed, and a few hesitantly drawing closer to the ancient figure in the tree roots. Steve strode forward behind Thor.
The figure did not move as they approached. He simply stared upward, his chest rising and falling maybe once a minute. Steve saw that the tree had actually grown over him, thin roots twining around his wrists and inching over his concave chest. When Steve climbed over a root he finally saw the man's eyes: they were sunken in his face, and milky white. He's blind.
"It's like Yggdrasil," he heard Loki murmur to Thor, gesturing to the tree. "A broken mockery of it."
Thor's face looked as if it had been carved out of stone. He climbed another root, as thick and round as a car, and then planted his feet and drew himself tall.
"Bragi," he called, with the command of a king.
From his vantage point on a different root, Steve saw the sprawled old man's ears twitch. And suddenly, faster than Steve would have thought possible, Bragi's hand broke free of the twining roots and flicked up, sending a blast of golden light searing across the darkness toward Thor.
Tony cried out in alarm and Thor raised his axe, but Sam was fastest: he dove out of the blackness and deflected the golden blast with his shield, sending it careening out into the endless darkness.
Everyone's weapons went up. Sitting in the roots, Bragi's eyes glowed gold.
Thor lifted his axe. "Bragi, I am Thor Odinson" - the old man lurched out of the roots and onto his gnarled feet, hands flicking as he sent four more scorching bolts of light flying toward Thor - "of Asgard, and I command you-" a bolt of light caught Thor in the chest, sending him spinning away and into a chasm between two roots.
Everyone fired. Bragi, surprisingly fast again, span away into the roots like a spider. Sam swooped, firing down at him, then had to careen away when a crackling golden bolt nearly speared through his wing. Shuri and her guard ran forward, shouting, only to be forced to dive behind the cover of a root as more searing gold light rained down on them.
Steve ran up the side of a root and jumped, lifting Mjolnir in the same moment, before he brought down an electric blue bolt of lightning on the space Bragi had disappeared into. The bolt cracked through the dark roots.
Bragi sprang on top of a nearby root, his face contorted and his teeth bared in a hiss. "Not the tree!" he screamed, in a voice that made Steve's brain feel as if it was vibrating. He was so thrown off by the alien cadence of Bragi's voice that he nearly didn't see the surge of golden light the emaciated old man launched at him.
"Look out!" Bucky shouted, firing a semiautomatic round at Bragi to distract him.
Steve dove just in time, heart pounding, dodging over three ropey roots and getting the massive trunk of the tree between himself and the god. As he did, he spotted something deep in the roots that he hadn't seen before: a massive golden harp lying in three pieces. It was hard to tell in this strange place, but it looked as if the harp hadn't been touched in a long time. Roots had grown through and around it, as if the tree were absorbing it.
A blast erupted, drowning out the ever-present music, and the entire tree shuddered. This was followed by another resonant, earsplitting scream from Bragi. His voice had power, and through the pain and grief in it Steve could hear how it might have once borne song.
Avengers ran and flew around the tree, trying to pin down the leaping, dodging shadow that screamed at them. Bolts of golden light seared through the air, narrowly missing them: Iron Man, War Machine, Carol, Sam, Quill, Wanda and Vision soared around the trunk like a flock of birds, and the rest of them jumped and weaved around the roots. Bolts of magic began flying in the air: Wanda's red light, Strange's golden symbols, and even Loki's green sorcery. Rounds from a dozen different kinds of weapons lit up the darkness.
"Bragi, look at what you have become!" Valkyrie shouted, and her spear hurtled past like a streak of silver light. Steve caught a glimpse of Bragi, his golden eyes flashing, before he disappeared behind another root. "This is not a place worthy of a skald, and would you fight your last remaining kin?"
"You are no kin of mine!" came that awful voice again, and Steve flinched. Bragi flitted along the lower branches of the tree now, leaping and firing golden bolts. "My kin is gone, my love is gone, my-" he broke off, and Steve saw him tumbling out of the branches as if someone had hit him. Steve aimed another lightning bolt, which crackled past and dissipated into the darkness.
