Chapter 16.

A faint glowing dome surrounded the ranch when they arrived: a protective barrier JARVIS had erected when they departed. Upon approaching, the barrier parted and closed as soon as they crossed the perimeter.

They stored the Tesseract in a safe and debated what to do next while Thor tended to Loki's wound.

"Their leader," Loki winced as Thor disinfected the wound. "He wore a Dark Elf armor."

Thor's hands stopped mid-movement. All the Asgardian eyes were on him, mostly puzzled, but Volstagg was the most alarmed.

"That's impossible," he asserted. "The Allfather's father killed them all!"

"I remember the stories from before we were born," said Loki, then winced again and hissed at Thor. "Damn it, why does it hurt so much?"

"Because you should have half your body blown up," Tony replied, examining the holographic scans of the scepter. "This baby packs quite a punch."

"And we left it there," Loki sighed, passing his left hand over his face.

"Don't worry," said the millionaire. "While it's with SHIELD it should be good, or at least not as bad. As long as if doesn't fall in the wrong hands, that's it. Oh, hey, the leader had a different biology than the others!"

He enlarged the hologram. The scan had formed an image of the body inside the armor, and they could see the invader's face.

"Give it color, JARVIS."

The invader's skin was pale, almost the same shade of his hair, which he wore combed backwards and neatly arranged in braids along the head. His facial features, set forever in a peaceful expression, were delicate and pleasantly proportioned. The shape of his closed eyelids hinted at two big, almond eyes, framed by high, sharp cheekbones. His nose was slightly aquiline and his lips were full and finely shaped.

Had the invader decided to infiltrate midgardian society he would have been considered a somewhat strange, yet very attractive human being. Only the shape of his pointy ears might have given him away.

"Svartálfar," Volstagg said weakly.

The humans looked at each other, silently wondering why the Asgardians had become so pale.

"But King Bor was supposed to have killed them all," said Hogun.

"Seems like he left some of them," Tony commented. "Geez, Thor, that hammer of yours can be real nasty."

Now the projection, devoid of color, showed the crushed ribcage and the broken spine.

"I didn't use lightning because I didn't want to hit the other humans," Thor said to Loki, in an almost apologetic tone.

"What do you make of this all?" Tony asked them, expanding all the holograms so they occupied the entire living room.

There was a long silence, during which only the sound of Thor breaking the bandages' seal could be heard.

Darcy was the first to break it.

"So, do all these guys get along?" she asked, still gazing at the holograms. "I mean, not only the elves and these weird cyborg guys, but also the Frost Giants came here. Are they working together?"

"No," said Fandral, who always sat at her side. "The Jötunn and the Svartálfar considered all the other races inferior. The Jötunn expected to exterminate or enslave other planets, the Dark Elves… didn't they try to destroy the Universe?"

"Return it to its primordial state," Thor corrected. As he was tending to his younger brother, he sat giving his back to most of his allies and friends, and only Loki could see how his expression had clouded as he spoke with a hoarse voice. "They came from the Ginnungagap, the Yawning Abyss that was before. Once the Universe was born, they resented all the races which came with it, but most of all they hated the Asgardians, who challenged with their light their former supreme reign, and so they went to war. After a long time my grandfather made them retreat to Svartalfheim, where he defeated them."

He secured the bandages and got up abruptly. Loki had noticed his brother's hands trembling slightly.

"I could understand if there was a race from outside the Nine Realms who somehow allied themselves with the Jötunn," Sif mused. "But both Svartálfar and Frost Giants? They would be more than happy to destroy each other."

"I couldn't subdue the agents through magic," said Loki. "Because they were already under a very powerful mind-controlling spell."

"Even Erik?" Jane asked.

"Him especially. Understand that if he was the head scientist at whatever project they were developing, he would be the first one to be controlled. After all, the agents were protecting both the elf and Erik.

