"So we're going to sit here whilst yet another realm is destroyed?"

"I am open to suggestions. If they don't find an Infinity Stone it may be that they leave Nidavellir alone as opposed to ripping it to pieces."

No one believed that.

Loki had put the footage of Asgard up on the screen in the kitchen and the ensuing discussion took nearly three hours as they went through the repercussions from what had happened.

What it boiled down to was where the other Stones were and therefore who was most at risk from Thanos.

"There has to be something. Rumour, hearsay, some magic treasure map hidden in a bottle, mystic runes on a tree, something." Tony had his head in his hands, his voice at the height of frustration.

"If there was don't you think I would have mentioned it!"

"Some childhood story or something?"

Loki turned away from the table, throwing his hands up in the air. "Norns! I give up! Thor, you try and talk some sense into him!"

Steve cleared his throat, interrupting the conversation before the blonde God could do so. "Okay, if we assume the other Stones are out of the question, what do we do now?"

"We as in the Nine Realms, or we as in those of us in this kitchen?" Loki asked acerbically.

"Does it make a difference? We have no idea how long he's going to be on Nidavellir, no idea where he's going to go next and no idea where the other stones are. What do we do now?"

All faces turned towards the two Gods, as if they could possibly answer.

The trickster shrugged, turning away. "I don't know."

"Loki…"

"I don't know. Don't you think I'm trying to find an answer? I've been trying since I first became aware of Thanos and his plan."

Rhodey waved a tired hand in the air. "Look, can we just go back a few steps here. Everyone keeps asking about finding the other Stones. What's the point? Why not hunt Thanos down and sort him out?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Sort him out? Certainly. Why not just walk up and stab him in the throat? Simple as that."

"Alright, alright. Quit being so bitchy. Why's he even want the things? What's the point?"

Being called 'bitchy' like a teenage girl wasn't exactly a good way to ensure the trickster's cooperation, and to prove that point Loki shattered the mug next to Rhodey's arm with a dark glare.

"Hey!"

"He wants wholesale destruction." Tony was the one who answered; exhausted where he lounged in his chair. "Right? Wholesale destruction?"

"Not quite wholesale."

"Semi-wholesale? What does he want then?"

"He courts death. He wants the universe under his feet to offer as sacrifices to whatever darkness it is he believes in. The loss of the Nine Realms is a small price to pay to then be able to subjugate the rest of the universe."

Silence fell across the room at the pronunciation, only broken when Steve let out a low whistle.

"That's…That's like something out of a horror movie."

"The universe?" Rhodey looked as shell shocked as the group felt. "We've only just got used to saving the planet. That's way out of our jurisdiction. I mean; we can only just reach the moon."

Tony waved a hand. "Pluto. I reached Pluto."

"Yeah, whatever, still within the Solar System. We can't save the universe!"

"We might have to."

Rhodes held his head in his hands with a groan. "This is too big." He looked up at Tony. "We can't keep this shit to ourselves. The World Council need to be informed. NATO, the UN, all the important people who can deal with global threats."

"We'll definitely need more fire power." Steve added quietly. "But I'm assuming you're working on that, Tony."

"I can defend this tower, a five block radius and then have patchy coverage for the city further out from there. I need to finish rebuilding the Iron Legion." Tony met Loki's gaze across the table. "But we don't even have a time scale, do we? They could turn up tomorrow, or five thousand years' time. We have no idea."

"No, we don't."

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

"Thirty years."

"Pardon?"

Tony was holding Brandr, Hope already asleep in the crib, and he glanced up briefly at his husband. "Thirty years. Do you think we could at least have that?"

"Why such an arbitrary number?"

"To see the kids grow up. Watch them all become adults. Have at least a little bit of a life before Earth gets snuffed out."

He didn't get a response and looked over to see Loki staring out of the window.

"I just want to see them grow up." There was a note of pleading in the man's voice. "There's got to be a chance."

"There's always a chance." Loki's voice was distant, as if he was speaking the words out to the whole city that was spread out beneath him rather than the man behind him.

"Yeah, what chance?!"

"Is Brandr asleep?"

"I…what? Yeah, he's asleep. What's that got to do with our imminent doom and the possible deaths of our children?"

The prince turned away from the vista, arms folded tightly across his chest. "I need to show you something."

There was something dark in his voice that made Tony carefully place the sleeping baby down in the crib and follow his husband out of the nursery.

"Something as in 'you've gone and done something stupid'? Or something as in 'you have an idea to save us all'?"

The slight lopsided smile on Loki's face made Tony groan.

"Oh God, bit of both?"

"It may be a bit of both." Loki sat down on the bed, and Stark thumped down heavily next to him, taking up most of the mattress.

"Go on. What the hell have you been up to?"

"Nothing recent." Loki looked down at him then laid back so they were side by side. "And I'm not even certain I should tell you about this."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because it could get you killed. Or worse."

"Worse than killed?"

"It could get you tortured for the information, then killed, then half of the universe is wiped out."

"…Huh. Been there, done…most of that. Hit me. What's the problem?"

Loki sighed heavily. "You are going to hate me for this." He waved his hand in what Tony was now recognising as an opening sigil to open one of the pocket dimensions he kept things in. A small, wooden box materialised that he caught before it fell. Tony very vaguely recognised it as something that had sat on his husband's shelf in Asgard.

"A box?"

"Strangely enough it is the thing inside the box that is important."

"Alright, Mr Sarcasm." Tony sat up as the trickster did, staring at the receptacle that he had been promised was so dangerous. Whatever was in there could only be small… "Oh wait…You didn't!" He moved his gaze to his husband. "You don't…that isn't…tell me you don't have what I think you have!"

"Depends on what you think I have."

"Well right now I'm thinking you're holding what is potentially one of the most dangerous and highly sought after objects in the universe."

"Something like that." Loki ran a hand over the carving on the box. "I would move back a little if I were you."

For once Tony took the warning to heart and shuffled backwards, staring at his husband. When the lid on the box was lifted he had to shield his eyes against a sudden intense glare.

"I can't believe you've been hiding this from me!"

"Well, I'm telling you now."

Stark slowly lowered his hands as the fierce glow dissipated a little. "Is that what I think it is, then?"

A small glow was hovering in the centre of the open box, bright yellow and about the size of a walnut.

"This is the Reality Stone."

