The rest of the evening passed like some sort of nightmare.

Loki had immediately gone to the site, taking Steve and Bucky since Tony was too emotionally compromised. They had succeeded in rescuing Happy, as well as a handful of other SI staff and helped the emergency services to put the fires out in the complex.

But Happy had been correct; six people were dead.

Pepper was one of them.

It hadn't occurred to anyone in the moment – because why would it? – but Happy had answered Pepper's phone when Tony called it. Which meant that he had spent the hours before that lying pinned under the ceiling joists with his colleague's body pressed up against him.

Happy himself was a mess. The weight on him had cut the blood flow to his abdomen long enough to require extensive reconstructive surgery and both his legs had multiple fractures. Stark had specialists flown in at considerable expense to make sure his friend didn't lose the limbs.

With some very gentle prompting from Steve – because Tony would be the first to admit that he could be thoughtless when emotionally compromised – the financial aid was extended to the other injured SI personnel and Jarvis took it upon himself to quickly put some very large life insurance policies in place for the families of the dead. Money was cold and impersonal, but also so very necessary when adversary struck.

In the moment there were some terribly practical things to have to think about before any real grieving could be done. All of the bodies were taken to the nearest hospital but Jarvis was already scouting the best funeral homes nearby. Likewise, Stark Industries had suddenly been left without a CEO, returning the control to Tony for the time being.

And someone would need to draft a press relief.

And tell all of the families.

And…And all of the terrible terrible things that happen when someone dies.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

Pepper's funeral was held on a crisp spring day. The church was full of sprays of pale pink carnations and blue cornflowers, neither in season but nothing was too good as far as Tony was concerned. They'd been her favourites, so Pepper was going to be absolutely surrounded by them for one last time.

Steve had helped choose the hymns – the only one who really had much to do with a church – and Tony couldn't help but think how hollow the words were. Given he had two Norse Gods stood next to him it seemed obsolete to be throwing prayers at a completely different one. He'd been raised an atheist and whilst he still didn't consider himself religious he supposed theoretically he was now pagan.

Make me a channel of your peace…

"Does your daughter look after them?" The quiet words were nearly lost under the music, but Loki heard them and moved his gaze from the coffin to his husband. Tony read the confusion there and clarified, scuffing away tears with the cuff of his expensive suit jacket. "Does Hel look after those who go to her? Is she kind?"

"I do not know." Of course, Loki had not seen his daughter since she left and became the queen of that unmentioned realm. "However, she was a sweet child. And kind then. I believe she may well be kind now, to those she looks after." He reached down to grasp Tony's hand. "She knows the value of peace, and what it can mean to those who need it."

Stark didn't bother to ask how it felt to be a deity in the home of the wrong religion. Pepper had had some small faith and Loki and Thor could suck it up for her sake to sit through a Christian funeral.

There were a few readings; Happy had insisted on giving one, crutches and all, Evie managed to read a poem Pepper had liked and Tony found it in him to give a eulogy. He didn't stutter or stumble. He was proud of that. Pepper would have been proud of that. He had given enough emotionally charged speeches in his time that he knew how to give one without the bubbling despair showing itself.

If asked afterwards the man couldn't have told anyone what he'd actually said. He hadn't bothered to write it out before hand – when had he ever managed to stick to a script anyway? – so just reeled off what came into his head in the moment. It must have been reasonably good since he saw a lot of people smiling fondly at what he reminisced about. Rhodes patted him on the back when he went to sit back down, and Evie hugged him tightly.

They went with a cremation. Pepper didn't have any blood relatives – her friends and family had been comprised of the Avengers and Stark Industries – so Tony had had to make that decision as well. Cremation and at a later date they could worry about the ashes.

The wake was held back at the Tower, well away from the prying eyes of the media. Pepper's Twitter page was still being flooded with condolences from across the world so Jarvis streamed it up onto a wall.

