After everything that happened on Sakaar, learning about Hydra lurking inside SHIELD, and all the royal drama on Asgard, the strangest part of Clint's week was still having a casual family breakfast with aliens who looked like medieval fantasy characters. What made it so strange was how ordinary it felt. His wife and kids could just as easily have been chatting and laughing with their own neighbors.

Lila, who insisted on sitting next to Gerd, barely paid attention to her food because she was more interested in interrogating her about her fairy princess friend. Laura served as referee, but Gerd seemed very charmed by Lila's enthusiasm and answered all of her questions readily. Cooper and the other boy, Leif, kept asking Fjolnir to freeze individual grapes for them.

For the first few minutes, Clint felt kinda unsure what to do with himself, but then Freyr asked him about the bow and quiver he'd been given at the banquet, which led to an animated discussion about archery. Before too long, the boys left to resume their snow battle. The conversations between Clint and Freyr and Lila, Gerd, and Laura moved to the comfortable settees around a fancy kind of fire pit.

Clint didn't realize how long they'd been chatting until Nat showed up. He thought the other family was just as sorry for their time together to come to an end as his. If Thor and Loki ever offered to invite them back, he definitely wasn't going to say no.

When Nat and his family got back to their guest rooms, she pulled him aside (Laura obligingly marshalled the kids in getting ready to go).

"Have you decided?"

"We put everything that happened in the report, but we leave out what Thor told us."

She nodded. "What about our souvenirs? Turn over the weapons and bracers from Sakaar, but leave out the translators?"

"Yeah, and we tell them about Odin's gifts," said Clint. "Fitzsimmons won't be able to do anything with those anyway, and they only work for us."

"Okay," said Nat. "Thor says he and Loki want to come back to Earth, since Steve Rogers is awake."

"Should be fun."

X

It was with some apprehension that Loki returned to the palace and went to the rooms where the House of Freyr had been staying. He half-expected them to have already cleared out while the events of the morning unfolded, but he found Gerd and Fjolnir there, halfway through what looked like the boy's seidr lessons. Fjolnir was the first to spot him, and his face split in a grin. "Hello, Loki!"

Whatever had happened last night hadn't done too much damage, then. "Hello, Fjolnir. I was hoping to catch you before you left, if only to say farewell."

"Actually," said Gerd, touching Fjolnir's shoulder. "We've decided to stay a while longer."

A not insignificant portion of the anxiety in Loki's stomach disappeared at that. "That's wonderful news," he said. "Although...it will make this somewhat awkward. I'm going to Midgard with my brother. We shouldn't be more than a few days."

Fjolnir looked slightly crestfallen, but Gerd let out a laugh. "Well, perhaps we can pay a short visit to my parents on Alfheim, then. We'd be able to collect a few books for you on the Jotnar, Jotunheim, and frjosleikr."

"I would be very grateful," said Loki.

X

"I'm just not sure it's such a good idea for me to go back," said Bruce.

"Come on," wheedled Thor. "Don't you want to meet Stark and Captain Rogers with us?"

"Under SHIELD's supervision? Yeah, that's gonna go great. If something goes wrong—"

"What could go wrong?" said Thor. "If you turn into the Hulk, I can keep you contained."

Bruce was skeptical. "Both of the last two times that happened, when I came back, you looked like you'd just lost a boxing match, and it wasn't just you."

Loki opened his mouth to speak, but Bruce cut him off. "And I don't want you pretending to be Betty again. That was just weird."

"That isn't what I was going to suggest," said Loki haughtily. "Not that I choose my strategies to accommodate other people's notions of 'weird'. If at any point it looks like SHIELD or some other interfering party might try anything, I can simply cloak you and change your appearance again. You can return to the Bifrost site and Heimdall can retrieve you, and there won't be anything the other mortals can do about it."

"Oh." Bruce tried to come up with a good enough objection. When none occurred to him, he sighed. "I guess I kinda owe you guys anyway. When are we going?"

"Tomorrow!" said Thor, beaming.

