Disclaimer: Nothing here is mine, except the insanity that you see unfolding

Stepping from the jet after the far too long flight to Norway was a welcome relief, loathe as Sherlock was to admit it. True, he had grown to almost like the company of Tony and Bruce, and the others weren't terrible, but their never ending stratagems, and the hostile flirting that Tony and Steve were exchanging had begun to grate on his patience after the first twenty minutes. Natasha had spent the flight at the front with the pilot, and Thor had remained mostly silent, something that Sherlock had started to appreciate in the otherwise predictably dull man. Thankfully, Jack hadn't joined them; he had offered to investigate the smaller areas of activity, disappearing with a crackle after tapping a device that he had strapped to his wrist.

What bothered Sherlock more than the Avengers and their cosy teamwork was the worry that had been gnawing on his guts from the moment he had first realised that John was missing; the guilt didn't help either. This entire mission seemed pointless as far as he was concerned.

"Why would Moriarty, or any mastermind, have set up camp on a beach?" he had demanded, looking incredulously between Bruce and Tony, ignoring Steve, who was already relaying the information to Fury and Natasha via an earpiece, "That makes absolutely no sense! We should be searching the other sites!"

Bruce had shaken his head and smiled in a way that Sherlock could only imagine was placating.

"The other signals were just remnants, like a carbon footprint of where these guys have been," he explained softly, and Sherlock resented the patronising tone, "This one's huge, and it's happening now. Maybe their base isn't the beach, but we might find a lead there."

"Yeah, you never know Poirot, we might find some handy minions to question." Tony added, nodding encouragingly. Sherlock had paced violently, side-stepping Natasha and Thor as they had entered the room.

"We have a minion and he's not talking!" Sherlock had snapped, "The best thing we can do is keep looking through what we have, not chasing random steams of data that could lead us nowhere."

He had been stopped in his tracks as Thor placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, effectively preventing his from pacing, and keeping him fixed regardless of the dirty looks that the detective threw upwards.

"The best strategy is to explore every possibility, no matter how ridiculous you may find it." Thor said firmly, "You must not give up hope, Sherlock, we will find your friend, and ours, so long as we do not take up fighting amongst ourselves."

"Exactly," Tony had said, patting Sherlock on the back, wincing sympathetically at the pathetic expression on the detective's face, "Now, I'm going to suit up. Everyone better be ready to leave by the time I get back, 'cos, I don't waiting well."

Tony left the room, and for a moment there was silence, broken only by the sound of the fabric of Sherlock's coat scratching from Thor's reach as he shook away the over-large hand and resumed his pacing.

"You think I don't miss Clint?" Natasha had shattered the tension by immediately intensifying it, "or that Bruce doesn't miss Donna, or that Thor isn't torn up about Jane?"

Sherlock had frozen, and stared back at the red haired woman, wondering how she managed to be so open whilst remaining almost unreadable. At the same time, he hated that she could read him so well.

"You don't understand." He dismissed her question.

"I understand perfectly Mr Holmes, and I think it would be far better for you to accept that we're all in the same boat, and all far further adrift than we'd like to be right now." She replied sternly, glaring across the room at him. The moment's staring had been broken, Sherlock regretted, as he had been the one to look away first. As no retort came, the team dispersed, Natasha and Bruce striding from the room, followed by Thor, who had patted Sherlock on the back as he passed. He wasn't sure why they all kept doing that.

"You don't have to come if you don't want to, but I'll keep a seat open for you." Steve told the detective as he too had made to leave, "I'll give you half an hour."

And then he too had left, also giving Sherlock a comforting thump on the back as he passed.

So now here they were, standing outside the SHIELD jet, none of them willing to move too far onto the beach; although there was nothing there to stop them. The beach was dreary, the tides climbing hurriedly onto the rocks and lowest sand banks before petering out and retreating into the watery mass that was the sea. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing strange or dangerous that Sherlock could see, just a consistent, weighty silence that permeated every grain of sand.

Steve was the first to stride forward, taking the position as leader to heart.

"Alright, we've been here long enough." He ordered, turning to face the team, "Bruce and Tony, you start scanning, and whatever you do; find out where that energy reading is coming from and what it is."

Tony, now in full Iron Man gear, which Sherlock had to admit, was a genius piece of engineering, followed Bruce across the sand, stumbling slightly as the two of them waved identical portable scanners to and fro in the air.

"Thor and Natasha, you spread out and keep watch for anything that might be a threat; we don't know if our enemies are hiding, or if they're even here, so be careful." Steve instructed, nodding to the West and East sides of the beach. Sherlock rolled his eyes; this was useless, over cautious and pedantic. Natasha did as she was told, and Thor headed in the opposite direction, nodding to Steve with a quick.