It took surprisingly little effort to change the mood from sombre to celebratory though. Loki casting a glance at what was now a very old and battered sofa and reminding Tony how that was where he and Miss Potts met. The complete and utter inappropriateness of that memory had Stark laughing before he could help himself.

Pepper deserved celebrating. She had been there from the very start; cleaning up after all of Tony's crap, dealing with the press after his ridiculous behaviour, and then helping Tony replace the original arc reactor, supporting him becoming Ironman, taking over Stark Industries for him. Quiet, unassuming and absolute balls of steel. It still didn't feel real.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

No one was expecting to see Tony up early the next morning, but nonetheless there he was, dragging a large wheeled display board into the sitting room.

"Tony? What are you doing?" Steve was still using that quiet voice as if he were talking to an injured animal, and it earned him a glare.

"Right. Who's here? Most of us?" Stark looked around the room, only counting the usual early risers. "Okay, no matter. Right. So."

"How much coffee have you had?"

"Enough." Loki answered for his husband, following him into the room and looking equally confused. "Stark, what are you up to?"

Tony centred the display board up against the bar and turned to face the meagre group that were there, all staring at him. By group, it was four people – five with Loki now – Steve, Bucky, Natasha and Bruce. The usual early birds.

"Okay, right. I had this idea last night. So." He turned to Loki. "Reindeer games, our first proper conversation. You, me, this room. You had the glow stick of destiny and I had a death wish."

The trickster dipped his head in a nod. "I remember, what of it?"

"What did I tell you?"

"…Quite a few things? You rambled rather considerably, made mention of the Hulk, then I th-"

"Threw me out the window. Yeah. Well, since you apparently missed the most important part of my ramblings let me remind you." Tony thumped his fist against the display board, making it wobble alarmingly. "I told you who we are. We are the Avengers! And-"

"And if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it." Loki finished the phrase.

"Exactly!"

"And this is…?"

There was a piece of laminated paper clutched in Tony's free hand that they had overlooked in favour of staring at the random board, but he brought it to attention by slamming it against the flat surface and ramming a drawing pin through the top to hold it in place.

"I'll get a better photo when I have a moment, but for now…this is a start."

It was one of the pictures of Pepper that was usually down in the foyer of the building. She looked happy, self-assured in her favourite suit jacket. It had been taken the day she had begun as CEO of Stark Industries.

"This is it. This is what we exist as a group for. We avenge. And this is going to be where we place all those we're avenging. These are the people that were stolen from us, and we are going to damn well avenge them!" Stark was holding back tears as he said it. He was refusing to meet anyone's eye until he felt Loki's hand on his shoulder.

"I like the idea. May I?"

He managed a nod.

The trickster stepped up to the board and waved a hand so that a golden glow diffused out into a space a similar size to Pepper's portrait and next to it. He smiled sadly as Frigga's picture appeared.

"I've got some I could add to that." Bucky's quiet voice came as a surprise and he looked slightly affronted as everyone turned to stare at him. "What? I had to live somewhere after I said my fond farewells to Hydra. My landlady and her family were in Paris and had decided to visit the Mona Lisa."

"You didn't say anything about that." Steve said quietly.

"Why would I? There were some considerably bigger problems in the moment and then there was never the right time." Bucky glanced at Tony. "I'll pull some photos off their social media."

"Grand."

"If we're counting just people we know…an old contact of mine was at the theme park." Natasha said slowly. "I mean, we hadn't spoken in a while, but…yeah. Now we won't ever again."

The board slowly filled out over the next few weeks. With more attacks, more names went up; Sam insisted that celebrities had to count after his favourite band were caught up in one, and friends of friends went up after Scott's daughter lost some classmates. Evie's old riding school teacher, the owner of Clint's favourite coffee bar, a friend Thor had made through an online game. People were dying and they had no answers.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

Tony was slightly taken aback to walk into his labs and find a large image of the Infinity Gauntlet spinning around in the centre of the area.

