The next morning, Thor and Loki broke their fast with Frigga, who informed them that Odin had slipped into the Odinsleep during the night. She watched Thor more closely than usual throughout the meal, but kissed them each on the cheek and wished them well on Midgard at the end of it. Loki noticed that Thor hugged her rather longer than he normally would, and couldn't help imitating him at the thought of what the Dark Elves had done to her in Thor's memories.
Halfway to the stables, they were intercepted by Sif, Fandral, Volstagg, and Hogun. "Well, Loki, what have you discovered?" said Fandral, while they all shot furtive glances at Thor.
"He is who he says he is," said Loki. "And everything he said is true."
"Then why have you not taken the throne?" said Sif to Thor. "We heard that the Allmother is regent once more."
"There is much I must do, and I cannot do it from Hlidskjalf," said Thor. "Asgard will be in the most capable hands possible, and I am trusting the four of you to ensure that Mother's regency goes smoothly."
"What do you mean?" said Volstagg. "Are you leaving? But you aren't even wearing your armor!" He gestured at Thor's leathers and Loki's black and gold surcoat.
"Loki and I will have little need of armor. We are bound for Midgard. If we are to succeed in creating a better future, we must first reforge the alliances I built there the first time I lived these years."
"Then surely your need is greater than Queen Frigga's," said Hogun.
"Yes," said Sif. "We will come with you." Her eagerness was reflected on Fandral's and Volstagg's faces as well.
"In time, I do hope to introduce you to my mortal friends," said Thor, "but for now, I want you here to support Mother. We will return when Father wakes, so you will hardly have time to miss us." He clapped an arm around Loki's shoulders as he said it.
Loki, who had been bracing himself for the prospect of visiting the dullest of the nine realms with those four making fools of themselves the whole time, was surprised to hear Thor rebuff them. He couldn't remember the last time he had declined an opportunity to have them about. The princes had been sent on occasional errands together by Odin or Frigga, of course, but it was a rare thing indeed for Thor to choose to leave Asgard with only his younger brother for company. Loki's spirits lifted, and he berated himself silently for it. It would be foolish to become too used to this kind of treatment from Thor. Surely once they had dealt with the Dark Elves, Ragnarok, their wayward sister, and Thanos, this unusual surge of affection brought on by his grief from the aborted timeline would settle back to where it had been for the last few centuries.
Sif and the Warriors Three looked just as surprised as Loki felt. "Will we be waiting until you return to do something about the Jotnar who got into the Vault?" said Hogun.
"The Jotnar are not one of the dangers we need to worry about," said Thor. "I would sooner have them for allies than seek a fight with them now. The more help we have against what's coming, the better."
That might just have been the most shocking thing Thor had said since his initial declaration that he had traveled back in time. All five of them gaped at him. Loki was the first to find his voice. "You would trust those monsters to fight alongside us in battle?" he said. Nothing he had seen in Thor's mind had indicated this particular change of heart, and he found it difficult to credit. "What of your ambition to hunt them down and slay them all?"
"You should not speak of them so," said Thor. "I was a fool to do so." He actually sounded pained, though Loki could not imagine why. "Asgard was the victor in a just war, but we are little better than bullies if we cannot treat a defeated foe with respect. The Jotnar should not be under our heel if they can be at our side."
"Are you quite certain you've only come back eight years?" said Volstagg.
"You wouldn't believe how much eight years can change," said Thor. "Now, when you report to the throne room, do not speak of any of this to Mother. She does not know that I am from another time. I will tell her, but only after Father wakes."
"Of course, Thor," said Fandral. "We will follow your lead."
"Thank you. Dearer friends I could not ask for." He embraced each of them again, and then he and Loki continued on to the stables. Gladr and Lettfeti awaited them just inside, already saddled. They mounted and rode for the Rainbow Bridge.
"Have you thought about how you will approach your former friends?" said Loki once they had ridden out past the heart of the city.
"What do you mean?" said Thor. "I will tell them who I am and enlist their help, of course." He sounded utterly unconcerned about it, which either meant the mortals in question were complete simpletons or that Thor had given the matter very little thought.
Loki resisted the impulse to run a hand over his face. "Then you intend to tell them, as an introduction, that not only are you a prince from another world, but also a time traveler with detailed knowledge of upcoming threats to their own? Has it occurred to you that it might be difficult to persuade them of your truthfulness? Unlike me, Sif, and the Warriors Three, these mortals haven't met you yet to know of your trustworthiness, and they likely have no concept of magic, other worlds, or time travel. At best, they will think you mad. At worst, dangerous."
Judging from Thor's expression, this had not occurred to him at all. But he did not wave off Loki's concerns as if they were unworthy of consideration. "Then what should I do?" he asked, frowning.
Loki wasn't used to being given an opportunity to elaborate, but he recovered quickly. "Perhaps you would do better to treat this as a diplomatic mission rather than some kind of reunion," he suggested. "As princes of Asgard, we could approach them with the goal of forging ties between our two realms and giving them advance warning of coming threats, which we are naturally in a better position to know about than they are with their primitive technology. That would be a far easier story to sell, and it would achieve the same goal."
"You are probably right, but that all sounds so formal," Thor groaned, throwing his head back and looking petulant. "These were my friends!"
"Are you saying that befriending a group of mortals for the second time is too difficult a task for you? You?"