"Reality. The Reality Stone. You have got the fucking Reality Stone here, in our bedroom, and you've been keeping it in a little wooden box on your shelf for God knows how long."

"For about seventy two thousand years, actually."

"Oh that makes it all better!" Tony leant forwards, just a little, to look at the small object. "What does it do?"

"Best I can tell; it gives the bearer the ability to alter reality. Create living hallucinations, build false projections, visions, illusions…" The trickster quirked a small grin at his husband. "Technically what I can do, but on a much much larger scale."

"So can you, I dunno, use it? Could you weaponise it?"

"I can barely hold it, I'm afraid."

"You used the Tesseract."

"The Tesseract was neatly protected inside a pretty blue cube. Did you think that was it's real shape?"

Tony's gaze moved from the stone to his husband incredulously. "Seriously? You can't use this thing?!"

Loki sighed. "Need proof?" He carefully closed his hand around the bright yellow glow, closing his eyes as he did so.

"Wow, shit! Not if it's dangerous!"

"Of course it's dangerous." The trickster opened his eyes again and they were glowing the same bright yellow of the stone. He held his free hand out, palm up, and waved it across the room. Tony yelped as the space around them melted away and became sudden literal space.

They were floating in nothingness, stars pinwheeling around them. There was a comet streaming off into the distance, and Tony followed it's trajectory open mouthed. He'd felt the weightlessness of space before, but never without the safety of a suit. Now, with his hair taking on a life of its own and shirt billowing he could feel what it was really like.

"This is incredible!" He turned to his partner just in time to see Loki's yellow eyes flicker green. "Hey, you okay?!"

"No…" Yellow became fully green and the trickster suddenly dropped the stone with a yelp. As he did so the cosmos around them stuttered and crashed back to the bedroom they were really in. The stone fell back into the box and the lid slammed itself shut.

"Are you hurt?!"

"Only superficially." Loki smirked and held out his hand to reveal his burnt palm. "I did tell you I could barely hold it."

"Huh." The look on Tony's face said he was already trying to think through the problem. "So what if we managed to build a box for it like the Tesseract so you could use it and-"

"No. Thanos can never have any idea of where this is." Loki frowned as he saw Stark's expression change. "What?"

"He tortured the Tesseract's location out of you."

"Thank you for that reminder." The trickster vanished the box again. "He demanded the locations of all the stones I knew about." He grinned. "So I told him of the two best known; the Space gem on Alfheim and the Tesseract on Earth. I may have also mentioned the Aether, but to be honest I can't remember. Either way, it took a lot for me to give him those; he has no reason to believe I know of any others."

"And now I know too."

"Well, don't get yourself captured by Thanos, and don't let him have any reason to think you know a thing about this."

"Oh God this is crazy!"

Loki started to reply, but was cut short as the baby monitor next to the bed lit up. "Crazy is what we do, Stark."

Tony fell back against the mattress to stare up at the ceiling as his husband went into the nursery to see what was wrong. To know that there was an Infinity Stone on Earth, let alone in his tower was something that he was going to struggle to get his head around.

Naturally he wanted to do something with the knowledge.

There was no reason Thanos would know. God knows where Loki had found the thing, tens of thousands of years ago, but there was no reason for Thanos to think it was on Earth. No more reason than thinking it was there rather than on any other realm anyway.

Could they use it? Tony was good; was he that good? Could he create something like the casing the Tesseract had been kept in to allow Loki to hold and use the stone in the same way? It ought to be possible. And if he couldn't was it possible to destroy the damn thing? Fires of Mount Doom or whatever. Mt Etna was always active, right?

"Are you alright? I could hear you thinking from in the twins room." The mattress by his head dipped and Tony moved his gaze up to see his husband sit down beside him again.

"Define alright. Who was crying?"

"Hope. Who did you think? I've left the covers off her tonight; it's quite warm and the Jötunn genetics do seem to be affecting her temperature regulation. And I define aright as not about to have a panic attack."

"Well by that definition I'm alright. Do we need to start worrying about other Jötunn physiology creeping in?"

"Let's wait until it snows and see what happens. How freaked out are you then?"

"Reasonably freaked out. And if she goes blue Evie is going to be furious; she's always wanted to be blue."

Loki snorted quietly with laughter. "Yes, that is true." He ran his fingers through his husband's hair. "Go on, I know you have more questions."

"Where did you find it?" Straight to the heart of the problem.

"Muspelheim. Many millennia ago. Rather by accident actually; I didn't realise what it was, I just knew it was powerful."

That sounded like the Loki Tony knew and loved. Decisions were usually based on emotional impulse rather than thought. "Does anyone else know you've got it?"

"Literally no one but you. I never even told Sleipnir."

"Can anyone else get at it?"

The trickster smirked. "It's safe, Tony. It is stored in a pocket dimension – I've essentially placed it in a tame black hole. The only way it can be retrieved is if I retrieve it myself."

"What if something happens to you?"

"If I die it will stay where it is for the rest of eternity. And before you ask; no it can't be destroyed."

"Am I that obvious?"

"You were practically assembling the Fellowship of the Ring."

Tony grinned. "Guilty. So…we have no choice but to defeat Thanos then. We can't destroy that thing, we can't use it, we can't bargain with it. All we can do is hide it and hope like hell we kill him before he kills us."

"Pretty much."

"Fucking awesome."

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

With their minds so firmly fixed on the extra-terrestrial threat – and with good reason – it was very easy to forget home-grown human threats. However, just because they had put it out of their minds didn't mean that their external contacts had.

"Remember that mustard gas?" Clint knew how to make an entrance, drawing eye rolls from the occupants of the kitchen.

"I remember when my life didn't contain conversational openers like 'remember that mustard gas?'."

The archer grinned at Sam's grumpy response and dropped a large dossier amongst the cereal bowls on the table. "I've had some old mates in Pristina pull through on the serial numbers on those canisters."

Given that this was the first news regarding Hydra they had had in months that drew people's attention away from their breakfast. Most of the group had forgotten they still had a teeny tiny helicarrier locked up in a safe in the labs.

"What's the news then?" Bruce cleared the crockery away so there was space to spread the sheets out. "Good or bad?"

"Kinda both." Clint found the most pertinent print-outs and handed them over.

