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Chapter Text

The ship’s engine grumbled and growled, the sound rumbling through the cabin like a sleeping beast about to wake. The low, rhythmic buzz filled the air, nearly drowning out the tension of the moment. The Guardians were all gathered around a table in the central control room, their faces set with serious and determined expressions. Conversations overlapped with urgency, their words jumbled over the engine's noise, each one determined to get their opinion in first.

Quill, his hands joined and fingers tapping impatiently, leaned in closer to the group.

“Earth! There are two there. We can get to them before he does.”

Rocket, his ears perked as he narrowed his eyes at Quill, looked at him with a puzzled frown.

“Gems?”

Gamora nodded, her gaze serious, fixed on the table in front of them as if it held the universe’s secrets.

“Yes! If we could get to them before Thanos, we could have a chance…”

Quill’s eyes lit up, flickers of a bold plan sparking across his face.

“Exactly! We could ask the terrestrials to relocate them on another planet or even destroy them.”

“Or we could just rob them!”

Chimed in Drax with a hint of excitement in his voice. His usual fervor charged the atmosphere like a static shock, momentarily lifting the tension.

Quill raised an eyebrow but remained silent.

Gamora added, “We have to be careful though. We don’t know what kind of security measures are in place.”

Quill looked at each of his crewmates, a steely resolve in his gaze. “Alright, team. That’s it, we’re heading to Earth. We’re going to prevent Thanos from getting his hands on those stones no matter what it takes.”

Rocket clapped his hands together, the sound a sharp crack in the charged air as he grinned.

“Alright then. Let’s set course for Earth. Time to show Thanos and the rest of the universe what the Guardians of the Galaxy are made of.”

The others nodded, their determined expressions masking a mixture of anxiety and excitement. As Quill punched in the coordinates for Earth on the ship’s control panel, the energy in the room shifted from tense deliberation to focused action. The urgency of their mission hung over them like a storm cloud ready to burst.

The ship’s engine roared to life, and the stars outside whizzed past in streaks of light. They could feel a change in the ship’s movements as it hurtled through space, speeding along its course. There was a sense of anticipation, a silent countdown echoed in their minds, as a sense of awe and uncertainty settled over the crew. Each of them felt it: the tremor of their resolve turning into action.

As the ship spiraled toward Earth, skimming the clouds on its final descent, a taut stillness filled the cabin—like the held breath before a storm. It wasn't much longer before the ship landed, almost seamlessly, in an alley across the street from a peculiar, round-windowed building.

Quill extended his hand toward the cockpit window, gently grazing its surface. His voice cracked through the stillness of the cabin, sharp and bright like a firecracker. "It's here, guys!" He could feel the thrill coursing through him like an electric current.

Mantis peeked past him, curiosity lighting her features, her eyes wide with an almost innocent wonder. "Inside this little house?" She asked, as she followed the others outside, her antennae testing the surroundings. Her curiosity lightened up her features, turning them bright and alive.

Rocket, clutched a small device that beeped with increasing urgency. He furrowed his brows, disbelief written across his face, flowing through every word. "It seems so, radars are indicating a high frequency coming from there."

Quill gave a determined nod, already halfway to the main entrance. "Alright! I'm going in." He felt a rush in his chest, the kind that came right before an heroic feat — or a disastrous failure.

Behind him, Drax’s voice sliced through the tension, completely missing the gravity of the moment.

"Aren’t we knocking on the door?" he asked, his tone blunt and entirely practical, as though suggesting a simple formality rather than a high-stakes mission.

Quill paused mid-stride, turning back to face his team, his features drawn with both bewilderment and impatience. "Would you knock on the door of someone you're going to steal from?" His voice held a mixture of disbelief and exasperation.

Drax smirked, his retort quick and cutting.

"I would knock on your mother's door, ha!"

“What?"

Quill's disgust was palpable, the exclamation hanging in the cold air between them. Gamora shot Drax a withering look, shaking her head at the absurdity of the exchange. Groot's laughter echoed through the alley, a childish snicker that added to the chaos.

The group was still embroiled in an argument, voices overlapping, when the door suddenly swung open.

Standing in the doorway was Strange, his robe flowing like an extension of his mystic aura, a brow raised as if in mild amusement or annoyance.

"Welcome to you all. I have to assume you're not from here, right?" His voice cut through their confusion with a sharp, knowing edge. Time seemed to stretch as each of them processed the unexpected welcome.

Rocket blinked, his grip tightening around the device. "Did this guy just...?"

Quill's mouth hung open, trying to catch up with the situation. Their plan was completely blown before they could even reach the entrance lock. He struggled for words, but as usual, Drax was one step ahead of him, his voice carrying its usual literal bluntness across the threshold.

"How did he know?" Drax marveled, his eyes wide with genuine awe. "The weird man is impressive..."

Groot folded his arms with impatience, his tone tinged with a hint of frustration. "I am Groot." Even his words seemed to carry a small echo of exasperation as they bounced off the stone walls.

Rocket, always quick to turn a failure into a jab, crossed his arms and rounded on Drax, his voice dripping with a combination of sarcasm and amusement. "The tree’s right, Drax. I highly doubt they have talking trees or mighty creatures like myself here on Earth. Ha."

Mantis, standing slightly to the side, tilted her head in genuine curiosity as she watched the exchange unfold. Her antennae twitched with interest, as she added with earnest concern, "Does he know everything?"

Quill turned towards the group, his expression caught between a scowl and a grin, fighting to maintain his dignity while feeling the sting of their failed approach. His shoulders slumped with a mix of embarrassment and grudging admiration for Strange's foresight.

Gamora, noticing Quill's dismay, placed a calming hand on his arm. She spoke with a mix of reassurance and determination. "At least he hasn’t attacked us yet."

Quill huffed a sigh, his bravado deflating like a punctured balloon. "Yet," he repeated, shaking his head as he took in the scene, wondering how they'd managed to find themselves in this situation so quickly.

Strange's eyes briefly flickered with a mysterious, knowing light.

"Well, do you care to come in?"

Quill glanced at Gamora, hesitation mingled with resignation as he shoved his hands into his pockets.

"I guess this blows our cover, so we just might make ourselves comfortable."

He shot her a look that was part apology, part mischief, and they stepped over the threshold into the heart of the Sanctorum. They followed Strange, still exchanging words as they moved deeper inside, their bickering relentless as if nothing had gone wrong. Each room they passed was filled with strange relics and mystical antiques, shelves stacked with glowing artifacts that seemed to defy explanation.

The Guardians fought hard to convince Strange, trying to pull him into their quest—all in hope he might actually listen.

Quill leaned in, his confidence unwavering, as he tried to talk some sense into the stoic sorcerer.

"Alright, let's talk business weird guy in a cape. We're here for that," he said, pointing towards the amulet Strange was wearing.

The doctor offered only a slight turn of his head, unimpressed, his tone sharp and unwavering, "The Eye of Agamotto? Yes, no way I'm giving you this."

Gamora interjected with urgency, trying to make Strange grasp the gravity of the situation. "The fate of the universe is at stake," she said, her voice unwavering.

Strange's gaze swept across the room, his skepticism evident, "And you're telling me the universe's fate is in the hands of a group of… idiots?" He turned toward Rocket, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Paws, pardon."

"I am Groot."

"And branches, yes," Strange replied, nodding towards Groot with a momentary flash of perplexed amusement.

He continued, his voice steady, "As I was saying..."

Quill interjected, a mix of confusion and intense curiosity in his voice. "You speak Groot?" he asked, eyebrows raised.

"No..." Strange replied, a furrow deepening on his brow. "I can interpret the situation, though, Mr.?"

"You can call me Star-Lord."

Strange nodded, dismissive yet faintly amused. "Sure, Mr. Star-Lord ," he said, his voice trailing off as he shifted focus.

"As I was saying... I'm here to protect this relic."

Gamora's eyes narrowed, her words cutting through the air with pointed clarity. "That's not just a relic, that's an Infinity Stone, and my father is after them to finish what he started."

Strange paused, this new information finally cracking his aloof demeanor. "And your father is...?"

Gamora responded instantly, her voice charged with the urgency of someone who had lived the horror she was describing.

"Thanos," she said. "He's already wiped out more planets than you can imagine—slaughtering entire populations in the name of his so-called ideals. We have to act, now. We came here to stop him before it’s too late. Earth has two of the Stones, and we know you’ve come into contact with a third. We need your help—and your resources."

The room fell silent, their plea hanging in the air like a weight that pressed on every breath. Strange looked around at them all, the conflict clear in his eyes before he finally spoke.
"This may be more complicated than I thought... I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not making any promises."

Quill glanced at Gamora, hope flickering between them—just enough to believe Strange might actually help.

Minutes later, the group found themselves outside, Strange’s voice echoing behind them as they left. "Wait here. I’ll see what I can arrange," he said as the door closed.

Acting purely on faith, the Guardians loitered near the ship, unsure of what Strange might do. Quill paced impatiently, hands buried in his jacket, while Rocket fiddled with several gadgets, muttering impatiently about "Earth tech." Gamora stood apart, arms crossed, her stance a mixture of tension and determination. Mantis was by Groot, both watching Drax as he tossed pieces of scrap metal into the air like a carnival game.

When finally Strange returned, the air of reluctance about him was unmistakable. "There may be others who will hear you out," he said. "Follow me."

The Guardians exchanged wary glances before falling into step behind Strange. His cloak billowed dramatically as he moved, seeming almost alive in the way it responded to the slightest breeze.

"Others?" Quill muttered, quickening his pace to walk alongside the sorcerer. "What kind of others are we talking about? More cape-wearing wizards, or...?"

"The kind who might actually be able to help with your problem," Strange replied, his voice clipped yet somehow still carrying an undercurrent of dry humor.

Rocket scurried ahead, his small form darting between pedestrians who stared openly at the unusual group. "Great, more humans. Just what we need."

"I am Groot," came the response from behind, sounding distinctly unimpressed.

"Yeah, exactly," Rocket agreed. "Bunch of primitive monkeys playing with technology they barely understand."

Strange cast a sidelong glance at the raccoon. "You might be surprised at what we 'primitive monkeys' have accomplished."

They turned a corner onto a bustling New York street, the cacophony of horns and shouting vendors washing over them. Drax looked around with undisguised fascination, nearly walking into a hot dog cart as he studied the city.

"Your planet is very loud," he observed. "And smells of many strange foods." He paused taking in the scenery. “I like it.” He decided, stepping closer to the group.

Gamora kept her hand close to her weapon, eyes constantly scanning the surroundings. "Where exactly are you taking us, Doctor?"

"Somewhere more secure than the sidewalk," Strange answered.

Moments later, they found themselves speeding through the congested streets of New York, Strange driving with surprising dexterity for someone who seemed more at home manipulating mystic energies. His nonchalance behind the wheel stood in sharp contrast to the Guardians’ nonstop chatter, their voices overlapping in a chaotic blend of strategy debates and wild speculation about the meeting ahead.

They arrived at a towering building, its original purpose obscured by renovations and repurposing.

Strange led them inside without ceremony. "I can't guarantee they'll side with you," he said, though a hint of grudging respect edged his voice.
"Or that I will."

The Guardians nodded, holding onto the fragile thread of hope Strange had offered as they followed him inside. The corridors twisted like a labyrinth, only less dark and lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. Strange navigated them with quiet confidence, making it clear he had been there before. He stopped in front of a heavy door, hesitating just long enough to make them wonder what lay beyond—then pushed it open.

In the now-transformed Avengers Tower, a meeting was unfolding—presided over by a dead man.

Chapter Text

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: From half this chapter onward, the story begins an optional recruitment arc. It explores character dynamics and lays some groundwork for future chapters. However, if you’d prefer to stay focused on the main storyline—or if you’re not in the mood for side-character moments—you can skip ahead to Chapter 6: Iron Resolve to continue with the core plot.

ps. Be sure to read the first half of this chapter tough 🥰

Fury sat at the far end of the long glass table, his hands clasped and an intense frown imprinted on his forehead as he took in the magnitude of the situation.

Beside him, agent Hill was absorbed with a stack of files, her manner businesslike and efficient as always. Across from them, Gamora and Dr. Steven Strange occupied the other side of the table.

Tension was thick in the air, each person locked in their own thoughts about the aftermath of their decisions.

Eventually, Gamora broke the silence. "Who are they?" she said, her curiosity piqued by the assortment of profiles in front of Hill.

"Earth's mightiest heroes, miss?" Fury said, his voice a gravelly rumble.

"Just Gamora," she cut him off, her tone steady. Her eyes were unwavering as she absorbed the information about this infamous team. She had expected more of them—expected a unity that wasn't reflected in the files.

"Aren't the Avengers somewhat fallen apart? I thought there was legislation involved?" Added another voice.

Hill looked up, her eyes meeting Strange’s with a level gaze. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, ready to give a concise report. "Yes, Mr. Strange," she began, only to be interrupted.

"Doctor, please," Strange interjected, the correction both polite and firm.

Hill continued with a no-nonsense tone, revealing the complex intricacies of their situation. "Some of the Avengers have signed a paper resigning their services to the American government," she explained, "while the others are on the run from the said government." Her voice was matter-of-fact, the efficiency of her words underscoring the severity of the split.

Gamora took in Hill's words with mounting impatience, the disarray of this so-called super-team testing her usual calm. "Then how are they gonna help?" she asked, her irritation leaking into her voice. Fury’s reply came with a hint of amusement, as if the chaos was just another day at the office for him. "Nobody said the Government should be involved," he stated simply, confidence evident in his tone. 

Strange tilted his head, catching on quickly to the plan’s inherent difficulties. "Then I guess the only problem is stopping them from hating each other," he stated, with an amusement that conceived his perplexities with the plan.

He arched an eyebrow, his skepticism mingling with grudging respect for the boldness of Fury's strategy.

Fury leaned back in his chair, unfazed by the mountain of complications. "That is why we are going to talk them into this separately," he said, a sly edge to his words. "I'm going to need your help for this," he added, looking directly at Strange.

The room was thick with the weight of what they were attempting, each member silently acknowledging the herculean task of corralling the scattered Avengers. There was a pause, a collective moment of recognition that this plan could just as easily fall apart as succeed. Strange's eyes met Fury’s, and in the silent exchange there was the unspoken agreement that they'd go down swinging if that was what it took.

The Guardians, Fury, Hill, and Strange stood around the hangar with an air of grim determination. The stakes were looming large, and they knew the plan had to be flawless if it was going to work.

"Okay," Fury said, his voice carrying a weight that underscored the seriousness of their mission. "Let's revise the plan once again. We first target Stark, Thor, and Banner." He paused for emphasis, ensuring that everyone was on the same page. "Stark is an easy one to spot, but the hardest one to talk into this. Strange, he is yours." He looked at Strange with a knowing glance.

"Thor has been difficult to locate, but thanks to the Guardians' technology, we have found that he is currently on one of the nine realms, Muspelheim. I want him here by the end of the week." His eyes swept over Rocket, Groot, and Quill, assigning them with a pointed look. "You three will go."

Releasing a heavy breath, he continued, setting his sights on the next objective. "Banner has been even harder to find and will be even harder to get back. He is currently on a planet that on these..." He hesitated, searching for the right words, "...warriors' account is called Sakaar."

"We've never been there before," Mantis interrupted, her voice sing-song as she chimed in.

Fury acknowledged her with a nod, continuing the briefing without missing a beat. "I’m glad you are this enthusiast, because you, Gamora, and Drax will be heading there to get him back." He paused, eyeing his team with firm resolve. "And as for myself, I'll get Steve Rogers to join." His confidence was palpable, the assurance of a man used to making things happen against the odds.

"From there, we will relocate and get to the others." His voice carried a mix of urgency and optimism as he wrapped up the meeting. "See you back here, hopefully in one piece."

The urgency of their mission propelled them into action, each team moving with a singular focus as they prepared to embark on their assignments. Strange lingered a moment, casting a thoughtful glance at Fury, as if to point out how they were embarking on a plan with more holes than certainties. Fury returned the look, a subtle smirk playing at the corner of his lips, as though the chaos was part of the fun. Then Strange was gone, whisked away to track down Stark through an untraceable portal. 

As Gamora, Drax, and Mantis boarded their ship (courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D.), knowing that their task would be the most dangerous—and possibly the most futile, but hope flamed up their spirits, and for them, that was enough. Within moments, they were in the air, the craft a blur against the horizon as they set their course for Sakaar at breakneck speed.

Rocket, Groot, and Quill made final adjustments to their gear, a mix of human tools and alien tech, before powering up their ship. Their mission was straightforward, but Thor's reappearance brought complications they couldn't fully anticipate. The engines roared to life as the three exchanged a quick nod, ready for whatever had to come.

Rocket stumbled through the treacherous wasteland, adjusting the scanner in his hand with both irritation and determination. The desolate hellscape of Muspelheim stretched endlessly around him in every direction, a fiery desert that seemed to consume the horizon itself. Rivers of molten lava snaked through craggy, blistering terrain, and volcanic ash swirled in the searing air like snowflakes in Hades. 

"Where the heck is that thunder boy?" 

He muttered, squinting against the heat and wiping a sweat-soaked brow.

Groot lagged behind, his usually vibrant branches singed and drooping. 

"I am Groot," he offered, but there was fatigue in his tone, even as he tried to give them a snarky remark.

Quill jogged to keep up, his usual cocky demeanor faltering in the oppressive conditions. "I know, guys, I'm tired myself," he panted out, his voice straining to sound confident and bolstered.

He looked at the monitor strapped to his wrist, tapping on its cracked screen. "But the signal is still strong, he's here, he has to be. I'm sure we'll find him soon."

Thor lay distant and delirious, his mind teetering on the edge of sanity as the sweltering world of flame throbbed around him. His head rested on his torso, a position he'd been forced into by the merciless grasp of chains that bound his wrists and ankles and wrapped ominously around him like the crushing coils of a serpent.

Time had lost its meaning since his capture, his once indomitable resolve now hanging by the thread of his frustration. 

In an attempt to stave off madness, he found himself speaking to the only companion in his makeshift prison—a bleached skeleton grinning back at him with ghostly indifference.

"And I couldn't find any of the stones, you know," he rambled, the words tumbling out in a daze. "And I had a girlfriend, but she left me. What is a man to do?"

He paused, the silence looming large before he confessed his own defeat. "Sometimes, a man has to get captured to get straight answers. What do you say—want to bail this place with me?" His voice was hopeful, a strange light flickering amidst despair.

"Sure, why not, sparkle," came an unexpected reply, the words a jarring interruption to his solitude. Thor jerked his head back, searching the fiery shadows for the speaker.

His heart thudded as his eyes darted from the silent skeleton to the erupting landscape beyond his cage. "Did you say something?"

His voice trembled with a strange mix of suspicion and hope. "Are you a magical skeleton perhaps?"

A pause, then a response—this time tinged with the sharpness of sarcasm.

 "No, but you're a magical idiot. I'm down here, magical idiot."

Thor struggled against his chains, the metal clattering discordantly as he shifted to peer from the other side of his cage. "I can't see you," he called out, his curiosity overcoming his resignation. "Who are you?"

"Your mighty hero," the voice declared, the tone now smug. "I was sent to get you back to Earth, Sparkle. But you seem pretty out of it. Maybe it's better if we just get the other Avengers."

"Wait, you know the Avengers?" Thor pressed, his suspicion now more pronounced than hope.

"Pff, 'do we know the Avengers.'" The voice scoffed with exaggerated disbelief. "Quill, he asked if we know the Avengers.” He retorted sarcastically and then paused.

“No, no, we don't. But we know someone who does. And he said you're valuable. So are you?"

Thor pulled at the chains with all his might, the metal groaning as he stretched against it, fierce determination rekindling. "Get me out of here, and I'll show you."

"He's feisty—I like him," Quill chimed in, his enthusiasm barely contained.

"I am Groot," came the sing-song reply, a hint of curiosity in the tone.

"I'm glad you are having fun," Thor interjected, his voice frantic and edged with impatience. "When you're done deciding if I am worth your time, could you please break these fucking chains?"

As soon as Quill got a shot on the metal binding Thor, a horde of grotesque monsters began to appear, creeping from the burning shadows and surrounding them with malicious intent.

"Shit!" Quill yelled, the urgency in his voice escalating to panic as the situation rapidly deteriorated. "Rocket, I've gotta finish the job. Can you take care of our friends?"

"On it!" Rocket barked, springing into action with adrenaline-fueled precision. "Alright, Groot, let's show them what we got."

The two charged defiantly towards the encroaching enemies, guns drawn, unleashing a barrage of firepower as Quill returned to his precarious task.

"Good," Quill said, his focus divided between dodging incoming monsters and freeing Thor. "Could you like, try to pull the chains so I can have a good angle without, I don't know, killing you maybe?"

Thor let out an exasperated sigh, his patience as frayed as the chains. "Oh come on, give me that gun. I'll do it myself. I'd really want to know who thought sending you idiots to rescue me was a good idea."

While shooting back the unrelenting swarm, Rocket shouted, the words tinged with defiance and pride. "Nick Fury, that's who."

Thor froze for a split second, the unexpected revelation cutting through the chaos. "What do you mean with ‘Nick Fury’?" he called out, the desperation breaking in his voice. "What's going on on Earth?"

"Thanos," Quill replied, the single word bearing the weight of fate upon it. "Thanos is going on, and not just on Earth, but in the whole galaxy. We're gonna need all the help we can get."

He tossed Thor the gun, a silent testament of trust in the midst of the madness. Without a moment of hesitation, Thor aimed, a fierce gleam in his eyes. He fired a couple of inches from his arm, the shot precise and reckless, leaving a small chain still attached. He repeated for the other arm and legs and then leaped out of the cage, the newfound freedom sparking through him like lightning as he charged headlong into the mass of creatures.

"Now you'll see how useful I am," he shouted, his words carrying a promise and a challenge in equal parts. He swung a mighty fist, sending one of the attackers sprawling through the air. He stood firm, raising a hand to the sky as though daring the heavens themselves.

"I don't see anything," Quill quipped, glancing up with an incredulous grin.

A confident smirk danced on Thor's lips. "One moment."

Seconds stretched like eternity, with the others still engaged in fierce combat against the unfolding horde.

"Wrong punchline timing..." Thor muttered, with a small laugh that tried to cover the awkwardness of the moment.

Then, with a triumphant roar, Thor held his hand higher. The moment seemed to crystallize, each second measured in heartbeats and anticipation before a hammer shot towards him, streaking like a comet from the heavens to his grasp.

"There you go, much better," he said, and with renewed vigor, Thor dove back into the chaos, the hammer an extension of his fierce will. He shattered skulls with thunderous blows, the monsters falling like wheat before a scythe.

"Where's your ship?" he bellowed, the booming demand punctuating the relentless sounds of battle.

"All the way towards that big red rock," Quill shouted back, his words laced with the irony of the landscape.

"Which one? They're all big red rocks!" Thor replied, the hint of outrage almost comical amidst his fierce determination.

Rocket's voice carried the same indomitable spirit. "Just keep running in that direction—you'll see it when you get there."

Thor surged forward with relentless momentum, his advance carving a path through the bodies that swarmed towards them with savage persistence. Groot followed closely behind, taking down any who slipped past Thor's formidable offense.

Rocket and Quill completed the formation, firing relentlessly at the pursuing horde, each shot landing as they weaved through the monstrous throng.

After fifteen impossibly long minutes of running, the four figures finally began to see the outline of the spaceship, their escape looming like salvation on the horizon. They were pushed to the edge, each of them fighting against their physical limits. Thor, having been confined too long, felt hunger gnaw at him, his muscles dragging with the bitter ache of captivity.

Groot stretched out one of his branches, pressing against the hull of the ship as it recognized its owner. An old door slid ajar, opening for them with a clang of metal that sang of freedom.

"Come on, get on the ship, we don't have time to lose!" Quill shouted as they approached, the urgency in his voice a call to arms.

Thor halted at the ramp, determination carved into his features. "Go on, get on board. I'll hold them down."

"Are you sure you can handle them?" Rocket retorted, still firing as the monsters pressed dangerously close.

"Yes," Thor insisted, the force of his will almost tangible. "Go now, or they'll start tearing the metal apart."

Trusting in his conviction, Rocket and Quill darted up the ramp, leaving Thor to fend off the horde with Mjolnir's sweeping fury. They continued to shoot at the closest beasts, even as they sprinted for the safety of the ship.

Once everyone was on board, Quill felt the speed of fear propelling him. His tired body moved faster than it should have. He bolted to the command plate. Urgency filled the air as he started the engines.

Rocket and Groot were already at the door, firing at anything that dared come close.

"Go, go, go!" Rocket yelled, pouring every ounce of energy into beating back the encroaching horde while scanning for Thor.

The ship vibrated to life, a resonant hum signaling their last hope of escape.

Meanwhile outside, Thor fought on tirelessly, his stamina fading. The monsters grew bolder, closing in with each second he stayed behind. His strikes lessened, missing more targets as weariness sapped him. From inside the spaceship, Rocket tried to help him, but the distance made it almost impossible to get a good aim. Thor was almost face to face with the enemies, barely holding them off. The hammer felt foreign in his hands, the weight unnatural and his very breath labored.

Quill slapped his hand on the console in frustration. "Come on, Thor," he shouted, the engines finally roaring to life with a triumphant blast. "Get on board, we're leaving!" But the God of Thunder had no more energy left. The mob of creatures encircled him, claws and fangs flashing as he weakly swung his hammer, the godly weapon now no more effective than a twig. The monsters surged forward, sensing victory. "Shit," Rocket muttered, desperation etched into his face as he fired wildly at the mass around Thor. 

"I am Groot!" came the determined cry, the tree being launching himself back outside, defiant and loyal. His branches stretched to their limits as he wrapped them around the son of Odin, the effort nearly overextending him.

Thor was barely conscious, the world fading in and out around him, a collage of chaos and defeat. "Yes, Groot!” Rocket shouted from the ramp, using every ounce of his skill to support the rescue from his vantage point. "You're my favorite, you know?" Each shot from his gun was an affirmation of his faith in Groot, keeping the creatures at bay.

Groot lifted the unconscious god with strenuous fatigue, each step back to the ship a monumental labor. "Get him on board!" Rocket urged, his voice commanding and filled with hope as they got closer to the ship. His cover fire grew more precise, determination allowing him to concentrate with the intense focus of a last-ditch effort. Thor dangled like prey in a trap, his limbs heavy, his senses overwhelmed. Summoning every reserve, Groot managed to pull him up the ramp and inside. The instant Quill noticed they were all inside, he slammed the doors shut, sealing away the hellish landscape of Muspelheim. 

Quill launched the ship with a fierce lurch, the vehicle blasting away from the surface with mottled streaks of energy trailing behind it. Colors shifted from fiery reds to the chilling blues of space, the vast emptiness contrasting starkly with the crowded fight they had barely escaped. Out of the atmosphere of Muspelheim and back into the cosmic void, an eerie silence enveloped them, broken only by the electronic whirrs of the ship and the ragged breaths of the team.

The three collapsed onto the floor, Thor's limp form pooling like water next to them as they worked to catch their breath. "You think we got away clean?" Quill asked, the trembling in his voice betraying the terrifying uncertainty that lingered despite their escape.

"Hope so," Rocket replied, his bravado tempered by the close call. "Groot, see if our mighty hero needs a little mouth-to-mouth."

Groot crouched over the ashen figure, alert for any sign of life. "I am Groot," he said with quiet insistence, his tone almost tender.

Rocket couldn't help but snicker, relief giving way to humor even in the dire situation. "Sounds like a personal problem, big guy."

Quill watched Thor's still form, their recent brush with disaster fading as a new urgency took hold. "We need him conscious," he said, the command cutting through the lingering tension. "We're no match for Thanos without him."

Rocket eyed their comatose ally skeptically, a mix of concern and mischief playing across his features. "Looks like we're no match for Thanos even with him."

Groot lowered a branch gently onto Thor's chest, coaxing a subtle response from the fallen god. To everyone’s surprise, Thor stirred slightly, the flicker of consciousness a small victory. 

Quill jumped to his feet, the rush of purpose rekindling his energy. "Groot, help him. Rocket, with me. Let's see if this ship is still in one piece."

They scattered to their tasks, the ship a hive of frenetic activity as they sped toward Earth. The urgency of the mission consumed them, each mindful of the greater threat looming.