"Will somebody grab this guy already?" called Tony in the comms, and Steve saw him flying past, trailing smoke from a glowing golden burn on the foot of his armor.
A golden comet seared past Steve's ear, sending him staggering into the tree trunk, and when he got his footing under him he looked up just as a swirl of Wanda's red power jetted out and caught at Bragi's hand as he fired on Sam, stalling him. The power twisted, condensed, and lifted Bragi six feet in the air as he shrieked and kicked.
"Now!" Loki called, and a flicker of green power swirled into life at Bragi's ankles, shackling him.
A second later Thor dropped out of the branches, his eyes flickering electric blue, seized Bragi by his remaining shred of clothing and brought him to the ground. Steve let out a breath and jogged down his tree root.
Thor did not let go of Bragi. Grabbing fistfuls of his filthy tunic, he held Bragi a few feet above the ground so his shackled feet dangled. "What have you become, Bragi?" he shouted, eyes still flickering. "What have you done?"
"Leave!" Bragi shrieked back, his eyes still glowing. He scrabbled at Thor's arms with those yellowed fingernails and his bone-thin limbs jerked as he tried to wriggle free. "Leave me! Leave the tree! Leave the song!"
The Avengers slowly approached, eyeing Bragi and Thor warily. Steve wondered how long it had been since Bragi had ever seen, let alone spoken to another person.
Thor shook Bragi. "Look at these people you've taken, Bragi!" he shouted, gesturing up at the tree branches, and Steve's stomach sank as he fully comprehended just what they were looking at. Each of those golden orbs… his eyes turned upwards. Music still twisted and condensed in the air. Bragi had turned people into apples, a mockery of whatever his reality in Asgard had been.
Thor kept shouting: "You used to nurture skalds for the betterment of their world, not steal them away for your own selfish gain! These people have people who love them, who you stole them away from!" Thor held Bragi at a distance, his lip curling. "What would Iðunn say?"
Bragi stalled, his face furious and body shaking, before everything in him seemed to crumple. His limbs dropped as if all life had left them, the faint golden glow around his eyes and hands blinked out, and a moment later tears began to spill from his milky white eyes.
Steve reached the bottom of his tree root and stood with the others, silently watching. Mjolnir was a steady weight in his hand.
As Bragi began to weep, Thor dropped him, disgusted, and the ancient man crumpled to the ground, bowed over his folded knees with his forehead against the roots of his tree. His chest shuddered as he began sobbing.
The Avengers stood in a loose circle around the scene, panting and wiping away sweat; some had been seared by the golden light, but none too badly. Now that relative silence had fallen again, the music in the air seemed deafening. Steve could hear individual voices and instruments weaving through it all.
Bucky came to stand by Steve. "Alright?" he panted. Steve nodded, ran an eye over his team, and then turned back to the pitiful scene amongst the dark tree roots.
Thor stared down at the crumpled, weeping Bragi with a thunderous look on his face. But Loki had begun pacing, his face turned up to the branches.
"How did you do this?" Loki asked.
Bragi's bony chest heaved. "I watch their lives… I listen. I… I save them-"
Thor's face contorted with fury again, but Loki held out a hand to stop whatever he was about to do.
"These are all people?" Tony asked, and his faceplate slid back so he could peer up at the golden orbs again. "How do we… get them out?"
Steve looked to Thor for an answer to that one, but he suddenly seemed uncertain.
"Let's find out," Carol said, and kicked off the ground and into the air, her hands glowing. She flew up into the branches, found the closest golden apple, and reached out - before snatching her hand away with a yelp.
"A protection enchantment, most likely," Loki posited.
Steve saw a duller orange light flicker through the branches, and looked down to see Doctor Strange forming runes with his fingers, his eyes on the golden fruit. A moment later his hands dropped. "I concur," he said, glancing at Loki briefly. "I'm not able to break the protections."