"The problem is that the Avengers aren't a group at all yet. Before Thanos sent his Chitauri army to invade, they didn't have a reason to come together as a team. I don't know that any of them have even met each other, apart from Romanoff and Barton. And the only reason Thanos took the risk of sending the Chitauri in the first place was that the Bifrost was destroyed and Asgard was unable to provide an army for Midgard's defense. And a few of the Avengers will never even exist if that invasion doesn't happen, because with it came the Mind Stone."
Thor had slumped a little in his saddle and his brow had furrowed by the time he fell silent, as though the full weight of every factor he needed to account for as he sought to change time for the better had only just settled over him him. Loki reined his chestnut steed closer to her pure white cousin so that he could reach out to grip Thor's shoulder. "Patience, Brother. You've said yourself that we have time. Just as Great-Grandfather Buri did not build Asgard in a day, we do not need to save Yggdrasil in a day either."
Thor's expression softened into a fond, faraway smile. "You cannot know how I have missed this. You and me, off on an adventure. In some ways, I have returned to a simpler time. It gives me hope."
"Yes, and you've returned an enormous sap," said Loki, cuffing Thor over the head.
Thor laughed and retaliated in kind, putting Loki in a brief headlock that left them both in danger of falling off their horses.
They reached the Observatory moments later. A broad smile stole over Thor's face as he strode inside to greet the Gatekeeper. "Heimdall! I cannot tell you how good it is to see you."
"Can you not?" said Heimdall, sparing one hand from Hofund's hilt to return Thor's hug. "My eyes have not deceived me, have they?"
"No," said Thor.
"Then where on Midgard shall I send you?"
"Really?" said Loki. "No other questions for my time-traveling brother?"
"I have many questions, but questions have a way of answering themselves if I only wait and observe."
"There are things beyond your sight that we must find," said Thor.
"The Dark Elves," said Heimdall.
"And Thanos." At this, Heimdall's impenetrable mask of calm actually flickered. "You could not see them before, but perhaps that is only because you didn't know they were there to be seen."
"I will look, my prince."
"May the Allfathers guide your gaze," said Thor.
X
They landed on the desert sand in a whirl of dust. It was roughly the same time of day on this part of Midgard as on Asgard, which meant it was about mid-morning.
"Now, where are these friends of—," Loki began, but Thor cut him off with a hand to his chest. The dust still made it impossible to see, and Thor was listening hard. This wouldn't necessarily happen the same way as before, but just in case… He heard a screech of metal and rubber, and he seized Loki by his surcoat and pulled him out of the way, just in time for a large vehicle to come swerving right across where they had been standing. It couldn't have done much damage to either of them, but the truck would not have been so fortunate, and Thor had learned that such contraptions could be very costly to repair.
"What the Hel?!" said Loki indignantly. "Did they just try to attack us?"
"Not quite," said Thor, unable to suppress his grin. At last, the dust began to settle, revealing the truck and its three very familiar occupants, all of whom were gaping at them through the windshield. He lifted a hand and waved at them, his grin widening.
"That woman," said Loki sharply. "She was on Svartalfheim."
"Indeed she was," said Thor, his grin slipping a little as his stomach lurched.
Jane, Darcy, and Selvig all climbed cautiously out of the truck.
"Sorry we almost hit you," said Jane. Her eyes roved over them, taking in their distinctly non-Midgardian clothing. "We couldn't see anything in that dust."
"Uh…is there a LARP convention around here that we didn't know about?" said Darcy. "Also, if hunks like this are LARPing these days, I'm gonna go trade my iPod for an elven princess costume right now."
"Darcy, shut up!" Jane hissed. She ran a hand through her hair and flashed Thor and Loki an awkward smile. "Ignore her. Do you guys need a ride some...where?" She frowned. Like Selvig, she seemed to have just noticed that there was no other vehicle in the vicinity, and she had also noticed the burn patterns on the ground between them. Her eyes went very wide and her mouth dropped open.
"If you're wondering how we arrived here, perhaps you noticed the dramatic pillar of rainbow light that touched down on this spot a moment ago?" said Loki politely, though there was an undercurrent of glee in his voice. For all his moaning about how dull Midgard was, he had always enjoyed showing off in front of mortals.
"A-are you saying you were inside that event?" said Jane.
"Yes," said Thor. "I am Thor Odinson, this is my brother Loki. We are the princes of Asgard, and we have come by Bifrost to forge an alliance with your realm."
"That's not possible," said Selvig faintly. Thor could tell that he wanted to be skeptical, but the compelling evidence of the Bifrost and the marks it had left on the ground were making that difficult for him.
"Wow, you guys don't break character for anything," said Darcy. "I can respect that."
"I understand if you require proof," said Thor. He turned to Loki. "Should you do the honors, or should I?"
"Allow me," said Loki. "If you do it, you might break something." And with a flourish of his hand, there were suddenly several simulacra of Loki standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to him. Darcy let out a yelp and two sparking coils of metal shot from the device in her hand and passed harmlessly through one of them.
"I believe that was sufficient," Thor muttered, and Loki made the simulacra vanish. "Though if you require further demonstrations, we would be happy to oblige."
It actually took me a while to figure out what the heck to do with this chapter. I stalled out after writing a long scene a couple weeks ago, because nothing else seemed to fit with it. That scene ended up on the cutting room floor, but I might be able to repurpose it for a future chapter.
Thor and Loki's horses are a couple of the named horses from Norse mythology. Gladr means "bright" and Lettfeti means "light-footed." They seemed like good names to go with the actual horses we saw them riding over the Rainbow Bridge in canon.
This was the first time I've written Jane, Darcy, or Selvig, and so far they're pretty fun to write. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do Darcy justice, but her lines practically wrote themselves, and I'm super happy with them.