He was right with that. If they had been hoping to get a lead to a Hydra production line it turned out that the gas on the helicarrier was a bit of dead end. The canister numbers were specialist Hydra codes, but Clint's Kosovar sources had recognised them and linked them to a nearby warehouse in the area.

Hydra had bought up all the old stock but hadn't actually set up any production lines of their own. Whether this meant that using mustard gas was a prototype was still debatable, but it was hopeful.

"So we can't track down a manufactory, because there isn't one." Bruce sighed.

"Pretty much, but this means they aren't making it themselves. And if they aren't making it themselves it's because they don't have the capacity. We know these guys like to be self-sufficient – the fact that they can't be means they're a lot weaker than they want us to think." Clint said triumphantly. "Hitting the helicarrier hurt them, and hurt them badly. Unfortunately the stock pile they bought from still exists, but nothing more has been bought."

"So Hydra aren't rebuilding."

"Or if they are, they've given up on mustard gas."

"Thanks for that vote of confidence. This is the first piece of good news we've had all year!" Hawkeye slapped his hand down on the table. "Hydra are struggling!"

"Yeah, but do we know where they are?" Natasha pushed one of the pieces of paper around. "We need to hunt them all. Cut the head and three more grow and all that bullshit."

"Working on it. The buyers in Kosovo haven't been seen since the first and only purchase and they haggled hard. My sources tried very hard to find them again – hell they wanted to sell more – but Hydra've vanished. Chances are we got them in that hit when we took the helicarrier."

"That's…very optimistic."

Clint spread his hands in the universal 'I don't know' gesture. "What do you want me to tell you?! This is the best news we've had in a long time. This is reasonable evidence that Hydra are on the ropes. I'm not saying trust it implicitly; they could easily just be sourcing elsewhere, but we need something to celebrate right now. They're running scared."

"We can but hope."

But it was good news, and they would take it.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

"Jarvis, where's Loki gone?"

It was bedtime for the twins, and whilst they'd fallen into a routine where one or the other parent would settle them it was unusual for the other not to at least be hovering in the doorway.

"He took himself up to the roof approximately 12 minutes ago. I monitored an incoming energy source. It's possible he was receiving some communication from outside Earth."

It had been six full months since Loki had visited Jötunnheim. Six months with no further word from the Aesir refugees or his off-world family and whilst he had been mostly silent on the subject it had been bubbling there in the background. He would no doubt be glad to have finally heard something.

At six months the twins were sleeping reasonably well, at least as much as the parents could expect. Tony could at least hope for about two hours before one possibly woke up, and with Jarvis keeping a watchful eye he felt happy leaving them to hunt down his husband.

It was early evening, so not quite dark, but the rain was hammering down against the windows as Stark made his way up towards the roof. It was a seasonal storm – although they could never rule out Thor having a moment of grief over what had befallen Asgard and her people these days. It wasn't really the weather to choose to be outside in.

For once Loki wasn't sitting on the very edge of the building. Instead, Tony found him lying flat on the concrete staring up into the thick black clouds. A human probably wouldn't have been able to stare directly up into such a torrential downpour but the alien god didn't seem to be having a problem with it. Tony debated just staying in the doorway and calling, but that wouldn't show him as a very good husband. Instead he sighed and left the relative shelter of the stairwell.

It was raining so heavily that in the handful of steps it took to cross the rooftop Stark's t-shirt and jeans were absolutely soaked through.

"Hey." Careless of the puddles, he sat down on the concrete beside his husband. "What's happened?"

Because Loki was dramatic, but not usually this dramatic.

"Nidavellir has fallen."

Tony let out the breath he didn't even know he was holding, the news hitting like a punch to the gut. They had known it was coming, expecting to hear it at any time, but that made it no easier.

"Any survivors?"

"Heimdall opened the Bifrost at the end. A few hundred got through. Maybe less." It had long been established that the Bifrost couldn't be opened during the main attack on a realm. If they evacuated people too soon they risked Thanos assuming that an Infinity Stone was being smuggled off realm, and too late there would be no one to save. Heimdall had had to hit that point blank moment as the mad titan unleashed the full power of the stones in his possession leaving the Watcher to scoop up any survivors who had been at the Bifrost point at that moment.

The rescued dwarves had been unaccepting of this explanation and the animosity was high. Realistically the Aesir could have been evacuating the inhabitants of Nidavellir from the moment the Bifrost was working again, but to draw Thanos' attention back to the rubble of Asgard would mean the destruction of everything they had managed to salvage. It had had to be down to the very last second; when Thanos would be confident there was no stone and wouldn't follow the few survivors.

Tony couldn't help thinking about it in the same terms as Earth. How many humans would be able to make it to a single point after months of such bombardment? How many humans across the whole planet would be able to get to one specific spot? That they had even managed to rescue a few hundred people from Nidavellir under those same circumstances was actually a huge achievement.

When Stark expressed this sentiment Loki laughed bitterly.

"Nothing about this can be celebrated."

"You know I don't mean it like that."

"I know." The trickster's hand reached out, finding his husband's and holding tight. "This is all my fault."

"What? How can-?"

"I let go. I let go, I let the chitauri take me, I told Thanos where the Nine Realms were, I lead the attack for the Tesseract. This is all down to me." Loki turned his head slightly, just enough to make eye contact. "And you know that's true."

"It's not-"

"Tony, it is. If I hadn't told him where the Nine Realms were this wouldn't be happening. If I hadn't come here for the Tesseract this wouldn't be happening."

"Huh." Tony could feel the hand in his shaking, could hear the tears in the tone of voice that the rain was hiding. "You know, I have to disagree."

"There is nothing to disagree with here. I am stating facts, not asking for an opinion."

"Yeah and the Earth is flat." Stark said gently. "Look. I agree that Thanos followed your lead to the Nine Realms. However –" He held up a hand as Loki began to protest that single word. "However, he would have found us eventually anyway. All you did was set a timescale."

"This would not have happened if-"

"Of course it would." Tony reached out to untangle the prince's sopping wet hair. "You said yourself Thanos has been searching for the Infinity Stones for eons; he'd obviously already narrowed them down to the Nine Realms. Yeah you showed him the way here, but he was persistent enough to have found one himself eventually. This isn't on you. This really isn't on you."