X

"Sir, you wanted to be informed if I detected any signs of movement between Earth and Asgard."

Tony rolled out from under the car he was in the middle of dismantling as a break from repairing and fine-tuning the Mark VI and drawing up schematics for its successor. "Missouri again?" he asked, grabbing his water bottle and taking a swig. So nice not to be drinking a daily gallon of chlorophyll anymore. His taste buds had nearly recovered from the super secret, mostly ineffective heavy metal detox diet (not to mention all the palladium itself), and he was looking forward to being able to enjoy the food on the next date night as much as Pepper.

"Yes, the same place as yesterday. Then the spot just outside the capital moments later."

Tony wilted slightly. Thor and Loki had made it sound like they were going to be making regular visits, but so far he hadn't heard a peep and the only people Asgard seemed to be interacting with were those SHIELD guys and, for some reason, a farm family in the heartland. One afternoon had not been enough time to pick the brains of the Super Viking Bros. "They don't call, they don't write…," he grumbled petulantly.

"Surely this counts for something."

It was a good thing Tony wasn't under the Rolls anymore or he would have bashed his head against the undercarriage when he jumped out of his skin. Loki was standing inexplicably in his garage a few yards away, glancing around at his collection of very new and very classic cars like he wasn't quite sure what the point of them was, which made Tony instantly curious about the vehicles he was used to. Then again, maybe it was just beaming up all over the place, magic flying hammers, and turning into animals.

"Hey, no fair. You turned me into a squirrel last time; the least you can do is give me a chance to get the drop on you when you show up again." He pointed at him with a screwdriver. "Don't think I'm not gonna get you back."

Loki gave him what looked like a sincerely delighted grin. Tony had to wonder if nobody had ever done this guy the courtesy of participating in a prank war with him. A voice in the back of his mind (which sounded a lot like his girlfriend's) asked if it was really a good idea to get into that kind of thing with the actual God of Mischief, or if he should be tipping said God of Mischief off to it up front. He replied mentally with a childish "he started it." The voice was much easier to win arguments against than the real Pepper.

"So what's the deal?" he asked, getting up and walking closer. "JARVIS said your fancy light show just touched down on the other side of the country. Did you teleport over to Malibu to say hi?"

"The Bifrost merely returned Barton and Romanoff home," said Loki. "I am still on Asgard."

Tony blinked. "What, so this is like a hologram?"

"Nothing so crude as that, though I suppose the function is similar."

Tony poked the screwdriver at Loki's chest. It went straight through with a glimmer of that same green-gold light that had been the last thing he saw before the squirrel transformation. "And you can just make one of these appear when you're not even on the same planet?"

"It is a simple matter to send one anywhere I have been physically. Much more difficult if the location is unfamiliar to me."

Tony shook his head. "I gotta know how this works. Any progress on that?"

"I haven't had as much time to research it as I would have liked," said Loki with a grimace. "Other matters have arisen."

"Well it's nice you took time out of your busy schedule to kinda pop down here," said Tony. He traded his screwdriver for the open pack of freeze-dried pineapple sitting next to the toolbox. It wasn't his favorite snack, but anything he could tip out of a packet directly into his mouth saved him a trip into the house to wash the grease off his hands.

"My brother and I will be coming back to Earth tomorrow, and bringing Dr. Banner with us. We likely won't stay long, and we'd prefer not to have to use SHIELD as an intermediary if possible."

"And you came to me for help working outside the system? I'm flattered." It wasn't even sarcasm. This was going to be fun.

"We trust you, and though we also trust certain of SHIELD's agents, they are an organization of spies."

Tony folded his arms, munching on pineapple. That was interesting. "So what are you hoping I can do for you?"

"Steven Rogers," said Loki.

Tony nearly choked. "Uh, what now?" he spluttered. "Steven Rogers, as in Captain America?"

"Our Gatekeeper watched as SHIELD retrieved him from where he was entombed in ice. He lives. Barton and Romanoff will try to ensure he can meet with us when we come, but in the event that their superiors disagree…"

"You want me to muscle my way through."

"If you would be so kind."

