The King's Spear, Asgard

Nearly as often as Sif spent her mornings at the training grounds, she also joined the Warriors Three for breakfast—though in Volstagg's case, it was the "midmorning meal" as he always broke his fast with his family (not that it made much difference to his appetite). It was as solid a tradition as any they had as companions, and perhaps the most significant that didn't include the princes, who could not reliably get away from their royal duties that early in the day. Sif and Volstagg occasionally found themselves eating without one or both of the other two, as Hogun was sometimes needed on Vanaheim for months at a stretch and Fandral frequently found it difficult to part company with some maiden or other.

The latter had been absent the day before. When Volstagg had begun chortling about it as he usually did to a flat-faced Hogun, Sif had bluntly set him straight and explained what Fandral had done and what it had nearly come to in the throne room. It had put rather a pall over the rest of the meal.

So when Fandral walked inside The King's Spear on the day after the princes' departure for Midgard as Sif, Volstagg, and Hogun were finishing their last bites of food, he was met with three stares of varying degrees of hostility.

"Bold of you to show your face," said Sif coldly.

"Or foolish," said Hogun.

Volstagg frowned, perhaps more upset than angry. As much as he enjoyed a battle, he hated a quarrel and usually refused to participate in them except to encourage civility and understanding on all sides.

"I will not trouble you overlong," said Fandral, expression and posture overflowing with the same remorse and misery as he had shown in the palace. "If you want nothing more to do with me, I can hardly object. I have broken my oaths to one we all swore to protect and disgraced myself, and I do not deserve such excellent friends as you. However, if there is anything I can do to regain my honor in your eyes, I will do it in an instant."

He turned to face Sif. "It was not my intention to allow Loki to believe you responsible. I regret that I did not find him to make my confession before he found you, and I hope your friendship will not suffer needlessly on my account."

Some of Sif's anger was squelched beneath renewed hurt over what Loki had assumed about her, which was then complicated by indignation that Fandral thought he was in a position to apologize for what Loki had done, as well as a rash of unhappy thoughts that she might well have deserved Loki's suspicion for the way she had behaved toward him in recent decades. What a mess this all was.

Fandral bowed low and withdrew before Sif or the other two could make any reply. Sif was determined not to forgive him—certainly not so easily; she would follow Thor's lead—but with him so transparent about his desire to make amends, she had to work a bit harder than she liked to remain furious with him.

She caught Brunnhilde watching Fandral's retreat from the bar with narrowed eyes. She'd been there having a mostly liquid breakfast the previous morning too, and hadn't interacted with their table beyond a cursory nod of acknowledgement. Now, however, she got to her feet and strode in their direction. Sif wanted to salute or show some other sign of deference to the woman's rank, but Brunnhilde had been quite firm that she wouldn't tolerate it, so all she could do was sit ramrod straight on her stool and try not to feel like she was being incredibly disrespectful.

"Brunnhilde," she said, her voice as natural as she could make it. She sensed the grin forming on Volstagg's face and restrained herself from kicking him under the table.

"You headed to the palace training grounds after this?"

"Er, yes," said Sif, confused.

"Want to have a fight?"

Sif's mouth fell open. It took a second or two for the meaning of the question to sink in, and then it was all she could do not to leap to her feet and throw her arms around the other woman. Every frustrating thought about Fandral and Loki was forgotten. She couldn't believe this was really happening! A real Valkyrie, battle-proven and all, wanted to test her mettle? She could hear snorting and snickering sounds from Volstagg and even Hogun now, but she could not have cared less. "I would, very much," she said, unable to stop herself from grinning ear to ear.

X

The Triskelion, Earth

Thor stood with Loki outside the same briefing room where Coulson had led them to meet Fury, Hill, and Alexander Pierce weeks earlier. The humans had said something about checking the room for bugs. (Loki had frowned at that, and Thor had explained that sometimes when mortals said "bugs," they meant high-tech listening devices, not insects.) They didn't want the princes inside while they did this in case their "weird alien energy signatures" threw off the scanning equipment.

"Is this the best way to do this?" said Thor, using the nameless tongue. After that phantom woman had surprised them, he had decided it was probably best to simply always use it on Earth when dealing with anything pertaining to SHIELD.

"Do what?" said Loki.