"Uh…why?"

Loki flicked his hand so that the construct froze in place. "I'm trying to think and a visual helps." He pointed to the gems already in place and they glowed at his command. "We're going to come up against this, so we might as well have a plan of how to defeat it."

"What have you got so far?"

The trickster shrugged. "Thanos has four Stones now. Power from Svartalfheim, Space from Alfheim, Time from Muspelheim and Mind from Asgard. I have the Reality Stone so all that is left out there is the Soul Stone."

"And any idea where that sucker is hiding?" Tony brushed some papers aside and sat on his desk, staring at the gauntlet. "How many realms do we have left for him to rip through?"

"Three."

"Three?!" But the maths worked out. As well as the four realms Loki had listed, Jotunnheim hadn't held a Stone and neither had Nidavillir. "So that's us, Vanaheim? And…Nifiliffilf-"

"Helheim is easier to say."

"Fine, Helheim. Earth, Vanaheim, Helheim. And one of us has the Soul Stone."

Loki glanced at him with an amused smirk. "Vanaheim has it. I don't know where – they probably don't either – but Earth doesn't have it, and Helheim doesn't, so process of elimination."

"How do you know Helheim doesn't?"

"My daughter created that realm. She would have made sure everyone knew if she'd got her hands on an Infinity Stone, and it would have been a considerably bigger realm."

"She created a whole realm? How powerful is your kid?!"

"Well, she built upon an existing empty space, technically."

"But she still built a realm, gathers the dead to live there and…is queen of it all?"

Finally Loki's smirk turned to a proud smile. "Yes, queen of it all. Evie's not the only one with an empire to her name."

"Future empire. I'm not dead yet and Birdy may not even want to run Stark Industries. And I thought I was immortal!"

"You are, but Evelyn will probably do a better job."

Tony nodded, smiling at the provocation, but mind already racing ahead to a new tangent of thought. "And it's definitely a good place to be? Helheim, I mean. People can be…happy there?"

Pepper's name floated in the air between them; unspoken but tangible.

"It's not heaven, if that's what you mean." It was a quiet little statement. "Do you…did you believe in an afterlife? I don't think I've ever even asked that."

The man shrugged. "I never used to. That moment on Asgard when I busted my heart completely and thought I was dying I remember being terrified at the thought of the nothingness after death. I assumed that was it. You die and become nothing. And I think that was worse than any other possibility."

"Well, it's better than that at least. It's not the Christian ideal, but it's also not what the Christian's co-opted it into. Hel isn't Hell, as it were."

"Not filling me with confidence here."

Loki sighed. "I've never been there myself. My father went, once, and tried to talk to Hel. He never told me how that conversation went, but at least told me about the realm." At Tony's expectant look he sighed again and flicked his fingers so that the Infinity Gauntlet vanished and other images could appear as he spoke.

"There is a river, Gjöll, which has a bridge of gold spanning it. That is the only way the living can enter. Beyond it there are fields, and lands of burial mounds and henges. I'm told wild flowers grow there.

"Across these lands there are halls, where the souls reside. Some are in family groups, some are with those whose company they enjoy. The largest and most famous of these is Valhalla, where the warriors feast and fight.

"Hel has her own hall, where she will meet souls for judgement, and that is far more like the traditional depictions of death. She met my father there, and he said it is a dark pace of pillars and rock."

Tony had frowned a little at the description. "Judgement? She judges people?"

"Her realm."

"Is she fair?"

A shrug. "I don't know. She was a kind girl; I can only hope that she is a kind ruler."

"Way to make me feel better here, Capricorn." Tony waved his hands hopelessly. "Doesn't sound all that…I mean, it's not the sort of paradise you hear about, is it? Where're the choirs of angels?"

Loki raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Do you want there to be choirs of angels?"

