To celebrate having taken my last final, here's a chapter!

Arrows the Wolf: I'm terribly sorry!

Wolflihood: Tis my speciality.

LittleMissMia123: What happens if it gets more real/unreal?

Justasmalltowngirl2713: I love Steve too haha. And I love you too. And thanks!

tribute14: Cliffhangers are always the worst.

MysticRyter: Haha I had them all written out and was like, why not? And thanks!

Itsgoose2u: I wonder how people were to react if I killed them. Hmm...

miller330: Thank you!

Kittyjs123: You want to give him a hug now? Wait until you've read this chapter.

firemage23: I'm glad you loved the "Loki'd." I honestly couldn't help myself haha.

O.O LOLz: You must really love it if you used caps lock!

Jayc Black: I hope that it is the good form of dying.

evelyn: Why, thank you!

AngelVamp6688: Haha thanks. I had a HP birthday party last year. Twas awesome.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Thor and Loki found themselves tumbling along on a hard ground once they went through the tesseract's portal. Loki groaned as he opened his eyes. He was laying on his back and looking up towards the sky. And the sky was familiar.

They were in Asgard.

"Thor, you idiot!" yelled Loki, getting onto his knees. "Look at what you've done!"

Thor didn't answer and answer and was looking around in what almost seemed to be confusion.

"I was going to fight you!" continued Loki. But Thor still remained quiet. "You always mess things up! Now how am I suppose to get back!"

"Quiet, brother!" hissed Thor, still looking around.

"I am not your brother!"

"Shut it!"

Loki became quiet at Thor's booming an thunderous voice.

"Does nothing seem off to you?" asked Thor.

When Loki thought about it, something did seem off. It was oddly quiet, even for Asgard. When Loki looked around, he could see smoke rising in the difference. He listened closely and realized it wasn't actually quiet. There screams coming from where the smoke was.

Asgard was under attack.

"What has happened?" asked Thor. "We must find father!"

"Over here...my sons..."

Loki whipped his head around to see none other than Odin, laying on the ground, his back against a fallen statue. He was alone. That's when Loki noticed the knife handle protruding from Odin's stomach, the blade inside him.

"Father!" cried Thor as he ran to the All-Father's side. Loki hesitantly and slowly followed, unsure of how to feel. This was the man who raised him. Though he had failed at parenting, this was still the man he had always called his father.

"My...sons..." breathed Odin. It didn't take a healer to figure out that Odin was near Death. If one looked beyond life, they could even see Her, hovering over the king.

"Father, we can get you help-"

"No, Thor," said Odin, cutting off Thor. "Do not waste your time. I know that mine is up."

Odin looked up at Loki who was now standing behind Thor.

"Loki...I need to speak with you," said Odin.

Thor looked back to see Loki and pulled him down to the ground next to Odin when the god of mischief did not move.

"Loki...I must tell you something. I am sorry."

Loki could not hide the shock that appeared on his face.

"I will forever regret the way I treated you. There is nothing I can do to fix my mistakes, but I can tell you this."

Loki still could not find his voice as he watched Odin take short and painful breaths.

"I love you Loki. You are my son. You have always been my son. I do not care what you are or what you have done. You are still Loki, son of Odin. And I am proud of you."

It was silent as Odin drew a great breath.

"I love you Loki, no more and no less than Thor. You are both equal to me."

And then Odin took one more shaky breath and moved no more.

"Father?" asked Thor. "Father?"

At the realization of his father's death, Thor picked up Mjolnir, which had fallen on the ground when they had arrived, and allowed a massive amount of lightning to strike it. Out of his anger and grief, Thor threw the hammer has far and hard as he could.

Loki, however, remained at Odin's side, not believing that the man was now dead. He had never thought Odin could actually die. It just wasn't possible. And to have been by just a silly knife. Loki took a closer look and saw that it was actually coated in some sort of poison. But it certainly wasn't a substance of Asgard.

"Thor!"

Thor turned around to the noise while Loki continued to stare in disbelief at Odin.

Sif, her long black hair pulled back and had a cut on her lip which had dried blood on it, was approaching them, followed by Volstagg, who looked rather hungry, and Hogun, his non-existing smile still non-existant.

"My friends," said Thor, though he certainly did not look happy to see them. "What has happened? Where is Fandral?"

"He was injured," answered Hogun. "He is in the healing room."

"What happened?"

"Asgard was attacked," said Volstagg.

"By what?"

"We are unsure," said Sif. "They were not of Asgard nor any of the nine realms as far as we know."

"Is anyone else hurt?" asked Thor.

"We believe so," answered Volstagg. "But we know not the number dead. We were fighting."

"Thor," said Sif in a quiet voice, pointing at Loki. "Is that-"

"All-Father!" shouted Volstagg suddenly, walking around Loki. "Is he-"

"Dead," finished Loki, his voice unusually high. "He is dead."

There was an awful silence in the air as Sif let a tear escape her right eye. Hogun looked more grim than usual and Volstagg kept opening his mouth to say something, but then closed it after a moment of thought.