"However," Loki continued when he saw Jane's face. "When the alien fired and hit one of the agents, the spell broke for him and his companions. Maybe when Erik wakes up the spell will break too."

Dawn broke as they were discussing what to do, bathing the living room in golden light. They still needed to smuggle components under SHIELD's nose, and now the news of the invaders added more urgency to their mission.

Right in the middle of the discussion, JARVIS informed them of an incoming transmission from Director Fury.

"Talk about the devil…" Stark grumbled as he took a cup of coffee in his hands. "Okay, let's answer it."

"Director! What a surprise!" he exclaimed as a holographic screen with Fury's face hovered in front of him. "How do you do in this fine morning?"

But the Director didn't seem in the mood for small talk.

"Stark," Fury didn't seem to appreciate the other's festive mood. "You know why I'm calling you."

"Aw, no need to thank me," Stark continued, sipping his coffee. "You know, since I turned into a philanthropist I find myself saving the world more often than I thought."

"Where's the Tesseract?"

"In a safe place," Thor growled, stepping behind Tony.

"Might I remind you that…?"

"That it's an Asgardian relic and that we are its rightful owners," Thor interrupted him. "That you were misusing it and endangering your own planet and that it's for your best interest that we remove it from your custody."

The Director's face was inscrutable, and the silence between the two warriors lasted several beats, until Fury's visage relaxed ever so slightly.

"I thought you might say that," he said. "I tried to warn my superiors but they never listen."

Thor tensed at those words and everyone in the room feared for the worst.

"So," Fury continued. "Since they don't seem to understand that stepping on the toes of mythical creatures is always a bad move, I've decided to turn a blind eye on this matter. Do I have your word that, by helping you return to your home I will never see your faces ever again?"

"As long as Midgard doesn't need our help, you have my word."

"Tell me what you need and SHIELD will provide it."

"What?" Stark exclaimed. "No chewing anyone's head off? No sending any agents to my house? Did that alien use his scepter on you too? And, what's with the pun? Thought you didn't like your eye being mentioned."

"Despite what you might think of me," the Director continued. "I don't have my head stuck up my ass like the bureaucrats and politicians who lord over me. When the Tesseract fell in our hands we saw an infinite source of energy, that's true, but we weren't prepared for what it also implied. It has become a problem rather than a solution. Besides," he turned to Thor and Loki. "Starting a war with another world is the last thing I would like to do."

"Are you sure?" Tony insisted. "You will provide anything? Even if I could get it myself?"

Fury sighed, glaring at him.

"The portal we were developing has been lost, but we still have a prototype that we will ship to your ranch, along with several agents I will assign as your security. With all due respect, I wish these visitors out of my planet as soon as possible."

Without further ado, Director Fury cut the transmission, and the ranch inhabitants went about to prepare their breakfast or, rather, to choose which breakfast they wanted the automated kitchen to prepare.

"We're lucky this guy is on our side now, right?" said Darcy as she served herself a mug of coffee.

"There's no such thing as luck," Tony smiled wryly as he drank from his own. "He's a clever bastard."

"He probably wants us to build the Bridge for him," said Loki, carefully accommodating his right arm on a sling. "Knowing that after we use it the Tesseract will have to remain here while we are on our merry way home."

Thor, who hadn't touched yet the scrambled eggs before him, frowned.

"Can't we take it with us?" he asked.

"Not if it's powering the reactor," said Loki.

"We have fallen in his trap," Sif stated, taking her hand from around her mug and clenching her fist.

"We are victims of the circumstances," Loki tried to calm her. "We have no other choice but to comply and accept whatever comes our way for now. After we free Asgard, however, we will return. In peace."

Tony chuckled, finding real humor in that line.

"Bring some soldiers with you, just in case," he said. "Besides, didn't your brother just promise you wouldn't come back?"