The implications of all this were pretty mind boggling. Aside from Loki's and Thor's own powers (each brother being at least a match for Beige Knockoff Hulk and a swarm of Hammer drones on his own), Asgard apparently had some pretty intense surveillance capabilities, which they were using to keep tabs on spies and frozen American super-soldiers. "Why the interest in Rogers?"

"He, like you, Banner, my brother, and I, is on the list Director Fury wants for his Avengers Initiative. If we are all to be shield-brothers, we should meet together."

"Yeah, I dunno if Fury mentioned this to you guys, but I'm not really big on teams," said Tony.

"Nor am I," said Loki. "But there are times when circumstances require them." His tone became very dry. "Of course, we could always wait until one of our worlds is in peril to learn how to work together. "

"You and Thor are more powerful than anything my planet's got. Why do you need help from guys like us?"

"I asked the same question myself, but that was before Barton and Romanoff proved critical to our quest on a planet called Sakaar, well outside Yggdrasil. If not for them, I might even now be in the clutches of an intergalactic warlord."

Damn, Romanoff really was slumming it with that whole model-turned-corporate schtick, Tony thought. What he said aloud was, "Aw, come on, the spies got to go to another planet? What am I, chopped liver?"

"It was sort of a spur of the moment affair, seeing as the window of opportunity opened in the middle of their official visit." Loki raised an eyebrow. "Besides, I thought you weren't big on teams."

Tony shot him a flat glare. "Touché. Well, I guess I'll see if I can scare up soldier boy for you."

"Until tomorrow, then," said Loki, inclining his head. Then his form flickered and vanished.

Tony dumped more pineapple into his mouth and stared at the spot where the magic hologram had been. He could count on one hand the number of people his dad had respected more than Steve Rogers, and he'd grown up torn between admiration and resentment of the guy because of it. Failing to recover his friend's body had been one of Howard Stark's biggest regrets, and now it turned out he was still alive. This could get weird. But that wasn't the only thing. "Hey JARVIS, can you send the footage from the garage to my workshop? I wanna see how magic shows up on Earth tech."

"Right away, sir."

X

Alexander Pierce tossed the Barton-Romanoff mission report back down on his desk with a frown. The thing belonged in the science fiction section at Barnes & Noble, even more so than some of the 084 operations he'd overseen in recent years. Barton and Romanoff had been to multiple planets in the last few days (which had totaled about twice as many actual days for them as had elapsed on Earth), gotten a good idea of Asgard's goals, and brought back some neat trinkets—not that R&D would be able to do much with a couple of those, since they were magic.

Pierce was frustrated. It hadn't been possible to add a Hydra agent to the mission. Barton and Romanoff were the best in all of SHIELD; you didn't bench one of them in favor of someone else or add a third wheel on an assignment this critical to the security and interests of the planet without raising a few eyebrows. That was his own fault. He should have ensured that at least one of his people was just as capable as those two, but none of the current crop was quite there. Garret was past his peak, Rumlow would only ever be a blunt instrument, Sitwell was too critical to domestic operations to be sent off-world, and Grant Ward was still too green.

Now, in addition to Coulson's attaché position, two of Fury's other most loyal had managed to personally befriend the powerful alien princes, not to mention gain their trust. It would be a real bitch to get any of his people in their ears now.

He was going to have to settle for getting ears on them, and he was going to have to do it fast.

Planning an Earth arc that isn't piggybacking on the plots of any of the movies is weirdly harder to do than planning Asgard drama, but I think you guys are going to like what's coming up next.

I'm going to try to maintain the same loose update schedule of posting once every one or two weeks or so, but the pandemic has done some major damage to the industry my company relies on, and job security stress is, it turns out, extremely harmful to my creative drive. I hope you guys are doing okay and staying safe and sane. If anyone's interested in doing a Lord of the Rings read/reread, my friend and I just started one, so check out my tumblr (same username as here) for updates on where we'll be posting it. We haven't fully decided between Tumblr or LJ or if it merits a Discord server yet, and it largely depends on how many people join in.