"Share all I know of Hydra with them." said Thor, gesturing towards the room. After the shawarma, Romanoff had told them to get ready for a long discussion about that with Fury, and here they were barely a day later. "Would it not be easier if you showed them my memories instead? Then they wouldn't have to bother with all those code words she told us about, and they would see the faces of many of the Hydra agents I can't name."

"You used to be so dismissive of my spells. I'm starting to miss that."

Thor frowned at him, and he rolled his eyes. "You really have forgotten everything Mother tried to teach you of seidr, haven't you?" He mimicked Frigga's voice and graceful way of carrying herself. "'A proper sorcerer uses his seidr for matters of necessity, not convenience.'"

"Clearly that obnoxious Earth wizard never got that lesson," Thor grumbled under his breath.

"What?" said Loki.

Thor didn't repeat himself, for something else had occurred to him. "Do you mean to say that it was necessary to turn Stark into a flying squirrel?!"

"Of course!" said Loki. "I couldn't very well have done that without seidr, could I? Now, I'll admit that I would be more willing to help you share these memories than I would be with anything pertaining to Jane Foster, but I don't see the need for it. Or the wisdom."

That caught Thor's attention. "What could be unwise about giving them better access to what I know? With Pierce dead, surely they need as much as I can give them, as quickly as possible, to begin forming their plans."

"These aren't Aesir warriors, they're mortal spies. Even if you count a handful of them as friends, it doesn't change the fact that they failed to notice the parasite growing in their midst for an entire lifetime of their kind. You don't know how much that may have influenced them, whether they meant it to or not."

"I don't know that we can hold that against them," said Thor. He certainly couldn't, considering his own history. "I wouldn't want to give them a reason to withdraw any of the trust and goodwill we've earned with them. Not when they've just learned of so much treachery in the organization they've dedicated their lives to."

"At a certain point, openness begins to have diminishing returns," Loki countered. "Better to show a little circumspection. Information is currency to these people, and your memories, O Crown Prince of Asgard, contain far more information than what pertains to Hydra. Already they seek to control what you will tell them before they have even asked you their questions, which is why they haven't invited Stark, Banner, or Rogers to this meeting."

Thor had noticed that none of them were present, and it bothered him that half of the Avengers would be at a disadvantage when it came to knowledge, but was the solution to start withholding even more of that knowledge himself?

"Come, Thor," said Loki, nudging him out of his brooding contemplation with an elbow. "You've come this far in less than a month, with very little planning. Don't start overthinking it now. If it really matters that they be able to match all those faces you saw to names, let them present a solution to the problem before volunteering to use memory magic."

That, Thor felt he could agree to. He just wished that helping rid Earth of Hydra could be as simple as protecting a Vanir village from bloodthirsty trolls.

"And," said Loki, now in a tone of grudging concession, "if you still don't want them to have to go to the trouble of using codewords, I could offer to cast an illusion to take care of their end of the conversation. Any eavesdroppers they failed to discover will hear nothing but a very dull discussion of Dark Elf battle tactics."

Thor smiled. "Thank you."

X

"Alright," said Fury, hands splayed out atop the glass table. Romanoff and Maria Hill flanked him on either side, facing Thor and Loki, who had taken seats at the opposite end. He glanced at Loki. "That hocus pocus of yours up and running?"

Romanoff rolled her head around and gave him a look. "Don't give me that, Natasha. I'll be as skeptical as I want about using an anti-eavesdropping spell to avoid blowing the only head-start we have on these assholes."

"If Loki says they won't hear anything worth hearing, they won't," said Romanoff.

Beside him, Loki wasn't entirely successful in concealing the pride her words evoked. Thor wanted very much to hug her for that. Perhaps there would be an opportunity later.

Fury shook his head like he thought they were all hopeless, then fixed his eye on Thor. "I'm sure Barton and Romanoff already told you that they briefed me on everything they learned on Sakaar and Asgard."

Thor nodded.

"Good. I hope you don't have any objections about filling in the details for me. I don't see why you would, considering this problem doesn't have any impact on your planet but could be incredibly dangerous for mine."

"On the contrary," said Loki, possibly jumping in before Thor could have second thoughts about what they had discussed in the corridor. "One might consider it Asgard's duty to assist in eliminating Hydra. We had ample cause to intervene when Schmidt took the Tesseract from Father's place of safekeeping, yet we did not. Had we acted then, there would not have been enough of Hydra left to worm its way inside SHIELD in the first place."