Chapter Text

Sakaar was everything you'd imagine a planet on the outermost edge of the universe to be. From the moment the hatch of the Avengers' Jet opened, the sights and sounds of the chaotic planet poured in like an unrestrained flood. Flashing colors and buzzing machinery filled the horizon, and the scents of melting metals wafted through the air. Sakaar was alive. Gamora, Drax, and Mantis gazed out with mixed emotions, each processing the sensory overload in their own way. Mantis's eyes were wide with wonder, taking in the vibrant surroundings as she unboarded. Everything about this wasteland was new to her, a stark contrast to the tranquil, empty garden world she once knew as home. She took a deep breath, allowing this strange new world to engulf her senses. Here was a chaotic place, bursting with activity and energy. Before the others could react, she stepped off the craft and wandered ahead, utterly entranced.

“How are we going to find him?” Drax grumbled loudly as he soon followed, his feet pounding the ramp with solid determination.

“We'll have to get information from the inhabitants, but we'll need to be careful. We can't risk word getting out.” Gamora was last to join them, closing the ship's hatch and activating a camouflage shield that made the imposing vehicle fade into nothingness as far as the eye was concerned.

She threw on a grubby cloak, pulling the hood tightly over her head. She was skeptical that anyone on this frenzied planet would care about her identity, but she knew better than to be too sure. Her time with Thanos had taught her the risk of underestimating mercenary types. If Thanos's agents paid a visit to Sakaar, she couldn't afford to be the subject of any reports.

“Drax, where is Mantis?” Her sharp eyes scanned the bustling scrapyard, but their teammate was already missing.

“She said she wanted to take a stroll, whatever that means.”

Gamora resisted the urge to slap herself on the forehead. “Let's go find her. I have no intention of playing babysitter for the two of you!” Her voice was filled with annoyance, but she secretly knew she was in for a long day.

The scrapyard they landed in was a chaotic mess of random piles and makeshift structures, as if the universe had tidied up and dumped the unwanted bits here. Gamora handed a heavy payment to a man at the exit, and with a threatening glare, reminded him to keep quiet about their presence. The message was clear, and a bonus from S.H.I.E.L.D. ensured it would stick. As the team stepped into the streets, they faced the overwhelming rush of an endless crowd, a sea of beings flowing and clashing with manic energy. It was like facing a tidal wave, and Gamora's frustration rose as her field of view shrank to nothing.

“Shit, we're never gonna find her like this!” she snapped, elbowing her way through the throng.

Drax used his towering height to his advantage, steering through the packed street like an icebreaker. He directed Gamora ahead of him, creating a sort of breach in the flow as they muscled forward. It didn't take long before he spotted Mantis, standing out from the crowd by the sheer stillness of her trance-like stance. She was in front of a makeshift high-rise, her antennae twitching, eyes fixed on something in the sky. Drax pointed her out, his grip like a vice on Gamora's shoulder, pulling her with unwavering focus toward their lost companion.

Gamora was ready to scold Mantis for running off, but Mantis sensed them first. Her antennae moved in the breeze, and she turned to them with an expression of sheer delight.

“I've found him!” She announced with bright eyes, pointing to a massive banner displayed on the side of the building in front of them.

The others followed her gaze, shielding their eyes from the glare of Sakaar's blazing sun. The advertisement loomed above them, a spectacle of the planet's entertainment culture. It showcased a green figure far larger than Drax, roaring to the camera with primal fury. The name 'The Hulk' was emblazoned across it in bold letters, along with details of a match in the Grand Arena. The picture was unmistakable, and it was clear they had found their mark.

“We have some time to kill before the event, but I'm going to be very clear with both of you,” Gamora said sternly, though a hint of relief softened her tone. “If I lose sight of you again, I'm going to glue you both to the side of our ship.”

They spent the afternoon touristing Sakaar's overcrowded markets, seeing an opportunity to refurbish for the journey back. Glowing signs blared down at them, vendors shouted in a thousand alien tongues, and bustling stands offered everything imaginable, from spaceship parts to exotic weapons. The streets were a swirling mass of colors, a kaleidoscopic carnival of creatures and chaos. Going through stalls at the end of the universe underlined how many intresting things can be buyed and sold on a planet where law was an abstract concept.

Gamora decided to stock up on cool gadgets she thought could be useful later on. Among these was a small object resembling a poorly made metal scrap lighter, but that according to the seller, was an inhibitor of magnetic fields, capable of jamming the most complex equipment. She also decided on a keychain shaped like the tiniest sword handle. When flicked, it released a flamethrower resembling the planet's prettiest and most deadly fire sword. She didn't entirely trust the craftsmanship of the Sakaarans, but the price was good enough, and ultimately, it was still S.H.I.E.L.D.'s money she was spending.

The team darted from one stall to the next, each new distraction pulling their attention in different directions, yet Gamora managed to keep Drax and Mantis in sight this time. She also used the opportunity to gather intelligence, buying tickets for that night's event. It didn't seem to make them suspicious to anyone, as fights in the arena were standard for Sakaarans entertainment. She learned that the ruler of the Sakaarans scum was a megalomaniac known as the Grandmaster, with a cruel fondness for bloodsport. He captured prisoners and made them battle in a brutal tournament, falsely promising freedom to the winner. A few credits more, and she learned that Hulk was his latest toy, showcased as the main attraction in the upcoming match.

With tickets in hand and a few pockets filled with gear, the three reunited at a food stand, where Drax insisted on trying one of everything. The aroma of spices and exotic foods wafted through the bustling air, blending seamlessly with the metallic tang of machinery and the pungent odor of strange, unfamiliar plants. Even amid the throngs of people crowding the streets, there lingered a subtle hint of desert dust in the background, whispering tales of distant sands and forgotten winds.The smell of alien cuisine was overpowering, but Mantis enjoyed tasting new things too much for Gamora to drag them away. Eventually, even Drax had his fill, and they made their way toward the looming structure of the Grand Arena.

That evening the team made their way through the bustling streets, drawn toward the pulsating glow of the Grand Arena. The air buzzed with anticipation, and the atmosphere simmered with electric excitement. Vendors lined the roads, hawking last-minute tickets and cheap souvenirs that promised to commemorate the night's event. The Guardians joined the throng of eager spectators, their presence masked by the sea of life that flowed like a river toward the looming structure. Gamora led the way, her hood pulled low over her eyes, her focus sharp and her stride even sharper. She had given up on trying to keep Drax and Mantis perfectly in line; they would get there in their roundabout way, and she had resigned herself to accepting that.

By the time they reached the main entrance, the building was an enormous, glowing behemoth, standing in stark contrast to the darkening Sakaaran sky. The scale of it was overwhelming, dwarfing the already chaotic surroundings. It was a hive of activity, swarming with hordes of creatures pushing their way inside. Despite the apparent disorder, a methodical routine began to emerge, and Gamora's strategic mind ticked as she observed the flow. She scouted the entrances and exits, memorizing their locations, her tactical instincts serving her well in the absence of a formal plan. Although it was Quill's specialty to formulate schemes, she trusted their abilities to improvise when the moment presented itself.

"We're going to have to wing it," she muttered, keeping her voice resigned but confident. They would find the right opening to act, even if it meant plunging in headfirst.

Security was tight, with armed guards checking every entrance, and weapons were strictly forbidden. Gamora didn't flinch as they approached the front line, her self-assurance growing with each passing second

Drax appeared unfazed, carrying himself with a casual defiance that seemed ignorant of the risk. Mantis trailed behind, her eyes wide with curiosity.

When it was their turn, Gamora boldly approached the checkpoint, concealing nothing but her intentions. Her breath was steady and calm, and it wasn't even necessary to feign innocence. The guard's scanners barely glanced at them, and Gamora's pockets, laden with gadgets and gear, went unheeded. Her newest addition, the tiny sword-like keychain, passed the security controls entirely unnoticed. She flicked it in demonstration to Mantis as soon as they were out of sight, the glowing fire sword lighting with a hiss, catching even Drax by surprise.

"We’ll see who's really the best fighter around here," Gamora stated with a smirk, her confidence now swelling.

Inside the arena, they were met with a wall of sound. Thousands of Sakaaran citizens roared and stomped, creating a deafening cacophony that vibrated through Gamora's chest. The circular stadium was packed to capacity, spectators crammed shoulder-to-shoulder along tiered seatings that stretched upward into darkness. Flashing lights of every color pulsed in time with the crowd's chants, and holographic advertisements flickered across suspended screens.

"These people are very excited about watching others fight to the death," Mantis observed, her antennae twitching nervously as she absorbed the collective bloodlust.

"It is a noble entertainment," Drax nodded approvingly, already scanning the arena floor. "Though their seatings are too small for warriors of proper size."

Gamora shoved them both toward their assigned section. "Just remember why we're here.”

The anticipation inside the arena reached its peak a few moments later when the crowd erupted into an even wilder frenzy. The dimming lights heightened their eagerness, and the stadium floor flooded with bright illumination, intensifying the spectacle. From the announcer's cabin high above came the laid-back voice of Sakaar's ruler, a charismatic figure that the floating screens identified as the Grandmaster.

"Friends, people of Sakaar, Hi." 

His casual greeting carried a peculiar vibe, as if he was in a different world. He didn't seem particularly focused, perhaps having indulged in some Sakaaran recreational substances. The way he spoke was almost as if he was addressing some buddies at a laid-back party.

He paused as if completely unsure of what should come next. There was no urgency in his voice, just the cool confidence of someone who knew he could take all the time he wanted. Turning to one of his counselors, he whispered with an ever-present air of amusement.

"What... Ah, yes, yes." The words drifted out, barely before he turned back to the microphone.

"As I was saying, people of Sakaar, welcome back to another amazing night in the Grand Arena. For your delightment," his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, "and mine," before returning to full volume and enthusiasm. "We'll be having another wonderful match tonight. The people's favorite warrior, the almighty Hulk, will fight against a newcomer. Will this new guy last more than two minutes? Only time will tell." His words were accompanied by a pleased humming, tapping his fingers like he was deeply satisfied by the thought.

"But first, the less interesting matches of the day, I'll be sitting these ones out, but, but you enjoy them." He turned and called directly to someone behind him, more interested in his own musings than the audience. "Come on now, open these doors, go do your fucking job." The entire spectacle was delivered with a dismissive wave of his hand, as if everything was just part of a personal game.

The Guardians watched from their crowded section, the chaos of the arena matched by Gamora's racing thoughts. Beneath the surface of her disciplined exterior, she was calculating every possible outcome. She knew it was risky to wait until Hulk had already entered the arena. Timing was key, and they had to make their move before the main event.

"This guy can't even remember what match his favorite fighter is in," she scoffed, a smirk playing on her lips as the Grandmaster's strange voice continued to echo. "Maybe he won't notice when we crash his party." She looked at Drax and Mantis with a combination of urgency and determination, knowing full well that they had to reach Banner before his match began.

Inside the arena, a buzz of excitement hung in the air, the crowd's energy feeding off the spectacle and announcing the night. Even in the colorful chaos, Gamora's focus remained sharp, her determined eyes fixed on the arena floor. She knew that once Hulk was unleashed, things would get dangerous, and she had every intention of reaching him before he became a force of nature.

The crowd's roar was deafening, a wall of sound that seemed almost physical in its intensity. Thousands of beings from across the galaxy joined in the fervor, shouting and chanting with wild enthusiasm. The Grandmaster was now completely ignoring the means of communication, engaged in something entirely else. Gamora couldn't shake the feeling that no one around him was aware of much that was going on outside their small bubble.

"These people care about one thing," she noted, her strategic mind spinning through plans. "We just need to distract them long enough to get in and out."

"Let's hope these warriors do not bore us," Drax added, his enjoyment of the madness clear, and his thoughts already on the fight. "We need to get the best seats!"

"Where will we sit, anyway?" Mantis asked, antennae twitching, her empathy cutting through the bloodthirsty excitement. "I don't want to be too close."

Gamora's eyes flickered between her two teammates. She knew they were ready to jump into action, even if they didn't fully understand her plan. "We'll get close enough," she said, "and when we do, just follow my lead."

Not so much later the iron gates placed circularly around the arena started to open. The sounds of grinding metal and the sharp hiss of steam echoed as the rust-colored barriers retracted, adding to the rising pitch of excitement within the massive stadium. The energy of the spectators became almost frantic, a living thing that pulsed and writhed with anticipation. Gamora's sharp eyes took in the scene, absorbing every detail with calculated precision. She quickly redirected her focus to the Grandmaster and his entourage high above the arena floor, finding them impossibly preoccupied with their own indulgences. It seemed to her they were not the smartest of the bunch. They were definitely not paying much attention, and all of them had gone back to smoking and eating charcuterie from wooden boards made out of scraps. The Guardians' presence was likely to go unnoticed, at least for the time being.

"We have to find a way to get inside before Banner can get in the arena." Said her, eyeing both Drax and Mantis. She knew they had only a short window to reach him before the main event began. Despite the chaos, her mind remained sharp and focused, running through a series of potential tactics.

Gamora's thoughts raced as she took in the obstacles. Armed guards were stationed at every entrance, and the crowd's intensity meant slipping in unnoticed would require precise timing. Her determination was fierce, and she was certain they could pull it off with the right plan.

"How are we going to do it? There are guards outside each entry," noted Mantis, following the perimeter with her gaze. She seemed genuinely concerned, her awareness of the challenge stirring a sense of urgency within her.

Gamora's confidence swelled as she worked through the possibilities, knowing that improvisation was their strong suit. She looked at Mantis with a gleam of certainty in her eyes. "You are going to do it," answered Gamora, her tone resolute and assured.

The plan began to take shape in her mind. Gamora knew that a well-timed distraction could be their key to success. The chaos of the opening event would provide the perfect cover, and with the Grandmaster's attention elsewhere, they had a real chance.

"We need you to put to sleep the guards at one of the entrances," she explained, outlining the strategy with brisk efficiency. "You'll use an excuse to get closer and then we'll all sneak in as the fight starts. If everything goes according to plan then we'll hopefully go unnoticed."

She waited for the warriors to reach the center of the stadium. These so-called 'less interesting matches' seemed to involve a full-scale slaughter with over ten combatants at a time. She scanned the spectators, observing their every move and waiting for them to become most distracted.

That moment came soon after, right when the grandmaster's spokesman announced the start of the game. The Sakaarans were glued to their seats, eyes fixed on the gladiators, waving banners and cheering for their favored warrior.

Gamora caught Mantis's attention by tapping her shoulder, nodding towards the nearest entrance leading to the warriors' quarters.

Mantis quickly sprang into action, just as Gamora had instructed. She moved through the crowd, her antennae twitching as she sensed emotions, careful not to attract unwanted attention. As she headed towards the target, Gamora tried to get Drax's notice. Her friend was completely engrossed in the match, imitating the Sakaarans' movements and chanting to no one in particular, extolling death and warrior bravery.

Gamora grabbed his arm, her strength nothing compared to his, but enough to make him turn towards her. She signaled to him, indicating that his team needed him. Drax reluctantly left his seat, grumbling about his right to enjoy himself and how he could outperform the current fighters if he were just a few feet below.

As the Guardians neared the exit door, Gamora's attention fixed on Mantis, who was already over by the guard's outpost. She watched her teammate gesturing and could just make out Mantis's voice as she spoke. "Excuse me, sir," Mantis said to the armor-clad sentry, her words fluttering with urgency and innocence, "can you please tell me where the nearest bathroom is?" The guard looked puzzled at the odd request, then began to explain directions, his hands waving about as his voice got lost in the surrounding noise. Mantis leaned in closer, her face a picture of seriousness. "I don't understand," she said, her manner flustered yet sincere, "can you say it again, please, while you bend a little closer?"

Mantis's ruse was laughably simple, and Gamora found herself skeptical, sure that the guard would see through the ploy. But to her surprise, and perhaps to Mantis's credit, the man leaned down, tilting his head toward her like she had asked.

Gamora almost couldn't believe that the trick had worked, and this newfound guard might be dim enough to fall for anything. Mantis reached out, placing her delicate hands on the burly man's forehead, her eyes clamping shut in concentration. Within seconds, the guard was swaying, his rigid stance softening as if sleep had suddenly claimed him. He swayed again, even more unsteady, and then seemed to melt completely, collapsing against Mantis in an unconscious heap. His whole weight threatened to topple Mantis over, his armor clanking loudly as it shifted.

Gamora sprang into action, dashing over just in time to assist. She took hold of the slumping sentry, helping Mantis ease him to the ground with all the quietness possible. Though the arena's atmosphere was full of shouts and cheers, Gamora felt as if any noise might betray their position. She knelt down, swiftly unhooking the keys from the guard’s belt, each movement precise and careful. The keys jingled softly, and Gamora froze, glancing around to see if any attention had turned their way. It seemed they were in the clear for now, though she knew that that could change at any moment.

"We’re going to need to be faster than that!" Gamora whispered urgently to Mantis. The roar of the arena was deafening, echoing with the chaos of battle, but Gamora's instincts told her to remain as silent as possible. She beckoned to her companions, casting a quick look back toward Drax. He was catching up, making his way through the throngs of spectators with a slightly annoyed expression. His enthusiasm for the fights was evident, and his participation in the mission seemed, at least to Gamora, secondary.

"Someone else will take our seats," Drax grumbled as he caught up with the group, clearly dissatisfied with the interruption of his entertainment. "They should have at least brought me a pretzel." Despite his complaints, the Guardians were back on track, and Gamora felt a rush of determination as she led them toward the entrance.

The timing was perfect, the commotion from inside the arena covering their movements as they slipped past the unconscious guard and got inside. The path wound through narrow corridors, rough concrete walls barely containing the noise of the stadium. Gamora's mind spun through the unfolding parts of their plan, her awareness of every possible failure making her more focused.

"We have to get to him first," Gamora's voice carried urgency as she spoke to Drax and Mantis. "We're not going to have another chance." With the keys in hand, she pushed onward, moving through the dimly lit halls like an expert infiltrator. The loud sounds of the match continued, shoving the entire space with its intensity, but Gamora knew it wouldn't last forever. Stealth was crucial, and each step took them closer to their goal.

The corridor stretched ahead like a labyrinth, dimly lit and echoing with distant sounds of combat. Gamora led them deeper into the underground network beneath the arena, the roar of the crowd now muffled but still present. The walls were marked with crude symbols—some kind of directional system that made little sense to outsiders.

"This place is a maze," Gamora muttered, pausing at a junction where three identical passages branched off. "They've designed it this way to prevent escapes."

They walked for what seemed an eternity, the tension instilling them with anxiety as their mission was time sensitive. Each second that passed was one second closer to failing.

Gamora pushed forward, her hand softly caressing the wall’s incisions as if by entering in contact with them could get her their knowledge.

After a while Drax stopped abruptedly, sniffing the air, his face wrinkling. "There! It smells of fear and... something worse down that way." He pointed to the leftmost corridor.

"That's probably where they keep the creatures," Mantis whispered, her antennae twitching nervously. "I can sense many minds, all afraid, all except one."

They moved cautiously, passing a series of barre, pressing unintentionally closer to each other.

The scenery shifted as the passageway led into a spacious, circular chamber, closed off by a glass barrier. Dominating the center was a large pillar, occupying much of the room.

“He is not there.” Commented Mantis. “I can feel a stronger presence going forward.”

Gamora nodded to her, trusting her teammate intuition. “Lead the way.” She said in a whisper as she let Mantis take lead at the front of the trio.

The corridor lead to a less wider room, which to the Guardians disbelief, lacked any sort of protection preventing a possible escape. There wasn’t even a proper door as an archway signed the ending of the corridor and the start of Banner’s quarters.

The place was like a cavern, dark and foreboding, with walls made of rough-hewn stone and a ceiling that seemed to drip with the green glow of Hulk's anger. The room was sparse, with only a few pieces of furniture scattered about. In one corner stood a large bed, its frame made of dark, sturdy wood with a simple woven mattress on top, while the space around was filled with mountains of knick knack and all sorts of useless junk.

The room echoed with deep growls and heavy breathing as Hulk paced back and forth, eyeing his visitors with suspicion. He was already dressed in a heavy armor as he was waiting for the show to start. Every step he took resonated on the side walls as he pounded against the stone floor.

The air was thick with the weight of his presence, and the trio couldn't help but feel a chill of both fear and awe as they went inside.

"Hulk!" Gamora called out, stepping forward with her hands raised in a gesture of peace. "We need to talk to you."

The green behemoth turned, his massive shoulders tensing as he faced the intruders. His eyes narrowed, and a rumbling growl built in his chest.

"Who tiny people? Why in Hulk's room?" His voice was deep and gravelly, vibrating through the stone chamber.

Drax stepped forward, puffing out his chest. "I am Drax the Destroyer, the greatest warrior in the galaxy! We have come to—"

"We've come to bring you back to Earth," Gamora interrupted, shooting Drax a warning glance. "Your friends need you. The planet is in danger."

Hulk's face contorted into something between confusion and anger. "Earth? Hulk not go back to Earth!" He slammed his fist against the wall, sending cracks splintering through the stone. "Earth hate Hulk! Here, Hulk is champion! People love Hulk!"

Mantis moved closer, her antennae glowing softly. "Please, we need Banner's help—"

"NO BANNER!" Hulk roared, his voice shaking the very foundations of the room. "Only Hulk now! Banner gone!"

Before any of them could respond, the glinting blade of a dagger whistled through the air, narrowly missing Gamora's cheek and embedding itself in the wall behind her. The Guardians spun around to find a woman standing in the archway, her appearance seemingly human, but the strength and precision with whom she attacked told a different story.

Chapter Text

The woman stepped closer, anger in her eyes as she took a fighting stance.

“Who are you?” she demanded, her hand already on her belt, reaching for another dagger.

“Who are you?” repeated Drax, adding soon after “We were here first.” He pumped his muscles, grateful for the opportunity of having some action after he was taken away from the main show.

“I’m the one who found him and I’m not letting you take him away.”

She drew another dagger and pointed it forward ready to throw it again.

Gamora's reflexes kicked in instantly. She dove to the side as another dagger sliced through the air, rolling to her feet with fluid grace. In one swift motion, she unsheathed her own blade, the fire sword blazing to life with a fierce hiss.

"We don't want to fight you," Gamora called out, even as she shifted into a defensive stance. "But we will if we have to."

The woman - Valkyrie - didn't hesitate. She charged forward, her movements a blur of deadly precision. Drax met her head-on, his massive fists swinging. Their collision was thunderous, the impact echoing off the stone walls.

Mantis scrambled to the side, her eyes wide with alarm. "Please, stop!" she cried out, but her pleas were drowned in the chaos.

Valkyrie ducked under Drax's punch, using his momentum against him. She drove her elbow into his solar plexus, following up with a knee to his face. Drax staggered back, blood trickling from his nose, but his grin was fierce.

"Finally, a worthy opponent!" he roared, launching himself back into the fray.

Gamora circled, looking for an opening. The fire sword hummed in her grip, casting eerie shadows across the room. She fainted left, then struck right, the blazing blade clashing against Valkyrie's dagger in a shower of sparks.

Hulk meanwhile stayed aside, gladly watching the show, while he was against the idea of getting back on earth he didn’t side with either parties. He was particularly interested in Drax physical strength though, even though he was no match for him he still displayed a great form.

“Ah-ha!” triumphed Drax as he found an opening in Valkyrie’s side, landed a blow causing her to lose balance causing her to tumble for a second.

Just what Mantis needed to catch her by surprise and block her with her powers.

As Drax's face contorted into a scowl when Mantis's hands connected with Valkyrie's temples, the warrior woman froze mid-strike, her eyes glazing and her body going limp.

Mantis gasped as her mind connected with Valkyrie's, the woman's consciousness unfurling before her like a tapestry of pain and memory. The physical world around them faded away as Mantis was pulled into visions of another time, another place.

"Oh," she whispered, her voice barely audible as tears welled in her eyes.

Suddenly she wasn't in Hulk's quarters anymore but soaring through golden skies, armored in gleaming silver and white. The wind rushed past her face as she rode a magnificent winged horse alongside a legion of warrior women, their faces fierce and proud. Brunnhilde, that was her name—not Scrapper 142, but Brunnhilde of the Valkyrie.

"They were your sisters," Mantis murmured, her body trembling as the emotions washed over her. "You loved them so much."

The scene shifted violently. The golden skies darkened as a woman wreathed in shadow approached, her antlered headdress silhouetted against flames. Hela, goddess of death. Mantis felt Brunnhilde's terror, her determination, her rage as the battle unfolded. Winged horses fell from the sky, warriors impaled on blades of darkness. The screams—so many screams.

"You were the only one who survived," Mantis choked out, tears now streaming freely down her face.

Gamora and Drax watched in stunned silence as Mantis swayed on her feet, still connected to the immobilized warrior. Hulk had stopped his pacing, his massive green face showing curiosity rather than rage.

The memories continued to flow. Brunnhilde falling through space, crashing onto a world of junk and chaos. The bitter taste of alcohol burning down her throat as she tried to drown the faces of the dead. The self-loathing as she captured others for the Grandmaster's games, becoming the very thing she once fought against.

"You sold your sword," Mantis whispered, feeling the weight of the betrayal Brunnhilde carried. "You sold your soul."

Valkyrie's body jerked under Mantis's touch, fighting against the intrusion even as tears leaked from her own closed eyes.

"You hide here because you couldn't save them," Mantis continued, her voice growing stronger as understanding bloomed within her. "But you still wear their mark." Her fingers traced the faded blue tattoo on Valkyrie's forearm—the symbol of the elite Asgardian warriors.

With a gasp, Mantis broke the connection, stumbling backward. Drax caught her before she could fall, his rough hands surprisingly gentle.

"What did you see?" Gamora demanded, her fire sword still raised defensively.

"She's a Valkyrie," Mantis said, her voice filled with awe and sorrow. "A warrior of Asgard.”

Mantis got closer to Valkyrie that was still out from exertion. “I think she could be a great addition to the Avengers, she is really strong.”

“But she just tried to kill us, I don’t think she would agree.” Commented Gamora severely, not wanting to put the mission more in jeopardy.

Noticing Valkyrie didn’t get up, Hulk started to become more and more upset. “What did you do to her?” He roared. “SHE IS FRIEND!”

He seemed on the verge of attacking them and time was running low. Sooner rather than later someone would have come to search for them.

“TAKE HER BACK!” Hulk roar again.

"Ok, ok, big boy. We’re going to bring her back." Gamora kept her voice steady, but urgency sharpened her words. Hulk loomed over them, his massive fists clenching and unclenching with growing impatience.

She shot a glance at Mantis. "If there's anything you can do to get her on our side, do it now!"

Mantis scrambled toward the limp figure, her own heart pounding as desperately as the situation. Her glowing hands found Valkyrie's temples once again, but this time, instead of searching through her memories, she reached deeper, speaking to the core of her very being. "Brunnhilde, can you hear me?" Her voice was earnest and pleading.

Though Valkyrie's eyes remained closed, her body began to twitch slightly. "I think you can," thought Mantis, relief washing over her. "Good."

As she poured her energy into the limp warrior, Mantis called forth visions—scenes rich with emotion and possibility. She filled Valkyrie's mind with crystalline images of Asgard at its most glorious, of bygone days when the Valkyrie were revered. Her intent was pure, her words gentle. "Do you remember?" her voice resonated, layering with the visions.

"You don't have to go back to Asgard if you don't want to. You can come to Earth with us. Be a hero." She crafted a vivid tapestry of what could be: Valkyrie returning as a savior, embraced as a protector. "You could make things the way they used to be. You can be useful again. Earth needs you. We need you."

Mantis then turned to something darker and more urgent. She projected images of Thanos, his menacing figure casting a long shadow over desolate worlds. She showed Valkyrie the destruction wrought by the Mad Titan, devastation she herself witnessed through others' souls and her own eyes. Entire planets reduced to lifeless husks. "You could stop this," she urged, the desperation in her voice matched by the starkness of the visions. "You could be their savior."

A new string of images flooded Valkyrie's mind—of her fighting alongside the Avengers, alongside Thor. At the mention of the name, Brunnhilde's body tensed as if bracing for battle. Her muscles twitched violently, and Mantis felt the raw strength of her resolve. "And you could be back to Asgard as a hero. You could fight with us." The spasms grew more intense, Valkyrie's eyes snapping open, blazing with intent to kill.

Mantis released her, and Valkyrie jolted to her feet with ferocious speed. She snatched a dagger from the floor, drawing it in a fluid motion against all of them, her movements a mix of anger and confusion. "What did you do?" she demanded, her voice a whip of rage.

"N-nothing," squeaked Mantis, hands raised in surrender as she squirmed backward, her antennae flickering with panic.

"Thor, you named him," insisted Valkyrie, her dagger unwavering. "Are you with Odin?"

"No," said Mantis, her voice small but earnest.

"Thor left the throne. He said he saves Asgard, not rule," Hulk chimed in, his booming voice carrying more gravity. Valkyrie paused, absorbing the unexpected news from the only person there she remotely trusted.

"Is that true?" she interrogated, her eyes skeptical but undeniably curious.