"My pleasure."

Steve nodded in return, then turned his attention to the detective.

"Sherlock, you-"

"I'm not one of your team; I don't need my commanding officer to tell me where to stand." Sherlock snapped, striding past Steve, whose mouth had clamped shut, ignoring the way that his feet sank into the sand as he stood in the now empty space and watched the others stroll about the beach, "And this is ridiculous."

Steve walked over to stand beside him, and Sherlock had to force himself not to flinch away. God, he thought, I'm too on edge, I need to calm down and think.

"You may think it's ridiculous. It may be, I'm no genius, I don't know." Steve said quietly, "But you're a scientist, you believe what you can see, what's there. You can't tell me you don't feel that?"

"Feel what?" Sherlock hissed under his breath; there was nothing to feel. Nothing other than the crushing agony of the blatant emptiness that John's absence was imposing, and the uselessness that being in this place was bringing.

Steve shrugged his shoulder, folding his hands over his chest. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it and looked down at Sherlock, who merely waited for an answer.

"It's like the beach is holding its breath." Steve muttered, his eyes following the path that Tony's suit was creating as he strode back and forth on the sand, forming thin ridge that snaked and curled as he span with the scanners in his hands.

"Ridiculous." Sherlock repeated, but there was no fire behind the statement. Now that he thought about it, the anxiety that had been there since the start had intensified since the engines in the jet had shut down. It was like an itching under his skin, which made him rub at the skin on his wrists, and become restless the second that his hands tucked into their respective pockets. His mind couldn't settle, and he knew deep down that it wasn't just the flow of information and new reality that was causing it. It wasn't like the beach was holding its breath; it was like the beach was watching them, waiting for them to do something, holding the bow over the string until one of them could think of the perfect note. As ridiculous as it was, Sherlock couldn't fight the feeling that the beach was expecting something.

Suddenly Tony's voice rang out over the space between them.

"Banner! Banner, tell me you're seeing this!" he yelled, running in a bust of red and gold towards where Bruce had frozen.

"I'm seeing it Tony," Bruce replied, "Just having a hard time rationalising it."

Steve immediately jogged towards the pair without a word, and Sherlock followed closely behind, almost barrelling into Bruce in an attempt to see the now caterwauling scanner in his hand. Natasha and Thor had obviously heard the commotion, as moments later they had crammed around the edge of the group, peering at the readings.

"I don't understand, what's happening?" Sherlock demanded, just as Steve began asking the exact same question. For all that they were frantically gathered, the beach remained unmoved and silent.

"The energy and radiation readings just spiked, like a lot." Tony replied sharply, pulling up his visor so that he could glance around, "Apparently something huge is happening right now, but we can't see or hear, or feel it."

"Maybe my equations were wrong…" Bruce muttered under his breath, tapping the scanner.

"No, you are correct." Thor cut in, staring out at the sea as if it were staring accusingly back, "I can feel something, although I know not what."

Sherlock turned his head upwards to glare at Thor, although it was difficult as the team had packed so closely together.

"You can't just say something's happening because you have a feeling." He protested, but Thor silenced him with a wave of his hand.

"I am of Asgard; my senses are far more powerful than your own." Thor declared in a way that begged no arguments.

"All of you need to stop so that we can figure out-" Steve tried to instruct them, as Natasha began talking over the men: "That's all well and good, but now what do we-", and Tony spoke up, "So we have this invisible activity-", and Bruce tried to make himself heard, "Guys, these readings are spiking again!"

At that moment the wind picked up, gusting a sweep of sand into the mid-sections of the Avengers and the detective, before curling around them to meet another violent gust of air. The team fell silent, watching with bated breath as the beach seemed to exhale, relinquishing its pent up frustration.

There was a noise like a thousand keys being dragged across the strings of a piano, a gong ringing out over and over in a hollow cave, as some gargling sea-creature gasped for air as it surfaced. Sherlock wasn't one for grand statements, but it sounded like someone was trying to tear through the fabric of the universe, and the universe was gritting its teeth at the discomfort.

Metres in front of them, a blinding light pulsed and throbbed into existence, and when Sherlock could bar to open his eyes again, he promptly snapped them shut. Behind him, he felt Thor shift onto his back feet, raising his hammer, and the others braced themselves against each other, ready to defend themselves if need be. As he opened his eyes again, he was forced to accept that he wasn't hallucinating.

Before the six of the, fading in and out, becoming more solid each time, now visible through the golden light, was the silhouette of a box. A blue box, with the words 'Police, public call, Box' emblazoned above the crystalline opaque windows, from which the winds, and the roaring seemed to emanate. A sound like a gong rang out, and finally, the winds dropped, and there was silence.