"Yes," said Thor. "This is partly why I felt honor-bound to help against Hydra when Rogers requested it of me in the original timeline." He had been determined not to allow Loki's scepter to be used by the successors of the very same mortal villains who took the Tesseract. "But where is Barton? Should he not be here for this as well?" Surely there was no need to exclude him; unlike Stark, Banner, and Rogers, Barton already knew that Thor was from the future.

"He's busy chasing a ghost," said Romanoff with a meaningful quirk of one eyebrow.

"Ah," said Loki. "She won't be a liability then?"

"That doesn't appear to be her intent," said Hill. "We just need to be sure."

"Back to the matter at hand," said Fury. "What can you tell us? Names, resources, hideouts, drop points, tactical maneuvers. I want everything you've got."

"For the most part, I merely followed Rogers's command," said Thor. "Once he had us all together, he explained some of what happened when he and Romanoff first discovered them. Something about a computer brain in a military bunker?" They all gave him nonplussed looks. He waved his hand and laughed awkwardly. "I didn't really understand it. But Hydra does not have the scepter containing the Mind Stone. That will save us a great deal of trouble in dealing with them—though I would rather they had it than Thanos. I'm afraid there are few names I can give you, but the Avengers struck at a number of Hydra's lairs all across the planet. We made quick work of every last one of them."

He smiled to himself as he recalled their missions. "By the second or third, we had devised combat strategies that combined each of our abilities. Romanoff and Barton would ride on Hulk's back to get in position if Stark or I couldn't give them a lift, and Stark would ricochet his repulsor blasts off Rogers's shield to catch them by surprise with the angle of attack. I would use my lightning to boost Stark's suits—it didn't work so well when Barton had me try it on an exploding arrow, though. It blew up in my hand. We had a good laugh over it, and Romanoff called us both idiots, which I thought was a bit harsh. Oh, and the best one—Rogers called it the Grand Slam. I tried to convince him that 'Mighty Slam' sounded better, but he insisted. Anyway, I would wind up a really good strike with Mjolnir, and then he would throw his shield at me, and—"

Hill cleared her throat loudly. Thor stopped mid-sentence and gave her a questioning look. He realized he had lifted Mjolnir from his side and begun acting out some of the moves he was describing. He also realized that Fury and Hill wore very flat expressions while Romanoff and Loki were both stifling laughter. He set the hammer back down and resumed his seat a little sheepishly, while Hill opened up a large map of Earth's landmasses and spread firmly it over the table. "Can you show us locations?"

X

Summer 2014, Original Timeline

When the Avengers contacted him several months after the Convergence, Thor had been eager to help fight this Hydra enemy they spoke of. Staying with Jane had been wonderful, but even her company could not take his mind off the loss of his mother and brother like a good battle against a hideous monster might.

He was slightly dismayed, therefore, to learn that the word "Hydra" did not refer to a gargantuan beast, but merely an organization of ordinary mortal villains whose bid for control of Midgard had been foiled by Rogers and Romanoff. No matter. He would still help however he could. Following the others' lead, he assisted them in capturing a fortress manned by many soldiers and containing considerable resources that might have been used for evil purposes.

After the third such mission, Thor noticed that Rogers hadn't seemed as pleased with their successes as he and the others did. In the short time Thor had known him, he had never been boisterous, even by mortal standards, but he had been particularly reserved since the quest to defeat Hydra began. It was a while before Thor found an opportunity to raise the matter with him, but eventually there came an evening where Stark was immersed in his designs for a machine that could contain the Hulk, Barton was nowhere to be found, and Romanoff was working with Banner on something they called a lullaby, which was meant to help the Hulk calm down and change back into his mortal form.

"Are you well, Rogers?" Thor asked. "Are you not satisfied with the outcome of the operation?"

Rogers grimaced. "It's not the operation. We did good."

Thor grinned. "Indeed, the anvil maneuver worked just as we practiced it." He clapped Rogers on the shoulder.

Rogers looked heartened for a moment, no doubt mentally reliving when Thor had struck his shield at just the right angle to send a shockwave directly into the thickest area of the battlefield, but it faded quickly and his expression grew somber. "Thanks for helping with all this, Thor. I know it's been a rough year for you."

"It has," Thor agreed, but he refused to let his spirits fall. "But I know Mother earned her place in Valhalla, and so did Loki."