"Well…not literally I guess. Church propaganda and all that. But Pepper might like angels. She had a thing for cutesy things with wings. Fairies, angels, Pegasus…Did your dad at least mention seeing a Pegasus? Or unicorns? Unicorns would be good." Stark waited a few moments then shrugged. "That would be daft though. Ignore me."

"Svarðalfari has wings."

"Sffarthal-who now?"

Loki looked slightly abashed. "…Sleipnir's father."

"Sleipnir's…Wait! Your sexy stallion one-night-stand?! He's in Helheim? He's dead?"

"Yes? Thor killed him?"

"And…not only is your ex literally hung like a stallion, he can actually fly as well?"

"You can fly."

"Of the two points I just made, that was not the one for you try and stroke my ego regarding."

The two men looked at each other and Tony began to laugh. Loki shook his head with a wry smile.

"Okay. I've come in and terribly distracted you. Had you made any progress with the bracelet of doom?"

"Not one bit."

"…Standard."

Loki brought up the projection of the Gauntlet again. "The best I can do is tell you the capabilities Thanos now has with the stones in his possession." Each one, as indicated, lit up. "According to the legends, Time allows the wearer to manipulate time. I can only assume he hasn't used it to work out where the missing stones are due to how uncontrollably dangerous it is. Power gives manipulation over all forms of energy, it acts like a battery to the other stones. Space allows teleportation of people and things. Mind gives power over the minds of others."

"Time sounds fishy. Are we saying time travel is a thing?"

"Yes, but as I say, it's dangerous to the point of impossible." Loki zoomed the projection in to the gem in question. "You're a sci-fi fan; you know the risks."

True. Go back in time and step on an ant, and somehow your great-grandfather is never born. Messing around in time, in fiction at any rate, usually came with huge penalties. "So Thanos can't risk time-travel to look for where the soul and reality stones are?"

"He can certainly risk it. We have to hope that he doesn't. He could use it and take them straight out of history."

"But you have the reality stone."

The trickster smiled, sharp and humourless. "Quite. If I suddenly cease to exist assume Thanos finally grew fed up searching the hard way and took the reality stone from me when I first found it."

"Great." Tony rested is chin in his hand with a sigh. "So now I've got to add you suddenly disappearing from existence to my large list of anxiety-inducing scenarios." He frowned. "If you did cease to exist what about the kids..?"

"Don't go there, Tony."

"Yes, but-"

With a wave Loki banished the projection completely, leaving the lab looking eerily empty. "Stark, use that brain of yours for a moment please. I found the stone tens of thousands of years ago; if Thanos were to wipe me out back at that point an awful lot more than your living arrangements would change. I've told you before how much I played a part in historical events; the world would look very different without my in-put."

"Narcissist."

"Oh hardly! I caused the Anglo-Saxons to win a pivotal battle against the invading Danes which led to Alfred and his children uniting the kingdoms of England. Had they lost, the Danish influence on that country could have changed the course of the entire world."

"Again, a bit of a stretch."

"Says the white American." Loki moved over to his husband, the smirk now firmly back where it belonged. "You've got Irish ancestry – anything that affected England would hit your history too."

"I'm more Jewish, actually."

"Stop splitting hairs. You know that's not my only engagement in human history. Lose my influence and this world would look very different."

Stark was still sat on his desk, but shifted his legs so that his husband could stand between them. Loki's hands were warm as they cupped his cheeks.

"I do sometimes think you forget that you've married a god. I'm ancient, I've seen and done things, I'm important. That's not ego, it's truth."

"Mmm, still sounds like ego to me." Tony grinned. "So you're saying if Thanos does go back and wipe you out of history we'd never know because we wouldn't be here to know?"

"Pretty much."

Well, that could be worse. At least they wouldn't be around to know what they'd lost. Tony could think of worse things.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

"So. You're probably wondering why I've called everyone here." Steve looked…nervous. Captain America didn't usually do nervous, so the whole meeting was already starting off with everyone on edge.