"And all those terror attacks weren't on you, back in the day." Loki turned his head enough to glare up at the man accusatorily. "Your weapons, your inventions, all those dead, but you didn't send those missiles, did you? And yet you have still felt so guilty that you continue to use Ironman to try and atone for those crimes to this very day. Tell me: how is this any different?"

The silence that came as a response was very telling. Loki huffed and closed his eyes.

"I need to find a way to live with this." The words were breathed up to the uncaring sky.

However, he started slightly when the deluge of rain suddenly ceased across his face and upper torso and opened his eyes again with a frown. Tony was leaning over him, a hand planted firmly on the wet concrete on either side of his head.

"What are you doing?"

"What I promised to do when I married you. Aesir weddings don't have vows, but Earth ones do, and I'm holding to them."

"I don't understand…"

"Have and hold, better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health, love and cherish, 'til death do us part." Stark leant down to press his forehead against his husband's. "So I'm holding, cherishing, and loving whilst we get through this part of the worse."

"You think it's that easy?"

"No." A half-smile curled at the corner of the man's lips. "This shit's anything but easy, but I'm trying my best here. And if you're going to take the blame for all of this, and try to shoulder all of that guilt, then I'm damn well going to be right at your side as you go."

"Tony, none of this is your-"

"Oh don't give me that; I'm sure there's some convoluted way I can make at least some of this my fault too." Tony shifted so that he was propped up on his elbows – still one on either side of Loki's head – and wiped the wet hair out of his eyes. "Look, we're both hot messes and have ledgers drenched in red, taking on more is never going to help that."

"I can hardly-"

"You didn't personally attack Nidavellir. You didn't attack Asgard, or Alfheim, or Svatlwhoosiwhatsit. That wasn't you." He pressed a finger against Loki's lips as the trickster tried to protest. "And yes, I know you feel like it started with you, and maybe it did, but we'd have got here anyway one way or another. And if it started with you, then it also started with Steve, and my Dad and Bucky messing around with the Tesseract back in the day, and your Dad being a shit parent, and Thor being a shit brother, and a whole host of little people making little decisions all across time and space to lead to this moment."

"You have it all worked out, don't you." The words came out as a tired sigh.

"God no, but I sound pretty convincing, right?"

Loki laughed softly. "I don't know. You sound pretty full of it."

"But I made you smile."

The prince reached a hand up to cup Tony's cheek. "I suppose you did. You do." Said smile was small, but far better than the abject misery that had been painted across his face earlier. "You always manage to."

"I suppose that's something then."

"It doesn't save the Nine Realms though."

The man sighed and leant down to press their foreheads together. "Yeah, well, I'm sure in Doctor Who they manage to save the universe through the power of love all the time."

"And wouldn't it be wonderful if we lived in the sort of world where love saves the day and all the good guys live happily ever after?" Loki's voice was soft. "And what side would that put me on I wonder? Would I get to live happily ever after?" He moved his head enough to be able to press a kiss against his husband's cheek. "Don't try to answer that one."

"We need to get away from this all."

"Are you speaking hypothetically, or do you actually think we could run from this?"

"Not running, we just need a few days out of all of this mess to get our heads straight."

Loki looked bemused. "Are you suggesting a holiday?"

"Yeah, let's go on vacation. Just the five of us; two, three days, off grid. Not having to think about all this shit and just being a family."

"…I'll think about it." The trickster raised a hand to press gently against the man's chest, indicating that he wanted Tony to move.

"You don't think it's a good idea?"

"Stark, right now I don't really have the capacity to think of anything beyond the imminent threat, and keeping our children alive." He sat up, trying to wipe the rain out of his eyes. "Just…give me some time, yes?"

"Yeah. Sure."

The rain was still hammering down around them, but for a long moment there was silence between the two men.

"We're not doing this whole relationship thing very well right now, are we?" Tony sounded miserable.

Loki leant forwards enough to press another kiss against his husband's forehead. "How can you say that? You stormed across the universe to find me after a relationship that, frankly, was built on sex. I think we're pulling together quite well."

That surprised a laugh out of Stark, and he looked up to see the trickster smiling slightly. "Sex and having a child together. A slightly crucial thing to remember there."

"And now we have three."

"Four and a half."

Loki pulled back to stare at him. "How did you come to that conclusion? And how does one have half a child?"

"Evie and twins make three. And I adore Sleipnir, and he seems to be quite happy to consider me family so that's four. And I'm working on Merlin, so he's currently my half."

"You would count Sleipnir and Merlin as family?" Loki sounded disbelieving.

"Hell yeah I would! Step kids are family too. We both come from jacked up versions of family, so we might as well make our own version here."

That drew a genuine laugh from the trickster. "Our own version of family. I like that."

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

It was Muspelheim next. Half a year on from Nidavellir falling they received word that the attacks had started up on the next realm. The Eldjötnar – fire giants to the Avengers who still weren't all that up to speed with pronouncing ancient Norse names – were in a better position to fight back than the Dwarves, and Heimdall's initial contact with Earth sounded quite hopeful.

For the first time since Thanos had stormed into the Nine Realms he was facing actual opposition. There was a pattern beginning to emerge as well; now that it wasn't clear where the remaining Stones were Thanos was sending in his army to scout. It was unclear whether they were interrogating captives – unclear if they were taking captives at all – but there were multiple groups being sent out across the planet searching out clues towards any possible Stones.

This was new from the first three realms; Thanos had known that those three had the Gems and just needed to send in his armies to retrieve them. Now he was being cautious. Storming in and obliterating the place with the Gauntlet wouldn't destroy an existing Stone but risked burying it forever. He needed to either obtain it first, or determine that the realm didn't have one.

Muspelheim was fighting back against the scouting groups far better than the Dwarves had managed, mostly because of the local fauna. Muspelheim had dragons.

"Got what now?"

"Dragons. Or dreki, if you would prefer." Thor replied.

"Huh." Sam shook his head. "No. Still not sinking in. Dragons? Like, Harry Potter sort of dragons? Claws, wings and fire sort of dragons."

"Oh for Norns sake!" Loki waved a hand and an image appeared in the centre of the room, a few feet long. "That sort of dragon."

It looked reasonably like how mainstream media had assumed; not quite Western and not quite Chinese. Somewhere between the two. The projection flapped its wings and spat a ball of fire at Steve. The Captain was familiar enough with Loki's magic by now to know when something didn't actually exist and allowed the false flames to pass harmlessly through him.