"Where is my mother?" asked Thor, his voice cutting through the tension like a knife.

"With the healers," answered Sif in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

"We must tell her."

The four of them began to move off, but then Thor stopped.

"Loki?" he asked. "You should come with us."

After a moment of hesitation, Loki nodded and slowly got up. He wasn't quite sure how to feel.

Immediately he had thought these words were lies. He thought Odin was just trying to stop Loki from doing anymore harm to any of the realms. But then Loki realized that Odin did not possess a silver tongue. Every word that Odin had said to Loki were true. It was as if the king needed to say them as it was his last chance to.

And so as Loki followed Thor, Sif, Volstagg and Hogun, he couldn't help but finally feel a bit of peace. Those words meant more to Loki than anyone would ever know.

And it was all Loki ever needed to hear.

Steve wasn't quite sure what had happened as he slowly regained consciousness. All he could remember was seeing the bomb, realizing it was going to explode and then looking at Gwen. The only thing that ran through his mind was how he needed to save her, even if he died in her place. She had crept into his heart and he wasn't about to let her die. And so he had lunged to push her away and just as he realized she was safe and he had saved her, everything went black.

But Steve opened his eyes and immediately felt a horrible pain in his side. He lifted up his arm to touch where it hurt and grimaced as he felt the wetness of his own blood.

Even though it hurt, all he could think about was Gwen. He needed to make sure she really was alright. So Steve slowly opened his eyes. All he could see was the night sky and he wondered where he was. He turned his head and saw the aircraft and saw all of the other Avengers with the exception of Thor and Gwen. All of them were looking up with different expressions on their faces.

Steve tried sitting up despite the pain and looked up in the same direction. He could see what was like an electrical cloud at the top of the tower. Steve wondered if this was the work of Gwen. Suddenly, two figures shot out of the cloud and some sort of portal opened. The figures fell through the portal and it closed behind them.

Panicked, Steve tried to get up, thinking that Gwen had been one of them, but stopped as he saw the cloud slowly disappear and another figure began to fall.

Except this one didn't have a portal to fall into.

"Is that Gwen?" asked Natasha, her eyes wide.

Steve's heart was pounding, trying to figure out what to do. He didn't need to think long for Tony shot up in the Iron Man suit and began flying in her direction.

Only for a second did Steve wonder when Tony got there, but his attention went right back to Tony as he caught Gwen. He slowly flew back down, Gwen unconscious in his arms.

Once Tony was back on the ground, Steve ignored the pain and got up off the taxi cab he was on. He stumbled over to Tony who placed Gwen on a nearby car.

"Rogers," said Bruce who seemed to be the first one to realize he was awake, "you shouldn't be up."

He ignored the doctor and approached Gwen.

"She's not breathing," Steve observed, feeling sick to his stomach. "She's not breathing!"

Clint and Natasha pulled Steve back as Tony and and Bruce began to work on her. Steve didn't know what they were doing, but he wanted to be next to Gwen. He needed her to be alright.

Unfortunately, Steve was far too weak to fight against the two assassins and allowed them to bring him into the aircraft. They sat him down in a seat and strapped him in to keep him from leaving. Natasha brought over what seemed to be Bruce's extra clothes just in case he had to hulk-out and wrapped them around Steve's wound as there were no bandages to absorb the blood.

Steve watched as Tony finally carried Gwen inside the aircraft and he thought he was actually going to throw up. He couldn't lose Gwen. He had already lost too much. If he lost Gwen, he didn't know what he'd do.

"She's breathing," said Tony as if reading Steve's mind.

Steve nodded, feeling relief, but still feeling nauseous.

He watched as all the others came aboard, Bruce holding what seemed to be batteries and other electronical devices. Natasha and Clint got back in the pilot and co-pilot seats while Bruce went back to Gwen who was now laying on a stretcher like bed that was connected to the wall of the aircraft.

Steve felt Tony sit down beside him. His mask was up and his face showed that rare seriousness that made people rethink his maturity level.

"She'll be fine," said Tony to Steve. "She used more energy than she could handle."

Steve nodded, unable to make words. His voice wouldn't let him. Gwen was going to be okay. He kept repeating this in his head until unconsciousness took him once more.

Tony had never seen Steve look the way he had when they all saw Gwen. It was in that moment that Tony knew Steve would do anything for Gwen, which explained why Steve was the one injured first. It wasn't that this was a bad thing of course. Tony thought it was great. Gwen needed someone like that. In truth, Tony had always been worried about Gwen. He worried that she'd never want to get close to anyone, other than him and Pepper, but now it seemed she had found someone she could trust.

And it made Tony happy.

Of course, he wasn't going to admit it out loud.

Tony got up once he saw that Steve was not awake and walked over to Gwen. She still had very little color in her face, but it wasn't as pale as it had been before they had forcefully given her the energy and power out of several electronic devices.

He really wanted to know what had happened up there and why Thor and Loki had been thrown off and into a portal, but Tony knew he wasn't going to get his answers just yet. But as far as he could tell, it was over.

And Tony had just the idea of how to celebrate.