"He wasn't speaking as Asgard's Prince Regent," Loki said, smiling softly. "Not even as an emissary, and he wasn't referring to us as a group, but as royalty sometimes talks about themselves in the third person. Neither I nor our friends said a word," he said, sweeping his hand around to point at Sif and the others. "And if Midgard is how I think it is, you will have a conflict over the Tesseract, thus needing the true owner to come and retrieve it. No promise will ever be broken."

Tony downed a gulp of coffee, before walking back to the hangar, muttering he was glad he was on the aliens' side.

Loki saw little of Thor that day, but the expression of his older brother's face was something he couldn't forget. Even so, he pushed those thoughts away and concentrated on the task at hand. His right shoulder hurt less and less as hours went by, but his regeneration was far slower than normal. Whatever that scepter was, he rued having to leave it behind.

Jane, Darcy, Stark and Loki spent the day at the warehouse, reviewing at first the material they would need and sending the list to SHIELD; then they kept reviewing the blueprints and planning how to organize the construction. If things went well they could complete it in a matter of hours once they had all they needed.

Jane, as was usual with her, used the energy she had regained the previous night to plunge head first in the project, talking little to nothing to the others, save if it was about the task at hand. Nevertheless, she broke that custom several times to ask Loki how he was going and if he was all right.

That night, before turning in, she thanked him for the sleeping spell of the previous night.

"I heard you murmuring something in another language," she smiled. "I felt sleepy afterwards, and that was strange because I had drunk a triple espresso half an hour before. It was you, right?"

"You were about to drop dead."

She chuckled, blushing slightly, and he felt a shiver down his spine. Then she wished him goodnight and went to her room.

Loki remained in the living room, alone with his thoughts while he went over the reactor's blueprints. His shoulder still hurt if he tried moving it. Maybe the following morning he could try going around without the sling.

Eventually, he started dozing off. At some point during the night he became aware of a rhythmical, metallic thumping sound coming from outside. JARVIS hadn't alerted the household, which was a relief, but it also increased Loki's curiosity.

He snuck out of the house and walked as silently as he could towards the back of the warehouse, where the sound came from. There he stood, half-hidden, observing.

Thor had taken one of the spare girders and, sinking it on the ground, was using it as a training dummy. The sound Loki kept hearing was no other than the punches and kicks the prince of Asgard landed relentlessly on the metal, each blow with increasing anger until, with a final roar, Thor hit the already dented girder with both hands, splitting it in two. But not even that seemed to calm him down, for he remained there, staring with labored breath into the void, until he turned his face skywards and let out a cry, and this time Loki knew there was something else mingled with his anger. Thor then fell to his knees in silence, an image of utter despair that Loki had never seen before.

He was about to turn around and walk back to the house, but something inside him drove him to step towards Thor instead.

"Need someone to spar with?" he asked casually as he stepped into the moonlight. It was then when he saw that Thor had broken all the girders and metal planks he could find.

"Let me be," the prince of Asgard muttered with a quavering voice. "I am to blame for everything."

He was taken aback by his reaction, having expected him to joke about his wounded arm.

"Listen," Loki began. "The war with Jotunheim-"

"No! You don't understand!" Thor exclaimed as he stood up to face him. "Asgard's defenses failed because of me!"

"But that's impossible, the Odinforce…" Loki's voice trailed away as he realized what Thor meant.

The Odinforce was the magic force every regent of Asgard had to master and sustain with their own life-force. That energy fed the automated defenses and was also channeled through Gungnir. Should the regent be too weak or absent for too long without a substitute, said power would run out, rendering most systems useless. To be able to master the Odinforce, every Crown Prince had to undergo a very strict training, akin to the magic education Loki had received.

"I didn't train at all," Thor admitted with a hoarse voice and clenched fists. "I thought it was just nonsense. Father had been too weak to feed the defenses before falling into the Odinsleep, and I wasn't able to wield Gungnir when it was handed over to me. It's because of me that they could breach our barriers and invade us. It's because of me that Mother and Father… all our people…" his voice trembled slightly, but he kept talking. "Mother is standing alone against them while we are trapped here, and maybe she has been-"

"You know Mother is strong enough," Loki cut him. He couldn't stand hearing those next words. "And she has her own kin to help her. Together they have enough power to defend Asgard."