"We don't know," Gamora replied, seizing the opening. "We barely know these people," she admitted as she cautiously stepped forward, her hands up to show she meant no harm.

"We only allied with Earth because we need to stop Thanos from killing half the universe," Gamora explained, her voice tinged with desperation and sincerity. She moved slowly, testing Valkyrie's limits, hoping to appear as unthreatening as possible. Her blade was long since retracted and clipped to her belt. "We can let you see it. Mantis will, but we have no more time. We have to go."

Valkyrie's grip loosened a fraction as she weighed the words. Her eyes flicked between the intruders and the enormous green fighter watching with keen interest.

"I won't let her fiddle with my head anymore and I have nowhere to go." She turned to Hulk, confident he would side with her. "Hulk, you have a fight to attend. Let's get security called here."

"HULK SMASH!" he bellowed, seeming to echo her resolve.

"Wait," Mantis interjected, her voice a blend of urgency and empathy. "I won't show you," she promised softly. "But you know what I did in your head was nothing more than searching. All those things, they were all you. You want to be happy." She paused, her eyes meeting Valkyrie's with a poignant intensity. "Please allow us to help you."

Valkyrie's eyes narrowed as she considered Mantis's words. Her grip on the dagger tightened, knuckles going white with tension.

"You think Earth would be better than this?" she scoffed, gesturing around the stone chamber with her free hand. "At least here I know what to expect. I'm respected. I have a purpose."

"Capturing innocent people for slaughter?" Gamora challenged, her voice steady despite the building pressure of time slipping away. "That's not purpose. That's survival."

Valkyrie's jaw clenched. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know you're a warrior," Gamora countered. "A real one. Not this... scavenger you've become." She took another step forward, emboldened by the flicker of doubt in Valkyrie's eyes. "Look around you. Is this really where a Valkyrie belongs? Hiding on a garbage planet, serving a madman?"

Hulk growled, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Hulk like it here. Hulk champion."

"And you deserve to be," Mantis said gently, “And you will be, with us on earth, you can help save the universe. For your friends, for the Avengers.”

Hulk grunted, his massive frame shifting as he looked between his friend and the strangers. "Angry Girl, good fighter. Help Hulk."

Valkyrie's jaw clenched. "I stopped being a Valkyrie a long time ago."

"But you could be something again," Mantis said softly, rising to her feet. "Something of your own choosing."

"I'm not looking for redemption," Valkyrie snapped, but her dagger lowered slightly. "Or a cause."

Drax crossed his arms over his chest. "Then look for a better drink. Earth has much better alcohol than this planet of trash.

A startled laugh escaped Valkyrie's lips before she could stop it. "Is that your best argument?"

"It's an honest one," Gamora replied with a hint of a smile. "And we're running out of time. The Grandmaster will be looking for his champion soon." She glanced toward the corridor, where distant shouts could be heard. "We need you to make a decision now."

Valkyrie's eyes darted between Hulk and the corridor. Something shifted in her expression—a calculation, a weighing of odds.

"Fine," Valkyrie finally said, sheathing her dagger with a fluid motion. "But I have conditions."

"Name them quickly," Gamora replied, already moving toward the corridor's entrance to check for approaching guards.

"I want no contact with Asgard and I’ll limit the interactions with the son of Odin to the least possible" Valkyrie's eyes were hard, brooking no argument. "And my ship comes with us. That's all I have left."

Mantis nodded eagerly. "Of course! We wouldn't—"

A thunderous boom interrupted her as steps echoed through the corridor.

“Then take us to your ship, now!” Urged Gamora.

"With pleasure," she replied, her eyes gleaming with a mix of mischief and determination. Her fingers danced over a bracelet clamped tightly to her wrist, seemingly unbothered by the chaos around them.

"When I say so, you jump," Valkyrie announced.

"Wait, what?" Drax's eyes widened in alarm as the meaning of her words sank in.

The thunderous stomp of guards echoed through the corridor, growing louder and more numerous with each passing second.

Gamora, anticipating a fight, drew her sword with precision, preparing to hold their ground. The first wave of guards poured into the room, eager to reclaim the champion.​

"Now, jump!" Valkyrie's shout cut through the tumult.

Before anyone could react, Hulk slammed his massive fist into the window. It shattered with a deafening crash, splintering into countless pieces. With a triumphant roar, he launched himself out, following Valkyrie's bold lead.

Drax and Mantis exchanged uncertain glances, hesitation written all over their faces. "Is everybody jumping now?" Drax mumbled, but Gamora's determined leap cut off any further discussion. She hurdled forward, trusting in their new allies.

Left with no viable alternative and faced with an onslaught of guards, Drax and Mantis took the plunge.

The wind whipped around them, and the world blurred as they spiraled down, catching fleeting glimpses of Sakaar's chaotic cityscape. But before even a gasp could escape their lips, they landed firmly on the deck of Valkyrie's ship.

The impact of their landing rattled through Gamora's bones as her feet connected with the metal deck. The aircraft was already humming to life beneath them, its engines growling with impatience. They reached the hatch that Valkyrie had let open for them and entered the vehicle. As soon as they got inside the aircraft took speed.

The ship executed an impressive dive, carrying them through the towering cityscape with exhilarating velocity.

"We don't have much time to escape; they've probably alerted the cavalry by now," Valkyrie said, her fingers swiftly adjusting the sensor panel controls. Her hurried tone indicated she was no stranger to such situations.

 "We need to return to our hangar," Gamora added.

"I've got us covered," Valkyrie assured them, banking the ship hard to the right, sending them all stumbling against the bulkheads. "Where's your craft?"

"In the scrapyard, northeast sector," Gamora replied, steadying herself. "We've got a cloaking device active."

"Scrapyard, of course," Valkyrie muttered, punching coordinates into her navigation system. "Everybody hides their ships there."

The vessel shot through the narrow gaps between towering structures, debris and neon signs whipping past the viewports. Behind them, alarm klaxons blared across the city as the Grandmaster's forces mobilized. Screens throughout Sakaar flickered with their faces, marking them as the most wanted fugitives on the planet.

Hulk crouched uncomfortably in the ship's cabin, his massive shoulders hunched against the ceiling. His expression shifted between excitement and uncertainty, as if two different minds were battling for control.

"Banner," Gamora said, approaching him cautiously. "We need you to remember—"

"NO BANNER!" Hulk roared, slamming his fist against the wall and leaving a sizable dent. "Only Hulk!"

Mantis stepped forward, her antennae glowing softly. "May I?" she asked, hands raised but not touching him.

Hulk growled suspiciously but didn't move away. Mantis reached out, her fingertips barely grazing Hulk's massive forearm. The connection was immediate—a torrent of rage, confusion, and beneath it all, fear. Not Hulk's fear, but Banner's, buried deep within the green giant's psyche.

"I can feel him," she whispered, her voice trembling under the strain. "He's there, but... he’s not in control. Hulk’s pushing him back, I think he is trying to protect him."

"Well, get him out," Gamora called from the co-pilot seat, as Valkyrie executed another sharp turn, sending them all lurching sideways. "We could use his brains right about now."

Valkyrie glanced back from the pilot's seat, momentarily distracted from her frantic navigation. "What's she doing to him?"

"She's an empath," Gamora explained, watching the scene with concern. "She can feel what others feel, sometimes even influence their emotions."

Drax crossed his arms, nodding approvingly. "She once made me cry by showing me my dead wife and daughter."

Valkyrie blinked. "That's... disturbing."

"It was beautiful," Drax corrected solemnly.

The ship rocked violently as a blast from a pursuing craft grazed their shields. Through the viewport, they could see three sleek enforcement vessels gaining on them, their weapons charging for another volley.

"Hold on!" Valkyrie shouted, plunging the ship into a steep dive between two crumbling towers.

Drax braced himself against a bulkhead, his face splitting into a wild grin. "This is excellent! Almost as thrilling as jumping through the digestive tract of an Abilisk!"

"Not the time, Drax!" Gamora snapped, steadying herself as the ship leveled out momentarily. She turned her attention back to Mantis and Hulk. "Can you reach Banner? We need him to understand what's happening."

Mantis closed her eyes, her antennae glowing. “He is… hard to reach. It’s like I’m trying to find a back door.” She frowned as a wave of pain washed through her.

Valkyrie made another swift turn and Mantis lost contact with Hulk, as the movement hurled her against the side of the aircraft.

She let out a quiet cry of pain and frustration. “I’ll have to start again”

“NO BANNER!” started Hulk, regaining control over himself, as he started to hit the sides of the spaceship, making it lose its trajectory.

“He is going to make us fall.” shouted Valkyrie from the front.

"Stop it!" Gamora barked at Hulk, her voice cutting through the chaos. "You want to get us all killed?"

The green giant paused mid-swing, his massive fist hovering inches from the ship's control panel. His eyes narrowed, focusing on Gamora with surprising intensity.

"Hulk not die. Hulk strongest there is."

"Even the strongest can fall," Valkyrie called over her shoulder, wrestling with the controls as the ship lurched. "And I'm not letting you destroy my aircraft because you're having a tantrum!"

Another blast rocked the ship, sending sparks cascading from an overhead panel. Alarms blared, bathing the cabin in pulsing red light.

"We're taking heavy fire," Valkyrie reported grimly. "Shields at sixty percent and dropping."

Mantis steadied herself against a wall, her determined gaze fixed on Hulk. "Please," she whispered, approaching him again with outstretched hands. "Let me try once more."

Drax moved to stand beside her, his massive frame providing a physical barrier between Hulk and the rest of the ship. "If you smash anything else," he warned, "I will fight you. And, I promise it will be... unpleasant."

Hulk snorted but remained still as Mantis's glowing fingertips made contact with his forearm again. This time she worked faster, as pain washed over her again.

The fire continued as Valkyrie desperately tried to avoid getting them hit.

“Shields at forty five percent. We’re approaching the Scrapyard, but we’re going to have an emergency landing.”

Mantis was not done with Banner, but her consciousness had finally flowed into the complex tangle of emotions that made up Hulk's mind.

“I see him now, I’m going to need a couple more minutes.”

“Can you do that?” Asked Gamora apprehensively.

“I can try, but I can’t promise anything.” responded Valkyrie, shifting the steering wheel to gain height.

Mantis focused, her head still throbbing from the headache, her hands pressing even tighter on Hulk’s forehead.

The spaceships of the Grandmaster got closer, still drawing fire on them.

“Ship’s at twenty five. I’m going to have to get us down now.” Announced Valkyrie.

"Do it! Get us to the scrapyard, we'll handle the rest!" Gamora shouted, bracing herself as Valkyrie sent the ship into a steep nosedive toward the chaotic landscape below.

The pursuing crafts followed, their weapons still blazing. Mantis clung desperately to Hulk, her antennae glowing brighter than ever, sweat beading on her forehead as she delved deeper into the green giant's consciousness.

"Banner," she whispered, no longer speaking to those around her but to the presence buried deep within Hulk's mind. "We need you. The universe needs you."

Inside the maelstrom of Hulk's thoughts, Mantis could feel Banner stirring, a flicker of awareness pushing against the overwhelming tide of rage and fear. She reached for that spark, cradling it gently with her empathic powers.

"I'm giving you a path," she murmured. "Follow my voice."

The ship shuddered violently as Valkyrie executed a series of impossible maneuvers, threading through the towering piles of scrap metal and abandoned spacecraft. Behind them, one of the pursuit ships misjudged a turn and slammed into a mountain of debris, erupting in a fireball that momentarily lit up the sky.

"Two more on our tail!" Valkyrie called out, her voice tight with concentration. "And we're losing altitude fast!"

Drax had moved to the rear viewport, watching the pursuing ships with a warrior's calculating eye. "They are persistent," he observed, almost admiringly. "I would enjoy fighting their pilots."

"Not helpful, Drax!" Gamora snapped, scanning the landscape below. "There!" She pointed to a familiar clearing in the scrapyard. "Our ship is there, under the cloaking shield!"

Valkyrie nodded grimly, banking the damaged craft toward the coordinates. "Brace for impact! This isn't going to be pretty!"

Just as the words left her mouth, a final blast caught their port engine. The ship lurched sickeningly, spinning out of control as Valkyrie fought the failing systems. Smoke filled the cabin, acrid and thick, as warning lights flashed from every console.

Through it all, Mantis maintained her connection with Hulk, her face a mask of intense concentration. "Almost there," she whispered, more to herself than anyone else. "Almost there..."

The ground rushed up to meet them. Valkyrie pulled back on the controls with all her strength, managing to level their descent just enough to turn what would have been a fatal crash into merely a catastrophic one.

The impact came with a deafening screech of tearing metal. The ship skidded across the scrapyard, carving a deep furrow through piles of debris before finally coming to rest in a smoking heap.

For a moment, silence reigned. Then Drax's booming laugh cut through the haze.

“That. Was. Amazing!” He erupted, flicking a finger towards the spacecrafts that were already catching up on them.

Valkyrie looked at the remains of her ship, her eyes filling with unshed tears. “I’m going to miss you.”

“What was it called?” Asked Gamora, putting a hand over her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her new friend.

“Warsong, she was the best, and also the first I ever bought.”

“I’m sorry.” Said Gamora sincerely.

“Right. Let’s get to your ship now, so we can leave this shit of a planet.” Answered Valkyrie, with a stern tone and a newfound resolution.

“Wait, where are Mantis and Hulk?” Questioned Drax worriedly as he searched around the debris of Warsong.

Gamora’s eyes widened as she realized her friend and their mission’s objective went missing. As they started to lift metal pieces from the ground a small rattle caught their attention. Drax froze, his massive hand hovering over a particularly large sheet of twisted metal as it trembled against the ground.

"Something’s alive over here," he announced, peering closer.

The shaking intensified, and a familiar pale-green glow emanated from between the cracks. Delicate fingers pushed through the narrow opening, followed by the unmistakable sight of Mantis's antennae.

"Help!" Her voice was muffled but urgent. "You have to help us, he is too weak, and also extremely naked!"

Valkyrie rushed forward, her warrior instincts kicking in as she gripped the edge of the metal panel. "On three. One, two—"

She and Drax heaved together, tossing aside the heavy debris. Mantis emerged, covered in dust and minor scrapes, her large eyes shut as she hugged a human shaped figure.

“I did it. He is alive, I think.” She lifted herself up from the ground as Drax and Gamora took Banner from her arms. 

Valkyrie took one of his wrists delicately, searching for a pulse. It took her some time to identify the small beat, but as soon as she did a wave of relief washed over her. “He is, you did great. Now let’s get him onboard.”

Banner was a dead weight in Drax's arms as they sprinted across the scrapyard, dodging between mountains of twisted metal and discarded technology. The scientist's head lolled against Drax's massive chest, his breathing shallow but steady.

"There!" Gamora pointed ahead to where their ship waited, still invisible beneath its cloaking shield. She pressed a button on her wristband, and the sleek outline of the SHIELD craft shimmered into view, its ramp already descending to welcome them.

The whine of approaching engines cut through the air, growing louder with each passing second. Valkyrie glanced over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing as she spotted two of the Grandmaster's pursuit vessels cresting the horizon.

"We've got company," she warned, urging them forward with increased urgency.

They had barely reached the ramp when the first volley of energy blasts struck the ground around them, sending shards of metal flying in all directions. Mantis yelped as a piece grazed her arm, leaving a thin line of blood in its wake.

"Get inside!" Gamora shouted, pushing Mantis up the ramp. Drax followed with Banner, while Valkyrie took position at the base, her hand instinctively reaching for weapons that were no longer there.

The moment they were aboard, Gamora raced to the weapons locker, punching in the security code with practiced efficiency. The panel slid open, revealing an arsenal of SHIELD-issued firearms. She grabbed a heavy pulse rifle, checking its charge with a swift glance before heading back toward the loading ramp.

Outside, the Grandmaster's ships circled like predatory birds, their weapons systems humming with deadly intent. Another barrage of fire peppered the ground around their ship, one blast striking the hull with enough force to rock the entire craft.

"Valkyrie, get to the cockpit and start the engines!" Gamora called, taking position at the edge of the ramp. "Drax, secure Banner and help Mantis!"

Without waiting for confirmation, she raised the rifle and took aim. The weapon hummed to life in her hands, its targeting system locking onto the nearest vessel. She squeezed the trigger, and a concentrated burst of energy erupted from the barrel, streaking toward the enemy ship with unerring accuracy.

The blast caught the craft's starboard engine, sending it into a wild spin. Smoke billowed from the damaged section as the pilot fought to regain control. Gamora didn't give them the chance. She fired again, this time hitting the fuel cells. The resulting explosion lit up the scrapyard like a miniature sun, debris raining down as the ship plummeted to the ground in a twisted, burning wreck.

Inside the cockpit, Valkyrie's hands flew over the unfamiliar controls, her warrior's instinct guiding her as she activated system after system. The ship hummed to life beneath her touch, displaying lighting up signaling they reached full power.

“Gamora get inside!” She shouted as she pushed to take the spacecraft in the air.

On the outside Gamora almost lost balance as the vehicle started to lift its weight, the ramp still opened. She fired one last rifle of projectiles against the remaining ship, enough to get them some much needed time.

As she jumped inside, gate closing, she shouted against Valkyrie. “Under the control panel there’s a big red button, push it.” Valkyrie followed her instructions and soon after two missile launchers descended from the armor plating.

Her control panel lit up displaying an arsenal of smart munitions to choose from.

“What should I use?” She asked, allarmed, to Gamora.

“Just push the first one that comes up.”

And so she did, a missile shot from the pylon directly towards the last remaining aircraft.

The missile streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of white smoke in its wake. It connected with devastating precision, striking the pursuing craft's underbelly. For a heartbeat, nothing happened—then the ship erupted in a blinding flash of orange and blue, its hull disintegrating as the explosion tore through its core systems. The shockwave rocked their vessel, the vibration rattling through the deck plates beneath their feet.

"That's what I call fireworks!" Valkyrie whooped, her hands never leaving the controls as she pushed the ship higher into Sakaar's atmosphere.

Alarms blared throughout the cockpit as Gamora rushed to the co-pilot's seat, her eyes scanning the displays with mounting concern.

"We've got more incoming," she warned, pointing to a cluster of red dots appearing at the edge of their sensor range. "The Grandmaster's not giving up that easily."

Valkyrie's expression hardened as she accelerated, pushing the engines to their limits. "Of course not. We stole his champion and blew up his favorite toys." She banked hard to starboard, narrowly avoiding a piece of orbital debris. "Brace yourself because I’m getting you out of here." She said as she set course to the Devil’s Anus. The biggest and fastest portal to get in and out of the planet.

“Gamora, I’m going to need full shield support.”

Gamora propped herself down on the co-pilot seat once again, fidgeting with the defense settings. “Aren’t they going to follow us?” She asked, concerned.

“They won't be able to, they're going to get fried if they try.” The answer didn’t settle Gamora’s doubts, but she didn’t reply as they set course to earth.

Chapter Text

Strange conjured a swirling portal, its edges flickering with mystical energy, opening not far from where the two men stood.

Through the shimmering interdimensional doorway, Stark’s New York penthouse awaited like an unspoken promise, all cutting-edge polish and material grandeur. The sort of sanctuary that exuded not just wealth but the full essence of Tony’s inimitable style.

Nick Fury watched the spectacle with his arms crossed and an expression that could only be described as smug satisfaction. He was aware of just how important that moment was, almost as if he had choreographed the entire scene himself, which, of course, he had.

Strange noted Fury’s confidence with a knowing glance, challenging his judgment, painfully aware that the only person that could turn the tides was waiting for him. And so he turned, ready to set everything in motion.

He was as contemplative as ever, as he stepped through the portal. His mind turned wheels as he pondered the next course of action. Each footfall carried him across dimensions, and with each step, the vision was just a bit clearer.

————————————————————————————————-

The sunset cast a warm orange hue over the New York skyline, the penthouse glimmering like a jewel set high above the city’s pulse.

The building was unmistakably Stark’s, with its sleek design and panoramic views of New York City. The kind of place that screamed money and technology, with more than a little bit of Tony’s flair for the dramatic.

The house was fully engulfed by windows that started from the bottom of the floor and reached roof height. The modern design of the architecture met with the refined angle of a garden that was definitely not curated by Stark himself.

Inside, the low hum of classical music filled the air, where Tony Stark and Pepper Potts shared a quiet evening, their laughter mingling with the aroma of freshly prepared dinner wafting from the kitchen. Here, in this cocoon of normalcy, everything seemed in perfect balance—until the unexpected visit of a certain sorcerer threatened to unravel it all.

“So what’s next for the man who has it all?” Pepper teased, leaning against the granite countertop, her arms crossed, a playful smile dancing on her lips. She watched as Tony set the table, and how he stopped for a second, playing mindlessly with a fork he had in hand, as he considered which project to focus on next.

“Oh, you know, maybe I'll finally get around to redesign my arc reactor for better efficiency,” he replied, flashing a charming grin that was all too familiar to her. “Or perhaps I should start planning that lavish vacation you’ve been suggesting—”

“--to the Maldives?” she finished, raising an eyebrow. “And leave behind all of your projects? Impossible.”

“Seems cruel, doesn’t it?” he countered with mock disappointment, his brow furrowed. But his expression shifted to one of fondness as he continued, “No, it just feels like things are too... quiet. Maybe I’m overdue for a little chaos. It keeps life exciting.”

As if summoned by the very thought, the atmosphere shifted abruptly. A soft knock interrupted their lighthearted banter, just before the door swung open with barely a creak. Doctor Strange stepped inside, his entrance as measured and mystical as ever, a hint of urgency etched into his brow.

“Stark,” he greeted, scanning the luxurious space with a practiced air, his eyes quickly settling on the couple. “And Pepper, good evening.” A small polite smile arched his features as he acknowledged the woman.

“Strange,” Tony said, his tone cool as he stepped away from the warm domesticity of the moment. “I didn’t know we had a date planned for tonight.” He joked, although a tight smile suggested much more beneath the surface.

“You’re needed.” Strange cut him off, his gaze unwavering, turning serious as he leaned against the doorframe, physically grounding himself to deliver the weighty news. “A new threat’s coming, bigger than anything we ever faced.”

Tony’s expression hardened, frustration seeping through his facade of nonchalance.

“Pepper, can you give us a second please?” He turned to his girlfriend and asked, attempting to mask the frustration in his voice.

The woman nodded and offered him a comforting smile, as if to tell him, "It's alright, you can leave, I'm not upset." Yet, Tony didn’t want to hear it.

As soon as Pepper left the room Tony turned to Strange once again.

“I won’t help you, I’m sorry. I can’t, I’ve got a life now, I can’t risk it. And for what? Another Apocalypse scenario? Been there, done that. No offense.”

“Let me at least explain,” Strange tried.

“No need thank you, but you're welcome to dinner if you want. Pepper made a delicious beef and we were thinking of pairing it with some Merlot.”

“Merlot,” echoed Stephen, irritation prickling at the edges of his calm demeanor. “This isn’t about your personal agenda, Stark! Thanos poses a cosmic threat—he’s searching for the Infinity Stones and it’s only a matter of time before he reaches Earth. We need to assemble the Avengers.”

“I don’t give a damn about the Avengers!” Tony snapped, pacing furiously around the room, hands gesturing wildly, accentuating his agitation. “I don’t know how up to date you are, but the Avengers ARE the threat to this nation.” He kept pushing.

Strange opened his hands slowly, palms facing outward, as he cautiously inched closer to Stark. His movements were deliberate, each step measured as if he were approaching a wild animal he intended to soothe. “I know you had a thing last year,” he began, his voice calm yet firm, “that may have spiraled beyond the boundaries of your control.” He paused momentarily, allowing the tension in the air to build, the atmosphere heavy with anticipation for what he would say next. “But there are far greater dangers out there than anything you could ever pose,” he continued, his gaze penetrating, “or understand.”

Tony scoffed with disdain, “What was he even trying to imply?” The question seethed with contempt. Tony had seen enough nightmares to last a lifetime, balancing risk and clinging on survival by a thread. He wasn’t some reckless fool chasing glory with a death wish— unlike Strange, who received his powers yesterday, fought one battle, and already believed he could do almost anything.

“You have no idea of what you are talking about! Not about danger, nor the Avengers.” He straightened, feigning control, the wounds of betrayal still too fresh to be addressed.

"I possess knowledge beyond your wildest dreams, Stark. I walk in a realm you've only glimpsed through tales, a reality beyond your vision and understanding," Stephen remarked. "You're naive if you think you can steer clear of what’s coming. Death isn’t solely tied to conflict, and it leaves no room for choice."

Strange wasn’t accusing him, his tone was neutral and carried only the truth, which was what irked Stark the most.

“Do you even understand what joining means? It means breaking the Sokovia Accords. It means going off the radar, becoming a fugitive, and potentially endangering everything I’ve built, especially,” he underlined the word, charging it with the gravity of the matter, “my relationship with Pepper.”

His voice rose with each point, filled with pent-up emotions—fear, guilt, and a deep-rooted anger from the past that resurfaced with alarming clarity.

Strange remained steadfast, his composure a sharp contrast to the growing chaos around him. “What you’re ignoring is the consequence of doing nothing. If you want to keep your life intact, if you want to protect what you cherish, then you need to take action. Thanos won’t care about the Sokovia Accords when he comes for you.”

“You don’t understand,” Tony fired back, voice straining under the weight of conflicting loyalties. “I’ve loved that life, I was addicted to being Iron man, but I have priorities. I fought hard to find this—” He gestured around at their shared space. “This was hard-won. You’re asking me to throw it away for a cosmic wrestling match!”

“I’m asking you to protect Earth,” Strange corrected, his tone unyielding. “When the stakes are this high, you won’t have the luxury to decide what kind of life you lead. Trust me.”

Their eyes locked for a tense moment, a silent battle of wills as the reality of the universe began to ripple around them like an unseen force, bending their resolve. A frown etched deeper into Tony’s expression, his frustration bubbling close to the surface.

“Get out,” Tony finally ordered, voice low and dangerous. “Find someone else to save the universe. I’m done.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and laden with meanings that stretched far beyond the confines of the room. In the hallway, Pepper paused, her heart catching at the threshold of the conversation. She had stayed nearby, listening intently, her desire to remain close overshadowing the tact of leaving entirely.

She took a deep breath, feeling the weight of Strange's warning mixed with Tony's stubbornness, twisting painfully inside her. It was a clear reminder of the burdens Tony carried. Pepper's mind was racing, caught between the urgency of the looming danger and the longing for a simple, peaceful life. Every word between the two men echoed in her thoughts, forcing her to confront the reality of Tony’s inevitable pull towards chaos and heroism.

Standing out of sight, she felt the tension of the moment, the familiar pain of being stuck between Tony's relentless drive and the life she wished they could have together. She wanted to protect him from the path that seemed to always call him, but the fear of what Strange had foreseen crept into her thoughts, impossible to ignore. She knew too well the cost of inaction, too well the regrets of holding back when they should step forward.

Pepper leaned against the cool surface of the pillar, the solidness of it grounding her amidst the swirling uncertainty, her breath shallow as she braced for what she knew she had to do.

Strange, meanwhile, did not flinch at the dismissal. Instead, he nodded subtly, recognizing the gravity of the moment but refusing to capitulate entirely. “Alright,” he said evenly, turning on his heels to leave without argument, the door closing behind him with an audible click.

————————————————————————————————

A soft thud resonated throughout the bare, now quiet room. The air felt different somehow, the earlier warmth replaced by an unsettling chill. Tony stood motionless, his figure silhouetted against the expansive cityscape behind him, as if waiting for the last reverberation to fade before letting himself breathe.

In that heavy silence, the gap between the life he was living and the one Strange wanted him to jump back into felt even bigger. It was almost as if time itself hesitated, unsure whether to move forward or rewind to just before the knock had shattered their peace.

The quiet was thick with stress and unspoken questions, wrapping around him like a tight blanket. Tony's clenched fists were the only sign of the chaos brewing inside him.

When Pepper reappeared, she didn’t say a word. Instead, she walked towards him with purpose and understanding. She wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, resting her cheek against the broad expanse of his back. Her touch was gentle, a silent promise that she was there, that they would face whatever came next together.

Tony’s resolve wavered as he let out an unsteady breath. He placed one hand atop hers, his thumb grazing her knuckles. “You heard all of it, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice subdued, almost as if he already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Pepper replied softly, squeezing him tighter, willing him to feel the reassurance she couldn’t quite put into words. “Every bit of it.”

Tony turned within the circle of her arms, his features a storm front of worn-out bravado and something much darker, a defeat that seemed to press his shoulders a little lower. “Not tonight, Pep. I’m sorry,” he said, voice hoarse with everything he couldn’t admit. He slipped out of her embrace and strode past her toward the bedroom, his movements abrupt but not angry, just tightly wound.

