2. Power Lunch

. . .

"I can't believe Asgard never learned about hoagies. I would have thought that'd be a lock, considering the tone around here." SHIELD Agent Daisy Johnson poked at the slab of roast meat on her gilt-edged plate with a silver fork, watching the chunk slice next to it absorb its delicious au jus. "A giant roll of bread, meat stacked fatter than Thor's butt-"

"Please," said Loki with a genuinely pained wince.

She didn't break her verbal stride, slicing a smaller wedge of meat off the more intimidating wedge of meat. "Cheese, and only a few vegetables. Y'know, for color contrast. Aesthetic." She popped the slice in her mouth, then closed her eyes in delight. With her mouth full, she added, "I mean, it's still frigging delicious as is, but sandwiches, dude. The royal kitchens should look into them."

"We know what sandwiches are, Daisy. We knew them when I was a child, I assure you." Loki ignored Coulson next to him, silently choking off his third laugh in the last ten minutes into his cupped hand. "This is not brand new information."

"Do you call 'em that, though? Being that we humans, like, named them for a guy?"

Loki stared up at the perfect blue sky of Asgard and said nothing.

"Do you? This is a legitimate question."

"Cram."

Daisy put her next slice of meat back down and looked at him. "You didn't just tell me to shove it, I bet."

"No. Our 'sandwiches' are sent out as field rations, oftentimes. Wrapped tight in cheap linen not unlike a classy sort of take-away sub. The warriors call them cram. Because of how the contents are all sort of… crammed together. In the bread." It was a bright and lovely afternoon in Asgard, and Loki sounded exhausted as all hell.

Daisy stared at him.

Loki shrugged. "Yeah."

"'Sandwich' is way better."

"Well, no chef ever named their ruddy brat that around here, we've no Lord All-Father of Subway Sandwich or whatever the ruddy fuck, so we all just have to deal with it. Yes? Good? Eat your damned lunch." Loki tore off a hunk of bread from an enormous sourdough boule left in the center of the table and munched on it with all the hostility he could muster. Which was a fair amount.

"You alright, dude?" Daisy let the mini-rage blow over her without so much as a twitch. It could be interpreted that she had been egging him on to cause a minor blow-out of this exact nature, because it was obvious he was also still as anxious as a cat on a fraying powerline, and that would, as it happened, be the correct interpretation. She studied him, seeing his shoulders relax a fraction. "That help a bit?"

"Don't pull me into shouting at you, I don't care for the guilt after." He continued to munch, looking at neither of his human companions.

"Eh, I literally brought it on myself." She finished up the meat slab and leaned back in the elderwood chair, looking up as a cloud passed overhead. "It's gonna be okay, dude. We're gonna go meet your ship in an hour, and they'll be just some nobodies happy for a paycheck. No double-crossing, nothing weird. Then we go meet Nebula, and we find out what horrible thing is happening in the galaxy now, because that's just our lives these days. And we'll fix it, or you'll fix it with her and we'll be a cheering squad or whatever, and it'll be fine. It's really going to be okay. Right, Coulson?"

"Mhm." Coulson was still leaning on his hand with his mouth covered. The edges of a grin were peeking out.

"See?"

"Both of you are full of auroch shit, I don't know how I got to a point in my life where I've allowed myself to bossed about by humans, both of whom together are a tenth of my age." Loki ran both his hands through his hair, starting along his temples. A rare nervous tic, but a comforting one.

"You'd die without us," said Daisy, cheerfully, hearing the grudging but genuine compliment hidden inside the false insult. "It's scientific."

"She's got a point. Really, for full safety, we should have called up Strange and had him come along, too."

Loki put his hands down and stared at Coulson, his eyes narrowed in deadly intent. "Not a chance." He looked at Daisy next. "Regardless, you're almost getting it. You want to come along as moral support? Very well, I've acquiesced. That's your job as you've perfectly outlined it. Don't interfere, don't put yourself into danger, don't jump in front of me if something ridiculous is about to happen. Please." He looked up as the serving boy approached the table with a quick half-bow. "I think we're set, thank you. My best to Rolaf, your family has always been reliable with their care."