Loki began pacing again, his face bathed in gold. "The fruit are sustained by the tree, and tied to it, kept in immortal suspension. Only song bleeds through." He sounded fascinated. Loki glanced at the crumpled, weeping Bragi, and then back up. "He must have stolen the last remnants of Iðunn's youth magic and entwined it with his own to create this place."
"So, what do we do?" Steve asked, drumming his fingers on Mjolnir's hilt. "Cut down the tree?"
"No, that would break the whole spell," Wanda cut in before Loki or Strange could. "It would kill them." Her eyes glimmered scarlet. "I can feel them. They are tied to the tree."
"I feel them too," whispered Mantis, her antennae glowing.
"So many of them," Natasha said, her eyes darting from golden orb to golden orb. "There are way more here than the number of people we've found reported missing during the Decimation."
Bragi heaved a sob at the word. "They went out!" he cried, and Steve felt his mind shiver again. "I was listening, and half of them faded to nothingness."
"That was the Decimation," explained Shuri, her voice almost gentle. "Thanos wiped away half of the universe. It must have impacted your spell, too."
"Half of all living beings," Clint echoed.
"I had to replace them-"
"Thus the sudden spate of missing musicians," Rhodey said disgustedly.
Natasha strode past Steve, still looking up. "But if he had… fruit before the Decimation, then…" she turned on the spot, eyeing the golden fruit. "He could have been doing this for decades. Centuries."
The gravity of that hit them all, and they fell silent. Song kept sifting through the air, seeping into their minds and bodies. Bragi slumped further onto the ground, sniffling and wailing softly.
As Steve stared up at the arching branches with their golden fruit, a sudden terrible idea occurred to him.
He turned toward the shrivelled god on the ground. "Did you take a woman named Alice Moser?"
Everyone looked up at him, some surprised and some pitying. Natasha's face filled with sorrow as if she'd been waiting for him to say that, and Bucky's eyes went wide and he started scrutinising the golden orbs in the branches, as if he could spot her.
Bragi peeked up, his sightless white eyes turned in Steve's direction. "I do not remember them by their names. Only their music."
Steve closed his eyes and strained to hear, letting the music wash over him and through him, trying to pick an individual voice out of the endless swelling song. A terrified hope shivered in his chest, threatening to crack his heart. The closer he listened to the song the more it seemed to pull at him. He understood the urge to lie at the foot of the tree and let the dark roots grow over him.
He could feel the others looking at him, concerned, and he realized he had to quash this hope. It was rising in him, filling his lungs like water, and he knew it would drown him if he let it linger. Besides, it was implausible. Impossible, even.
So he pressed it down. He opened his eyes, deafened his ears to the song. He had a job to do.
"So how do we get them back?" he heard Tony prompt.
Loki folded his fingers together. "He has to do it."
As one, they all turned to Bragi. The god sat up a little, shaking, his face twitching.
"Send them back," Carol said flatly. Her fists crackled with photon energy.
"It's not so easy," Bragi said. The wailing grief had left his voice, making Steve's hackles rise. Bragi's voice was almost crooning. "For most of them, their time has passed them by. Let me keep them here, invaders. The world is not theirs any more, they are safe with me-"
"They're not yours to keep, Bragi," Nebula interrupted.
Bragi's face contorted and his hands and eyes flashed gold, but every single Avenger lifted their weapons threateningly, lightning and whining engines and safeties being flicked off. Bragi subsided. His lips quivered and all of a sudden he began weeping again, tears coating his cheeks. He fell to the ground, raking his ragged fingernails over his face and arms.
"Don't take them," he pleaded in a high and grating voice. "I plucked their seeds, I nurtured them - listen to them, how can you want it to stop? Please-"
"Bragi," came a gentle voice. Steve looked around to see none other than Tony, and his eyebrows rose. Tony slowly approached, his expression cautious and pitying. "I…" his jaw worked. "I know what it's like to lose a loved one. How it can tear you up inside. But you can't keep these people. It's time to let them go."
"Iðunn would tell you the same thing," Valkyrie added, her face composed.
Bragi moaned, making Steve's ears ache. "But the song-"
"This is a song only for you," Thor said, gesturing at the tree. "It is not for them, and it's not for us. Let it end."