"Huh."

There were just five adults in the room – although Bucky wasn't contributing to the conversation – but Loki had Hope sat on his lap and Brandr was happily sat at his feet chewing on a teething ring. As the dragon flapped it's wings again Hope reached out towards it with a demanding little 'bah!' noise. The projection flew over to the baby and shrank down into a small plushie that she could grab hold of.

"Are you going to go to this Fire Planet, see if there's anything you can do?" Steve asked.

"Frankly I don't know how much use it would be. I have no idea if there's an Infinity Stone there or not, and all I would do if I looked would be to draw the enemy's attention to it." It wasn't a surprising answer. "At this point we know how Thanos is working: we know what it's going to look like when they come to Earth, we need to plan for that. Earth needs to be the priority."

"Can Fire Planet hold them off for a while?"

"It's a land of dragons, lava and fire giants; they'll certainly keep Thanos' army busy."

"Fire giants?"

Loki smirked. "Think about twenty feet high, skin that can melt iron and the ability to spit fire."

"Sounds delightful."

Thor grinned at his brother's description. "Those dragons are the size of a helicarrier. It is truly one of the most dangerous realms to visit."

"Exactly; if there is an Infinity Stone there it will be difficult to find. Svartalfheim had theirs locked away in such a way that anyone with a knowledge of magic could find it, Asgard's was sat in a treasure vault and Alfheim was showing theirs off in a museum. Muspelheim has very little by way of stable land. Imagine what Earth would have been like when newly formed." Loki let that thought sink in. "It is almost entirely volcanic, with the toxic atmosphere already in place and fauna that has long adapted to such extremes. Thanos won't find searching the place easy."

Steve let his breath out with a whistle. "Well, to be honest that's probably the best news we can have. That's four realms down; we need a break, and we need something to slow this all down."

"Before they decide we're next, you mean." Sam made it sound off hand, but the tension in his jaw said he was feeling anything but relaxed.

"Before they decide we're next." Thor knew that denying it wasn't going to stop the inevitable but out of the corner of his eye he could see Loki hold Hope just that little bit tighter.

It was a flat, empty way to end the discussion, but there really wasn't much more to be said. They couldn't help Muspelheim, so the best thing to do was try to get their own defences in place and hope like Hell that the realm of fire would manage what the other fallen realms hadn't and overwhelm the invading forces. Best case scenario; Thanos was defeated before he could ever turn his sights on Earth.

With the conversation over the room emptied, leaving Loki to return his full attention to the two children. However, that didn't mean he wasn't aware of the gaze on him.

"Can I help you Sargent Barnes?"

"I don't know."

The trickster placed Hope down on the floor so that she could sit beside her brother and looked up at the soldier. "I need more than that to go on."

"You can heal injuries, yes?"

"Within reason."

Bucky hadn't left his chair, but leant forwards as he engaged in the conversation. "Can you regrow limbs?"

Given the amount of time he had now spent with the Avengers it was reasonable that he was finally becoming comfortable enough with them to start asking those sorts of questions. Loki's gaze moved to the man's gleaming metal arm.

"I am sorry, but no. Some can, but only after training in the healing arts for many many years. I'm not that proficient."

"Oh." Bucky didn't look disappointed, more like he had already assumed that was going to be the answer. It did leave an obvious question floating in the air.

"You have been with us for over a year now, why have you not asked Tony about an upgrade?"

The soldier shrugged running a hand over his metal forearm. "Haven't gotten around to it, I guess." There was something about his expression that to someone who lied professionally told Loki a lot. Bucky was evidently still very uncomfortable with talking to Stark about something so personal. There was something else as well that took Loki a little longer to realise.

If the soldier wasn't concentrating on something else there was a strange blank expression that passed across his face when he moved the prosthetic arm. A complete absence of emotion that was certainly hiding something.

"Is there some reason that you're asking about this now? Do you have a problem with the arm?"

There was the same blank moment: someone trained not to show emotion carefully hiding something that had hit home. "It's fine."

Loki grinned. "You're lying to the God of Lies. Not a smart idea, Barnes." That earned him a glare. "You want my help, you've already stated that. Maybe if you tell me the full story I can actually do something."

"You said you can't regrow my arm."

"And that isn't the true problem." The trickster's attention was diverted to his children momentarily as he returned a teething ring that Brandir had thrown just out of reach. When he looked back up he was surprised to see Bucky beginning to unclip the attachments at the very top of the prosthetic.

It was an intricate contraption and took a few moments to fully unbuckle. It was obvious it wasn't something he did very often. The arm itself couldn't be detached given the cybernetic parts that buried themselves in his actual flesh but he could remove the outer casing to reveal the point of contact.

Loki frowned. "How long has it been like that?"

Barnes glanced at the limb in question. The flesh was swollen and an angry red. There were areas of patchy bandaging covering sores left from where the prosthetic was rubbing.

"A while. Your daughter helped a little when I first came here, but it hasn't been fitting properly for a while now."

"And you haven't said anything? Why? We could have sorted this the moment it became a problem."

"Yeah, would you trust this sort of problem to people you were trying to kill just over a year ago? I'm only talking to you because Steve convinced me it was a good idea."

"Good old Steve Rogers." Loki was still looking over the injuries to the stump. "Whilst I cannot regrow the whole limb I can heal up those pressure sores for you. However, that's fixing a symptom, not the actual problem. You need to speak with Stark: the prosthetic needs updating if not a full remodel." Bucky's expression could only be called territorial and the trickster rolled his eyes. "Or not. Your choice. Do you want me to fix up those wounds?"

Again there was a tightly controlled play of emotions on the soldier's face. This time Loki recognised exactly what was going on. Here was a warrior with a streak of pride a mile long needing help and struggling to actually bow down and ask for it. Thor was still only just learning the fine art of asking for assistance when he was injured.

"Okay, let me rephrase that. Give me your arm. I can beat you in a straight fight so do not even bother trying to refuse, and let me sort that mess out."

Bucky smirked. "You don't look half as threatening as you think you do, by the way."

It was true. With the plush dragon still on his lap and the twins playing at his feet he didn't exactly look intimidating. "I don't need to look anything. I am sleep deprived and one bad night away from burning a city down. How I look doesn't enter into it." He held a hand out expectantly.