"Thank you, Your Highness," said the boy, picking up an armload of emptied plates, not fazed for a moment by the oddly-dressed humans and the infamous dark prince of the realms. "Health to the great house of Asgard."

"And to yours," said Loki, with automatic formality.

"Do we tip?" whispered Daisy to him as the boy left.

"No, it's fine. The treasury trucks over a few lumps of Dwarven gold every month to cover the standing bill. It's the family equivalent of your favorite Chinese delivery, we're probably paid up into the next millennia."

"God, it's amazing bread. I totally get why."

"It is. Grab the rest before the boy takes it." Loki rose and gestured to the remnants of the huge loaf that doubled as a centerpiece. "Thor always does."

. . .

Daisy spun around as the group pushed its way deeper into the busy port, owning her wide-eyed tourista look and knowing she didn't have anything anyone would want to pickpocket. The spaceport was the newest permanent addition to Asgard, who used to manage most of its transportation via Bifrost and a handful of space-capable vehicles. Loki, veiled for a time as the All-Father, had gotten the idea in his head that a proper channel for tourism and shipping would be useful for a realm that had gotten a shedload more PR around the galaxy in recent years. It was something useful from his ill-thought days of rule, and she knew he was privately quite proud of the initiative.

Odin, after consulting with Loki on his original plans, was currently expanding it.

The port was down a new road that circled out from the city that grew around the great golden palace and through a field that turned into hills that hid the port's lights at night, for the port itself never slept. It might have been ugly, since it was partially bolted onto the underdark stones that kept Asgard's small green world aloft. It was not.

Marble inlays and silver details and enchanted gimlet-black grit strong enough to take the brunt of spaceflight engines made up the new series of platforms. The silver grew along its edges, safety rails disguised as eternal ivy and hiding support beams made of rough dwarven godsteel. Warehouses and office buildings were Asgardian in style close to the main entrance portals, but speckled into a wild lack of uniformity just beyond, recalling the chaotic, jewellike interest of other hubworlds like Xandar. There were infoscreens 'growing' out of certain silver ivy patches, intel on a permanent scroll to show arrivals and departures, and key galactic news.

Daisy flicked her gaze from screen to screen, a cute blue Xandarian guy seated behind a desk and doing his very best Chris Hayes impersonation as he narrated off whatever a teleprompter was in space. Here in the galaxy, too, what bleeds leads, and he was chasing several stories about space pirating, a blockade deep in the Gamma quad that was hindering medical deliveries, the victories of some glowing humanoid woman, and, now and then, a figure that looked vaguely familiar somehow. She couldn't put a finger on why. "Hey," she said, pausing in her stride. "Hey, Loki?"

He glanced back at her from where he was next to Coulson, then at the feeds. He looked unsurprised at the hulking figure that loomed in the back of the fuzzy footage, like a cryptid. Before him thronged scuttling, vicious creatures, a little like half-made, barely sentient Chitauri. Living weapons, obeying only his command. "Cull Obsidian," said Loki, and there was a frozen note in his voice she didn't like.

The name meant nothing to her. She watched the footage again, realized what it was. It was the armor she was seeing, bulky and dark and sometimes golden in places. That guy had worn something like it. Thanos. "Uh…"

Loki watched the footage scroll in silence for a minute, seeing the brutal assault on a distant, peaceful world, ripping away its vital resources for their ships and weapons. "It's what I'm out here for, I expect. He's on the move. Openly. Nebula will know why."

"He's one of the generals. The Order guys." It was a dumb thing to say. She knew he was. The way Loki was talking was enough to tell her that.