"You didn't tell us much about what happened before London," said Rogers. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Thor frowned. "Everyone thought I was mad to involve Loki in the plan," he said. "They were sure he would betray me. I suppose they had good reason. He nearly killed me with the Destroyer, and after we'd thought him dead for a year, he returned only to attempt to conquer Earth. I don't like to think it took the death of our mother at the hands of a Dark Elf to bring him back to himself, but he...he was the brother I knew again. He stayed true. He protected Jane, he saved my life, and he gave up his own to slay our foe. It was a good death. Better than falling into the void, certainly." He looked out over the city Loki had attacked. "But still far too early."

"You're saying he wasn't himself when he attacked Earth?" said Rogers.

"No. Someone gave him that scepter, and I believe it came at a high price. I tried to talk to him, persuade him to abandon his schemes and come home to his family, but he wouldn't hear me. Some of what he said made no sense." I remember you tossing me into an abyss! Thor grimaced and had to force his hands away from the railing of the balcony before he damaged Stark's building with his grip.

"When did you realize he was still in there?"

"Not until far too late." Thor's throat grew tight. "I was too angry. I didn't argue with Father's sentence for him. I never visited him in his cell in the dungeons. I wasn't even the one to deliver the news of Mother's death to him. He had to learn of it alone, from someone who didn't care for her as he did."

There was a peculiar intensity about Rogers—beyond his habitual mien. Thor cleared his throat and made an effort to summon back his cheerfulness. "I sought you out to ask after you, and instead…." He gave a very false laugh. "I must be boring you with all my regrets. You only knew my brother as an enemy."

"No," said Rogers. He looked rather pained. "Actually a lot of that sounds pretty familiar."

"What do you mean?" said Thor.

"Growing up, I...I never had a brother," said Rogers. "But I had someone who was as good as one. He shipped off to the war, and they were never gonna take me until the serum, no matter how hard I tried. By the time I got over there, his unit had been captured. I disobeyed orders to get them out, and then we spent the next year fighting Hydra side-by-side." A light kindled in his eyes at the memory, but it quickly dimmed.

Most of the tales of battle Thor was used to were the raucous, joyful sort. He had a little more experience in the other sort now. "What happened?"

"We were fighting our way along a train headed to a Hydra base high up in the mountains. The train car got blasted open over a thousand foot drop to a frozen river, and I didn't get to him in time. He fell."

Thor reached automatically for Rogers's shoulder. Though the image of Loki falling into the void had been replaced behind Thor's eyelids with alternating memories of Kurse stabbing Frigga in the back and running Loki through, he still remembered exactly how it had felt to watch, powerless, as he disappeared into the collapsing vortex of the Bifrost. That Steven Rogers knew the same pain of impotent loss, and that it had come about in such a similar manner, was truly terrible.

"He's alive," said Rogers.

"Your brother?" said Thor.

"He was one of the Hydra operatives Natasha and I fought last month. They did something to his mind until there was barely any of him left, but I got through to him in the end. I know I did. He could'a let me drown in the Potomac, but he fished me out instead."

"But this is wonderful!" Thor cried. "Where is he? I would love to meet him."

Rogers shook his head. "He disappeared. Natasha got me all the intel she could, and Sam's been helping me track down leads. Every time we hit another Hydra objective, though, I can't help wondering if he'll be inside, fighting on the wrong side again."

"Then I shall help you find him too!" said Thor. "Tell me what I can do to help."

Rogers gave him a bittersweet smile. "You're already helping the best way you can, but thanks. I've got this one. I hope."

Thor felt a twinge of disappointment, but only a small one. He thought he understood. He nodded. "Then you must tell me when you find him. It will do me good to know that at least one of us succeeded."

Sif finally gets to spar with Brunnhilde! Brunnhilde already regrets doing this! Whee!

The scene where Thor and Loki discuss the wisdom of using memory magic to convey Hydra intel came about because it occurred to me after writing the actual briefing scene that technically I've established that this kind of magic is a thing Loki can do, so it would be a plot hole if I didn't deal with it. And then it turned into a pretty good philosophical discussion with some of my favorite jokes in a while, so that was pretty cool.

Baby bro helped me brainstorm all the stuff Thor would say while getting carried away with himself. I was going for an Endgame sort of vibe with his very hectic manner of recounting events, except with a happier twist because these are good memories on the whole. Cheers, baby bro.

I concluded a while ago that if I was going to figure out whether or not Steve ever told Thor about Bucky, I was going to have to write a flashback scene set between Winter Soldier and Ultron and see how it played out. You see before you the results of that exercise. :)