Pepper watched him go with an ache that felt both old and fresh at once. For a full minute, she stood rooted in the empty living room, arms tightened in a self hug, steadying herself as if to keep her from running after him. She listened to the soft pad of his feet receding down the hall, the low hiss as their bedroom door shut, and the faintest metallic shuffle that meant he’d collapsed onto the end of the bed without even bothering to undress. In the silence, Pepper’s own breath echoed back at her, and she grappled with the helplessness of loving a man who was always at war with himself.

She turned off the main lights, letting the city’s neon bleed through the glass, painting the floors with a shifting mosaic of color. For a while she busied herself with the leftovers—putting food away, wiping down counters, arranging two perfectly clean plates in the dishwasher. Yet each motion only sharpened her worry, until finally she set a glass of water on the nightstand and padded quietly toward the bedroom.

Inside, she found him exactly as she’d expected: sprawled on his back atop the covers, still in the same shirt, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. The city’s glow played across his face, throwing sharp lines under his eyes, accentuating the unfamiliar exhaustion there.

She didn’t say anything, just crawled up next to him, curling around his side, her head resting on his outstretched arm. He seemed to come back to himself in slow degrees—his hand drifted to her shoulder, then tightened slightly, almost apologetically.

For a long time they lay in silence, breathing together, listening to the distant hum of the arc reactor winding down within his chest, until they both drifted off to sleep.

———————————————

Sunlight crested the skyline and spilled through the penthouse’s unshaded windows, scattering prisms across the rippled surface of the comforter. Pepper woke alone, the lingering warmth on the other half of the bed the only evidence Tony had been there at all. For a few minutes she just lay and watched the morning sharpen the outline of the furniture, the city’s heartbeat somehow muted so far above it all.

She padded barefoot to the kitchen, expecting silence, but a low, frenetic energy buzzed in the air. Tony stood at the marble island, a half-full mug of coffee in one hand and a whisk in the other, reading prompts off a tablet propped precariously against a carton of eggs. The kitchen was a wreck: flour dusted the counter, a pan sizzled with butter on the induction stove, and a collection of small kitchen robots (each with a custom paint job, she noted with exasperated affection) queued up to deliver ingredients at the edge of the workspace.

He looked up as she entered, eyes bright but ringed in shadows. “Hey, sleeping beauty. Hope you don’t mind—figured I’d tackle breakfast.” He gestured with the whisk, dotting the air with a few drops of unincorporated batter. “Your options today are: omelette, pancakes, or existential dread. Possibly all three.”

She found herself smiling despite the heaviness in her chest. “I’ll take the first two and an extra side of coffee.”

Tony set the whisk aside, wiped his hands on the nearest towel, and poured her a cup. “Coffee’s been upgraded. Should be less acidic, more ‘morning hug in a mug.’”

She took the mug, inhaled deeply, and leaned back against the counter. For a while she just watched him—absorbed, almost manic in his focus, plating precisely, talking constantly, as if volume itself could keep the world’s threats at bay.

“And you slept…?” she prompted gently, not expecting honesty but craving it all the same.

He shrugged, flipping a pancake with the sort of over-wrist flourish that would have gotten anyone else a lecture about wasting batter. “About as well as anyone who’s been put on cosmic notice by a man in a cape. Lotta dreams about genocide and flying squids. But I woke up alive, so that’s a win.”

“Tony, you know you don’t have to—”

Finally he turned, noticing how she had closed their distance, face now, mere inches from hers. He met her gaze. His eyes searched hers, as if hoping to find an answer to a question he hadn’t dared to voice. “I don’t know if I can do this again, Pep. Go back to that life.” His voice cracked slightly, a mix of vulnerability and defiance that few ever saw beneath his confident facade.

She reached up to touch his face, her fingers brushing the stubble along his jaw. “I know how much you’ve given up to be here,” she said, her voice a mixture of love and anguish. “But I also know who you are. Even if you try to run from it, Tony Stark always shows up when it matters.”

A shadow crossed Tony's expression, and he pulled away slightly, as if distancing himself from the truth she spoke. “What if I don’t want to show up this time?” he challenged, his voice rising with a tinge of desperation. “What if I just want to be... normal?”

Right as Pepper opened her mouth to answer him another voice erupted in the room. “Sir, Doctor Strange is still outside the building. It appears he spent the night floating in the garden, as if he was… meditating.”

And just like that, their little moment shuttered. Pepper moved away from him, and Tony felt a void carving its way in his chest. Filling the void came anger. It wasn’t the interruption that sparked it—it was the reminder. That even here, in his kitchen, the war could find him.

He inhaled sharply, the breath laced with a storm of resentment. The frustration built, a tangible force that filled the room just as he wished to leave it behind.

But then, it was never really about leaving, was it? It was about staying, about having what he wanted and not needing to lose it all just because the universe decided it needed him more.

A dull ache settled in, the kind that no amount of sarcasm or armor could deflect.

Tony Stark paced, each step punctuated with a rising frustration. He glanced out the floor-to-ceiling windows, and just like that, he caught sight of the sorcerer floating like a beacon, serene amidst the chaos of the city. The juxtaposition irked him; Strange was so calmly composed while he felt like a volcano ready to erupt.

“What the hell does he think he is doing?” Tony growled, running a hand through his hair. His anger sparked, did he think he could corner him? That Tony would give in out of exhaustion?

He wanted to fight him, to be consumed by the anger that burned him and to redirect it all to the wizard. He had no right to barge into his life, to dictate terms, to endanger Pepper.

His mind was flooded with possibilities — A smarter man might’ve called someone, filed a complaint, sent a drone to make him leave, called Ross even, and get Strange, and all of the other idiots that joined his cause, to rot in jail. But that wasn’t how Tony Stark worked—not anymore. He wanted to handle it himself, to scare Strange for underestimating him.

“Do you want me to prepare your suit, sir?” FRIDAY prompted, sensing the change in his demeanor.

“Just wait a second. Let me think,” Tony snapped, hands finding their way to his hips, the position filled with tension. Every moment with Strange lurking outside his window pulled him deeper into a riptide of unease. He thought about the decisions he had made, the calm he had fought hard to build around himself, and the life that Pepper had worked to craft with him. Would he really toss it aside to chase shadows once more?

Pepper watched him prowl the kitchen with the restless agitation of a caged animal. His jaw worked, teeth grinding out a rhythm of anxiety, and she saw in the tremble of his hands how close he was to boiling over.

She crossed the distance quietly, her movements measured, unhurried. When she reached him, she placed her hand on his forearm—light but insistent, a lifeline cast across surging rapids. Tony flinched, the impulse to jerk away almost electric, but her fingers held steady, their warmth an anchor. For a second it seemed he might pull free anyway, snap the fragile connection and retreat behind some new armor. But when Pepper’s thumb stroked the inside of his wrist, soft as memory, he stilled. His pulse thundered beneath her fingertips.

“Hey,” she said, so quietly that it hardly interrupted the quiet drone of city noise from the windows. The word was a soft plea, a gentle summons back from whatever brink he was staring over. She leaned in, her other hand bracing lightly against his chest, and the scent of him—coffee grounds and hot electronics and something faintly metallic—filled her senses. He avoided her gaze, blinking hard, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed a desperate ambivalence: part of him wanted her to let go, the other part needed her to hold on.

Minutes passed in a hush suspended between them. Tony’s breath slowed, shoulders slumping in stages as if yielding to gravity itself. The armor of sarcasm that served him everywhere else was useless here, in this sunlit kitchen, under the scrutiny of the woman who knew him best. He let out a ragged sigh, and for once there was nothing performative about it.

Pepper shifted even closer, cutting off any escape. Her palm moved to cradle the side of his face, fingers threading into the hair just above his ear. She felt the minuscule quiver in his jaw, the way he leaned into her touch before catching himself and drawing back—then giving in again, as if surrender were the only option that made sense anymore.

“You said you wanted a normal life earlier, do you mean it?” she asked, the words barely more than a whisper. There was no accusation in her tone, just a deep desire to understand his struggle.

He hesitated, a million scenarios flashing through his mind—outcomes he had both foreseen and dreaded. “I mean... I don’t know,” he confessed, his shoulders sagging under the weight of his indecision.

She nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving his. “Then we’ll decide together. Whatever you choose, it won’t just be your choice,” she said emphatically, her conviction grounding his uncertainty. “We’ll make it side by side, Tony.”

Her words struck him deeply, his anger still bubbling under the surface, but it appeared now as a muffled version of the fury that took over him not long ago. He let out a long sigh, his fear crept up mingling with his already heightened emotions. “And if I fail? If I put you at risk?”

“That is not on you,” Pepper insisted, her eyes earnest, shimmering with unyielding conviction. “You understand me? I would never put that on you. We’re together, in this more than anything. I’m choosing this, Tony.”

“But you won’t be out there, Pep. I’ll be. What if I don’t want that, what if I want to be here with you? I promised, right? A vacation, the Maldives. I promised. Less work, more us.”

Pepper’s eyes grew softer, a recognition settling in her gaze. She felt responsible for this, burdened by sorrow, but she didn’t show Tony that.

“But you’re not like that, are you?” She pressed her cheek to Tony’s arm, trying to reassure the both of them. “You do want to go back out there. And I think that scares you more than anything.”

Tony’s expression tensed. He felt like Pepper had just slapped him.

“No, that’s not—”

“It is, and it’s ok.” She carefully cupped Tony’s face with one gentle hand and made so he could watch her, as she spoke the next words. “I know you love me and I know you care about this relationship. I saw you working hard to fix this. That is all I needed Tony, seriously. I know now, that even if you go, you’ll always come back.”

For a moment, the heaviness lifted, and Tony searched her gaze, finding the courage nestled within her support. He stood still, rooted in place, feeling the back-and-forth play out like a concert of conflicting emotions. The anger and self-doubt bubbled under the surface, clashing with the steadfast love she offered.

Tony’s expression flickered, and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly, as a bittersweet smile broke through. “You always know just what to say.” He moved closer, the warmth of their connection palpable in the space between them. He reached out, her hand still on his cheek, and letting the concern and admiration swirl together, he kissed her. Slowly and softly, desperate to make a connection, to let her know just how she could make him feel.

The moment seemed to linger endlessly, but then, just as it began, it had to end. Tony stepped back, letting out a small sigh. Letting go burdened him more than he was able to admit.

“I guess I’ll have to follow him.” Tony muttered, expression hardening again with the resolve that would shield their lives from peril. “It’s always like that, isn’t it?” Pepper gave him an encouraging nod, an expression of faith warming her eyes.

With a deep breath, Tony finally made the decision, albeit reluctantly. He leaned down to give Pepper a final kiss, sealing a promise that despite the uncertainties awaiting him, they would face it together.

“Take care of yourself,” he whispered as he stepped away.

“Always,” she replied softly, a glimmer of assurance passing between them as he turned toward the control panel.

Tony felt the competing forces within him begin to still, leaving behind a quiet he had rarely allowed himself to experience. It was the calm before the storm, he realized, and it terrified him as much as it brought him peace.

With a few toggles at the controls a swarm of nanites buzzed to life, shooting from the storage unit, enveloping Tony like a second skin. He could feel the familiar hum of the Iron Man suit filling him with strength. It was a heavy decision, to abandon the idyllic life he so desperately desired in favor of a battle once again. But deep down, he knew who he was and no matter the chaos, he would always rise to defend.

The gold and red nano-plates shimmered as they wrapped around his body, the helmet forming over his face with a final, satisfying whisper. “Vitals normal,” FRIDAY intoned, the AI’s voice a cool balm against the agitation humming beneath Tony’s skin. He flexed his fingers, the servos responding with the thoroughness of muscle memory, and for a fraction of a second, he let his mind go blank—just him and the suit and the city sprawled below, waiting for whatever came next.

“Let’s give Strange a proper welcome,” Tony replied, his voice gravelly with a newfound determination.

He strode to the window—not bothering with the door—and paused for a breath as he scanned the skyline. Strange was still there, floating cross-legged like some smug, levitating Buddha, hands resting on his knees in silent invitation. New York looked different through the photochromatic tint of Mark LXXXVII’s optics: the city was a living map of heat signatures and neural frequencies, every cab and pigeon and cyclist pulsing in high definition.

Pepper stood in the threshold, arms crossed, but there was no censure now. She watched him with something closer to pride than fear, and when he gave her a half-salute, she mouthed, “Don’t be late for dinner.” He nodded, the gesture more heartfelt than he’d ever admit.

The wind hammered against his chest plate as he arced downward, then up, the city shrinking beneath him in a rush of vertigo and clarity. The suit’s sensors painted targets and trajectories across his HUD, but his attention was on Strange, who remained perfectly still even as Tony accelerated toward him like a missile. At the last instant, Tony flared his jets and came to an abrupt hover, leveling off ten feet in front of the sorcerer.

“Nice entrance,” Strange observed, not budging from his meditative position. His eyes opened, pupils flecked with cosmic orange, and for an instant Tony thought he saw every possible version of this meeting flicker behind them—every universe in which they were allies, enemies, or simply strangers passing each other on the street.

He shivered at the realization, an uncomfortable weight settled in the pit of his stomach. He shoved the feeling in the back of his head as he answered, trying to sound as natural as possible.

“What, you didn’t see that coming?” Tony countered, “You’re the one camping outside my building like a groupie.”

Strange shrugged, his hands making lazy circles as orange sparks danced between his fingers. “I knew you’d come around. Took you long enough,” he said, his tone casual yet layered with significance, as if the moment’s importance stretched far beyond their individual destinies.

Tony frowned, his faceplate retracting to reveal an expression mixing annoyance with curiosity. “Don’t push it, Wizard. I’m only doing this because Pepper convinced me.”

“I appreciate that. But we don’t have time to waste.” Strange gestured to a swirling orange portal that began to coalesce behind him, a vibrant doorway leading to the Avengers compound.

There was a tension in the air, but it wasn’t the crackle of imminent violence. It was something subtler, a sense that both men were standing on the edge of a precipice neither wanted to acknowledge. The city’s noise faded, replaced by the hum of arc reactors and the faint, citrusy ozone of the portal Strange was conjuring behind him.

“Ready to go?” Strange asked, rising smoothly into a standing position, cloak billowing in the windless air.

“No, but since when did that ever stop me?” Tony replied, rolling his shoulders. He allowed himself a final glance at the skyline—at the home behind him, the life he was about to leave in the hands of fate and Pepper’s remarkably steady heart—then faced the swirling portal.

“After you,” he said, voice dry as a martini.

Strange inclined his head, stepping through the gateway without a backward glance. Tony hesitated on the threshold—not out of fear, but out of a quiet, gnawing hope that maybe, just maybe, this was the last time he’d have to jump headfirst into the unknown.

———————————————————————————————

As the portal opened the image of the compound’s hangar opened in front of them. Everything was just as Stephen had left it a couple of hours prior, except all the aircrafts were now missing and the only person standing in the darkness was Nick Fury.

A sleek black SUV loomed behind Nick, its tinted windows concealing the identities of its occupants. The only discernible detail was the presence of a man and a woman seated in the front row, their silhouettes barely visible against the darkened glass.

Chapter Text

As Tony emerged from the portal, the sharp neon lights of the compound momentarily blinded him, their harshness seeming to mock his life decisions. Before Tony could even shoot another glare back at his house, Strange flicked his wrist, and with a ripple of energy, the portal vanished. As the last glimmer of light faded in the room's stillness, Stark had to face the fact that there was no turning back. The silence felt oppressive, as if the very walls were holding their breath.

After a tense pause, Nick Fury's voice broke the silence like a sudden clap of thunder. "Strange," he greeted, a smirk on his face that matched the smugness in his tone. He exuded the confidence of a man who knew he had won before the contest even began. "I knew you'd bring him back." His single eye shone with a sense of triumph.

Stephen remained unperturbed, his calm demeanor always managing to unsettle Tony. "I didn’t do anything, actually," he replied in a tone almost too nonchalant, infusing it with his usual air of mystery. "It was all him." The words lingered in the air, and Tony could sense Strange's subtle amusement with the situation.

Tony coughed to draw attention as he moved further into the room, making sure everyone knew he was there. "Let me be clear about something," he declared, his tone a mix of defiance and resignation. "I'm not here by choice. You can thank Pepper for that." He gestured dramatically to himself, rolling his eyes as a shield against the vulnerability he was feeling.

"I don’t doubt it." The comment came from someone inside a nearby SUV, the familiar low drawl easily recognizable to Tony even before the faceless figure emerged.

Stark had known this was a possibility—one that had loomed in a corner of his mind since the moment Strange appeared at his door. Still, he had harbored a flicker of hope that perhaps Rogers was smart enough to avoid this place—his place. Now, face to face with reality, his pulse quickened with the weight of unspoken words and unresolved history.

As if on cue, the car door swung open, and the figure stepped into the light, standing under the compound's unsettling neon glow. The moment was seared into Tony's mind: Captain America, walking toward him, as if the last time they had seen each other hadn’t ended in blood.

"Captain," Stark began, his voice slicing through the compound's recycled air with an edge sharper than any blade. The word dripped with acid—there was nothing respectful about it, just an old pain that refused to scab over. "Well, isn't this a delightful surprise? I was under the impression you weren't welcome in the States." Tony locked his stance, feet wide, chin raised in that strange mix of challenge and self-defense that always accompanied Rogers’ presence.

Rogers, unyielding as a statue, let the accusation settle like a heavy cloak. He met Stark's glare unflinchingly, the lines in his face deeper than Tony remembered—etched by a year of running, hiding, surviving. "I’m not," Steve replied, his voice level despite the tension cutting through the room like piano wire. "But you know it takes much more to stop me." The words, as always, were simple and full of conviction. Even Tony, mind ablaze with rage, could never accuse him of being anything less than sincere.

“I’m afraid I had to witness your stubbornness firsthand, Cap.” Tony’s attention flicked momentarily over to Strange and Fury, both silent observers to the impending train wreck. But the real audience was Steve alone. Tony’s words slithered out, full of venom, every syllable a tiny needle in his own side. "You remember Berlin? Of course you do. The airport," he said, the conjured memory sharp and immediate. He couldn’t look at Steve without seeing the whole tableau: the jet, the ruined tarmac, and especially Rhodes, limp and broken on the concrete. It had become a recurring nightmare, playing on a loop no matter how many times Tony tried to bury it. "You tried to kill us—you almost killed us."

Steve drew a measured breath, the air whistling through clenched teeth. The guilt was all over him, raw and unrefined. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it, trying to line up the words in a way that would matter. He took a step forward, shoulders set—not in defiance, but in a strange, battered humility. "Tony..."

The tone in Steve’s voice was one of submission, he was willingly letting the control sit in Tony’s hands. The word was a white flag, and it twisted something in Stark's core. "I'm truly, truly sorry. For everything. None of this should’ve gone down how it did." Steve’s eyes darted to the floor, as if he could find the right answer carved into the brushed steel. "You had the right to know. The whole truth. I... I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I should have."

For a moment, the room held its breath, floating in the sickly fluorescent light. If Steve thought that an apology was what Tony wanted, he could not have been more wrong. It only served to make Tony’s eyes flash with a hotter, more focused anger, like a dying star collapsing inward. He clenched his jaw, voice low and controlled as a scalpel. “You—” He cut himself off, every neuron in his brain firing at once with a thousand variations of what he wanted to say, and none of them doing justice to the betrayal. "You don’t get to decide that for me, Captain." He said the last word like a curse, twisting it in his mouth as if to wring out the last drop of respect.

Steve stood his ground. He didn’t blink or flinch or do anything to lessen the blow. Instead, he pressed forward, voice steadier now. “You’re right, I don’t.” Each syllable landed like a stone on water, calm on the surface but sending ripples deep below. “And I also know why you signed those accords.” He kept pushing, like a man trying to break through a locked vault. "You wanted to stop the pain that this life brings us all. But you can’t do that, Tony. The things we did—we did for the best. We tried to help everyone, but that’s not something that ever works. It never has. But the fact that you’re still here says it all.”

Tony’s breath hitched. Why did Rogers always cut straight through the armor, past all the sarcasm and superiority, straight to the soft tissue underneath? He felt something dangerous rising, a tide he’d kept at bay for too long. He watched Steve’s approach, the old soldier moving with haunted familiarity, every step drawing them closer to the confrontation neither of them knew how to survive.

Steve stopped only when he was toe-to-toe with Tony. He placed a hand, gentle but firm, on the reinforced plate over Tony’s shoulder. “We can forgive each other and start over, Tony.” Steve's fingers pressed ever so slightly, as if willing the words into Tony’s bloodstream.

It should have been a moment of healing, a symbolic gesture of reconciliation. Instead, Tony’s reflexes overrode everything else. He shrugged Steve’s hand off—not with defensiveness, but like a man swatting away a wasp that had nestled too close to an old wound. In a blur of motion, Tony’s hand gripped Steve’s forearm, twisting it in a practiced move that would have made even Natasha proud. He spun him sharply, one arm coming up to anchor Steve in a half-choke, the other pinning his freshly injured wrist behind his back.

The move was rough, but the greater restraint came from Tony himself; he could have hurt Steve—really hurt him—but stopped just short. He held on, knuckles white, as if letting go would mean falling apart completely. It was more raw, frantic instinct than calculated aggression—a man drowning in his own betrayal and dragging the nearest anchor down with him.

Steve didn’t fight back. Not out of passivity, but out of penance. He let the collar of his jacket dig into his throat, let the sting of Tony's grip remind him of every mistake, every choice he'd made that led them there. "Do it if you need to," he rasped, voice rough but not pleading.

Tony’s face was inches from Steve’s ear, his breath hot and ragged. "Yes, you’re right. I think I needed this," Tony spat, his voice shaking—equal parts venom and heartbreak. He let go of the hold, sending Steve to the ground, still aching.

He took a deep breath to steady himself; the room had gotten quiet since the Captain's appearance. Tony shot a look to Fury and Strange, their faces a mask of indifference. He couldn’t tell if they didn’t care or if they thought it better to let the two of them resolve their issues on their own. His gaze turned to Steve again; the repulsion hadn’t decreased, but he’d had enough for one day. Tony extended a hand to the man on the floor. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he started. “We are not friends, and all the apologies you can mutter won’t change that."

Steve lingered on the polished concrete, the fine grit and cold pressing through the sleeve of his jacket. It took him a moment, but eventually, he raised his eyes to Tony’s outstretched hand—a gesture offered with such visible reluctance that Steve couldn’t help but almost smile at the sheer stubbornness of it. He clasped Tony’s wrist, not in camaraderie but in a hard, old-fashioned shake—the kind that spoke more of endurance than affection. Tony pulled him to his feet with a jerk, the forceful motion bordering on hostile but stopping just shy of it.

Only then, as the tension settled like dust in the electric light, did the SUV’s doors open once more. From the leathery interior emerged a new figure—the silhouette of a woman—the other presence who had been watching them up until that moment.

The girl stepped out of the SUV like an ethereal apparition, dressed in a halter, one-piece black silk ensemble that flowed elegantly into wide-legged pants. The top featured a sophisticated V-neck with a tailored design. Her presence was both commanding and mysterious. Her copper-brown hair was styled loosely in a bun, with a few strands gently cascading over her sculpted shoulders, accentuating a face that combined beauty with an aura of danger, evident in her striking dark jade eyes. A basic pair of black running shoes completed the outfit, making it both sleek and prepared for action if necessary.

Overall, she exuded an elegance that seemed more like a meticulously crafted facade than a natural demeanor. Her movements were silent and graceful as she approached the small gathering, a hint of a smirk playing on her lips as she stopped at Strange’s side.

She cleared her throat to get the attention of the four men. "Now, if you're done with your little testosterone display," she began, her voice carrying a faint, almost undetectable European accent. "I suggest we settle down and figure out our next move. It seems to me, from Fury's call, that we're in quite a hurry, aren't we?"

The silence after her entrance was sharp and echoing, the kind of hush that meant everyone in the room was recalibrating. Tony watched the newcomer with keen, predatory curiosity, his gaze sweeping over the elegant lines of her outfit, the sculpted precision of her posture, the deliberate calm with which she occupied space. All of it told him she was no ordinary asset.

He angled himself toward her, gesturing with his chin, his voice casual but baited with a challenge. "And you are?" There was a spark of performative chivalry in his tone, the kind that said he was daring her to get past his prickly defenses.

The woman held a moment of perfect, unblinking eye contact before allowing herself a slight, enigmatic smile. “Cassandra Gastaldi. A pleasure.” The accent—subtle, somewhere Mediterranean—rolled off her tongue with a practiced coolness.

Tony gave a quick, sardonic salute. "Charmed, I'm sure. I didn't realize we were recruiting from the Paris runways now." But even as he spoke, he was already cycling the name through every classified file in FRIDAY’s database. He came up empty. That made the hair on his forearms rise; people with real, dangerous skill sets always left the least paper trail.

Steve, still rubbing the red mark on his neck, chimed in. "Cass has been helping me out for the past few months. I met her by chance, and it turned out we had similar goals. She's been a real godsend.”

Fury gave a short, approving grunt without looking up from the data tablet in his hand. "Ms. Gastaldi’s credentials are more extensive than yours, Stark, and—as you might have noticed—she has no records. Nowhere. Best in the business at not being found. Some like to call her Shadow."

There was a ripple of reaction from Tony, but also from the others. Strange’s mouth twitched as if suppressing a smile; Steve, meanwhile, straightened as though the implied endorsement meant something more.

Tony held Cassandra’s gaze for a fractional beat longer, then let the tension go with a half-laugh, half-cough. “No offense, it’s just... hard to trust new faces these days. Especially when they show up looking like they’re here to collect my soul.” He glanced to Strange with a wink. “Not that you’d ever let that happen, right?”

Strange narrowed his eyes at Tony but let the remark slide. Cassandra, however, broke into a genuine smile, her teeth bright against her otherwise enigmatic expression. "If I were here for your soul, Mr. Stark, you wouldn’t see me coming," she replied, deadpan.

The room warmed by a microdegree; even Tony had to admit, she had style.

Fury cleared his throat, breaking the momentary détente. "If we're done here, I suggest we move to the situation room." He gestured toward the corridor leading deeper into the compound. "We've got a universe to save, and time isn't exactly on our side."

The group fell into step behind him, an uneasy alliance forming with each footfall. Tony maintained a calculated distance from Steve, while Cassandra moved with silent grace beside Strange, whose cloak rippled as if sensing the tension.

The situation room was plain and utilitarian, but didn’t lack all the comforts Stark’s money could buy—a large holographic display dominated the center, surrounded by sleek chairs and tactical consoles. The whole room was surrounded by glass walls. Three sides were made of transparent panels that connected the room to the rest of the floor—hardly discreet, but more than sufficient in a private tower. The fourth wall featured tall, floor-to-ceiling windows that filled the space with light. Apparently, large windows were something of a Stark trademark.

Fury took position at the head of the table, his single eye scanning the assembled group with practiced intensity.

"Let's get down to business," he said, activating the display with a wave of his hand. A three-dimensional map of the cosmos materialized before them, a couple of points glowing with distinct colors. "These are the Infinity Stones we've identified so far. Strange has the Time Stone, Vision has the Mind Stone, and we believe the Space Stone is currently on Asgard with Thor."

"And the others?" Tony asked, leaning forward to study the projection. He had gotten out of his suit before reaching the meeting.

"That's where it gets complicated," Fury replied. "The Power Stone was last seen with the Nova Corps on Xandar. The Reality Stone is... well, reality is often disappointing. And the Soul Stone remains elusive."

Strange stepped forward, his hands tracing arcane patterns in the air. "According to what Gamora told us, Thanos needs all six Stones to achieve his goal. If even one remains out of his reach, his plan fails."

“Wait,” interjected Stark, who was having trouble following their lead, “who’s Gamora now?”

Fury gave Stephen a piercing, disapproving glance, since updating Stark was supposed to be Strange's responsibility. Stephen responded by raising an eyebrow, looking like someone who had spent the entire night drifting through November's dreary weather, clearly unamused. At Fury’s prodding, Strange spread his hands in a gesture of measured patience and addressed the group—though his eyes landed on Tony, who had crossed his arms, face set into a skeptic’s mask.

“Well, Tony, since you missed the opening act,” Strange began, injecting just enough dryness to mark this as both a report and a subtle dig. He then launched into a brief recap of the past 72 hours, for the benefit of not just Stark, but Steve and Cassandra as well.

Cassandra’s dark jade eyes narrowed, but she remained silent, arms folded across her chest. Steve, on the other hand, leaned forward, absorbing every detail with the intensity of a man preparing for battle.

Tony let out a sarcastic snort. “So, surprise crisis, huh? Tuesdays, am I right?” Then, as if remembering a missed plot point, he shot a look at Stephen. “You’re the wizard—can’t you just portal the Stones to a black hole or something?”