It was getting to the point that Loki's common complaint of 'not an expert at healing spells' was becoming redundant. The repeated practice was making him proficient at what had been a weak spot in his magic. It didn't take long for him to clear the pressure sores left by the prosthesis and start work on an infection that had set in.

It was probably due to the super-soldier serum that Bucky had been able to hide the early signs of the illness, but it was still an ugly infection that would have needed a course of strong antibiotics. Clearing it up would be removing a significant amount of pain.

"I still believe you need to let Tony look at your arm." Loki said, his voice quiet with concentration. "It's not fitting properly and you need someone who knows what they're doing to sort that."

"Stark is not a prosthetics expert."

"No, but he is a mechanics expert who knows how to intricately fit metalwork to a limb. How is the response time in it?"

Bucky glanced down at the hand in question and clenched it. "A slight delay, but not enough to warrant a problem."

"Tony could remove the delay entirely."

"You put a lot of faith in his skills."

"His skills took him to the other side of the known universe in a suit he made himself, to save me. I have every faith in what that man can do." Loki was focussing on the injuries under his hand, but glanced up at the small huff of laughter. "What?"

"Nothing." Bucky was smiling, but without malice in the expression. "Just, for the guy that Hydra were so concerned about, you're rather...soft."

"There's nothing soft about appreciating the lengths someone will go to for you. Captain Rogers would do the same for you. Has done the same for you. I do believe Steve crossed Nazi territory, broke into a munitions factory and kicked the Red Skull in the face to rescue you." The trickster finished with the largest of the pressure sores and moved his attention to the smaller ones. "And you can't deny that."

"I'm not denying it. But I never asked him to do it." The soldier spotted the smile on the trickster's face. "What?!"

"I think you will find that you and I are very similar in some regards. I never asked Stark to storm across a universe either. But here we both are, because of two men who did things we didn't ask them to do."

Bucky craned his neck to look at the difference to his arm. "You are drawing parallels between two completely different situations."

"Yes of course. No similarity at all."

"Look, just because I was born in the 20's doesn't mean I don't know when someone's insinuating something!"

Loki smiled serenely. "You've said it yourself; nothing to insinuate." He turned the soldiers arm one way and another, checking that he had reached all of the raw areas. "And I believe that is everything healed."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, thanks." Bucky moved the limb, presumably to check that Loki hadn't done anything to the actual prosthetic.

"I mean it though; talk to Stark about sorting the mechanics out. I've solved the symptoms, but not the problem. If you leave it the sores will just come back again."

"Sure thing, mom."

The humour was so unexpected that it surprised a laugh from Loki and he looked down at the twins. "Yes, well; I can't exactly complain about that, can I?"

"I don't think I am ever going to get used to the weirdness in this place!" The soldier rolled his shoulder again, evidently enjoying being pain free. "I might follow your advice though. Maybe Stark would be amenable to looking at it."

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

"Is there a reason you're hovering in the doorway like some creepy ghoul?" Evie asked sourly.

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just call me that." To be fair Tony had stopped in the doorway to the cinema when he'd spotted his daughter in there. But he wouldn't have called it hovering as such.

Evie had pushed the chairs and beanbags out of the way and was lying on her stomach, a plate of crackers in front of her and Arthur sat on his haunches watching her carefully.

"What are you doing?"

"Training. I hadn't realised he had a venom response; so now we're training to produce it on command."

"Did your mom not mention that? It's apparently on the edge of being bred out of them – I think he assumed Arthur couldn't do it. It's not supposed to be particularly harmful to humans, just –"

"Feels like a nettle sting?" Evie held up her hand, displaying a faint rash. "Yep, found that one out."

"What did you do to make him do that?" Tony left the doorway to come and sit beside her on the floor.

"I didn't, Dummy snuck up on him and pulled his tail; I got caught in the cross fire. So I thought it best to train him to control it." She pointed up in the air and the Münchrat rose to his feet, alert and ready. "Arthur, bristle."

In a movement similar to an angry cat the small creature arched his back. However, unlike a cat, the whiskers around his tusks obtruded and visibly hardened to needle-like projections. Evie pointed to a cushion that until this moment Tony had overlooked. "And fire!"

Said needles terminated the cushion with extreme prejudice. Stark huffed with amusement.

"That's rather impressive. I didn't know he could do that."

"He'll do anything for food." Evie held out a cracker that Arthur politely picked out of her hand. "The hardest bit was teaching him not to snatch the treats. He's been very good around the twins, but it can't hurt to make certain."

"Glad you're taking your role as a big sister so seriously."

"World's gonna burn, someone's got to be ready to protect them."

Tony ignored the insinuation that she didn't think he was going to protect their small family adequately. "Since when is the world going to burn?"

The look his daughter gave him was pure Loki. "Uh, hello? Evil Titan dude sending his evil armies of minions to destroy worlds? Y'know. The normal. And Hydra is still a thing."

"And you're training Arthur to repel Thanos and Hydra…?"

"Don't be stupid, Dad. I'm training Arthur because I need to do something. I feel useless just sitting around twiddling my thumbs so might as well see what he can do."

Stark looked down at the Münchrat, who had pulled the spines out of the cushion and curled up and fallen asleep on it. "Well, let's hope that he isn't our last line of defence. And how's your training going?"

Evie shrugged. "On and off. Depends who's decided to bugger off to another realm or lose their vital skills for nine months or so. I can get by with Youtube and Jarvis when I need to."

"Well, God knows what's going to get thrown at us next and Arthur spitting a handful of needles won't cut it. Thank you can handle some more firepower?"

The girl grinned. "Meaning you'll finally let me loose on the semi-automatics?!"

"I suspect you already know how to use one, but we might as well make sure you know how to do it properly." Tony held up a hand as his phone beeped in his pocket. "Hold that thought." He glanced at the message on the screen. "Huh. Your Mom's asking if I'm willing to fix the Frozen Buckyball's dicky arm."

"It's broken? Looked fine earlier."

"It's been ill-fitting since he came here. I think Loki's finally talked him into getting it looked at properly. Do you mind blowing shit up later? I don't want him to change his mind."

Evie flapped a hand at him. "Go on, go, I'm sure my fragile teenage feelings can handle it." She grinned.