Bragi shook on the ground, his teeth clenched and his eyes screwed shut. They all watched him, holding their breath. It was all in his hands, this madman. But Steve knew that madness grew out of the deepest emotions: grief, anger, fear. If they could just get through to him…
"It's okay," Steve said softly, adding his voice to the mix. He slowly approached the prostrate Bragi, and lowered to a crouch. He set Mjolnir down. Bragi's milky white eyes opened. "There will still be song, without this tree. You say you've been listening, right? Then you know there's song all over the universe." Steve had heard it too, when he'd journeyed across the galaxies to return the Infinity Stones. Wherever you went, wherever there was life, there was music too.
Steve held his breath.
Bragi lay still for a long time. He no longer shook, or wailed. The tree sang on, rising in symphonies.
Finally:
"Where can they go?"
"Send them back to where you took them!" Quill exclaimed impatiently.
"You would have them die?"
"What?"
"Most of my skaldi were at the point of passing on when I reaped them," Bragi explained, his voice low and grief ridden.
"Hale Holloway was walking down the street!" Clint snapped, and Steve shot him a warning look.
"I - I -"
"You got greedy," Loki said dispassionately. "You were afraid they would all vanish again."
Bragi began moaning again, a horrible harmony to the song from the tree. The Avengers gathered closer together, keeping their voices low so Bragi couldn't hear them.
"We'd best send them to the same place then, neutral ground," Tony said quickly. "Somewhere we can control. We could release them here? Get them back on the Benatar?"
"If they'd fit," Rocket said.
"We can't have them released here," Strange countered. "The enchantment is too strong, they would simply be absorbed back into the tree."
"So, Earth?" Natasha prompted.
"We'd better hurry, no matter what we decide," Bruce said, eyeing the fallen god. "Who knows how long this guy is going to work with us."
"Well we've got to choose right," Sam said. "Who knows what condition these people will be in, or where they're even from. We'll be dropping them into an entirely new place."
They all fell silent for a moment, thinking. Natasha suggested the Facility grounds, and Shuri suggested Wakanda. Steve was still caught on what Sam had said, though. He felt for the stolen people up in those branches; he knew what it was like to open your eyes in a new world.
It happened very quickly after that.
Bragi suddenly cried out, a resonant shriek that had them all wincing and covering their ears. Bragi leaped to his feet, eyes white and wild, and surged forward toward them - toward Steve. Steve hesitated, eyes wide.
"Show me," Bragi hissed, touched one gnarled, filthy hand to Steve's forehead, and with the other pressed his fingers to his lips and then let out a sigh, almost as if he were blowing a kiss.
The song in the air around them cut out. The sudden silence was almost as overwhelming as the song had been, and Steve felt Bragi sag at the loss. Steve looked up, eyes wide, just as every golden apple dropped out of the tree and plummeted to the ground.
But instead of bouncing and rolling away, when the orbs made contact with the dark earth the ground rippled like the surface of a black lake, and the orbs plunged down, down into the blackness until they disappeared.
It was as if the lights had been switched off. A faint glow still hung around the tree itself, so Steve could just make out the shapes of his fellow Avengers, but every single golden apple had disappeared.
Bragi cried out and fell back in the darkness, weeping and tearing at his hair.
"The SILENCE!" he cried. "It's so quiet, too quiet, I can't breathe-"
"What happened?" Thor called, over the exclamations from the other Avengers. They all turned toward Steve, calling blindly in the darkness. "What did he do to you?"
Steve opened and closed his mouth. He could still feel the echo of Bragi's surprisingly warm touch, and the sensation of Bragi reaching inside him, searching into his mind. "I don't… he just…"
"What did you do, Bragi?" Tony asked.
Somewhere in amongst the Avengers talking over each other, Bragi had gone silent.
"I sent them back."
"Where?" Natasha demanded.