"Yes. According to my scant information, the others used to call him a dwarf, mocking the people of Nidavellir. None of them are so cruel." He flicked a glance past her, narrowing his brows in tight. "Are you trying to get ripped off?"

"Not really, why?" Half a fib, okay, whatever.

He craned his head around her, frowning. "There was a shadow just now. Watching you."

"Yeah, the shadow of your paranoia." Coulson wandered back towards them, his hands in his pockets. "We're safe here, Loki. Nobody's gonna rip off a pair of humans, I don't think our smartphones go for much when everyone else has the latest crystaltech nano implant or whatever."

Loki looked down at Coulson with a theatrical roll of his eyes.

"Plus it's still Asgard. Do you put people in the stocks or what? I doubt anybody wants a bunch of hoity-toity god people throwing turnips at them, not over what we have in our pockets."

"Coulson."

"I have a few sticks of gum and a box of orange tic-tacs, is that worth getting boo'd at for a half hour like the witch-lady did in The Princess Bride?"

"Phil."

Daisy piped up again. "I still have a wad of royal bread in a napkin. That's pretty cash."

"I can pay off literally anyone here and have you both dropped in the middle of Antarctica with just enough to keep you alive until I bother to call someone else to have you picked up, and if you keep going, I will do it."

"No, you won't," sang Daisy, cheerfully.

"Keep trying," grated Loki.

. . .

The shadow watched the trio resume their push through the afternoon crowd, on time to meet their rendezvous, and felt bemused at their casual friendliness with each other. Loki, in particular, seemed to match nothing of the stories she had once heard. The shadow knew all about their travel plans, and had very little interest in the contents of their pockets. All she wanted was to be certain there was in fact no danger or interference here in the port, for the sake of her partner in this particular little scheme.

She slipped further away from the group, knowing that she'd come close enough to being caught, and tapped the comm hidden by her ear. Her old-style Asgardian accent clipped across the line. "They're away safe. No one else is following."

"Good," said the familiar male voice on the other end of the line. "Any idea yet who's sponsoring Nebula's operation?"

"No, Your Highness. It's… odd that some of it's going through the same channels we are. I could get that much out of my guy." She couldn't shake the feeling that they were all somehow on the same path. "But whoever's lurking in your brother's shadow just isn't someone I can target yet. They're good. Very good." Paranoia made that concerning to her, more so than to Thor.

"I thought I knew most of his contacts by now, if not his secrets. But you remain certain he's not walking into a trap?"

"Not yet, anyway. I pulled back, got his sniffer up earlier than I thought I would. You warned me, and he still spotted a tail. But they look clear to the next jump point." The shadow knew her limits. She was no spy. Scurrying around like this suited ill. She was vastly better with an open blade, but Thor had made the point that his brother and his friends didn't know her face at all, which gave her cover none of his other friends had. Useful enough, then. For his sake, she would play at this.

"All right. Meet me at the ship in an hour. I want to be sure we don't get picked up on any monitors. He'll be even warier once he gets into deep space, especially with his human friends along for the ride."

"Your Highness."

"And go easy on the mead, my good friend. Please. Clear heads prevail."

"I fight fine in any storm, Prince Thor." She clicked the comm off, grudgingly allowing that she would have only one drink. For the sake of Asgard, which, by all the damned gods, she supposed she still cared about.

"Fucking Thor," muttered the last remaining Valkyrie to herself, to this day annoyed at how quickly he'd ingratiated himself to her, there on Sakaar, where he'd gone to nurse his thoughts for a time and wound up faffing abouts in the arena for the sheer hell of it. A good fighter. A damn good one, and one with a proper look towards the future. She respected that, still and despite the role his father had played in a self-imposed exile that, she supposed in a certain way, mimicked the results Hel-fire'd death she'd narrowly avoided. She had been a non-person, and found contentment in that. And now she served, once more. If to a new lord. "Fucking Asgard."

The Valkyrie slipped away with a final glance at the news. And to all hells with the enemies of both.