Strange smiled thinly. “It’s not that simple. The Stones anchor our whole universe like a net of carefully threaded wires. Moving them with magic is nothing short of impossible, unless you have more magical power than the cosmos itself.”

Fury cut in, his voice sharp as a whip. “That’s why we need to coordinate. If Thanos gets even one, the rest fall like dominoes.” He flicked a finger at the map, where the glowing dots seemed to pulse with urgency.

Cassandra finally spoke, her tone measured but edged with a dry amusement. “So he’s collecting cosmic cheat codes. And you’re telling me nobody thought to just... destroy them?”

Strange offered her a hard glance. “Absolutely not. It’s incredibly stupid, other than extremely dangerous—and potentially impossible. As I said, those gems are integral to the structure of reality. They can’t just be removed,” he said with frustration, shutting down any further consideration of the idea.

Tony tapped at his comm, muttering calculations under his breath. “All right, let’s assume Thanos doesn’t play by the rules. What’s our fallback?”

“Simple,” Stephen replied. “Keep them separated. Out of his reach, out of his power.”

Tony glanced around the table, eyes lingering an extra moment on Steve. It was almost as if, for one heartbeat, the old team dynamic flickered back to life—each person falling into the familiar cadence of crisis.

“Or use them against him,” Fury put in, his voice so casual it caught everyone off guard.

Tony’s eyes widened a fraction, picking up on the implication. “Wait, you mean as weapons?” The skepticism was there, but so was a thread of intrigue—he was already six steps down the logic tree.

“Exactly like weapons,” Fury confirmed. “Most advanced arsenal in the universe, and we’ve all been treating them like they’re radioactive relics locked up in a vault. Maybe it’s time to start thinking like people who actually want to win.”

The room digested that—the unspoken “at any cost” hanging heavy in the air.

Steve shifted in his chair, looking uneasy. “That’s a last resort, Nick. We both know how these things backfire.”

Fury’s gaze went arctic. “I’m aware, Captain. But I’m also aware our ‘best case scenario’ involves a sociopathic mutant with a god complex. He’s coming to us. We either find a way to use those Stones to tilt the odds, or we play defense and wait for the world to lose.”

Stephen Strange made a tight, annoyed sound in his throat, the cloak around his shoulders tensing up. “The Stones aren’t designed for human manipulation. Their energy is—” He groped for a word and settled on, “devouring.” His face creased in remembered pain, but he pressed on. “If you can’t wield it, the thing wields you. We do not want to risk that, trust me.”

“That’s if we use them all together, right?” pressed Cassandra. “But you wield one. We could turn them all against him, one at a time.”

Strange’s brows furrowed deeper. “I trained for years using the same magic that flows in this Stone. Anyone else could burn in the attempt to control one.”

Cassandra's face showed no sign of being impressed by the sorcerer's claim, as if there was something she wasn’t telling them—yet she didn’t press the matter any further.

Tony’s mind, meanwhile, was moving at breakneck speed. “Say, hypothetically, we had someone—or some way—to channel the energy. Could we use a Stone to, I don’t know, dust Thanos off the cosmic chessboard before he even gets here?”

Fury nodded. “That’s your department, Stark. I’m just here to throw the Hail Marys.”

A silence lapsed—the sort where no one wanted to be the first to say yes, but no one was willing to outright say no, either.

Cassandra, quickly redirecting her thoughts, asked, "What about the Guardians? Any word from them?"

Fury shook his head. "Nothing yet, but it's only been a day since they departed. Their mission was to locate Thor and Banner in outer space. I don’t expect them to get back for a couple of days still."

"So no news is good news," Tony muttered, though his expression betrayed his concern.

"For now," Fury agreed. "Meanwhile, though we've made progress on our recruitment drive with you, Rogers, and Gastaldi, we still have a few key players to locate."

"Barton and Lang are still off-grid," Steve said, glancing at the tactical readout. "Last I heard, Clint was with his family, and Scott was dealing with some house arrest situation in San Francisco."

"And Romanoff?" Tony asked, trying to sound casual despite the weight of the name.

"Her last movements were tracked in Europe," Fury replied. "We’ve tried to contact her, but she is still hiding, and doesn’t want to be found."

Cassandra stepped closer to the holographic display, studying it with analytical precision. "I can handle the European wing," she offered, her voice cool and measured. "I have contacts there who might be useful in locating Romanoff quickly."

Tony raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued at her offer. "I'll take care of tracking down Barton and Lang then," he said, matching her initiative. "Shouldn't be too hard to find a retired archer and an ex-con."

"Actually," Fury said, “I’d prefer not to let you pick any more fights, Stark. Besides, I’ll need you to recruit Parker—that boy hangs on your every word.”

Tony's face clouded over immediately. "Parker? The kid? You want me to drag a teenager into an intergalactic war?" His voice rose with each word, hands gesturing wildly. "Absolutely not."

"He's already been in the field," Fury countered, unmoved by Tony's outburst. "Berlin wasn't exactly a playground fight, and he handled himself well."

"That was different," Tony snapped, pacing now. "That was a... a family dispute. This is Thanos we're talking about. Cosmic genocide. Not exactly the after-school activity I had in mind for him."

Steve watched the exchange with growing concern. "How old is this Parker kid, exactly?"

"Sixteen," Tony answered before Fury could, the word hanging heavily between them.

Cassandra raised an eyebrow. "And you brought him to Germany? To fight the Avengers?"

"I didn't know it would escalate," Tony shot back, defensive. "And for the record, he's got abilities that would make most of you jealous. But he's still a kid with homework and a bedtime."

Strange cleared his throat. "If his powers are as substantial as you suggest, we may need them. The fate of half the universe outweighs—"

"Don't," Tony cut him off, voice dangerously low. "Don't you dare finish that sentence."

Fury leaned forward, his single eye fixed on Tony with laser-like intensity. "Rhodes is still recovering, but we need him too. You're the only one who can convince them both."

"Send Rogers to get Barton and Lang then," Tony countered. "They'll slam the door in my face anyway."

"That's precisely why I'm sending him," Fury confirmed. "So here’s the plan: Rogers and Gastaldi set course for Europe. Cassandra will track Romanoff, while Steve finds Maximoff and Vision. When you're back in America, you'll split—Barton and Lang. I’m sure Natasha won’t mind paying a visit to her friend. Rogers, I’ll need you to get in contact with Wilson as well. Meanwhile, Stark will take care of Parker and Rhodes."

Tony shook his head, still struggling with the Parker assignment. "I promised his aunt I'd keep him safe. This is the opposite of safe."

"And yet," Fury said, his tone softening slightly, "this is the world he lives in now. With or without your permission, threats like Thanos will come. At least with you guiding him, he stands a chance."

The room fell silent. Tony stared out the window, the weight of responsibility pressing down on him. He'd seen what the kid could do—his strength, his reflexes, his uncanny instincts. But he'd also seen the light in May Parker's eyes when she looked at her nephew—the last family she had left.

"He'll need a better suit," Tony finally said, his voice quiet but resolute. "Something with more protection."

Fury nodded, knowing he'd won. "Do what you need to do."

Strange's cloak rippled as if in agreement. "I'll coordinate with Wong to secure the New York Sanctum. If Thanos sends his lieutenants ahead, they may target the Stone directly."

Fury nodded, adding, “Strange, I’ll also need you here to help me track down the remaining Stones. The sooner we get a hold of them, the better.”

Strange inclined his head in agreement, though a flicker of reservation crossed his features. "The Stones call to each other. Using the Time Stone to locate the others could potentially alert Thanos to our intentions."

"It's a risk we'll have to take," Steve said firmly. "Better to find them first and deal with the consequences than let them fall into his hands."

Meanwhile, Tony tapped his fingers against the table, mind racing through designs for Peter's upgraded suit. "FRIDAY, pull up the Iron Spider protocols. We're going to need to accelerate production."

"Already on it, sir," came the AI's response through his earpiece.

Fury surveyed the room, a grim satisfaction in his expression. "Then we're agreed. We move out immediately, you make contact with your targets, and we all reconvene here in 96 hours."

Steve's eyes widened slightly. "Only four days to find Natasha while undercover? And that's not even considering reaching Barton. That seems seriously tight, Fury."

Cassandra's eyes sparkled with confidence, a smirk forming on her lips. "I can handle it, Steve."

Steve lifted both eyebrows in disbelief. He knew she was talented, but he thought she was underestimating Natasha. "You don't know her. She's good."

"So am I," she replied, brimming with confidence.

"You heard her, Steve. Let her do her thing," Fury said. He was definitely too hasty in dismissing what he didn’t like to hear, in Rogers' opinion, but Steve didn’t press further.

As the group dispersed, Tony lingered behind, staring at the holographic display of the universe. The glowing points representing the Infinity Stones seemed to pulse with malevolent potential.

"Something on your mind, Stark?" Strange asked, pausing at the doorway.

Tony didn't turn. "Just wondering if we're making the same mistakes all over again. Bringing people together only to watch them fall apart."

Strange considered this, then replied, "Perhaps. But this time, the alternative is watching half the universe disappear."

Tony finally looked up, his eyes reflecting the blue glow of the hologram. "That's what I'm afraid of."

Without another word, he strode from the room, already calculating the fastest route to Queens. The kid would be excited, of course—too excited to understand the danger. Tony would have to make him understand somehow, without crushing that boundless enthusiasm that made Peter Parker who he was.

Behind him, the map of the universe continued to rotate slowly, stars and galaxies spinning in an endless dance, oblivious to the storm that was coming.

Later, after the meeting concluded, once everyone had left the room, Cassandra approached Tony with silent grace.

"I hear you have quite the collection of toys, Stark," she remarked, her voice carrying a hint of amusement. "I could use something for my European trip. Commercial flights are so... conspicuous."

Tony studied her for a moment, weighing his options. There was something about her—a dangerous elegance—that both intrigued and unsettled him.

"Sure, why not," he finally conceded. "Take the Quinjet Mark II from Hangar B. It's got stealth capabilities and enough firepower to level a small country. Try not to scratch the paint."

"How thoughtful," she replied with a smirk. "I'll treat it with all the care it deserves."

Tony watched as she turned to leave, her movements fluid and precise.

"One more thing," he called after her. "Who exactly are you, Gastaldi? Because FRIDAY can't find a trace of you anywhere, and that's... unusual."

Cassandra paused, looking back over her shoulder. The shadows around her seemed to deepen momentarily. "Let's just say I'm good at staying in the dark." With that cryptic response, she continued toward the hangar, leaving Tony with more questions than answers.

Strange approached Tony as Cassandra disappeared down the corridor.

"She's an interesting addition to the team," he observed, his tone carefully neutral.

"Interesting is one word for it," Tony replied. "Suspicious is another. You trust her?"

Strange's expression remained unreadable. "I trust that we need all the help we can get against what's coming."

"That's not an answer," Tony pressed.

"No," Strange admitted, "it's not." He turned his attention to the tactical display, effectively ending the conversation.

Tony sighed, resigned to the reality that trust was a luxury they couldn't afford right now.

As he headed toward his garage, in search of a proper vehicle, Tony couldn't shake the feeling that they were all pieces on a cosmic chessboard, moving toward an endgame none of them fully understood. The recruitment drive was just the opening gambit. The real battle—the one for the universe itself—was only beginning.

Chapter Text

The November wind came off the river with teeth, biting through the stitched panels of Steve Rogers’ coat and hounding him up and down the open tarmac. He squinted against the cold, eyes fixed on the hangar doors at the edge of the Avengers compound airstrip. The rest of the world had the decency to be asleep or indoors, but the compound’s perimeter lights stabbed the gray afternoon and painted the ground in long, pale bars. Tony’s new jet waited at the ready, its hull a needle of black glass and composite, shadowed under the hangar’s yawning roof.

Steve set his jaw, breath steaming out between clenched teeth. He’d been standing in the wind for almost twenty minutes, not because the schedule demanded it, but because anticipation, like penance, always seemed to burn hotter when he held it alone. He replayed the last meeting in the conference room—the awkward handshake, Tony’s brittle sarcasm, the unblinking assessment from Nick Fury, and the brief but loaded introduction to his new mission.

There was a time—Steve could still recall it in brittle, yellowed snapshots—when he thrived on crowds: parades, rallies, the thunder and crush of men pressed together in common cause, the way collective hope or fear would hum in the air like ozone before a storm. All of that, he’d realized, was gone, left with the people that cheered his name weaving American flags. The same flag that now hunted him.

If nothing else, Cass had managed to ease his sense of loneliness. He met her during a mission raiding a Hydra base in Morocco, she had been living there undercover and he’d tried to kill her. She was kinetic, unpredictable, bubbling. You would never tell at first glance, but she was deeply a kind person.

But she was late.

He paced the tarmac again, boots thumping across the painted lines. In the distance, the windswept Hudson gleamed with bleak determination, the rippling surface almost metallic in the sinking afternoon light. Steve checked his watch. She should have been here fifteen minutes ago.

He turned his attention to the hangar, scanning for movement. For a moment, all he could see were the rows of grounded jets and the silent, beady glare of security drones tracing lazy arcs above the compound. Then, out of the darkness, a figure materialized.

The hangar doors slid open with a hydraulic moan, and there she was, a vertical line of black against the hard white light. She paused at the threshold, as if reading the currents of the air before deciding to step into them. The wind caught her coat—no, not a coat, just layers of black fabric tailored to movement—and for a split second Steve saw the familiar way shadows cling to her, trailing at her heels like living smoke. She advanced with a smooth, unhurried stride, every footfall measured and economical, her eyes already locked onto the jet. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her in full daylight, but the effect was always unsettling.

Her hair was pulled back loose but with intent, the strands around her face highlighting the sharpness of her features. She wore no badge, no insignia, just a black suit, flat shoes, and the sense of someone who knew exactly how much space she occupied in the world.

When she drew within speaking distance, Steve saw the flicker in her eyes—a dark jade, impossible to place, but unmistakably watchful.

“You’re late,” he called out, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice.

She slowed, considering the words, then offered a half-shrug. “Time’s relative. Traffic in the corridors was murder.”

He eyed her, with his signature ‘you have people’s lives as a responsibility, you should behave better’ look. But didn’t comment further at his friend’s poor excuse.

“We should leave in five, I’ll get the motors ready,” he paused, sincere concern flickering in his eyes. “Are you?”

A faint smile played at the corners of her mouth, quickly smothered. “Always.”

They walked the last stretch together, footsteps echoing off the concrete. At the base of the boarding ladder, Cassandra paused, one hand hovering over the metal like she was sensing for heat. “Do you trust Stark’s machinery?” she asked, voice low.

Steve grunted. “I trust Stark’s need for control. That jet’s built to survive a direct missile strike—and you’d have to be an idiot to try and plant a bug on it, with all the countermeasures.”

“Then we’re in good hands,” she said, and ascended without a backward glance.

Inside the jet, the temperature was almost tropically warm, the interior as sleek and severe as the outside. Rows of plush seating, a cockpit bristling with touchscreens, the faint undertone of ozone from the scrubbers running overtime. She slung her duffel into the rear compartment, then returned, dropping into the co-pilot’s chair with a fluid motion that seemed more feline than human.

The jet’s engines purred to life, a low resonance that pressed against Steve Rogers’ chest and stole the edge from the outside wind. He reached for the flight panel, his hands moving with easy authority; years in the cockpit had layered muscle memory onto muscles built for a different century. As emergency beacons flickered along the edge of the glass, he keyed in their first destination. The blue arc of their projected flight path lit up the screen—a hard arrow aimed across the Atlantic, through the ice and sea-spray of northern Scotland, and banking south toward the patchwork wilderness of post-collapse Eastern Europe.

“We’re wheels up in two,” he said, voice pitched just loud enough for the cockpit. “First stop Edinburgh, you’ll drop me then you’ll keep on the Balkan route.”

Cassanda settled into the co-pilot’s chair as if it belonged to her, knees folded up against the dash, boots planted on the edge of the control panel in a way that would have driven Tony to a coronary. She didn’t seem to register the takeoff checklist, just turned her head to watch the world outside as the ground crew scurried away and the hangar doors sealed them off from everything but sky.

She let her thoughts dangle, tapping her index finger twice against her thigh. “You think she’ll run?” The accent in her voice was the only hint of her origins—a slant to the vowels that defied easy classification, like someone who’d spent too many years shedding borders and passports until only a residue of everywhere remained.

Steve’s knuckles whitened on the throttle, not from fear or stress but from a focus that pulled all his nerves inward. “Romanoff?” He shook his head, chewing on the syllables. “She doesn’t run. Not unless she’s out of options. But she’ll make you work for it.” He glanced over, dropping the comment like a coin into a well. “You kind of remind me of her sometimes.”

Cassandra’s eyes narrowed with a brief flash of surprise, then she let out a bark of laughter so thin and brittle it almost broke. “You make that sound like a compliment.”

“Maybe it is,” he answered, the corners of his mouth turning up, if only slightly. “Black Widow’s one of the best. Deadly, sure, but loyal when it counts. That’s not as common as you’d think in our line of work.”

Cassanda cocked an eyebrow, studying his profile with a scientist’s detachment. “You ever wonder if that’s a genetic thing? Or maybe just training?”

He shrugged, ran a thumb over the leather seam of the yoke. “Pretty sure the Red Room would say training. But I’ve seen her make choices that no program can bake into a person.” He paused, weighing the sentence, and then looked at her dead on. “Have you ever heard her backstory?”

She shook her head, letting the silence expand.

“When Fury recruited her, she’d already burned every bridge and played every angle. But she kept trying anyway, every mission a shot at redemption for something nobody could forgive her for. I used to think that kind of determination was a weakness, but…” He trailed off, then voiced the thought anyway: “Maybe that’s all any of us have left. The hope that we can fix something broken, even if it’s just ourselves.”

Cassandra grinned, exposing a glint of canine. “You get more philosophical every month, Cap.”

He cut her a sidelong glance. “You get more reckless.”

“Comes with the territory.” She thumbed a hidden zipper on her sleeve, producing a slim, matte-black cylinder. She spun it between her fingers like a poker chip. “So, hypothetically, if you had to neutralize Romanoff, what would you do?”

Steve’s answer was instant. “I wouldn’t.”

“Not even if it was a direct order?”

His jaw flexed, the answer as certain as the sky outside: “Not even then.” He pulled the jet smoothly into a climb, letting the clouds swallow the ground below. “Orders are for soldiers. We’re not soldiers anymore.”

“You seem to admire her.” Pondered Cassandra, if Steve thought highly of her then maybe she was truly a valuable ally.

“I do,” Steve said, voice flat. “She’s the best there is.”

Cass tilted her head, eyes flicking over his profile. “She?”

Cap shot her a look of confusion, before putting the pieces together and muffling a laugh. “She is the best at what she does.”

Cassandra had still her eyes in slits, brows furrowed. “Which is being a spy…”

“Which is,” corrected Steve, “a lot more murder less stealth than what you do.” He brushed his hair with a hand as a smile formed on his lips. “Believe me, Cass, you're still my favorite mission partner and best shadow-wielder I know.”

She replied as she always did. “Not a shadow-wilder, I merely blend with them.”

“Back to Widow,” she said, voice low. “If she’s not running, what’s she doing?”

He thought for a second, then: “She has a past, like all of us, she just finds it more difficult to get away from it.”

Cassandra nodded, absorbing the logic. “You think she has backup?”

“Hardly, she likes to work alone, but Romanoff doesn’t go anywhere without an exit plan.” He slid a finger across the map, highlighting a corridor of airspace. “Our best shot is hitting the drop point in Belgrade. She’s got ties there—old handlers, safe houses, places nobody else would think to look.”

Cassanda looked away, the Hudson a memory below them now, the world reduced to blue gradations and the sound of two people who’d learned to trust each other’s silences. She fished a folded dossier from her inner jacket pocket and began unfolding it, the pages stamped with redacted lines and the stubborn creases of too many reads.

“Belgrade. I thought about it earlier, I’ll start with the local division of my order,” she said, her voice suddenly efficient. “There’s a guy there, named Kovalic, he runs the place now, but before that, well, let's say he owes me a favor.”

He grinned. “See? You’re already thinking like her.”

Cassanda let herself laugh, this time less brittle. “Just don’t make me dye my hair.”

He laughed too, then. “I wouldn’t dare.”

For a heartbeat, something crackled between them—respect, and maybe the mutual understanding of people who’d spent their lives dodging bullets and betrayals. Then she looked away, pulling a black folder from her bag and thumbing through the contents.

“Scared of flying?” Steve asked, watching her.

“No,” she said. “I just like to have a plan B. And C. And D.” She flicked a page. “Did you ever wonder why they put us together, the Avengers?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Because we’re the best at what we do.”

She smirked. “Or because we’re the only ones left willing to say yes.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he throttled the jet forward, feeling the kick as the engines spooled up to full power. The compound fell away behind them, lights receding into a smear of gold and shadow. In the silence that followed, both stared straight ahead, each absorbed in the calculus of what was coming.

Above the clouds, the sky turned an impossible blue, the sun a pale disk just over the horizon. Steve glanced at Cass, her face lit by the instrument glow, eyes hard and alert. For a moment, he remembered the first time he’d seen her, in Morocco: the way she’d disarmed three men bare-handed, then vanished before he could even say thank you, just to reappear later at his motel. He still asked himself how she could have found him in so little time.

He turned his attention back to the controls. “I’ll take first watch,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” she replied, and closed her eyes—not to sleep, but to listen, the way monks do, for the faintest hint of what’s coming next.

The world slipped by beneath them, cold and indifferent.

Inside the jet, the only warmth was the hum of anticipation and the shared, hard earned, trust between the super soldier and the shadow monk.

————————

The jet dropped through a ceiling of low Scottish cloud just as the city lights flickered on, making Edinburgh glow like a secret on the verge of being confessed. The descent was quiet—Cassandra preferred to fly in silence, music and chatter always seemed like a waste of bandwidth. Steve circled once, then set down on a strip of tarmac that looked, from above, like an abandoned service road beside the railyards at Waverley. The city’s silhouette pressed close on every side: the black bulk of the castle, the neat grid of sodium-lit streets, the ghostly arms of cranes along the distant river.

Cap killed the engines, letting the faint tick of cooling metal and the creak of the composite hull settle into the chill air. They both got down the vehicle, the rain, thin and cold, sheeted the canopy, dulling every other sound.

Cassandra punched a code into the comms panel, activating the jet’s stealth field. A ripple of blue-white shimmer licked over the fuselage, bending the dull city light until the aircraft seemed to collapse inward and vanish, leaving nothing but wet cobblestones and a faint buzz of ozone. She double-checked the perimeter on the external cameras, then finally let herself out, stepping down into the wet and shivering night.

Steve was waiting with his arms folded and his collar up against the drizzle. The wind made him look older, or maybe just more human; his hair was damp, and there were deep lines bracketing his mouth. He was dressed to disappear—heavy wool coat, gloves, sturdy boots—but still carried himself like a soldier on parade, upright and open to the world.

Cassandra joined him at the end of the ramp, careful not to let the door slam behind her. She scanned the platform, checked for watchers or stray tourists, then gave a short nod to signal the all-clear.

He looked at her, something about the set of his shoulders making it clear this wasn’t a pep talk moment. “It’s going to be a quick mission. I know both of them and Wanda was on my side during the Berlin show down. They’ll listen.”

She nodded, the fear of the unpredictable surrounded her no matter the number of missions she had been into. It still didn’t sit right with her, having to leave Steve alone, even if only for a recruiting mission. Everything was easier when her life was the only one that could have been put into danger, when she was the only person she cared about. Because she knew she could take care of herself, but how was she supposed to intervene if she was miles away, in another state.

“Ok, but please don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.” Her eyes betrayed her thoughts, as Steve immediately caught up with her hidden fears.

“Don’t worry Cass, we’ll keep in contact alright? If there are any problems you’ll be the first one to know.” He paused, his serious expression fading if only a little. “Also, I’ll really need a lift when I'm done. You know, as you’ll take the flying thing with you.”

She smiled at him, knowing that Cap would definitely complain if he had to wait for her once he was finished, if she wasn’t fast enough.

He started walking away, boots splashing as he followed the deserted access road toward the edge of the city center. The night was a blue-black velvet, cold and absolute, the streetlights casting long, greasy shadows along the curb. Cassandra watched him leave in silence. After his figure was no longer visible from the sideroad she was standing on, she made sure to wait five more minutes before giving her shoulders to the cold night of Edinburgh and getting back into the aircraft, ready for her next stop.

————————

She left the jet at a private airstrip outside Belgrade, trading the slick silence of Tony’s technology for the hollow ring of boots on cracked asphalt and the sweetly rotting perfume of early spring. In the city proper, the streetlights glowed a sick amber, and the buildings wore their years openly: century-old brick stitched with cables, glass towers rising like afterthoughts, everything layered in graffiti and shadow.

Cassandra moved through the night as a ghost—never on the same street for long, always in the crease between surveillance cameras, her face shifting just enough to evade digital eyes. The black of her clothes helped making her invisible, her body heat muted by a mesh underlayer and her presence further erased by a cheap, disposable umbrella that hunched her silhouette into the shape of a local.

At the edge of the old city, she ducked into an alley and let the umbrella drop. The walls here were close, leaking water from ancient pipes, and every surface was scribed with tags in alphabets she didn’t read. She took a breath, centering herself in the cold, then pressed a thumb to the carved medallion she wore on a thin cord around her neck. The rigid pattern bit into her skin—an old monastery sigil, part prayer and part code.

She brought the pendant closer to her lips, she didn’t need to read the engraved message to remember the lyrics to the old chant as she murmured them in a voice just above the noise floor. The words tasted bitter, flat on the tongue. She waited, counting her own breaths, until the medallion softly lit up and a reply came—a whisper of static and then a soft clatter of syllables in a language she’d never learned. Serbian, she guessed, but the accent was so thick it might as well have been a code.

She didn’t answer, just held the medallion up in the night, waiting for the next prompt. A second voice joined the first: older, more careful, the rhythm slow and deliberate. She caught the shape of two numbers, then a single word: “dole”—down.

The line went dead.

Cassandra tucked the medallion under her shirt, skin prickling with the memory of a dozen similar handoffs in worse cities.

There were several different type of monks in the world. Some, like Strange’s had tall buildings standing as a memento in the busy streets of capital cities, or sanctuaries carved in the side of solitary mountains. Hers had a tendency to run down below. Corridors paved in the heart of the earth, beneath the bustling streets, hidden to the eyes, open only to those who knew what they were seeking. But not for that were they less grandiose.

One of the most important characteristics of a shadow monk was to observe, she’s been taught that since the day she set foot in her monastery. That way, when one of the cobblestones that made up the pavement moved slightly, she knew he had found what she was looking for.

With utmost care, she placed her feet on the stone, ensuring she didn't put any weight on it. As she did so, the stone crumbled inward. Cassandra maintained her balance with grace, even as the street beneath and around her began to give way. The only section that remained intact was the very spot she stood on.

All that was left after the stones had stopped moving was a staircase leading straight into the ground.

Cassandra descended the ancient steps, her footfalls impossibly silent against the worn stone. The air grew thick with each step downward, a cloying dampness that clung to her skin and filled her lungs with the earthy scent of centuries past. The walls pressed in from both sides, barely shoulder-width apart, their surfaces slick with condensation that caught what little light filtered from below.

She traced her fingertips along the rough-hewn stone, feeling the subtle carvings of symbols her order had used since before recorded history—warnings for some, guidance for others. The darkness was almost complete, and she let her senses guide her deeper. The weight of earth above pressed down, a reminder of just how far she'd traveled from the surface world.

The narrow passage suddenly gave way, and Cassandra stepped into an expanse that defied the confines of the underground. A grand hall materialized before her, its vastness startling after the claustrophobic descent. Vaulted ceilings stretched impossibly high, adorned with intricate gold filigree that caught the light of a hundred floating lanterns, casting a warm glow across the chamber.

Unlike Strange's Sanctum with its cluttered academic charm, this place exuded calculated opulence. Obsidian floors reflected the golden fixtures like still water, creating the illusion that one walked upon a midnight sea scattered with stars. Display cases of varying heights dotted the hall, each housing relics that seemed to pulse with their own inner light—ancient weapons, scrolls sealed in vacuum chambers, artifacts whose purposes had been forgotten by all but a select few.

Along the perimeter, dozens of identical doors stood at regular intervals, their black lacquered surfaces inlaid with gold symbols—some recognizable as old Cyrillic, others predating any known language. Each led to a different quarter of the temple: training rooms, meditation chambers, archives, and living spaces for those who had forsaken the world above.

"The prodigal returns," came a voice from the center of the hall, where a man stood beside a circular pool filled with pure clean water.