"Since you look like you're about to tell us you've put our dog down, yeah we're wondering." Clint threw his feet up on the table. "And assuming Evie would have killed you if you'd done something to Arthur it's probably something else."

"Yeah, it's something else. Arthur's fine. I think, I haven't seen him in a while – anyway that's not the point."

"Well get to the point."

"Hydra."

The archer sat up properly, his attention grabbed. "Okay, that's a point."

Steve looked around the group. It was one of those rare times that he had managed to pull everyone together. Even Fury was up on the screen via video-link and they had persuaded Scott to let Evie babysit his daughter for the hour or so this might take.

"We haven't heard from Hydra in months. They've gone quiet." Bucky was still their best informant on Hydra – even when not in the field he had a contact system that rivalled Clint and Natasha's. "Like a lot of terrorist groups they went quiet after the alien attacks started. Are you saying they've been mobilising again?"

That was the last thing they needed. With the extra-terrestrial threat they didn't have the energy or manpower to deal with the crap Hydra normally threw at them.

"They're…not exactly mobilising." And Steve didn't normally hedge an answer. "They…uh. They've called a truce."

Tony spat out the mouthful of coffee he'd just taken. "They've fucking what?!"

"So it turns out that I'm not quite as social media savvy as I thought I was and someone contacted me on Twitter. Jarvis confirmed the source and set up a private chat for us."

"You've been chatting with Hydra! On fucking Twitter!"

"Well, we're video talking now but…yeah."

"And what? They've just rolled over and showed their belly? How the hell does that work? How the hell does a truce with Hydra work?!" Stark sat back in his chair. "How are we even meant to trust them?!"

"It's…" Steve cleared his throat – a leader uneasy. "It's pretty dire out there Tony. Earth is under alien invasion and we can barely put a scratch on the bastards; it's humanity together now. Hydra can see that. They've offered support, man-power, any and all tech they've got stashed." He spread his hands in an expansive gesture. "All of it. Hydra have offered us all of it. It's a truce. Or more than that even; it's a partnership. With us in charge."

"Us in charge?"

"Too many heads. They don't have the organised leadership to deal with something like this."

"Why us?" Fury was as calm and collected as ever, which seemed ridiculous given the situation. "Why have they come to us? Why not the UN, or the government?"

"The UN isn't likely to listen to a terrorist organisation, regardless of the circumstances. Hydra were us. Kind of. Once at least. Not the king-pins, but the ordinary people. They were our office workers, and grunts, and hired guns. We would say hello and shake their hands and discuss the weather with them." Steve placed his hands on the table, leaning his weight onto them. "They are as confused and frightened as the rest of the world, and when someone feels like that they turn to what's familiar." He looked around at the impassive faces of his friends and groaned. "Look! I don't like it either! But when was the last time there was a terrorist attack? From any organised group? We may all want vastly different things of this world, but it's got to the point that everyone is agreeing we need a world before we can fight over the wretched thing."

Tony waved his hand in a lazy circle. "Sooo…what would this look like?"

The captain stared at him. "You were the last one I was expecting to accept this."

"I'm not accepting anything, I'm trying to get all the facts. Have we got an army now or something? What can they offer us, how does that transaction work and how do we communicate with them?"

"I don't know what this is going to look like Tony. They've proposed this team-up, we hadn't discussed any further since I needed to speak with all of you."

"Can we make demands?" Bruce's quiet question was so unexpected, coming from him, that it drew everyone's attention. He shifted uncomfortably under the combined scrutiny.

"I suppose we could make requests. What were you thinking?"

"The mustard gas they've been trying to source. That stuff is banned under every convention and peace treaty going; they need to hand the whole lot over." Banner tapped his pen on the table, the point retracted to avoid making a mark. "It's a bitch to destroy so we need to make sure it's taken care of properly. Same goes for any other chemical or biological weapons they've got lurking."