Tony did feel slightly bad given how long it had been since he had worked with the girl on her training, but Bucky was such a flight risk in any given situation that he couldn't really give the soldier the option to have a change of heart.

As it was the soldier was lurking outside the glass doors to the lab, still holding the pieces of the prosthetic that he had removed earlier.

"I-"

"Yeah, Loki explained. Although I can't say I hadn't noticed it was fitting poorly. Shall we?"

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

Loki and Thor returned to Jötunnheim a few times over the next year or so. Odin had taken up Loki's suggestion of making the remains in Asgard habitable again, and the younger prince had been instrumental in making a start at that. However, whilst he had been able to help Heimdall fix the Bifrost and clear the radiation from the area, cleaning the toxic atmosphere of an entire realm was stretching it a too far even for his considerable powers.

It had caused quite a delay in the rebuild.

"No luck?"

Loki had actually taken to Google and was beginning to show similar traits to his husband in holing himself up and researching. This meant going for long periods without speaking to anyone else.

"No luck." He glanced up from the tablet to see Evie leaning on the desk next to him. She was seventeen now; mentally more mature and the training regime paying off so that puppy fat had become muscle mass. Still a child, but Loki could see the adult his daughter was becoming. "It's a rather time consuming task."

"Want some help?"

"If you want to give it some thought." Loki conjured up a second seat and slid the A3 sheet he'd been jotting down notes on over to her. "How's your chemistry?"

"Reasonable."

Evie sat down and quickly scanned the paper. "Wow, Möðhy, your hand writing is crazy!"

The prince frowned at her. "Excuse me? Given that I usually use a runic alphabet I think it's just fine. You should see Thor's."

"I have. Spider-web much?" She tapped her finger on one of the formulae. "What's this? I recognise it."

"Formaldehyde."

"Ick. And that's in the atmosphere? Double ick."

"Exactly."

Evie requisitioned a pencil and began to chew the end of it as she studied the ideas her mother had already jotted down. "This looks like you're trying to tackle each compound separately…? Why?"

Loki glanced away from the tablet screen again with a sigh. "Because that's the best way my magic works. I need to work out how to remove each compound, and which order to do it in so that the remaining ones don't react with each other. And somehow reseed the atmosphere with a liveable mixture of oxygen and nitrogen."

"And everything else an atmosphere has."

"Exactly."

The girl frowned, tapping the pencil on her lip. "Does it have to be done by magic?"

"Do you have any better ideas?"

"Kinda." She circled a handful of the compounds that Loki had singled out as being the most prevalent in the new atmospheric composition. "What if we only cleared a small portion? Could you set up some sort up bubble around an area so we didn't have to do the entire realm at once?"

"Well that's what I intended to do, but I still need to clear out all of the toxic mess first."

"Well these ones are all flammable, but you need to watch out for the by-products so…." She trailed off and bit the pencil end again. "I mean, Dad could come up with something to burn these things off in small controlled bursts, but that would still leave some unknown yuck floating around…Hang on a mo'."

Loki blinked at her as the girl pulled her mobile out and found a contact. "Are we outsourcing now?" His daughter mouthed 'shhh' at him, which was possibly the first time such a thing had ever happened to the ancient God of Mischief. "Evelyn-" She waved a hand at him in the universal teenage 'shutupshutupshutup' gesture and her expression brightened as the call connected.

"Hey Scott, how's things?!"

"Scott?" Blame it on sleep deprivation, but Loki couldn't recall knowing a Scott. Evie shushed him again.

"Awesome, awesome, yeah so I've got a chemistry problem here, think you could help?" She nodded at the inaudible response. "Yeah, no, physics is my thing. Here, I'll send a photo." She quickly snapped the paper. "Got it? Great, yeah, so…" She wandered off, still chattering happily whilst Loki stared after her.

"Jarvis? Who is Scott?"

"Mr Lang, sir? Scott Lang; known to the team as Antman? You have worked with him on several missions now, sir."

"…He's the one that can shrink, yes?"

"Well done, sir."

Loki turned in his chair to see where his daughter had wandered off to. "And why is Evie speaking to him?"

"He has some experience and background in chemistry."

"So he cooks meth or makes bombs."

"I didn't say that, sir."

Given that his teenage daughter was happily chatting to the man in question Loki was going to automatically assume the worse, and Earth television had told him that meth or bombs were the worst end of chemistry. However, he forced a smile when Evie came back over, beaming.

"I was right! Scott thinks it's doable!"

"What's doable?"

The girl quickly talked through her plan.

Many of the toxic atmospheric components were flammable, and rather than taking Loki's approach and taking tackling them one at a time she proposed sectioning off areas and burning off the compounds. With Scott's quick input she had determined how to work out what the by-products would be and then how they could be dealt with.

"I see what you want to happen here, and I can certainly section areas of the realm off to do this in, but I don't have the first clue about these reactions." Loki looked over the hastily scribbled formulae. "I wouldn't know what to do for each component."

"Yeah, you wouldn't have to. You section off the areas and Dad can build something that can tackle the actual yuck in the air."

"And this would reduce the atmosphere to something liveable?"

Evie followed down the line of equations she'd written out. "Not totally. I think the oxygen levels would still suck, but you could then re-seed it." She grinned when her mother looked at her blankly. "I love when I actually know something you don't."

"Well don't get used to it; it's a rare occurrence." The trickster looked over the spider scrawl his daughter had added to his neat formulae. "You think your father could build something that could combust these compounds? He's an engineer with a background in physics."

"Are you kidding? This is asking him to set fire to shit! He was a weapons expert!"

"Don't swear." But he noted the point. If Tony was ever talented at something, it was blowing things up. Blowing up the atmosphere of an entire planet was probably going to be a record, but he could certainly do it. "Okay, so you think we can clear the toxins and their products in a few different steps. Then what? Does Earth have the technology to re-oxygenate an entire atmosphere?"

"Not currently. But we'd be left with a huge amount of carbon dioxide so I'm sure we can find a way to pull oxygen out of that."

"I could do something with that." At his daughter's sceptical look Loki smirked. "I can replicate the basics of photosynthesis, even if I'm not a chemist."

"Awesome; you'll be a tree." The girl grinned back in return. "So, I'm sure there's a good reason that you're not just sucking the whole mess of toxic sludge into one of those pocket dimensions of yours…?"