The beach was breathing again, but the people huddled in its centre were not.

Nothing happened, and for once, Sherlock had nothing to say. Tony had no such problem.

"Is it too late to side with Sherlock and say that this is just ridiculous?"

Sherlock felt Steve shake his head, and lift his arm to rub his hand over his eyes.

"I'd say it's the perfect time." He croaked, and then after a pause, "I haven't seen one of those since before I was frozen."

"Is this something you often saw them do?" Thor asked warily; nobody had moved from the huddle, too afraid, and shocked to step forward.

"I realise that history is not something I show much interest in," Sherlock said slowly, taking his time to soak in the fact that everything going on around him at that moment was completely impossible, "But even I know that the British Empire would have won the war a lot more quickly had we been in possession of phone-boxes that defy all laws of physics."

"But not the laws of Quantum physics!" a cheery voice called out, as the door to the police box swung open abruptly and the head of a man adorned with scraggily black hair popped out, "Sorry, I couldn't help listening in over the scanner."

The Avengers jumped, and within seconds each of them was in battle stance, their weapons pointed at the man's head. Sherlock had reached for John's gun, but didn't move from his place behind Tony. It would have been stupid to leave the protection of a man whose armour could deflect bullets.

"Oh really," the man scolded, "Guns? I only came here to check out some energy readings I've been following, you know, helping out a friend. I'll be out of your hair once I've done that."

He stepped out of the box, pushing the door partly closed, despite the female voice that was echoing around the interior in a way that it really shouldn't have been in such a confined space. Now that Sherlock could see him properly, he became even more frustrated; the only thing that he could deduce was that he had appalling fashion sense, as he had matched tweed with a spotty bow-tie.

"Who the hell are you?" Natasha demanded, her pistol aimed between the heads of Bruce and Sherlock, directly at the man's heart.

"I'm the Doctor," he replied with a smirk that made Sherlock understand what John had meant when he had told him that there were many people that wanted to slap him, "You can trust me."

Thor had dropped the hand holding the hammer, and stumbled forward before clearly thinking the better of it and pausing.

"I have heard of a man that goes by the name of Doctor; he is a fairy-tale among the Aesir." He said, ignoring the frustrated glances that Steve and Tony were throwing him, "Tell me where you are from and what that science you travel in is, and I will believe you. If you cannot then I will not trust you."

The Doctor smiled at Thor, and clapped his hands together, glancing between them all.

"I'm a Timelord, from the planet Galifrey in the constellation Kastarberous, and this is my ship, the TARDIS." He explained, his smile growing as the tension in Thor's shoulders released, "and I'm going to assume that you are Prince Thor of Asgard, which means that these people here are the Avengers of Earth."

"How can you possibly know that?" Steve asked, but it was Thor that answered.

"He is a Timelord." Thor declared, smiling to his friends as if that answered everything, "The Timelords were once seen like gods, and this Doctor is the most virtuous of all. We have nothing to fear."

Sherlock shook his head but couldn't think of anything to add to the discussion that would have been even a little bit useful. Instead he watched as the Doctor opened the door of his box a crack and called in,

"Rose, have you got the thing yet?"

The woman's voice drifted back out,

"Just a minute!"

The Doctor turned back to the group still huddled together on the sand, frozen in confusion.

"So let me get this right in my head," he said, almost as if to himself, "Thor," he greeted the Asgardian and shook his hand heartily, before moving towards the group and taking the hand of each in turn, "Which means that you're Tony Stark; well done for ditching the weaponry by the way." Tony muttered a bemused thanks as the Doctor moved along, "And Dr Bruce Banner…your research is profound, and I always get a kick out of watching your greener side smash things. That's a trademark right of the cuff." Bruce just shook his head, allowing his hand to be taken and then discarded, "Natasha Romanoff, just brilliant! And Captain Steve Rogers, I salute you." The Doctor popped his hand to his head and gave a mock salute, "Barton's missing…well, I suppose that it's too much to ask for the complete set…but who have we got here?"

Sherlock fought the temptation to retreat, as the others had all relaxed, too bemused and befuddled by the strange man, apparently alien, to feel that he was much of a threat. Sherlock on the other hand did not like it at all; time travel? Aliens? Omniscience? One giant, all-encompassing NOPE.

"I might be wrong, but you look to me like Mr Sherlock Holmes." The Doctor mused, taking Sherlock's hand without permission and giving it a perfunctory shake, "An honour to meet you."

There was something in his tone that set Sherlock's teeth on edge; the warmth that had filled his voice as he greeted the others had evaporated, replaced by curiosity, yes, but also something that sounded an awful lot like disapproval.