“Shut up Kovalic, I need a favor.” Put quickly Cassandra.

“Ah, always straight to the point, Cass. Sorry, I was having fun.” Kovalic was a tall, lean man in his forties, with jet black hair kept short that had a tendency to curl at the tips and a meticulously groomed beard that couldn't quite hide the thin scar running from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. He wore the traditional robes of their order—a midnight black robe embroidered with golden threads that seemed to shift and move in the lantern light. His eyes, pale green and sharp as broken glass, studied Cassandra with the practiced assessment of someone who had spent decades reading people's intentions in the space between heartbeats.

"You look well," he said, circling the pool with measured steps. "The surface world agrees with you. Though I hear you've been keeping interesting company lately."

Cassandra remained near the entrance, arms crossed. "News travels fast down here."

"Information is our currency, little Shadow. We heard about your Captain America months ago. A super soldier and a shadow monk—quite the partnership." His smile was thin, predatory. "Some of the elders are concerned about your... attachment."

"My personal relationships aren't up for review," she replied coldly. "I need to find someone. Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow. She's in Europe, last seen right here in Belgrade."

Kovalic chuckled, the sound echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "Ah, the infamous Red Room graduate. You know, we might have a contact for you, but it would be better if you approached him with discretion.” he shot her a look up and down that clearly meant she had to touch up her look a little.

“Alright, I’ll do what’s needed.” agreed her.

“You know Cass, they’re letting play with the Avengers, but this doesn’t mean the elders are pleased. You shouldn’t forget what our goal is.” He said sternly.

Cassandra's expression hardened, her jaw setting in a way that would have made Steve proud. "Our goal is to maintain balance. Right now, half the universe being wiped out seems like a pretty significant imbalance to me."

Kovalic's pale eyes glittered with amusement. "Balance, yes. But whose version of it? The shadow monks have existed for millennia because we understand that sometimes the greater good requires... difficult choices. The Avengers tend to be more black and white in their thinking."

"Cut the philosophy lesson," Cassandra snapped, taking a step forward. The golden threads in the floor seemed to pulse beneath her feet. "I need information on Romanoff's location, not a lecture on moral relativism."

"Patience, little Shadow." Kovalic raised a hand, his scarred face settling into a more serious expression. "Your Black Widow has been busy. Three safe houses burned in the last month, two handlers found dead in Prague, and a very expensive forger in Vienna who suddenly developed amnesia about a certain redhead who paid him a visit."

Cassandra processed this, her mind already mapping the pattern. "She's cleaning house. Severing ties."

"Or someone's cleaning them for her," Kovalic suggested, moving to one of the display cases. Inside, an ornate dagger with a serpentine blade caught the lantern light. "There are whispers that the Red Room wasn't as dead as everyone believed. Old programs, old loyalties.”

“Same shit,” finished Cassandra. “I know, I had a heads up from those black and white you hate so much. So what do you know?”

Kovalic circled the pool once more, his reflection rippling across its surface. "I don’t know where your Widow might be, she’s good at what she does, but the guy I told you before, his name is Aleksandar Petrovic, you’ll find him at this address." He said handing her a piece of paper in which he had just scribbled all the information Cassandra would need.

"Thank you, this pays for that time in Moscow," Cassandra replied, already calculating distances and routes in her head.

Kovalic nodded, moving to a nearby wall, bidding farewell before disappearing into one of the dozens of doors.

Chapter Text

The night had grown even chillier, with the river's breeze transforming her breath into mist. She navigated through narrow alleys and hidden side streets. The tiny slip of paper she held bore an address and a brief note detailing what she would encounter and how to handle it.

When she reached the garage, it was just as described: a squat, cinderblock building set between two taller, abandoned shells, the windows papered over and the door marked with the same ghost-red circle as before.

Inside, the air was a soup of oil, gasoline, and damp concrete. The main bay was empty except for a scattering of rusted toolboxes and the battered hull of a car that would never run again. She found a corner near the back, invisible from the street, and waited.

At 2:12, Aleksandar entered with a swagger, keys jangling, phone pressed to his ear. He was a tall and well buit man, hair shaved close on the sides, the top slicked back with engine oil and ego. He wore a leather jacket over a t-shirt that might have once been white and flaunted the kind of confidence that comes from believing you’d be the most dangerous man in a room full of dangerous men. He was alone, but Cassandra knew better than to trust appearances. She slipped deeper into shadows, stilled her breath, and summoned her Ki, feeling it pulse along her bones. She reached for the memory of Romanoff—her walk, her voice, her smile like a knife—and let the energy do its work.

It began with the skin: a flush of pale, then the subtle recontouring of jaw and cheekbones, hair lengthening and darkening to that familiar red. Her muscles shifted, compacting, reshaping; her hands grew slimmer, her shoulders narrowed. It hurt, but not in a way that mattered. When she opened her eyes, the world looked different—sharper, brighter, every sound high in the register.

She stepped from the shadows with Romanoff’s stride, heels clicking against the concrete. Aleksandar turned, startled, and nearly dropped his phone.

“Hello, Sasha,” she said, voice a perfect match.

Aleksandar's face flickered through a series of expressions—surprise, confusion, and finally settling on irritation. He slipped his phone into his pocket, eyes narrowing as he took in the sight of 'Natasha' standing before him.

"Nađa," he said, his accent thickening with displeasure, as the pseudonym rolled of his tongue. "What are you doing here? You should be at the docks." His gaze swept over her, assessing. "The shipment comes in less than an hour."

Cassandra tilted her head, a perfect imitation of Romanoff's calculated nonchalance. "Change of plans," she replied, moving closer with the predatory grace she'd observed in surveillance footage. "I needed to speak with you first."

Aleksandar crossed his arms, the leather of his jacket creaking. "You don't change my plans, Nađa. I give orders, you follow them." His voice dropped lower. "This isn't how we work."

"Relax, Sasha," Cassandra purred, circling him with measured steps. "The docks are covered. I made arrangements."

“Arrangements?" Aleksandar's jaw tightened. "What arrangements? Who did you talk to?"

Cassandra let a small smile play across her lips. "Does it matter? The job will get done."

"It matters," he growled, closing the distance between them. "You think I trust anyone else with this shipment? You think I can afford mistakes?"

She maintained her composure, though her mind raced. Clearly, this operation was more significant than Kovalic had indicated. She needed to pivot.

"No mistakes," she assured him, her voice cool. "But I needed information. About the Red Room."

Aleksandar's expression shifted, surprise returning. "The Red Room? Why now?"

"There's movement," Cassandra improvised. "Old ghosts stirring. I need to know what you've heard."

He studied her for a long moment, suspicion evident in his eyes. "Nothing crosses the Serbian border without me knowing about it. No Red Room operatives have been through here." His hand moved to her arm, gripping it just firmly enough to show control. "What's really going on, Nađa? First you abandon your post, now this talk of ghosts?"

Cassandra allowed herself to look slightly vulnerable—a calculated risk based on what she knew of Romanoff's history with men like Aleksandar. "I've been compromised," she said softly. "Someone's tracking me, using old protocols. I need to disappear for a while."

Aleksandar's grip loosened slightly. "And the docks?"

"As I said, covered. Your merchandise will arrive safely." She placed a hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat accelerate. "But neither of us wants them here, right Sasha?"

He stepped back, running a hand through his slicked-back hair. "This is bad timing. I want at least the name of your contact. I won't let this opportunity slip by because of your history. Don't forget, I could still eliminate you just to ensure everything runs smoothly.”

 Cassandra softened her expression, a mix of vulnerability and pragmatism that she'd seen in old footage of Romanoff. "Kill me? Then who would clean up your messes?" She stepped closer, voice dropping to a murmur. "Remember Bucharest? You'd still be explaining that to your superiors if I hadn't intervened." She thanked past Cass whom was thourogh enough to search all this man history on the way there.

Aleksandar's jaw tightened, but the reminder had the desired effect. His posture relaxed slightly, though suspicion still clouded his eyes.

"I'm not asking for charity, Sasha," Cassandra continued, maintaining Natasha's cadence. "I'm asking for insurance. We both know how this works—I need a fallback position in case things go wrong." She glanced at her watch, a calculated gesture. "I’ll give you direct contact with my man to make sure he has the right informations, if that’s what you need. But I won’t be there."

His eyes narrowed, studying her face for any hint of deception. "You've never been this cautious before."

"I've never had the Red Room on my trail before," she countered smoothly. "This isn't just another job. These people know me—they are supreme in number and in opportunities, If you know what I mean.”

And he, in fact, knew, as his faced paled instantly at the thought of having to deal with red room emissaries. “All right,” he conceded, “I’ll call this man immediately, but I want none of this business to interfere with our operations, have I made myself clear enough?”

Cassandra locked eyes with him for a moment longer, reading the subtle tremor of his eyelids and the too-quick gulp of his throat. She let her shoulders slope a hint, breathing out the tension she'd feigned for the part. Natasha—no, Nađa—would offer nothing more. With a practiced flick of her hair and a final, heavy-lidded glance, she turned on her heel and strode for the exit, letting her silhouette linger in the crude fluorescent light.

“Hey, we said contact, bitch!” He trailed with his voice, resonating in the little space.

“No need to get all agitated Sasha.” She said as she stopped right before the shutter. From one of the pocket in her leather jacket she pulled out a simple ball pen with which she scribbled on the nearby wall. “There you go, here’s your number. Have a nice one,” and with that she was off in the night, disappearing just around the corner, never to be seen again.

But her job was not done yet, she needed that adress. She navigated through the chilly alleys of Belgrade, eventually finding one that was isolated and far enough from the occupied garage she had just left behind. Her Ki shaped her again, she went back to her normal form, all but her voice, which changed yet again.

She waited for the man to dial the number of the disposable phone she kept in her pocket.

The conversation was smooth and lasted no more than five minutes, Vukan was the name she left him, and he was quick to provide informations.

She had what she needed.

Time to find the Widow.

———————————-

Belgrade’s old quarter, Stari Grad, near the river, was a labyrinth of wet stone and decaying plaster, the alleys slick with rain and alive with the flicker of neon signs advertising liquor, lotto, and lies. Cassandra worked her way through the maze, keeping to the edges where the sodium lamps barely reached, her body tuned to the rhythm of the city: footsteps, distant club music, the growl of a motorcycle two streets over.

She moved like a rumor—never in the open, always at a slant. She closed her eyes, deepened her concentration, reached for the energy that surrounded her, the energy embedded in the fabric of the world, the one she was thought to call Ki. Once she was connected enough she pulled at it, molding it around herself, forming a thin layer muffling her every move. She scaled a fence topped with razor wire, her hands never leaving prints, then dropped into a courtyard ankle-deep in last season’s garbage. Above, the sky glowed with the reflected lights of a hundred desperate shops.

She had eyes on Romanoff within fifteen minutes.

The Widow wore a rain jacket and chargo pants slid over her usual suit. She kept her head down, but every step was calculated—no wasted energy, always moving toward a landmark, always aware of every angle.

Cassandra kept to the shadows, matching pace at a half-block’s remove. She was in tune with the darkness, using it as she pleased, turning her material body in a mere extension of the night. It was what made her so deadly and untraceble: she blinked out of sight at the end of a street, reappeared behind a dumpster or in the alcove of a ruined chapel. She left no trail for cameras, no sound for the restless dogs, no heat signature for the cheap Russian IR units Aleksandar’s friends probably used.

But Romanoff knew. Cassandra could see the small tells—a hesitation at a crosswalk, a glance into a shop window not to browse, but to scan for followers. The woman was a professional, maybe the best there was, but professional or not nobody had ever felt her presence if she wanted to disappear. Cassandra was impressed, but she kept on her tail anyway, because she was just as stubborn.

Twice, Romanoff doubled back, crossing her own path and pausing to peer into the darkness. Cassandra stilled her breath, pressed flat against the wet brick, let the night swallow her. Once, the Widow walked straight past her, then stopped and turned, as if daring her to show a face. Cassandra didn’t move. After a minute, Romanoff melted back into the crowd, but her pace changed—quicker, angrier.

The third time, Cassandra let her guard down, just a little. She was tracking Romanoff’s reflection in a puddle, watching for the shift in stride, when she saw it: a ripple at the edge of the mirrored surface, a flutter of darkness that wasn’t hers. She snapped back, realized she’d been clocked.

The Widow paused beneath a neon pharmacy sign, the red light painting her face in war colors. She didn’t look at Cassandra directly, but her jaw tensed, and the fingers of her left hand curled tight around something in her pocket.

For a moment, the rain stopped. The city stilled. Even the street dogs fell silent.

Then Romanoff took off at a run, vaulting a low wall and vanishing into a side passage. Cassandra followed, burning Ki to close the distance in a heartbeat. She felt herself flicker through three, maybe four shadows, each jump leaving her with a faint taste of ozone in the mouth.

She landed in a courtyard lined with graffiti and broken glass. Romanoff stood at the far end, backlit by the light spilling from a cracked door. She turned, just enough to make eye contact, then slipped inside.

Cassandra didn’t hesitate. She crossed the space, reached the door, and slipped through without a sound.

Inside was darkness, old tile, the musty stink of wet stone. Romanoff was gone, but Cassandra felt the trail—heat, Ki, the faint electromagnetic shimmer of a world-class operative on the move.

She grinned, wiped the rain from her face, and set off in pursuit.

This was what she’d been made for.

————————————-

The warehouse hunched on the riverbank like a wounded animal, its ribs of steel and concrete jutting into the gray predawn. Rain battered the shattered windows, and every gust of wind sent a chorus of groans through the rusted beams overhead. Cassandra entered through a door barely hanging on its hinges, scanning the vast interior for heat, movement, or the telltale flicker of a shadow not her own.

The place was a graveyard of lost things: crates marked with Cyrillic, pallets of rotting wood, discarded cables coiled like dead snakes. The floor was slick with oil and river mud, and the only light came from a line of streetlamps across the water, painting fractured gold across the wet concrete.

Cassandra let the door close behind her, then stilled. She’d lost Romanoff’s trail twice in the alleys outside, but each time she’d found it again—faint traces of movement, the scent of wet leather, a shift in the air that only someone trained in the old ways would notice. Now, inside, the trail was cold. She waited, breathing slow and shallow, listening for the world to tell her where the Widow had gone.

A soft clatter, far end of the building, something small knocked off a crate. Cassandra circled left, keeping to the shadows, and let the Ki rise in her blood. The shadows bent toward her, pooling at her feet and then climbing her legs, wrapping her in a haze of near-invisibility.

She reached the midpoint of the warehouse, where the roof dipped and the columns grew thicker. Here, the air was dense, humid with the stink of river and metal. She paused, then spoke into the dark:

“Nice move, bringing me here,” she called out. “If you wanted a clean kill, though, you should’ve picked somewhere with fewer exits.”

A chuckle, low and almost affectionate, echoed from the upper catwalks. “You’re not easy to impress,” came the reply, in perfect American English with a thread of something colder underneath.

Cassandra looked up, scanning the network of platforms and stairs. She spotted Romanoff, crouched low at the end of a catwalk, half her face masked by the cowl of her jacket, the other half lit by a dirty pane of glass.

“Neither are you,” Cassandra replied, keeping her hands visible. “Want to skip the foreplay and get to the part where you tell me what you’re doing in Belgrade?”

Romanoff didn’t move, but her voice dropped lower. “S.H.I.E.L.D. burned me two years ago. Now I’m just here for unfinished business.”

Cassandra nodded, letting the words settle. She stepped forward, shadows tightening around her limbs. “You know I’m not with them, right? I’ve got my own agenda.”

“Good to know,” said Romanoff. “Then maybe not shooting you back at the river has been a good idea.”

A beat of silence passed. Then, with impossible speed, Romanoff launched herself off the catwalk, tumbled once in the air, and landed catlike on a stack of crates ten meters from Cassandra, in which surely appeard as a superhero pose to her. She rolled to her feet, fists clenched, tactical suit blending seamlessly into the gloom.

The two women faced each other, muscles tensed, every nerve screaming for action.

“You could have just called,” said Romanoff, smiling without warmth.

Cassandra’s lips twitched. “Never had your number.”

They circled, each testing the other’s range. Romanoff moved first—two steps forward, a feint left, then a spinning kick aimed at Cassandra’s head. Cassandra ducked, let the shadows absorb the momentum, and countered with a sweep at Romanoff’s legs. The Widow danced back, then lunged, aiming a punch at Cassandra’s jaw.

The hit connected, a flash of pain bright behind Cassandra’s eyes. She let it push her backward, then twisted, redirecting Romanoff’s next strike with a palm to the wrist. They traded blows, each more precise than the last—elbow, knee, lock, counter—neither giving ground.

Cassandra caught a wrist and felt the surge of strength beneath the skin. “You’re holding back,” she said, grunting as she absorbed a knee to the ribs.

Romanoff grinned, teeth white in the darkness. “So are you.”

Natasha wasn't easily impressed, but this girl was something else. She sensed she was dealing with someone dangerous the moment she realized she was being followed. It was an instinct she couldn't quite define. For Black Widow, not being able to immediately spot her new shadow spelled trouble, the kind she wasn't accustomed to facing anymore. It was frustrating to have to constantly turn around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the figure, and she began to wonder if her senses were deceiving her. But then her pursuer slipped up, and when Natasha saw the ripples in the puddle, she knew she had been right all along.

Now, in the warehouse she thought was the best place to corner the intruder, she felt as if she was loosing the upperhand. Not only that, each blow she took felt different, she felt them resonating in her bones. 

Before Cassandra could even begin to explain what she wanted from her, Natasha found herself thinking how the girl would have been a pretty valuable ally.

They broke apart, breathing hard, then circled again.

“Who sent you?” Romanoff demanded, eyes narrowing.

“I’d like to say I’m freelance,” Cassandra said. “but right now, that would be a lie. Me and Steve are lending a hand to rebuild the Avengers.” She used Cap’s name in hope Natasha wouldn’t frown at the new alliance.

Romanoff’s brow furrowed, then cleared. The mention of Rogers clearly struck her. “What do we need the Avnegers for?”

“It’s a long story, intergalactic shit will have to suffice you right now,” Cassandra said. “And if you’re smart, you’ll come with me. We can do more damage together than apart.”

Romanoff hesitated, just for a second. Then she stepped in, too fast to track, and grabbed Cassandra by the collar, pulling her close.

“You trust too easily,” she whispered.

Cassandra smiled, even as Romanoff drove a fist into her gut. “I don’t trust anyone.”

They grappled, hands locked, each trying to force the other to the ground. Romanoff’s technique was perfect, years of Red Room training evident in every move. But Cassandra had tricks of her own—she let the Ki flicker, twisted her form, and slipped through Romanoff’s grip, coming up behind her with an arm around her throat.

Romanoff bent double, flipped Cassandra over her shoulder, and both landed hard on the concrete. They rolled apart, panting, then got to their knees at the same time.

They stared at each other, faces inches apart, each measuring the other’s intent.

Finally, Romanoff sat back, wiped blood from her lip, and nodded once.

“Okay,” she said. “Maybe you’re not full of shit.”

Cassandra grinned, though her side was throbbing. “Maybe.”

They stood, neither offering a hand, but both staying in the circle of light.

Romanoff spoke first, voice softer now. “So what’s the plan?”

“I need to hear news from Rogers,” Cassandra said. “then we’ve got orders to visit a friend of yours.”

Romanoff looked her up and down, as if deciding whether she liked the answer. “You know they’ll try to put us on a leash, right?”

“I’ll cut it myself if they do,” Cassandra said.

A slow smile broke on Romanoff’s face. “I like you.”

“I know,” said Cassandra.

They strode with a confident purpose, their steps in sync as they were bathed in the warm glow of the rising sun. The sleepy city around them began to stir, its sounds a cacophony of bustling life as the two women made their way forward, their eyes fixed on the mission ahead.

It wasn’t trust, not yet.

But it was something.

Chapter Text

The BnB smelled of damp wood and cheap air freshener, a scent Natasha had come to associate with temporary safety. She eased her body onto the edge of the sagging mattress, cataloguing each bruise and strain from their warehouse confrontation. Across the room, Cassandra stood with her back to the wall, phone already in hand, her posture relaxed but her eyes sharp and watchful. An hour ago, they'd been trying to break each other; now they shared a cramped room and a mission. Natasha had built a career on strange bedfellows, but this one felt different.

The morning light filtered through thin curtains, painting stripes across the worn floorboards. Outside, Belgrade was waking up, the sounds of commerce and traffic beginning their daily crescendo. Natasha pressed two fingers against her ribcage, assessing the damage from Cassandra's well-placed knee. Not broken, but the bruise would bloom impressively.

"You don't pull your punches," Natasha observed, rolling her shoulder experimentally.

Cassandra glanced up from her phone, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips. "Neither do you." A small cut above her eye had crusted over, the skin around it purpling nicely. "I'll call Steve now. Let him know I found you."

Natasha nodded, stretching her legs out on the bed. She watched Cassandra dial, noting the subtle shift in her posture as she waited for Steve to answer – a slight straightening of her spine, a tilt of her chin. Small tells, but telling nonetheless. There was something there beyond professional respect.

"Steve," Cassandra said, her voice warming noticeably. "Yeah, it's me. Mission accomplished." She paused, listening, then broke into a genuine smile. "You doubted me? I'm hurt, Rogers. You said four days were tight, I did it in one." She laughed at whatever he said in response, the sound surprisingly light compared to the methodical fighter Natasha had encountered in the warehouse.

Natasha found herself watching Cassandra's face with professional interest. The woman was good – extraordinarily good. Her techniques had been unlike anything Natasha had encountered before, a strange blend of martial precision and something else, something that had made the shadows themselves seem to bend around her. SHIELD would have killed to recruit someone with those skills. The Red Room would have done worse.

"Where should we meet you?" Cassandra was asking, her expression growing more serious. "What do you mean, 'complication'?"

Natasha sat up straighter, her senses sharpening at the word. In their line of work, complications rarely meant anything good.

Cassandra's brow furrowed as she listened. "They left? Before you could reach them?" She ran a hand through her hair, leaving it more disheveled than before. "So you're still in Edinburgh?"

Natasha pieced together the conversation – Cassanda had told her getting to the Bnb that Steve was on Wanda and Vision’s track, they must have moved on before he could make contact. Not surprising; those two had been cautious since Berlin. She'd kept tabs on them intermittently during her time underground, enough to know they never stayed in one place long.

"So what's the new timeline?" Cassandra asked, her eyes meeting Natasha's briefly. "Another day or two? That's cutting it close with Fury's deadline." She listened, then sighed. "No, I understand. London by train makes sense if they're trying to stay under the radar."

Natasha watched the calculation play across Cassandra's face – the slight narrowing of her eyes, the tightening of her jaw. This woman thought like an operative, weighing variables, adjusting plans.

"So what do you want us to do?" Cassandra asked. There was a pause, and then her expression hardened. "Without you? To get Barton?" Another pause. "I don't like leaving you without extraction, Steve."

At the mention of Barton, Natasha felt a familiar tug in her chest. Clint had been off-grid since the Raft breakout, holed up with Laura and the kids, maintaining radio silence except for a few coded messages letting her know they were safe. Going to him now meant dragging him back into the mess he'd tried to leave behind.

"Sharon Carter? The agent?" Cassandra was saying, skepticism clear in her tone. "In Liverpool?" She didn't sound convinced. "And you're sure she can be trusted after everything that's happened?"

Natasha almost smiled. The protective note in Cassandra's voice was unmistakable. Steve had found himself a guardian, whether he wanted one or not.

"Fine," Cassandra finally conceded. "We'll go ahead to Barton's. But you call me the second you make contact with Wanda and Vision, understood? And if I don't hear from you by tomorrow night, I'm coming back." The threat in her voice was clear.

She ended the call with a sharp tap, her eyes lingering on the screen for a moment before meeting Natasha's gaze.

"Change of plans?" Natasha asked, though she'd gathered the gist.

Cassandra nodded, tucking the phone into her pocket. "Wanda and Vision left Edinburgh before Steve could reach them. They're headed to London by train. He wants us to go straight to America to recruit Barton while he tracks them down."

"And you don't like it," Natasha observed.

"I don't like leaving him without backup," Cassandra admitted, pushing away from the wall to pace the small room. "He says Sharon Carter can give him transport once he finds them, but..."

"But you don't trust her," Natasha finished for her. She stood, ignoring the protest from her bruised ribs. "Steve's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

"I know that," Cassandra snapped, then seemed to catch herself. She took a breath. "I know. It's just—things have been complicated since Berlin for him. Trust is in short supply."

Natasha nodded. She understood that better than most. "So we're headed to America," she said, already mentally preparing for what that meant – seeing Clint, facing the fractures in the team. "I know where Barton is. But he won't be easy to convince."

"That's why we need you," Cassandra said simply.

Natasha arched an eyebrow. "And what makes you think I'm convinced?"

Cassandra's lips curved into a half-smile. "Because you're still here, even after all the Thanos pep talk. And because you know that if what's coming is big enough to scare Fury into putting the band back together, despite everything that happened, then it must be worth it." She paused, her dark jade eyes serious. "And because I suspect you're as tired of running as Steve is of hiding."

Natasha didn't confirm or deny the assessment, but something in it rang true. She'd been living in shadows for too long, moving from city to city, erasing her tracks, burning bridges. There was a certain exhaustion that came with that life – one she'd thought she'd left behind when she joined SHIELD.

"Get cleaned up," she said instead, reaching for her go-bag. "We've got a long trip ahead of us."

Cassandra nodded, “we still have some time before having to go, though, we should sleep. I’m on a 36 hours streak as of right now.” Her expression then softened just slightly. "By the way, for what it's worth, I didn't expect to find you so quickly either." A hint of respect colored her tone. "Steve wasn't wrong about you."

Natasha felt a flicker of curiosity about what exactly Steve had said, but she pushed it aside. There would be time for that later. Right now, they had a mission to complete and a friend to convince.

And maybe, tucked away in the recesses of her mind where she rarely ventured, was the hope of a rebuilt team.

——————————————-

The jet cut through clouds like a silver needle through silk, leaving behind the patchwork landscape of Europe for the vast blue emptiness of the Atlantic. Natasha watched the horizon blur, feeling the familiar hollowness of transition in her chest. Beside her, Cassandra sat in concentrated silence, her fingers occasionally tapping a rhythm against her thigh—a tell that suggested calculations running behind those unreadable eyes. They had barely spoken since takeoff, both women content to exist in the liminal space between what had been and what was coming, their shared silence more comfortable than Natasha had expected.

The aircraft—one of Stark's more modest models—hummed with quiet efficiency. Natasha had raised an eyebrow when Cassandra had led her to it, wondering how Steve's new shadow had managed to commandeer Tony's property. Another piece of the puzzle that was Cassandra Gastaldi.

Three hours into their flight, the silence finally broke.

"You ever wonder why we keep coming back?" Cassandra asked, her voice low against the engine's drone. She didn't look at Natasha, her gaze fixed on some middle distance beyond the cabin wall. "To people who've hurt us, to fights that aren't really ours?"

Natasha considered her response, rolling the question over in her mind like a smooth stone. "Bold of you to assume that fights aren't mine," she finally said. "I've got red in my ledger. A lot of it."

Cassandra's mouth quirked upward, just slightly. "Steve mentioned you'd say something like that." She shifted in her seat, turning to face Natasha properly. "But this isn't about ledgers. This is about Thanos and infinity stones and forces beyond our comprehension. Different kind of fight."

"Same principles," Natasha countered. "Protect what needs protecting. Destroy what needs destroying. The scale doesn't change the math."

Cassandra studied her for a moment, her dark jade eyes revealing nothing. "So it's that simple for you?"

"Nothing's simple," Natasha said. "But sometimes the choices are."

A beat passed between them, filled only by the white noise of altitude and velocity.

"How bad was it?" Natasha finally asked. "When Steve and Tony saw each other again?"

Cassandra leaned back in her seat, her posture relaxing fractionally. "About as bad as you'd expect. Tony tried to strangle Steve within the first five minutes."

Natasha winced. "That good, huh?"

"Steve apologized. Tony didn't want to hear it." Cassandra's fingers resumed their tapping, a soft percussion against the armrest. "There's more to it than just Berlin, though. I could feel it in the room—like they were fighting about something else entirely."

Natasha knew exactly what that something else was. She'd been there in the aftermath of Siberia when Tony had learned the truth about his parents. She had seen the raw, bleeding grief on his face, the betrayal after he realized Steve had known and never told him. Some wounds went too deep for apologies.

"And yet they're working together," Natasha observed.

"Out of necessity," Cassandra replied. "The end of the world has a way of clarifying priorities."

Natasha allowed herself a small smile. "It usually does."