Steve was already nodding before the scientist could finish. "Agreed. And anything nuclear or alien." He frowned as Tony shook his head. "What?"

"I seriously doubt they have nukes, but let them keep the alien-tech. We all need whatever edge we can get and it's a little show of faith."

"But-"

"If the point of this is to have Hydra as a military ally, we need them to actually have the firepower to be useful. They're hardly likely to like it if we use them as cannon fodder."

It took hours for the group to draw up something that they could all agree on. The idea of allowing Hydra – who had attacked the very heart of them – to work alongside them was a difficult prospect. However, as Steve had first said, by this point it was all humans together. Frankly if Hitler rose from the grave and suggested teaming up they'd consider it.

They were in no position to be choosy.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

The team-up became useful sooner than they had expected or wanted. The attack was on the outskirts of Moscow and although the Avengers arrived first thanks to Loki there was that curious mix of relief and trepidation as blank vans rolled up alongside them, no insignias but the personnel heavily armed. With the Russian troops they finally had what was essentially an army to fight back with for the first time.

It had reached the point that they didn't even try to conceal Loki and Bucky amongst them anymore. If anyone had made any tenuous links – regarding Bucky more than Loki – they no longer cared. The media had bigger stories to bother about.

The Orks were, for once, taken by surprise. In any other situation they would have won given their superior weapons, but the surprise of so many troops, when they'd previously only been faced with the Avengers or whatever local police were around, was enough.

That wasn't to say it was easy.

Steve was co-ordinating the Hydra troops. It had been his idea so the group had rather left him to it; he was a damn good leader and knew what was needed in this sort of situation. As it was, Hydra were of better use mixed in with the Russian police and military units that had arrived. For the Avengers it was more of a rescue operation than battle. With the fire-power being thrown around the civilian casualties were mounting and panicked civvies running in every direction made life a lot harder for the professionals.

That's not to say Hydra weren't evacuating too. People are people; it's very easy to give a group a name and then see them as one homogenous lump, but the personnel that had up until recently been considered the enemy were still just people. And most of them were people who weren't going to leave civilians trapped like rats in a barrel.

In battle situations a certain member of the Avengers was also beginning to prove surprisingly useful. Scott Lang's presence had admittedly been treated as a bit of a joke – mostly thanks to Tony – when he'd first joined. His help in destroying the Helicarrier had done a little to build his reputation, but now he was really beginning to shine.

Tiny, invisible to the Orks and able to get through dense rubble, Scott was proving himself absolutely invaluable for the rescue effort. With Jarvis integrated into his suit he could scan through the destroyed buildings for life-signs and then squeeze through the gaps to reach possible survivors.

This time he found himself in a small caved-in room mid-way up a block of flats. The rooms above had collapsed in, burying the lower floors and anyone who had been in them.

"Got someone here!" There was just enough room for him to return to his usual size. "Her legs are trapped, but she's alive." Unconscious though, which was possibly for the best since he didn't speak a word of Russian.

"Can you get her out?"

"Nah." He didn't need to try moving anything to see that. "Everything is holding everything else up. Move anything, four stories are going to come down on our heads."

"Can anyone spare a hand?" Steve sounded harried, and an explosion across the coms made it clear why.

"I'm on it."

Scott didn't have a chance to ask who had responded before Loki materialised in the tiny space next to him. With both grown men – neither of them short – and the unconscious casualty it was a tight fit.

"How about I shrink?"

"How about you do that."

The woman was firmly pinned under the rubble, but Scott's scan suggested she was the only living person left in the building. Loki could teleport all three of them out and let the building collapse completely.

"She's going to need urgent medical care the moment we're out of here. The rubble is cutting off blood to her legs and abdomen, I think that-"

Whatever Loki thought went unsaid.

A blast from the external battle blew through the wall, bringing everything down on top of them. Already shrunk, Scott was blown straight out of the room and into open space.