But those words didn't seem to comfort Thor. His older brother looked at him with an expression Loki had never seen.

"Father told us the Dark Elves had been exterminated," he said.

"Maybe some survived, got stronger during these thousand years and they are trying to come back," Loki offered. "Maybe they are no longer such a threat, not like in the past, and this has been a stroke of luck for them."

Thor nodded, his eyes lost in the distance.

"I hope you are right," he murmured. "And we can learn something about this strange alliance."

Loki tried convincing him into returning to the house, but Thor sat down cross-legged on the ground instead. Seeing that his brother wouldn't move, he followed suit and sat down by his side.

"Do you know why Father fell into the Odinsleep?" Thor asked in him a hoarse voice.

The younger brother didn't answer.

"We had several quarrels while you were away," he continued. With each sentence his voice regained strength, but kept slightly trembling with fury. "I asked him when your punishment would be lifted, or if there was any condition to it. He never answered at first. Then he would simply say: Everything is taken care of, as if that meant something. But in the meantime, any travel to Midgard was forbidden.

"One day I was at the library, and saw the scribes at work in the family's section. I asked them what they were doing but no one would look at me. I could take a peek at what they were writing and…

He stopped, swallowed hard and continued speaking, his voice a monotonous rumble.

"They were rewriting the family chronicle, omitting your name or any mention of you. One of them was changing the family portraits, painting an empty space where you were supposed to be. I gather that was the start, and that the frescoes at the palace would be next."

For a second, Loki felt as if the whole wasteland swam and spun around him. A cold feeling started spreading through his chest as his brother talked.

"I confronted him," Thor kept recounting, his deadpan expression broke in a grimace of pain. "I asked him why he was doing it, and he said it was for the good of Asgard. I was… I was angry at him. It had been just a prank, and I had been the one to head into Jotunheim."

Thor took a small rock and ground it between his thick fingers, letting the dust escape through them.

"We argued. No. We fought. I didn't understand how he could dispose of a son so easily. He just laughed, and told me that I had much to learn, that safeguarding the Nine Realms required many sacrifices.

"I screamed at him. Can't remember what I said, but he finally shut up. I asked him if he would dispose of me too if I so much displeased him. He didn't laugh that time, just stared at me, and then I…" he passed a hand over his face. "I told him I didn't want anything to do with ruling Asgard, if that meant casting aside my own kin, that I would go to Midgard to take you back, and that he couldn't stop me."

He chuckled again.

"He told me that I was a fool for risking it all for someone who wasn't my own blood, but I needed to be taught a lesson, and if I wanted so much to share your fate, so be it. And when he tried to seal my powers, he fainted and fell into the Odinsleep."

Loki had no words. He felt sick at the stomach and had to start taking deep breaths to calm his racing heart.

"While he slept I asked Mother about his words, I told her about what the scribes were doing, and you know how she always takes Father's side, saying that there's a reason why he does what he does," he shook his head, grimacing. "She still did it. She defended him, only this time there were tears in her eyes. When she was watching over Father's sleep, thinking herself alone, I heard her weeping, and saying 'Why did you do it?' Over and over," he fell silent for a while, as if the memory of their mother crying was the most painful of them.

"The attacks happened not too long after that. I tried wielding Gungnir, but it rejected me. I thought it was just a series of skirmishes and so I came here to fetch you, but the full scale attack happened while I was away and we are now trapped here."

Thor lowered his head and said no more.

A coyote howled in the distance.

Loki fought the lump in his throat and, when he spoke, his voice trembled.

"That's why you weren't that surprised when you saw I was a Jötunn."

"Mother told me the whole truth when she warned me about your magic powers," Thor confessed. "She begged me to not let anyone else see you."