They lapsed into silence again, but something had shifted—a door cracked open between them.

"Tell me about Barton," Cassandra said suddenly.

Natasha's guard went up instinctively, her expression smoothing into professional neutrality. "What about him?"

"Steve says he's your closest friend. The one who brought you in from the cold." Cassandra wasn't looking at her, giving Natasha the space to compose her response. "I'm just trying to understand what we're walking into."

Natasha weighed her options. She could deflect, keep things strictly professional. But something about the quiet respect in Cassandra's tone made her reconsider.

"Clint had orders to kill me," she said finally, her voice even. "I'd been on SHIELD's radar for years—Budapest, São Paulo, Odessa. I had a reputation."

"The Black Widow," Cassandra murmured.

"Just another red room graduate with a talent for death," Natasha corrected, a bitter edge to her voice. "But Clint made a different call. He saw... something worth saving." She paused, remembering the rain-slicked rooftop in Bucharest, the arrow aimed at her heart that never flew. "I didn't understand it at the time. Still not sure I do."

"Must be nice," Cassandra said quietly. "Having someone believe in you like that."

Natasha glanced at her, catching something vulnerable in the set of her mouth before it disappeared. "I don’t know you," she observed. "but I can tell that Steve believes in you."

Cassandra didn't deny it, but her expression suggested she didn't fully accept it either. "It's different. Steve sees the good in everyone."

"Not everyone," Natasha countered, thinking of the way Steve's face had hardened when they discovered Zemo's plan. "And Clint isn't some saint. He has his darkness too. We all do."

The jet hit a pocket of turbulence, rattling them briefly before smoothing out again.

"Clint has a family," Natasha continued, surprising herself with her willingness to share. "A wife, three kids. A home that has nothing to do with SHIELD or the Avengers or any of this." She gestured vaguely to encompass their current situation. "He risked all of that to help Steve. Got locked up in the Raft for it."

"And now we're asking him to risk it again," Cassandra concluded.

"Yes." Natasha didn't try to soften it. "That's exactly what we're doing."

Cassandra nodded slowly, absorbing this. "Will he say yes?"

Natasha considered the question. Clint had promised Laura he was done after the Raft, had sworn he'd stay put, be the father his children needed. But he'd made similar promises before, and still answered the call when it came.

"He'll resist," she said finally. "He'll tell us he's retired, that he's keeping his promises this time. He'll say he has responsibilities that come first."

"But?"

"But he's Clint." Natasha felt a wave of affection tinged with guilt. "He'll grumble and argue and make us work for it, but in the end..."

"He'll suit up," Cassandra finished for her.

"Probably." Natasha wasn't entirely convinced, though. The stakes were different now. The fractures in the team ran deeper. And Tony Stark was a name that would hit a nerve.

"And what about you?" Cassandra asked after a moment. "Why are you saying yes? You were free. Off the grid. You could have disappeared for good."

Natasha looked out the window at the endless blue. She thought about the years before SHIELD, the cold efficiency of the life she'd led. The Red Room had taught her many things, but never how to have a home, how to trust, how to belong. Clint had offered her that first glimpse of possibility. The Avengers had given her something like a family, broken and dysfunctional as it was.

"I've tried running," she said simply. "It doesn't work. Not really."

Cassandra seemed to understand, nodding once. "Well," she said, "at least the company's interesting this time around."

Natasha found herself smiling despite everything. "That's one word for it."

The jet continued its path westward, carrying them toward a farmhouse where difficult conversations awaited. Natasha closed her eyes, letting the rhythm of the engines wash over her. For the first time in months, she was headed toward something instead of away. It felt strange, almost forgotten—this sensation of purpose, of connection.

She wondered if Clint would feel the same, or if he'd grown too accustomed to peace to willingly trade it for war again.

—————————-

The farmhouse appeared like a mirage as they crested the final hill, its weathered clapboards glowing amber in the setting sun. Natasha felt a strange tightness in her throat as the familiar silhouette emerged – the wrap-around porch, the old oak swaying sentinel by the barn, the curl of smoke rising from the chimney into the purple evening. This place had always represented something just beyond her reach: normalcy, permanence, the quiet certainty of belonging. She'd protected its secret fiercely over the years, this hidden heartbeat of Clint Barton's double life. As their rental car crunched up the gravel drive, Natasha saw small faces appear at the windows, then vanish in a flurry of excitement. Her chest constricted with equal parts warmth and dread. The warmth was for the welcome that awaited; the dread for why she had come.

"Nice place," Cassandra remarked, her expression giving away nothing as she surveyed the pastoral scene. "Wouldn't have pinned Hawkeye as a farmer."

"That's the point," Natasha replied, shifting the car into park. "Clint set this up years ago. Off the books, off the grid. A place where he could just be..."

"A person?" Cassandra suggested.

"A father," Natasha corrected, just as the front door burst open.

"Auntie Nat!" The cry came from Lila, who bounded down the porch steps with Cooper close behind. They hit Natasha like a small avalanche the moment she stepped from the car, nearly knocking her off balance. Lila wrapped her arms around Natasha's waist while Cooper, trying to maintain the dignity of his advancing years, settled for a more restrained hug.

"You got taller," Natasha accused, ruffling Cooper's hair. "Both of you. What's your mom feeding you?"

"You said that last time," Lila giggled, her face tilted up adoringly. "And we're supposed to grow."

Natasha felt her mask slipping, the professional distance she maintained as a reflex melting beneath the simple warmth of these children who saw only their aunt, not the Black Widow. It happened every time she visited – this disarming reminder that to some people, she was simply family.

Laura appeared on the porch, baby Nathaniel balanced on her hip. Her expression was complex – genuine pleasure at seeing Natasha mingled with the wariness of a woman who knew that unexpected visits rarely meant good news. Clint stood just behind her, his stance casual but his eyes sharp, taking in both Natasha and the unfamiliar woman who had emerged from the passenger side.

"Well, this is a surprise," Laura called out, her voice warm despite the question in her eyes. She descended the steps more slowly than her children had, offering Natasha a one-armed hug when she reached her. "You should have called ahead. I would have made up the guest room."

"It was sort of a last-minute decision," Natasha said, accepting the baby when Laura transferred him to her arms. Nathaniel regarded her solemnly for a moment before breaking into a gummy smile of recognition. "Hey, little spy," she murmured, bouncing him gently. "Remember me?"

"Hard to forget someone who changes your diapers," Clint remarked, finally approaching. He embraced Natasha briefly, his body tense despite the casual greeting. Over her shoulder, he eyed Cassandra with undisguised suspicion. "Going to introduce your friend?"

"Cassandra Gastaldi," Cassandra offered, extending a hand. "I've been working with Steve Rogers."

Clint's expression darkened momentarily at the mention of Steve. He shook her hand with perfunctory politeness. "Clint Barton. But I'm guessing you already knew that."

"Inside," Laura interjected smoothly, herding the children toward the house. "Dinner's almost ready, and I'm sure our guests are hungry after their journey." Her tone was pleasant, but Natasha caught the look she exchanged with Clint – a silent communication between people who had weathered many storms together.

The kitchen was warm and fragrant with the smell of Laura's cooking – some kind of stew simmering on the stove, fresh bread cooling on the counter. It was domestic in a way that still felt foreign to Natasha, though she'd been here many times. The children chattered excitedly, peppering her with questions about where she'd been and what she'd seen, while Laura set out extra plates.

"Kids, why don't you show Auntie Nat what you've been working on upstairs?" Laura suggested after a few minutes, her tone light but brooking no argument. "The new art project?"

Cooper looked like he might protest – old enough to sense the adults wanted to talk alone – but Lila seized Natasha's hand, tugging eagerly. "Come on! It’s a plastic for school, I made you and dad fighting bad guys!"

Natasha allowed herself to be led toward the stairs, glancing back to see Clint motioning Cassandra toward the living room. Laura caught her eye and nodded slightly – she would keep the children occupied.

When Natasha rejoined them five minutes later, having admired several clay masterpieces and promised to look at more after dinner, the atmosphere in the living room had solidified into something brittle and cold. Clint stood by the fireplace, arms crossed, while Cassandra occupied an armchair, looking entirely too comfortable for someone in the middle of a showdown.

"So," Clint said as Natasha entered, "you're here to drag me back into the mess. That's what this surprise visit is about."

It wasn't a question. Natasha didn't bother pretending. "Yes."

Clint laughed, but there was no humor in it. "After everything that happened? After the Raft? After Ross turned us into criminals for doing exactly what we signed up to do?" He shook his head. "I made a promise to Laura. I'm keeping it this time."

"The world's in danger, Clint," Natasha said quietly. "Real danger. Not just political games or superhero squabbles."

"It's always in danger," he countered. "There's always another threat, another battle, another reason why we can't just live our lives." He glanced toward the stairs, where the muffled sounds of his children's laughter drifted down. "I gave enough. We all did."

"This is different," Cassandra interjected. "Thanos is coming for the Infinity Stones. If he gets them all, he wipes out half the universe. That includes your family."

Clint's gaze snapped to her, hard and assessing. “I know you should already have a highly skilled team with you, so you don’t really need a guy with a bow and arrow. You can do this without me.”

Cassandra leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees, fingers steepled beneath her chin. “You’re right,” she conceded. “We’ve got a pretty strong team, but wars are win in numbers. We’ll need as many heroes as we can, and you’re not just a guy with a bow and arrow, Hawkeye.” Her dark jade eyes never left Clint's face, watching and calculating.

"Then tell me, Miss Hero, if you came here looking for me, who else is involved?" Clint asked. "If you're after numbers, I’m to assume you've also brought Stark into this, haven't you?"

“I’m afraid so,” interjected Natasha.

Clint’s eyes shot on the Widow, wide in shock. "What Nat? You don’t remember what the guy did? Because in that case I can help you remember. He’s the one who was perfectly happy to see us locked away on the Raft, who stood by while Wanda was put in a shock collar and treated like an animal!"

Natasha stepped forward, placing herself between the other two. "Tony made mistakes. We all did. But this is bigger than Berlin, bigger than the Accords."

"Easy for you to say," Clint retorted. "You weren't the one in a cage."

The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken history. Natasha felt old ghosts stirring – the Red Room, the chains, the years before Clint had found her. She'd known many cages in her life.

"I can't do it, Nat," Clint said finally, his voice softer. "I can't look my kids in the eyes and tell them I'm leaving again. Not for Stark. Not for any of it."

"Then do it for them," Cassandra said. "Because if we fail, there won't be anyone left to come home to."

Clint's expression hardened. "Don't you dare use my family as leverage."

"It's not leverage, it's reality," Cassandra replied, unflinching. "I've seen what's coming. We all have. This isn't about teams or sides or who wronged who. It's about survival."

Natasha watched the conflict play across Clint's face – the stubborn resolve warring with the ingrained instinct to protect. She knew him well enough to see the cracks forming in his resistance, but also the genuine pain beneath.

"I'm sorry about what happened," she said quietly. "About the Raft, about all of it. But we need you, Clint. The team needs you."

"There is no team anymore," he said bitterly. "Just a bunch of broken pieces Fury's trying to glue back together before the next catastrophe."

"Maybe," Natasha conceded. "But broken or not, we're all that stands between Thanos and everyone you love."

Clint turned away, staring into the unlit fireplace as if it might offer some escape from the choice before him. The silence stretched, punctuated only by the distant sounds of family life continuing upstairs – a reminder of exactly what was at stake.

"I won't work with Stark," he said finally, each word measured and hard. "Not after what he did. Not after how he betrayed us."

Natasha opened her mouth to argue, but Cassandra caught her eye, a slight shake of her head suggesting another approach.

"We're not asking you to forgive him," Natasha said instead. "Just to fight alongside him. For the greater good."

Clint's laugh was sharp and humorless. "The greater good. That's always the line, isn't it? The justification for every compromise, every sacrifice." He turned back to face them, his expression set in stone. "My answer is no. I'm sorry, Nat. I truly am. But I can't do it again."

The finality in his voice settled over the room like dust. Natasha felt a familiar weight in her chest – the burden of missions gone sideways, of plans unraveling. She'd come here believing that their history, their bond, would be enough to convince him. Now she wasn't so sure.

Before she could formulate another approach, a sharp electronic trill cut through the tension. Cassandra reached for her phone, glancing at the screen with a flicker of concern.

"It's Steve," she said, her voice suddenly tight.

Cassandra pressed the phone to her ear, her posture instantly shifting from relaxed to alert. Natasha watched as the woman's spine straightened, her shoulders squaring as if bracing for impact. "Steve?" Cassandra said, her voice carefully neutral, but Natasha caught the undercurrent of concern. Years of reading people in high-stakes situations had taught her to recognize the subtle tells of someone receiving bad news while trying to maintain composure. Cassandra's free hand had dropped to her side, fingers splayed then curling into a loose fist – a fighter's instinctive preparation.

The conversation with Clint momentarily suspended, both he and Natasha turned their full attention to Cassandra. Clint's brow furrowed, his argument temporarily forgotten as professional instincts took over.

"Yes, I'm with them now," Cassandra was saying, her eyes fixed on some middle distance. "We're at the farmhouse." A pause. "What do you mean, 'complications'? You said that before."

Natasha strained to hear Steve's voice from the phone, but could only catch the rhythmic cadence of his speech, not the words themselves. Whatever he was saying, it was measured, controlled – too controlled.

"Where exactly are you?" Cassandra asked, then frowned at the response. "And you're sure you've got the situation handled?"

Another pause. Natasha watched as Cassandra's expression tightened, the skin around her eyes pulling taut. Despite whatever reassurances Steve was offering, she clearly wasn't buying them.

"That's a lot of background noise for a quiet train station," Cassandra observed, her voice taking on an edge.

Natasha stepped closer, her senses sharpening. Now she could hear it too – not just Steve's voice, but a discord of sounds beyond it: raised voices, the metallic crash of something heavy falling, and a strange, high-pitched whine that didn't belong in any normal environment.

Clint had moved as well, his body language shifting subtly from defensive homeowner to coiled operative. He exchanged a quick glance with Natasha – a silent question passing between them.

"Steve," Cassandra said, more forcefully now, "what's really going on? I can hear—" She stopped abruptly, listening. Her free hand had clenched into a proper fist now, knuckles whitening. "Who else is there with you?"

The sounds from the phone grew louder, more chaotic. Natasha caught a fragment of Steve's voice – "...need to move now..." – before it was drowned out by what might have been breaking glass and a woman's shout that sounded distinctly like Wanda Maximoff.

"Steve?" Cassandra's voice had dropped, the word tense and urgent. "Steve, talk to me."

Clint moved to the window, pulling back the curtain a fraction to scan the darkening farmyard outside. His body language had completed its transformation – no longer the reluctant retiree but Hawkeye, assessing threats and calculating angles.

"Dammit, Rogers, don't you dare—" Cassandra was saying, but whatever Steve's response was, it made her jaw clench. "Fine. Yes. But you call me the second—" She cut herself off, listening intently. "What do you mean, 'they found us'? Who's 'they'?"

Natasha felt a cold certainty settling in her stomach. She'd operated long enough to recognize when a mission was spiraling – the cascade of unexpected variables, the rapid deterioration of controlled conditions.

"Are you hit?" Cassandra demanded suddenly, her voice sharp with alarm. "Steve, are you—"

The phone erupted with a sound like thunder, followed by the unmistakable staccato of automatic weapons fire. Steve's voice came through in fragments, each word clipped and breathless: "—find Wanda—back entrance—don't know how many—"

Then a new sound cut through the chaos – a metallic screech that raised the hairs on Natasha's arms. Not a human sound. Not a weapon she recognized.

"Vision," Cassandra said, as if reading Natasha's thoughts. "Is that Vision? What's happening to him?"

Another crash, then Steve's voice, surprisingly clear: "I've got to go. They're here." Then, with a finality that sent ice through Natasha's veins: "If I don't call back in thirty minutes, assume we've been compromised."

The line went dead.

For a moment, Cassandra stood frozen, the phone still pressed to her ear as if willing more information to come through. Then she slowly lowered it, her eyes meeting Natasha's with a cold fury that seemed to radiate from her very core.

"What's happening?" Clint asked, though his expression suggested he'd already pieced together the essentials.

"Steve's in trouble," Cassandra said, her voice tight with controlled panic. "He found Wanda and Vision, but they're under attack. He wasn’t able to elaborate, but probabily something like Thanos’ minions" She ran a hand through her hair, disrupting its careful arrangement. "There was weapons fire. And something else – something that was affecting Vision."

"Where?" Natasha asked, already mentally cataloging weapons and tactics.

"London," Cassandra replied. "Some kind of old train station or terminal building. He was being deliberately vague."

"In case the line was compromised," Clint murmured, more to himself than to them.

Cassandra nodded, her expression grim. "He said if he doesn't call back in thirty minutes, we should assume they've been taken."

The weight of that statement hung in the air between them. Natasha felt her body shifting into mission mode – assessing resources, calculating travel times, preparing for combat. Beside her, despite his earlier protestations, Clint was doing the same.

"How fast can we get to London?" Natasha asked.

Cassandra was already dialing another number. "Commercial flights would take too long. I'm calling Strange."

"The wizard?" Clint asked, eyebrows raised.

"He can create portals," Cassandra explained briefly, holding the phone to her ear. "Get us there instantly."

Clint exchanged a look with Natasha – part exasperation, part grim acknowledgment. The world had grown stranger in his absence.

"I need to tell Laura," he said quietly.

Natasha nodded, understanding what wasn't being said. Despite his firm refusal minutes earlier, there was no question now. Steve was in danger, and whatever grievances Clint held against Tony Stark, they weren't enough to override his loyalty to his friends when lives were on the line.

"We have no time to lose," Cassandra said as she waited for Strange to answer, her voice dropping to a near-whisper that contained more fear than Natasha had heard from her yet.

The simple declaration hung in the air, stripping away all other considerations. Whatever disagreements had filled the room minutes before seemed suddenly trivial in the face of immediate threat. Natasha watched as Clint's expression hardened into resolve, his earlier reluctance transformed by the prospect of his friends under fire.

This was how it had always been with them – arguments and rifts healing in an instant when one of their own was threatened. For all the damage Berlin had done, some bonds ran too deep to break.

As Cassandra spoke urgently into the phone, Natasha caught Clint's eye. No words were needed. They both understood what came next.

——————————————-

Strange answered on the third ring, his voice edged with the particular irritation of someone whose meditation had been interrupted. Natasha couldn't hear his words, but she watched as Cassandra's posture shifted – shoulders back, chin lifted, every movement economical and precise. "We have a situation," Cassandra said without preamble, her words clipped and urgent. "Steve's been compromised in London. Something's after Vision and Wanda." She paused, listening, then shook her head sharply. "No, that's what I'm calling to warn you about. There’s a chance they spotted Vision’s gem. Have you used the Stone recently? Any chance they could have detected it?"

Clint had moved to the kitchen doorway, speaking in low tones to Laura. His hand rested on her shoulder, his expression a complex mixture of apology and resolve. Laura's face was tight with worry, but there was acceptance there too – the resignation of a woman who had long ago made peace with loving a hero.

"Good," Cassandra was saying into the phone. "Keep it that way. Whatever's hunting them, it's not human. Steve wouldn't say much, but I heard sounds in the background..." She trailed off, listening to Strange's response.

Natasha's mind raced through possibilities. Alien threats weren't new to them – New York had seen to that – but coordinated attacks on multiple fronts suggested something far more organized than the Chitauri invasion. Something with intelligence, strategy, and an understanding of what the Stones were.

"We need transport to London," Cassandra continued. "Now. Commercial flights will take too long." Another pause. "Yes, all three of us. Barton's coming too."

Natasha glanced at Clint, who had finished his conversation with Laura and was now opening a concealed panel in the living room wall. From within, he extracted a compact bow and a specialized quiver – emergency gear stashed in case of exactly this kind of situation. His earlier reluctance seemed to have evaporated in the face of immediate threat.

"Thirty minutes?" Cassandra's voice rose slightly. "Steve might not have thirty minutes. Can't you—" She stopped, listening, then nodded reluctantly. "Fine. But make it twenty if you can. Barton's farm. Yes, I'll text you the coordinates." She ended the call, her expression grim.

"Strange is coming?" Natasha asked.

"He'll be here as soon as he can. Says he needs to secure the Sanctum first, in case whatever's after Vision comes for the Time Stone next." Cassandra's fingers flew over her phone, sending the location details. "He hasn't used the Stone in days, so there's a good chance they don't know where he is yet."

"Small mercies," Clint muttered, testing his bowstring with practiced fingers. He looked up at them, his expression hardened into something Natasha recognized all too well – the face of a man preparing for war. "So what exactly are we walking into?"

"Unknown hostiles targeting Vision, possibly for the Mind Stone," Cassandra replied. "Steve didn't give details, but he said 'they found them.' That suggests either very good intelligence or..."

"A way to scan for stones," Natasha finished for her. "Someone sensed Vision using his power."

"Which means they now know about our recruitment drive," Clint added grimly. "And possibly about the other Stones."

Cassandra nodded, her dark jade eyes cold with calculation. "We have to assume they're after all of them. The question is, who are 'they'? Because we know there’s a good chance they are affiliated with Thanos, but what if they’re not?"

Laura appeared in the doorway, her face pale but composed. In her hands, she carried a small duffel bag. "Your spare gear," she said, handing it to Clint. "And some medical supplies. Just in case."

The unspoken weight of those three words hung in the air. Just in case. Because in their line of work, there was always a case for bandages, for stitches, for worse.

"I'll be back," Clint told her, the promise etched into every line of his face.

Laura's smile was small but genuine. "You always do." She turned to Natasha, her expression softening. "Bring him home in one piece."

"I will," Natasha replied, the vow as solemn as any she'd ever made.

Cassandra had moved to the window, scanning the darkening farm with tactical precision. "We should prep what weapons we have. Strange can get us to London, but we'll be on our own once we're there."

Natasha nodded, mentally inventorying her own gear. Two pistols, extra magazines, three knives, garrote wire, widow's bites with only half charge – not ideal for facing unknown alien threats, but she'd worked with less.

"Clint," she said, "you got any more firepower stashed around here?"

He grinned, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Laura, honey, would you mind getting the kids upstairs? Far upstairs?"

Laura raised an eyebrow but didn't question it. "Movie night in Cooper's room it is." She squeezed his arm once, then headed for the stairs, calling for the children.

Once they were gone, Clint moved to the kitchen and pulled out a false bottom in the pantry, revealing a small arsenal: compact firearms, tactical gear, and what looked suspiciously like specialized S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue grenades.

"Fury's retirement package," he explained at Natasha's raised eyebrow.

"Always prepared," she remarked, selecting a pair of practical semi-automatics that would complement her fighting style and lods of ammo. Meanwhile Cassandra asked for permission to get a tactical baton that was more in tune with her close style combact.

"For everything except magical portals and alien invasions," Clint muttered, but there was a familiar determination in his movements as he loaded extra arrowheads into his quiver.

Cassandra had returned to the phone, sending a series of rapid-fire texts. "Letting Tony know what's happening," she explained when she caught Natasha watching. "In case we’ll need back-up.”

"Stark," Clint said, the name like gravel in his mouth.

"Yes, Stark," Cassandra replied evenly. "Whatever issues you have with him, they'll have to wait. Steve is in danger. Vision too. And Wanda."

At that, something in Clint's expression shifted. He, Steve and Wanda had fought alongside in Germany. He and Wanda had decided to stay on Steve’s side once, they’ll do it again.

"Fine," he said after a moment. "But when this is over—"

"You can go back to hating him," Cassandra finished for him. "Just help us save our friends first."

The tension between them eased slightly, replaced by shared purpose. They continued their preparations in focused silence, each lost in their own mental preparations for the fight ahead.

Twenty-two minutes later – faster than promised – the air in the Barton living room split open with a shower of orange sparks. The circular portal widened, revealing Doctor Strange in his full mystical regalia, the Cloak of Levitation billowing around him as if agitated by unseen currents. He stepped into the living room and soon after the sparkles dissolved.

"You need to work on your timing, Doctor," Cassandra said by way of greeting, already moving toward him with weapons secured.

Strange's mouth twitched in what might have been amusement or irritation. "Interdimensional transport isn't an Uber, Gastaldi." His gaze swept over the three of them, lingering briefly on Clint. "Barton. Decided to rejoin the land of the living?"

"Decided to save my friends," Clint corrected, slinging his bow across his back. "The rest is negotiable."

Strange nodded, apparently satisfied with this answer. "I've located them. Old railway terminal near Waterloo. There's been... disturbances in the energy signatures there. Something powerful."

"Vision?" Natasha asked.

"No," Strange replied, his expression grave. "Something else. Something not of this world."

"Can you get us close?" Cassandra asked, checking her weapons one final time.

"Within a block," Strange confirmed. "Any closer and whatever's there might detect the portal's energy signature."

"Good enough," Natasha said, stepping forward. "Let's go."

Clint paused only long enough to glance back at the stairway, where the distant sounds of his children's laughter drifted down. His expression hardened with renewed purpose, then he nodded to Strange. "Make it quick, wizard. We've got people waiting on us."

Strange's hands moved in precise, practiced gestures, another small portal coming in existance and then expanding to its full size. Through it, Natasha could see the dark streets of London, rain-slicked and glistening under street lamps. The air that rushed through carried the scent of diesel and wet stone, along with something else – a sharp, metallic tang that raised the hairs on her arms.

"Something's burning," she observed, her senses instantly alert.

"More than something," Strange replied grimly. "The energy readings I'm getting are off the charts. Whatever's happening there, it's escalating quickly."

Cassandra stepped to the edge of the portal, her body tense with barely contained urgency. "Steve's been out of contact for twenty-seven minutes," she said, voice tight. "We need to move. Now."

Natasha moved to her side, every muscle primed for action. The familiar cold clarity of mission-focus settled over her, sharpening her senses and steadying her pulse. Beside her, Clint adjusted his quiver one last time, his expression set in the focused intensity that had made him legendary at S.H.I.E.L.D.

Through the portal, a distant explosion sent orange light flaring against the London sky. Strange's expression darkened. "They're running out of time."

"Then let's not waste any more of it," Natasha said, and stepped through into the chill London night, Cassandra and Clint right behind her. Stephen stepped in last.

His face hard as stone, he wanted to help, but he had New York to protect as well. “I’m not coming, I have to go back to the sanctuary in case something plans on paying a visit, but I’ll be reachable at anytime, I’ll bring backup if needed.”

Cassandra nodded as Strange casted yet another passageway. Last thing she saw before this portal closed was Strange's face, softening with concern. "Be careful," he called after them. "If they're hunting Stones, this is just the beginning."

Then the portal vanished, leaving them alone on a rain-soaked street. In the near distance, screams echoed between ancient buildings, punctuated by the unmistakable sound of energy weapons discharging. The scent of ozone and burning metal filled the air.

"This way," Cassandra said, already moving at a run toward the chaos, her body low and predatory.

Natasha and Clint fell in beside her, their movements synchronized by years of shared missions and mutual trust. Whatever differences had divided them, whatever grudges still festered, none of it mattered now. Steve was in danger. Vision and Wanda were under attack.

And the Avengers, broken as they were, still answered when called.

Chapter Text

London streets had an eerie glow that night— as if the city itself had paused, holding its breath in the face of a gathering storm. Streetlamps flickered against low, wind-torn clouds, casting uncertain halos on the glistening wet pavement. The usually bustling streets were deprived of their vitality, but the chaos was just behind the corner. The street was flanked on both sides by an array of white buildings, their facades adorned with ornate details that seemed to echo the elegance and charm of the Victorian era.

The air throbbed with the reverberations of the battle, closing in like a storm ready to consume them. The wind hurled smoke and dust, an ominous harbinger of the chaos unfolding. Cassandra's heart pounded with dread as she inhaled the acrid stench of smoke mingling with burning debris—a nauseating cocktail of charred wood and molten plastic that clawed at her senses, painting a grim picture of the devastation that awaited ahead.

Amidst the clamor of battle echoing in the distance, the air was thick with tension, and Cassandra could discern the haunting, distant wails of terrified screams that pierced through the chaos. Each cry seemed to resonate in her chest, amplifying her unease and sending shivers down her spine, as if the very essence of fear was clawing at her insides. She quickly turned towards the others.

“It could be worse than we thought, I think there are civilians involved.” She fastened her peace, drawing enough energy to expand her senses past human capabilities.

Both Natasha and Clint seamlessly fell into the rhythm of her movements, allowing Cassandra to envelop the air around them in a hushed cloak. The sound of their footfalls was smothered, transforming the once audible slaps into a whisper of motion. She turned the three of them into shadows, gliding through the dimly lit surroundings with a silent, predatory elegance.