Completely out of control, even full-sized the drop was immense. A second blast flung him in a different direction and a piece of flying masonry narrowly missed him. Panic took over for a brief moment – falling, spinning, no idea of which way was up or down as the world continued to explode around him – before logic fought back and he called for help.

It took nearly twenty ants before one managed to get through the air-borne debris and catch him. They went up – the best direction when everything else around you is going down at terminal velocity. It was minutes of fighting through the dust and flying rubble before they burst out above the explosion and were able to look down on what had just happened.

The block of flats had collapsed in on itself and then burst out again on impact with the ground. Neighbouring buildings had been taken out in the ensuing shock-wave. The life signs Scott had initially seen for those had vanished.

"Loki, did you get the woman out?!" The coms were full of static. "Loki? Did you get her?"

"Scott, what happened?" Sam appeared out of the dust, looking around as if he could possibly spot Lang that high up and that small. Jarvis must have given him a rough location.

"We were trying to get a lady out of there when it came down. Where's Loki?"

It wasn't worth trying to find Scott so the Flacon hovered over the disaster site, scanning for the Trickster instead. "Where did you see him last?"

"Directly below you. We were in that building when it was hit."

Said building was a pile of rubble. Sam didn't have the time to spare for an in-depth sweep, but a quick scan didn't show any life-signs – something Scott had already ascertained.

"Not seeing anything."

He sounded calm, but for Lang the words shot fear through his spine. The woman hadn't been very old, surely Loki had managed to get her out…Surely Loki had managed to get himself out for that matter. The Trickster was still AWOL.

"Does anyone have eyes on Loki?"

"Capricorn's missing?!" Tony was a distant spec in the battle, but he came through clearly.

"A building came down on us; he's not answering his com!"

Sam was already scanning through the different com channels for the missing trickster but Stark swore and began doing the same as well. Losing track of one of their key players in the middle of a battle was never a good feeling.

However, in the midst of all of the chaos and destruction there was at least one small happy ending this time.

"What by the Norns is the problem?!" Loki. Thoroughly annoyed and slightly out of breath, but there on the line.

He received three responses at once: Sam calling for his position, Scott demanding to know about the casualty and Tony furious that he'd seemingly vanished off the face of the planet.

"She's fine; I took her straight to the hospital in the next town."

"Why didn't you answer the damn com?!"

"I was trying to speak to the doctors about her injuries at the time? Excuse me for trying to save someone."

The argument that could have blown up on them was neatly curtailed by another building actually blowing up near enough to Stark that he had to turn his attention back to the situation in hand.

It had been a brief thing – Loki had simply taken a casualty for aid and been unable to respond for all of five minutes – but the panic those five minutes had brought left their mark. Scott couldn't help but think about how close it had come. Even if Loki had the skills and magic to escape that situation, Scott himself had been lucky to do so. It was becoming the case that luck was all that was saving them sometimes, and for Pepper even that hadn't been enough.

They were all too aware of how very vulnerable they were to this enemy.

WMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMW

"Thanos has gone all-in on Vanaheim." Thor's use of the vernacular was usually amusing, but this time the modernism just made the statement worse. "Heimdall is evacuating who he can."

That answered the question of who was next at least.

Vanaheim; from Thor and Loki's accounts a beautiful realm of wildlife and farmlands. Not as learned as Alfheim, nor as majestic as Asgard, but simply beautiful for its natural simplicity. It had been a toss of the coin which realm Thanos destroyed first, but all things considered it made sense. Vanaheim was so much less built up than Earth; searching it would have taken a lot less time.

"So we can assume he now has the Soul stone…" Tony rubbed a hand across his eyes. "And he's coming for us next."

"He's most likely coming here, yes, but Heimdall could see no evidence of him finding another stone."

That…didn't make sense.

"What?"

"He hasn't got the soul stone. It wasn't there."

If Vanahiem didn't have it, and Hel didn't have it, and Loki seemed certain that Earth didn't have it…where the hell was the wretched thing?