Jane said Thor had covered Loki with his cape and didn't allow anyone to approach him, not even his dearest friends.

"Wouldn't you trust your friends with this?"

"No."

The answer came right away, without even thinking about it.

"They will understand," Thor clarified. "In time, maybe, but not now. I can't bear the thought of them turning on you. We have been poisoned for far too long," he said, shaking his head.

"It's not like you to be so downtrodden," Loki pointed out.

If there was anyone who could be optimistic, sometimes to ridiculous levels, that was Thor. That optimism always got to Loki's nerves, but now that it was gone he felt an increasing unease.

"Too many things happening at one," Thor raised his head, smiling wryly. "You know? When we were kids I sworn Mother I would protect you."

"When was that?"

"Right before you transformed into a snake to lure me into grabbing you and then stabbing me. I wasn't so sure about that oath afterwards."

Loki smiled, despite himself. That had been a good prank.

"I had been blinded by Father's tales of war and glory," Thor continued. "But I don't know if those tales hold any truth anymore. I don't know if the Father we knew existed at all, but I know that wielding Mjolnir is not enough to be king."

Out of the blue, Loki remembered that time Thor's hammer was stolen.

Thor had embarked once on the rescue of a Midgardian farmer's young daughter who had been allegedly abducted by Giants. Loki had been dragged along against his will on that search, which would cover three whole Realms. Once the lady had been found, it turned out that she was living only two countries further away from her father's home, on a cottage in the middle of a forest and miles away from nowhere, and that she hadn't been abducted by any Giant, but she had ran away from her father's home to avoid an unwanted marriage, as the girl tearfully explained to them.

To add insult to injury, Loki had to endure that the lass only admitted Thor in her home while he, hungry, cold and with sore feet, had to wait outside. It wasn't until he saw a dark shadow sneaking out of the cottage in the middle of the night that he understood what had happened: Thor had been bewitched and robbed of his hammer. It had been a trap all along.

But Loki had left the thief go, careful that he wasn't seen either. At that point he didn't have a sliver of compassion for Thor and he only wished to enter the cottage and curl in front of the dying hearth, well away from the sprawled form of his brother on one of the corners. But his sleep wasn't a long one, for Thor shook him violently to wake him up well before the dawn broke. The following events fully compensated the hardships Loki had to go through on that adventure.

Loki chuckled, earning a dirty stare from Thor.

"I just remembered," he said. "That time Thrym stole your hammer."

It took some seconds for his brother to remember it, but then he also laughed, though it was a short, almost forced sound.

"You never said anything of how he managed to do so," Thor said.

"You had enough teasing afterwards, before and after the wedding. White suited you."

Thor laughed again, this time more earnestly.

"At least we got to dine for free, and the fight after the banquet was fun."

The sky grew light towards the east. The coyote howled again, and another answered towards the north. Nothing could be heard in that expanse except for the wind and the wild animals inhabiting it. No wonder Stark had chosen that location.

"I'm glad you were safe here," Thor said after a while. "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had been the one to be sent here."

"Far less headaches for me, I am sure," Loki thought.

"You would have probably tried solving everything through brute force," he said aloud. "And would have ended up being hunted down by SHIELD."

"You think so?" Thor chuckled.

"Getting into problems is your main quality; getting you out of them is mine."

"I would have been the one to meet Jane," Thor mused, scratching his beard.

"She wouldn't have liked you," Loki asserted without even having to think about it.

"You sure?" Thor smiled.

"More than sure," the younger brother nodded. "I know her. I'm sure she would never feel any sort of attraction towards someone like you."

The two brothers kept taunting each other, but it wasn't the same as before. Loki felt Thor's tongue had lost what little edge it had, and he didn't feel like saying anything truly hurtful, or lash at him for his lack of preparation.

If anything, this crisis seemed to have changed something between them. For better or for worse, time would tell.