But Bragi ignored her. A slightly brighter glow was coalescing around him now, like bioluminescence. His long, narrow fingers curled and his white eyes turned upward. "I must join you now, my love," he whispered, a note of song in his voice. "I feel it now - I am ready."
The Avengers stared as Bragi staggered to his feet, drew in a shaky breath, and then slowly made his way over to the broken harp in the roots of the tree. Bragi eased down beside the harp, like getting into bed after a long day. He curled around the broken harp and reached out. He ran a finger along the strings.
Steve felt a shiver go down his spine at the ethereal notes that hummed from the instrument at Bragi's touch. Bragi's fingers moved again, exploring the notes, and even though the harp was hopelessly broken Steve could hear a song forming, growing with each note Bragi plucked from the golden strings.
None of the Avengers could move. They'd fallen silent, watching the softly glowing god play the harp that he used to play for his wife. Bragi breathed in, breathed out, and the song swelled. It felt lonely after the orchestra of song in this dark world, but also like no other song Steve had ever heard.
The song began to fade, and with it, Bragi. His fingers slowed, his edges went blurry, and his skin turned translucent before their eyes. He slowly drew his fingers toward himself, shivering over the strings as he played his last note.
The note trembled, held, and then faded. Bragi's form shifted and melted into motes of golden light that one by one dissolved into the darkness.
Natasha was the first to look away. The world was utterly black, and silent, save for the distant lights of the Benatar.
"What happened?" She asked softly.
"I think…" Steve swallowed. "I think he was searching my memories of Earth."
"So where are they going?" Thor asked.
"I… I don't know, I-"
"Okay, we can figure this out," Tony said. "Let's get back to the ship and get out of here."
"Seconded," Rocket said, sounding relieved.
They began hurrying back over the strange black earth toward the Benatar, leaving the barren tree behind them, already going over theories and ideas of where Bragi might have sent his 'fruit'.
But Steve thought he already knew.
A flash of golden light. A burst of song. Falling, falling.
A world away, Alice hit the ground.
My oh my.
I have to give a shoutout to aturnofthepage on Ao3, who was the first one to get the whole Bragi/kidnapped musicians/apples of immortality thing spot on in a comment back in chapter 54 (forty five). It was kinda spooky to see my whole plan laid out like that! Lots more of you figured it out pretty much last chapter, too, and I know some of y'all have been hiding your theories from me haha - were you right?
Also a few people have sort of put this together already, but at this point it's worth taking a look back over the story, if you want to. ~If a sentence looks like this~, it's Bragi speaking (the very first poem/song in the whole story, for example). I do have a list of each chapter he speaks in if you're curious, but I encourage a re-read anyway! Also you may see some "articles" I snuck in about a few other missing musicians as well ;)
Reviews
Teaanddoctorwho: Haha all good, I'm choosing to take it as a compliment that you were so shook you forgot to write your name ;) Hope you enjoyed this chapter too ;)
Pancakes: I'm so glad you liked last chapter! I couldn't face killing off Tony and Nat haha. I'm glad you're inspired for a re-read of Alice's disappearance! It was a fun challenge writing it from Steve's perspective. I really hope you liked this chapter, hopefully it answered your questions about Bragi!
Wolf: Thank you so much, you're so kind! Hopefully you loved this chapter too :)
Guest: "Liam Payne without the Liam"... I am dead lmao, thank you for this
Guest: Well, you were kind of right! This chapter does have Alice in it ;) But yes, I did a bit of a fake out last chapter with Steve going back to save Alice, only to just miss her. It's all a bit more complicated than that ;) Hope you liked this chapter!
Guest: I guess he could technically keep going back to that moment to save Alice, but… science. I don't know, it didn't really sit right with me that Steve would be the one to "save" Alice, because he'd still be taking her away from her family. So he just missed her!
CaptainLoki: Steve just missed her on his sojourn to the past! And now you can see why ;) Thank you so much lovely, let me know what you thought of this chapter!
Pandere: Hopefully more things connected this chapter! You're on the money with Norse mythology haha (though I did twist things a little to my own purposes). I'm glad you liked that Nat and Tony are still alive :)