"I'm powerful. I'm not that powerful. I couldn't simply remove an entire realm's atmosphere in one go."

"Really? Disappointing."

"It is a good job my ego is too large to damage, otherwise that would have hurt." Loki's smirk took the bite out of the words.

With an idea in mind mother and daughter worked through the problem for a few more hours. Evie called on Jarvis' expertise as to what was already possible with current technology so they had a concrete plan of what to ask Tony to build. With Loki carefully noting down every spell in his considerable arsenal that could be useful to clear, block off or shield large areas they were beginning to put together a workable plan.

By the time they called Stark down to have a look there was a strategy in place that would clear a few square miles of Asgard and return a liveable atmosphere. Tony raised a brief question about the radiation that saturated the realm, but was assured that it had already been mostly cleared by Asgard's few remaining sorcerers. Apparently it was easier to clear than actual particles.

It didn't take long for the man to start insisting that he started work on building the equipment they would need which left the small family sat on the floor of the labs with holograms and paperwork strewn everywhere. The twins were usually kept well away from Tony's work spaces but given that both parents were present, and that they were only working theoretically, the toddlers – nearly two and getting under everyone's feet - were with them.

Evie sat crossed legged, Brandir lying with his back supported on her ankles as she pulled faces and played with his hands. Hope was busy pulling at Arthur's fur as the patient little animal sat beside her.

"Where'd you get the chemistry know-how on this?" Tony asked. "I mean, it isn't wrong, just kinda advanced. I thought you hated chemistry, Birdy."

"I asked Scott for help."

Stark frowned at Loki in confusion, who mouthed Antman back at him.

"Oh, uh…You know Scott works for Hank Pym, right? Pym Tech and Stark Industries have some serious bad blood between them. Hank would be furious if-"

"If he knew his associate was helping put a realm back together?"

Tony shrugged. "Well, I guess as long as it's not the quantum realm." He was playing with a holographic screen that was covered with chemical formulae. "Anyone know if antimony is combustible?"

"There's antimony in the atmosphere?"

"Yup. That Infinity Bracelet defies all laws of physics and chemistry."

"Gauntlet, not bracelet."

Evie was tapping on her phone with one hand, still supporting her brother. "Wiki says antimony forms oxides in the air, or when oxidised with nitric acid. Does that help?"

"Not really." Tony moved some holographic elements around in the air. "Anything about it reacting with chlorine? I've got a boat load of chlorine floating around here after the initial burn-off."

"Uh…Forms a pyramidal tri-halide with chlorine. Whatever that means."

"Yeah, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"Let's assume bad. I don't know about you, but I don't want to breathe that in."

Loki looked across the almost indecipherable formulae. "It might get to a point that if everything that can be burnt off is burnt off, I can start trying to scrub what's left with magic."

"Well it's that or we start looking at nuclear fission and breaking shit apart on a molecular level."

The trickster held a finger up. "You are not nuking Asgard!"

"Okay, not nuclear fission then." Tony sat back on his heels and tapped his stylus against his chin. "But…But what if we stayed with the concept?"

His husband and eldest daughter stared at him. "What concept? Nuking Asgard?"

"No. Well, kinda. Give me a mo'." Stark cleared the formulae with a wave of his hand and brought up the original starting compounds that had been noted in Asgard's atmosphere. "Jarvis, taking Asgard's assumed size into account, can you give me assumed amounts of these compounds, realm-wide." The numbers floating in the air rolled through to Jarvis' rough estimates. "Right…"

Loki and Evie watched as he began sketching out other equations alongside. It meant little to the prince, but Evie's eyes began to widen as she recognised the co-efficients.

"Wow, Dad, that's risky."

"He's done it before." Tony sat back again and looked over what he had scribbled out. "Jarvis, can you run that and check the numbers?"

As the numbers scrolled again Loki moved over to sit closer to his husband. "What are you thinking here? I assume this is something you think I can do?"

"I know you can do it. I just don't know if it will be possible."

"A little bit of an oxymoron there, Stark."

A little green tick appeared next to Tony's scribbled calculations and the man grinned. "Bingo. My maths is always on point!"

"So's your ego. Now, what are you intending?"

The man glanced over his shoulder at his daughter. "Birdy? You seemed to guess what I'm looking at here."

Evie carefully moved Brandir off her legs and let him wobble over to his twin sister, leaving her free to scramble to her parents.

"Yeah, that looks like you're working out mass to cancel everything out."

"Mass of what?" Loki hated being the only one in a group not understanding what was happening, and his tone made that very clear.

"Antimatter."

The trickster gaped at his husband. "That would annihilate everything."

"Yeah, but you protected us with a shield last time you did it. And you weren't at full strength." Tony sounded all too enthusiastic for his husband's comfort. "Shield off anything we don't want fried into oblivion and blow the rest to kingdom come. Much easier than burning the atmosphere off in sections."

"Well, yes, but we're talking the largest annihilation event since the big bang. And even if I could pull that off everything outside of the shield would then be an airless vacuum."

"Well that just changes the problem. Rather than clean an atmosphere we need to reseed it."

Evie nudged Loki with her shoulder. "Your chance to be a tree!"

That drew a laugh from her mother and a confused look from Tony. "Be a tree?"

"Photosynthesis."

"Yeah, that needs molecular starting blocks." Stark stared at the formulae. "To be honest, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place with this. Either blow everything up and hope to burn off everything nasty, or wipe the entire slate clean and rebuild the atmosphere. Neither is easy and there're loads of complications whichever we choose."

"Can you pre-build an atmosphere in one of those pocket dimensions of yours?" Evie's question was so simple that both her parents stared at her. "What?"

"Actually I potentially could…And sticking a little piece of rainforest in with it I could grow it up to a decent size…" Loki began to grin. "That could work. Strip Asgard's atmosphere entirely like you suggested, and then I could have a ready-made replacement to throw straight into its place."

Tony held up both hands in a silent demand for High Fives. "Now that is family teamwork!"

"This is going to mean so much work…" Loki left the High Five hanging as he studied the wall of equations. "More antimatter, a full atmosphere, a shield…I do hope you two don't intend to see much of me any time soon."

"How long do you think?"

The prince let his breath out in a low whistle. "A few months. I could have everything in place by then." A grin spread slowly across his face. "A few months and Asgard will be liveable again!"

A realm rebuilt.