"I'm afraid that I can't return the sentiment." Sherlock remarked coldly, pulling his hand from the Doctor's grasp, "I know neither who you are nor why you're here, which considering we came here on the trail of what could possibly be the people who have stolen our friends and want to lure us into an unknown situation, makes me disinclined to trust you."

The stark reminder of why they were there made the Avengers stiffen, and the suspicion was once again in their eyes. Tony and Bruce's eyes were flickering between the Doctor and the box, from which a blonde haired woman was cautiously peeking, and Natasha and Steve had their arms raised defensively.

"I told you, I'm following an energy leak-"

"We followed energy readings to this spot." Bruce cut in, gesturing with his scanner, "We thought that is the people that had stolen our friends had managed to resurrect someone, then they were probably connected to this universe bending energy."

"Resurrection?" the Doctor repeated incredulously, before shaking his head and pulling a strange metal device from his pocket and waving it in the air, where it produced a tinny whine, "No, that's not important. And it's not universe bending energy, it's a form of Huon energy that you find around rifts, the void and the time vortex. There's always residue when someone time travels, or jumps across space."

Sherlock wasn't sure what to make of that, but was perfectly sure of what he made of the way that the air seemed to ripple as the whining of the metal device increased.

"But this isn't residue, it's happening now!" Bruce insisted, as Tony shouted, "What the hell are you doing!"

"I'm making the vortex horizon visible to the naked eye, so that I know where to open it." The Doctor explained, although if Sherlock was honest with himself, it was as if the Doctor was ignoring the group of confused people on the beach, and going about his own business.

"I would not do that Doctor," Thor warned, holding his hammer aloft, "We have only recently dealt with one portal to another realm, I do not think Midgard is ready for another so soon."

"If you threaten our planet, we will have to take you down." Steve assured him, his shield raised. The Doctor shook his head, looking at them as if they were mad.

"I'm not threatening, I'm just letting in a friend." He stressed, and then turned to the blonde woman, who had still not left the box, obviously waiting to see whether she would get shot on sight when she did, "Rose, hand me that so that I can open this."

The woman, Rose, wandered from the box, replying with a 'sure' in a cockney accent which Sherlock triangulated to somewhere near the Powell Estate. He wasn't sure what was happening, and the fear that he had felt during the case at Baskerville was back tenfold, only intensified when the others gasped at the sight of what was in her hand.

The Doctor took from his young companion a silver sceptre, pointed and lethal, with a vast blue gem fixed in the top that seemed to almost pulsate the nearer it got to the rippling air.

"Where did you get that!" Natasha yelled, and Sherlock distinctly heard the safety on her gun click, as the gloves of Tony's suit began to whir.

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder with an overdramatic sigh.

"I saw the kind of energy that this portal gives off, so I went to the museum at the end of the Universe, you know, the one run by the archaeologists of the school of the history of the Headless Monks, where everything turns up eventually, and I borrowed their spear." He shouted back irately, as the portal had begun to crackle and hum, making it difficult to hear, "Why? Have you got some kind of phobia of pointy objects?"

"Doctor don't antagonise them, he might be hurting in there." Rose yelled, completely oblivious to the weapons that were aimed in her direction. It finally hit Sherlock that he was definitely way out of his depth.

"Fine, fine. Let's get this over with." The Doctor could only just be heard over the growing hum and the crackling of the air that was rippling, and darkening, blocking out the light behind it.

Five voices screamed "NO!" as the Doctor plunged the sceptre into the 'horizon', but within a fraction of a second the blackened air surged forward, crackling like electricity, knocking them off their feet.

Then there was silence, and stillness, and the air, and his companions, had frozen. Sherlock lifted his head from the sand and looked for the Doctor, who was the only one on his feet, staring at the young blonde woman. The rippling was gone, as if nothing had happened, and she was kneeling beside a crumpled black mass that hadn't been there before.

As the others staggered to their feet, their gazes piercing the new arrival, Sherlock hated the feeling that he was the only one who had no idea what was going on.

"What's happening?" he demanded, looking first to Tony, then to Bruce, and then finally to Thor when they remained silent, staring icily at the mass. The man, who was soaked to the skin, and clad in black leather, managed to lift his head for just a second before dropping to the ground unconscious. Thor's gaze didn't waver, and when he spoke, it wasn't in answer to Sherlock's question.

"Loki."

Ok, firstly: this is about 1,500 words longer than my usual (I just couldn't find a good place to put a pause, so I carried on)

Secondly: I hope this isn't too confusing, I'm trying to bring the threads together before I unveil the villains' plot (I also need to think of that)

But...thoughts?