Natasha set her jaw and checked the charge on her stingers. “So much for staying under the radar,” she muttered, half to herself. She cast a quick glance at her teammates, eyes sharp as broken glass but with a flash of humor behind the edge. “I’m afraid we might get a visit from Ross after this. Or several ones.”

“Not like we have a choice,” Clint replied, grinning despite the tension. “Survival first, bureaucracy later. Besides, if we’re lucky, Fury’ll be enough to keep Ross out of radar.”

From somewhere in the heart of Westminster, the air erupted with a staccato beat: the sounds of metal clashing, the ululation of sirens and the strifle of firearms, punctuated by more primal sounds— screams, the crackle of energy discharges, the stuttering thump of something massive hitting tarmac. It was a soundscape designed to strip away illusions of bravery, a reminder that your skull was as thin as an eggshell and there was nothing heroic in standing in the open. For the three of them, it was the music of routine: dreadful, constant, and no longer worth resisting.

Cassandra licked her lips and forced herself to listen, mind cutting through a dozen layers of interference. “Let’s sweep east and close in through the alleys,” she suggested. “I don’t want to waste any time, we have to take the fastest route.”

Natasha and Clint nodded, they knew that it might mean exposing themselves to the enemy, but they also understood that time was at the essence.

Cassandra led the group, sprinting toward the noises without concern for whether the others could match her pace. She pulled the shadows around her, molding them, and her around them, until she vanished within. Passing through them felt like squeezing through a narrow gap in solid stone—only sharper, more suffocating, like folding her body into itself. She darted from one shadow to the next, moving at more than twice her normal speed. Nat and Clint were left far behind, guessing at each turn, following echoes and instinct more than any trace she left behind.

Soon enough Cass emerged on the edge of St. James’s Park, where the grass was churned mud and the air hung heavy with ionic discharge. The night there sparked in the bright orange glow of fire. The flames, which erupted from overturned vehicles, were now licking at buildings. The sounds turned overwhelming, all around her people were running and ducking for cover. A couple of police cars blocked the road in improvised security borders. Some agents were trying to get civilians to safety while a conspicuous number of them focused on firing at the sky.

It was at that moment that Cassandra’s eyes locked onto a fierce clash unfolding in the sky above. Two greyish figures— unmistakably alien— shot through the air with terrifying precision, their enchanted staffs crackling with violent energy. They weren’t just floating —they dived, spun, and lunged with the weight and speed of trained warriors. One of them barrelled straight toward a woman, Wanda she recognized, shooting like a missile, forcing her to veer sideways midair, just narrowly avoiding a crushing collision.

Wanda retaliated instantly, hurling a burst of hex energy that curved like a whip toward the attacker’s flank. But the second alien was already there, intercepting her blast with a wide sweep of his staff. The impact shattered in a flash of red and white, hurling shockwaves through the air.

Bullets from below arced upward—automatic fire from panicked police officers—but the two figures barely acknowledged it. Their only response was to bat the rounds aside mid-flight with a flick of the wrist, as if swatting away insects. They didn’t so much as glance down. Their focus was entirely on Wanda—and she, in turn, had no choice but to give them all of hers.

She flew in jagged, erratic patterns—dodging not just their spells, but the aliens themselves as they rushed her with brutal intent. One swiped at her head with the staff’s heavy end, the other launched a projectile at her back. Wanda twisted between them, breath ragged, scarlet energy flaring with each movement. Her magic came out sharper now, more defensive than aggressive, each blast barely keeping her attackers at bay.

Her jaw clenched, her flight staggered—she was still fighting, but the rhythm was turning desperate.

And then Cassandra saw why.

Far across the battlefield, Vision lay crumpled amid shattered concrete, barely conscious. A third alien hovered over him, larger than the others, gripping a grotesque, rune-etched scythe. The blade hovered just above Vision’s forehead, a low, sickly pulse emanating from its edge as it tugged at the glowing stone embedded in him. The Mind Stone flickered weakly—resisting, but losing.

Cassandra jolted towards the grounded figures, she wanted to help Wanda, but air just wasn’t her element. While she passed the blue barricades she shouted towards the police officers: “This way you're only endangering the Scarlet Witch. Just get the civilians out! We’ll take care of the rest.” She hoped that her plea got heard, to at least somewhat minimize the casualties.

The scenery around her distorted into a kaleidoscope of colors as she teleported across the battlefield in an instant, reappearing silently behind the hunched alien. The air shimmered with the residual energy of her sudden movement. With precise agility, she delivered a powerful, staggering kick to the alien's side, forcefully dislodging him from where he had been entangled with the red-clad hero.

Quickly, she darted to Vision's side, extending a steady hand to help him sit upright. "Are you okay? Can you walk?" she asked, her voice laced with concern.

Vision gritted his teeth, his face contorted with pain. "He stabbed me," he replied, his voice strained. "My systems are failing."

Cassandra nodded, her eyes tracing the jagged open wound in Vision’s circuits, the intricate wiring exposed and sparking intermittently. "I'll get you out of here. Can you hang in there until it's safe?"

Vision’s face crumpled in pain, “I think so.” He answered, although his eyes widened in uncertainty. Cassandra wanted to find another way, but for now that was all she could offer.

She assisted him to his feet, hoisting his body onto her shoulders and bearing his entire weight. Her movements felt incredibly sluggish as she maneuvered him to the side of the street. She kept glancing back at the ongoing fight while gradually making her exit.

Clint and Natasha had arrived and were handling the two creatures that were nearly overpowering Wanda. Clint had positioned himself on the rooftop of a small building overlooking the park, firing arrows at the airborne targets. Meanwhile, Natasha attempted to draw them nearer to the street to give Clint a clear line of sight.

Cassandra sensed Wanda's intense stare as she rushed toward them, her heart racing. With the other Avengers managing her previous opponents, she was able to reach them and offer assistance. Wanda arrived in a flash, her presence a whirlwind of energy, and with a powerful surge of her magic, she lifted Vision from Cassandra's back. She gently laid him against the cold, impersonal buildings lining the sidewalk. Her hand cradled his cheek as if it were the most precious thing in the world, and a solitary tear quivered at the edge of her lashes, threatening to spill. Her other hand hovered with intense focus over his wound, red magic streaming from her fingertips into his skin, knitting the gash with deliberate, painstaking care.

Cassandra searched the battlefield for signs of Steve and when she found nothing she turned towards the Witch, still intent on the care of Vision. “Where is Rogers?”

Wanda’s body stilled, as if it pained her to recall the events of the night, then she simply shaked her head no.

Cassandra felt her anxiety rampage, her body stiffen and her eyes widen. She repeated the question again, “Wanda, where is Steve?” Her voice felt like a whimper.

Wanda took a breath to steady herself before turning towards the other woman. “Last time I saw him we were running away from the underground, he stayed behind holding off two or three of those things.”

Cassandra's heart plummeted. Without another word, she broke into a sprint, darting back toward the underground entrance. The world blurred around her as she pushed her body to its limits, drawing on Ki to enhance her speed. She slid into the nearest alley, a narrow passage between ancient brick buildings slick with rain and centuries of London grime.

"Steve!" she shouted, her voice echoing off the close walls. The sound of distant combat faded behind her as she plunged deeper into the maze of back streets.

A flash of movement above caught her eye—a shadow where there shouldn't be one. Cassandra rolled forward just as a jagged spear embedded itself in the cobblestones where she'd stood. Three figures dropped from the rooftops, landing with inhuman grace despite their massive frames.

They were similar to the creatures attacking Vision and Wanda, but bulkier, their gray skin covered in intricate armor that seemed to absorb the dim light rather than reflect it. Their faces were hidden behind smooth, featureless masks with only narrow slits for eyes that glowed an unnatural yellow.

"Quite persistent, aren't you?" Cassandra muttered, sliding into a fighting stance.

The aliens fanned out, circling her with predatory patience. One brandished a curved blade that hummed with the same sickly energy she'd seen affecting Vision. The other two carried staffs tipped with crystalline points that pulsed with power.

The first one lunged, faster than anything its size should move. Cassandra twisted away, the blade slicing through her jacket sleeve. She countered with a swift kick to its knee joint, but it was like striking concrete. Pain shot up her leg, even as she ducked under a swinging staff from the second attacker.

She needed space. Drawing on her Ki, Cassandra melted into the shadows, reappearing behind the third alien. She struck hard at the base of its skull, her fist connecting with a satisfying crack. The creature staggered but didn't fall.

"Tough bastards," she hissed, narrowly avoiding another slash from the curved blade.

She vaulted over a dumpster, trying to create distance, but they were on her instantly. A staff caught her

across the ribs, sending her crashing into a wall. Pain exploded in her side—at least one rib cracked. Gritting her teeth, she pushed off the bricks, launching herself at the nearest attacker.

Her fist connected with its face mask, the impact jarring her arm to the shoulder. The mask cracked, revealing glimpses of mottled skin and teeth like sharpened metal. The creature chuckled, a sound like grinding gears, and grabbed for her throat.

Cassandra twisted free, but found herself cornered. The three aliens advanced in perfect coordination, cutting off any escape route. She gathered the Ki around her, preparing to teleport again.

But then a fourth figure dropped silently from above, directly behind her. The alien she'd kicked off Vision earlier, its armor still dented from her attack. She sensed rather than saw it, the displacement of air alerting her just before massive hands reached for her skull.

Cassandra teleported instinctively, the world compressing around her as she slipped between shadows. She reappeared ten feet away, gasping as the strain of consecutive teleports taxed her reserves. The fourth alien's hands closed on empty air where her head had been seconds before.

"Four against one," she panted, blood trickling from a cut above her eye. "Almost fair."

The creatures converged again, moving with unnatural synchronization. Cassandra backed up, searching for an advantage in the narrow alley. Her ribs screamed with each breath, limiting her mobility. She couldn't keep teleporting—each jump strained her as using her Ki meant a great mental focus, and she was already running low on energy.

Just as the nearest alien raised its weapon for what would likely be a devastating blow, an arrow streaked through the air, embedding itself in the creature's shoulder. The shaft beeped once, then exploded, sending the alien crashing into its companions.

"Duck!" a familiar voice shouted from above.

Cassandra dropped flat as Clint, perched on the edge of the rooftop, loosed three more arrows in rapid succession. Each found its mark with unerring precision, striking vulnerable points in the aliens' armor. The creatures howled in rage, their attention dividing between the new threat above and Cassandra below.

"Making friends everywhere you go, I see," Natasha remarked dryly as she appeared at the mouth of the alley, widow's bites crackling with blue energy around her wrists.

"You know me," Cassandra replied, pushing herself to her feet. "Life of the party."

Natasha charged forward, sliding under the swing of a staff to deliver a punishing series of strikes to the nearest alien's torso. The widow's bites discharged with each hit, electricity arcing across the creature's armor. It convulsed but remained standing, swinging wildly at her.

Clint's arrows continued to rain down from above, each shot precisely timed to create openings for the women below. He moved along the roofline with practiced ease, never presenting a stationary target as he fired.

"Any sign of Steve?" Cassandra called out, ducking under a blade swing and driving her elbow into an alien's throat.

"Nothing yet," Natasha replied, executing a perfect flip over an alien's back, wrapping her legs around its neck. She twisted her body, using momentum to throw the creature off balance. "But I found signs of a fight leading toward the main station."

Cassandra nodded, then teleported once more—a short jump, just enough to get behind the alien with the curved blade. She grabbed its arm, using its own momentum to drive the weapon into the leg of another attacker. The blade sank deep, and the injured alien shrieked, a sound like metal tearing.

"These things don't go down easy," Clint observed, firing an arrow that released a cloud of adhesive foam, temporarily immobilizing one of the creatures. "What the hell are they?"

"It’s more like: Who are they, " shrieked the tallest alien in a jarring attempt at English. She appeared to be the leader, distinguished by her unusual proportions compared to the other aliens. Her skin had a shifting purple hue, and a pair of horns added to her intimidating presence.

Cassandra raised an eyebrow at the alien's words. They had anticipated encountering intelligent life forms, but she hadn't expected them to speak their language. This might work to their advantage.

Even Natasha was considering the situation, but she quickly turned to shout at Clint. "Ask questions later," she grumbled, narrowly dodging a staff that smashed into the bricks nearby. "Kill them now."

The four aliens regrouped, forming a tight defensive circle. Their movements became more coordinated, more dangerous. Whatever they were, they had already learnt they patterns.

"We need to finish this," Cassandra said, her breath coming in painful gasps. "Steve could be in trouble."

Clint knocked an arrow with a specialized tip. "Got something for that. Nat, Cass—on my signal, get clear."

Natasha nodded, recognizing the arrow type. She caught Cassandra's eye and made a sharp gesture toward the alley entrance.

"Three," Clint counted down, drawing the bowstring taut. "Two..."

The aliens seemed to sense the danger, all four suddenly lunging forward in unison.

"One!"

Natasha grabbed Cassandra's arm, pulling her toward the alley entrance as Clint released the arrow. It struck the ground between the aliens, and for a moment, nothing happened.

Then the world turned white.

The sonic arrow detonated with a concussive force that sent shockwaves through the narrow alley. The aliens were thrown backward, their armored bodies slamming into walls and dumpsters. Windows shattered overhead, glass raining down like deadly hail.

Natasha and Cassandra huddled in the shelter of a recessed doorway, hands pressed over their ears. Even with protection, the sound was deafening, vibrating through their bones.

As the echoes faded, they peered back into the alley. The aliens lay sprawled and disoriented, their armor cracked in multiple places. One tried to rise, only to collapse again.

Clint dropped down from the rooftop, landing in a crouch beside them. "That'll keep them down for a minute," he said, already reaching for another arrow. "But not for long."

Cassandra pushed away from the wall, wincing as her injured ribs protested. "We need to find Steve. Now."

"The station's this way," Natasha said, leading them toward a side street. "I found signs of combat—"

A deafening explosion cut her off, the ground beneath their feet trembling. In the distance, flames erupted from the direction of the main railway terminal, illuminating the night sky with an ominous orange glow.

"Steve," Cassandra whispered, her face draining of color.

Without waiting for the others, she broke into a run, ignoring the pain lancing through her side. Natasha and Clint exchanged a quick glance, then followed, weapons at the ready.

The streets were eerily empty now, the earlier chaos giving way to an unnatural stillness. Emergency vehicles had been abandoned, their lights still flashing but no personnel in sight. The closer they got to the station, the more destruction they encountered—shattered storefronts, overturned cars, craters in the pavement.

Cassandra rounded the final corner and skidded to a halt, her heart seizing in her chest.

The grand façade of the station was partially collapsed, smoke billowing from shattered windows. Bodies—human bodies—lay scattered across the forecourt, emergency workers and civilians caught in the crossfire. And in the center of it all, surrounded by four more of the alien warriors, was Steve.

He was still fighting, though his movements had slowed. Blood matted his hair and ran freely down one side of his face. His jacket was torn to shreds, revealing the kevlar beneath, now punctured in multiple places. He wielded a piece of metal railing as a makeshift weapon, using it to keep the aliens at bay.

"Steve!" Cassandra's shout tore from her throat before she could stop it.

His head jerked toward her voice, eyes widening in recognition—and in that moment of distraction, one of the aliens struck. Its staff connected with Steve's shoulder, sending him crashing to the ground.

"No!" Cassandra launched herself forward, drawing on her last reserves of Ki. The world blurred around her as she teleported directly into the fray, materializing between Steve and the alien about to deliver a killing blow.

The creature's eyes widened in surprise just before Cassandra's fist connected with its throat. She felt something give way beneath her knuckles, but had no time to follow through as the others closed in.

"Get Steve out of here!" she shouted to Natasha and Clint, who had arrived behind her.

Clint immediately let loose a barrage of arrows, creating a momentary opening. Natasha darted in, hooking an arm under Steve's good shoulder to help him up.

"Not without you," Steve gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

"We're not leaving anyone," Natasha agreed, her voice steel. "Clint, cover us!"

Hawkeye positioned himself on a raised platform, arrows flying with lethal precision. Each shot found a vulnerable joint or seam in the aliens' armor, slowing their advance.

"Cass, we need an exit strategy," Natasha called, supporting Steve's weight as he struggled to stand.

Cassandra thought for a second, assessing their options quickly. The station behind them was a deathtrap, partially collapsed and likely to come down completely at any moment. The aliens were still pushing forward, as she tried to keep them at bay. She knew that if they tried to run they’ll likely follow and their friends, the four they had left behind, would join in the chase. No, they had to fight back.

“Not yet,” screamed her over the clashing sounds of the fight. “We have to secure the scene, there are still civilians. Moreover, I want information.”

Cassandra maintained her focus as she strategized a way to get them all out of there alive. “Nat, take Steve back to the park with Vision and Wanda. Me and Clint will offer coverage.” She knew those things were likely listening and honestly she hoped so.

Natasha nodded, making her way towards the alley they had just come out of. Cassandra shot her gaze up towards Clint, locking eyes with him in a way that told him to follow her lead, then she teleported out of the circle of aliens, right behind Natasha and Steve, covering their shoulders. Meanwhile Clint had made his way back on the rooftops from where he kept shooting his arrows as he followed them at a distance.

As expected the aliens began running towards them, but were slowed by the well placed arrows of Hawkeye, Cassandra managed the few that made it past the flying barrier.

As they rounded the corner, a familiar intersection loomed ahead—the same crossroad that led to the four stunned aliens. Cassandra's eyes darted left, her tactical mind working overtime.

"This way!" she shouted, pointing to a narrow side street. "Take the left path to the park! Go now!"

Natasha didn't hesitate, pivoting sharply while supporting Steve's weight. His boots dragged against the pavement as he struggled to keep pace, each labored breath sending a fresh rivulet of blood down his chin.

"Can't leave you," Steve managed between gasps, trying to pull away from Natasha's grip.

"Not the time for heroics, Rogers," Natasha hissed, tightening her hold. "Trust your team."

Cassandra spun to face the approaching aliens, drawing the tactical baton from her belt. The weapon hummed to life in her hand, crackling with energy as she settled into a defensive stance. "Clint, cover fire!"

Hawkeye was already in position, just passed from one rooftop to another, closer to the team. "On it!" he called back, loosing three arrows in rapid succession. Each one struck true, momentarily staggering the lead pursuers.

"Get them to the park," Cassandra ordered, not taking her eyes off the approaching threat. "I'll hold them here then get back to you."

"Like hell you will," Clint growled, dropping down beside her. "I didn't come all this way to watch someone else play hero."

A savage grin split Cassandra's face. "Then keep up, Barton."

Together they formed a barrier between the retreating Natasha and Steve and the oncoming threat. Cassandra's baton whirled in deadly arcs as she engaged the nearest alien, driving it back with a series of precise strikes. Beside her, Clint alternated between close-quarter combat with his bow and well-placed shots that kept the formation scattered.

They fought in perfect sync, as if they'd trained together for years instead of meeting mere hours ago. When Cassandra ducked, Clint fired over her head. When he needed space to knock an arrow, she teleported into the gap, buying him precious seconds.

Just as they began to gain ground, a chilling howl echoed from the alley to their right. Four more aliens emerged—the ones they'd left stunned earlier, now recovered and thirsting for revenge.

"Friends of yours?" Clint quipped, his voice tight as he reached for his dwindling supply of arrows.

"Persistent bastards, I was waiting for them," Cassandra muttered. She glanced back to see Natasha and Steve had made it halfway down the side street. Not far enough. "We need to fall back."

Clint nodded, understanding immediately. "Cover me."

While Cassandra engaged three aliens at once, moving with supernatural speed between them, Clint fired a grappling arrow to a building across the street. The arrow struck true, the cable whirring as it unspooled.

"Now!" Clint shouted, grabbing Cassandra around the waist. She instinctively wrapped her arm around his shoulders as the cable retracted, yanking them both upward just as the aliens converged on their position.

They landed hard on the rooftop, rolling to absorb the impact. Cassandra's ribs screamed in protest, but she was already on her feet, scanning for the fastest route.

"This way!" she called, sprinting across the rooftop. Clint followed without question, both of them leaping across a narrow gap to the next building. The aliens below started sprinting towards the park with full force. Unfortunately, they weren't fools, but Cassandra was aware of this and had planned accordingly.

"Clint, hold them off and make sure they don't reach Nat," she quickly instructed while joining him in the task, using a small precision gun. Luckily, Clint and Nat had managed to bring down the two flying guys in the park, and these other ones seemed more vulnerable to bullets.

"They're trying to flank us," Clint observed, noticing a couple of aliens doubling back, likely seeking another route.

"Let them try," Cassandra replied grimly. She could see the park now, its dark expanse opening up just two blocks ahead. "We need to get down and across."

Clint fired his last grappling arrow, securing it to a sturdy chimney. "Ladies first."

They rappelled down into a narrow service alley, landing in a puddle of rainwater. Without pausing, they sprinted toward the main road, emerging just in time to see two aliens rounding the corner ahead.

"I'm out of trick arrows," Clint warned, drawing his last standard projectiles.

"Then we do this the old-fashioned way," Cassandra said, gathering her remaining Ki. "Follow my lead."

She charged directly at the aliens, feinting left before diving into a shadow cast by a parked delivery truck. The darkness enveloped her completely, then spat her out ten feet behind the confused creatures. As they whirled to face her, Clint's arrows struck them from behind, one embedding in an eye slit, another finding the gap where neck armor met helmet.

The aliens staggered but didn't fall. Cassandra pressed the advantage, driving her baton into the wounded one's knee joint, feeling it buckle. Clint engaged the other, his bow now a blunt instrument as he battered it with practiced precision.

"Go!" Cassandra shouted, delivering a final blow that sent her opponent crashing into a shop window. "The park's just ahead!"

They sprinted the final stretch, bursting through a line of decorative hedges into the relative safety of St. James's Park. Ahead, they could make out figures gathered near a large oak tree—Natasha kneeling beside Steve, with Wanda maintaining a protective barrier around Vision.

"Took you long enough," Natasha called as they approached, though relief was evident in her voice.

"Had to take the scenic route," Clint replied, bending double to catch his breath.

Cassandra quickly knelt beside Steve, her hands moving gently as she examined his injuries. His face was swollen with bruises, covered in cuts and scrapes, and smeared with sweat and dirt. His uniform, torn in several areas, revealed more bruises and wounds. His heavy breathing and pained groans echoed through the park as Cassandra assessed his injuries. She swiftly checked for any broken bones, feeling a sense of relief wash over her when she confirmed he was okay. Overall, it wasn't too severe; they had both faced worse before. However, Steve was exhausted after spending minutes fighting off a horde alone.

“Alright big boy,” she started, a hint of annoyance punctuated her elsewhere caring tone. “Pull another trick like this on me and you're dead for real.” Steve gave her a small smile, too tired to throw her a snarky remark.

Natasha interrupted their calm moment to point out the aliens, pretty much still alive that were coming their way faster than before. “Don’t they ever get tired?” She huffed, disappointed, before adding, “Let’s try to separate them into smaller groups and get this over with. Wanda, we'll need you as well. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure no one gets near Steve and Vision.” The avengers nodded at her words, quickly scrambling back into position.

"I'll take point," Natasha announced, already moving toward the approaching aliens. "Clint, on me."

"Like old times," Clint replied, knocking his remaining arrows.

The aliens split into three groups as they approached—four heading straight for Natasha and Clint, while two each veered toward Cassandra and Wanda.

"Perfect," Cassandra muttered. "They're dividing themselves for us."

Natasha and Clint moved as one unit, flowing into the familiar rhythm of combat partnership. Natasha rolled forward, drawing the aliens' attention with a volley of gunfire while Clint circled to their flank. One alien lunged at Natasha with a staff, but she twisted beneath it, sliding between its legs and firing upward into the weak spot where armor plates met. The creature howled but remained standing.

"Behind you!" Clint shouted, losing an arrow that caught a second alien in the shoulder as it tried to blindside Natasha.

She ducked instinctively, using the moment to reload. "Thanks for the heads-up."

Clint vaulted over a park bench, drawing two aliens away from her. "Just like Budapest!"

"You and I remember Budapest very differently," Natasha shot back, a fierce grin lighting her face despite the danger.

Twenty yards away, Cassandra faced her own opponents. The two aliens circling her were smaller than the others but moved with unnerving speed. One carried twin daggers that seemed to absorb light, while the other wielded a staff with a crystalline tip that pulsed with sickly energy.

She dodged a thrust from the staff, feeling it pass close enough to raise the hairs on her arm. The air crackled where it had been. Not something she wanted to touch her.

"Let's dance," she taunted, drawing them further from where Steve lay recovering.

The dagger-wielder came at her first, blades flashing in complex patterns designed to overwhelm. Cassandra parried with her baton, the weapons connecting with a shower of sparks. She felt the impact vibrate up her arm but held firm, using the creature's momentum to spin it around. As it stumbled, she delivered a punishing kick to its midsection.

Before she could press her advantage, the staff-wielder attacked from behind. Cassandra teleported at the last second, reappearing behind it. The alien anticipated her move, pivoting with unnatural speed to catch her with a glancing blow across the shoulder.

Pain erupted where the staff touched her, a burning sensation that went deeper than skin. She stumbled backward, momentarily disoriented as the alien pressed its advantage, staff whirling for another strike.

Across the park, Wanda hovered several feet above the ground, her hands weaving intricate patterns as scarlet energy flowed from her fingertips. Her face was a mask of concentration, eyes glowing crimson as she maintained a protective barrier around Vision while simultaneously fending off her attackers.

The two aliens circling her launched themselves upward, one firing projectiles from a wrist-mounted weapon while the other attempted to flank her. Wanda's lips pulled back in a snarl, her hands thrusting forward to release a wave of energy that caught the first alien mid-leap. The creature writhed in her telekinetic grip, its armor creaking under the pressure.

"You will not touch him again," she growled, fingers twisting as she increased the pressure.

The alien's armor began to buckle inward, the metal folding like paper as Wanda's power compressed it. A horrible shriek escaped its mask before the pressure silenced it permanently. She released her grip, letting the crushed form drop heavily to the ground.

The second alien hesitated, witnessing its companion's fate. Wanda turned her burning gaze upon it, strands of power already coiling around her hands.

"Your choice," she offered coldly.

The creature chose to attack, firing a barrage of energy bolts at her shield. Wanda's barrier flickered but held as she gathered her power for a counterattack.

Meanwhile, Natasha and Clint had fallen into a deadly rhythm, their years of partnership evident in every coordinated move. Clint's last arrow found the eye slit of one alien, sending it reeling backward with an agonized howl. Before it could recover, Natasha was there, leaping onto its shoulders. She drove both widow's bites into the sides of its neck, discharging their full electrical load directly into its nervous system.

The alien convulsed violently before dropping like a stone. Natasha rolled clear, coming up with pistols drawn to face the next threat.

"One down," she called to Clint, who had just driven his bow like a staff into another alien's throat, crushing its windpipe.

"Two," he corrected, kicking the dying creature away. He spun to face the remaining attackers, drawing a combat knife from his belt. "Running low on toys here, Nat."

"Improvise," she replied, emptying her clip into an approaching alien. The bullets punched through weakened armor, finding the soft tissue beneath. The creature staggered but kept coming, raising its weapon for a killing blow.

Clint intercepted it, driving his knife deep into the alien's side. It roared in pain, swinging wildly and catching him across the chest. The impact sent him sprawling, his knife still embedded in the creature's flesh.

"Clint!" Natasha shouted, diving between her partner and the wounded alien. She fired her last rounds into its face, the bullets shattering its mask to reveal a grotesque visage beneath – gray skin stretched tight over an almost skeletal structure, eyes like molten gold in sunken sockets.

The alien collapsed, twitching, as Natasha quickly helped Clint to his feet. "You good?"

"Been better," he grimaced, pressing a hand to his bruised ribs. "But I'll live."

They turned to face the final alien, which had hesitated at the sight of its fallen comrades. This one was different – smaller, with more intricate markings on his armor and a bearing that suggested more diplomatic authority.

"Last one," Natasha observed, circling cautiously. "Want to do the honors?"

Clint checked his quiver out of habit, though he knew it was empty. "All yours, Nat. I'll just watch your back."

The alien backed away as Natasha advanced, his movements suddenly less confident. He glanced around, assessing his options, then made a break for the trees. Natasha pursued, her sprint eating up the distance between them.

With a flying tackle, she brought the creature down, both of them rolling across the damp grass. The alien was strong, but Natasha was quicker, managing to pin him with a knee pressed against his throat and her last widow's bite charged and ready at his temple.

"Don't move," she warned, applying just enough pressure to make breathing difficult.

The alien hissed something unintelligible, his alien tongue clicking and guttural.

"English," Natasha demanded, pressing harder. "I know you can speak it."

The creature's eyes narrowed, but he complied. "Kill me and be done," he rasped, the words oddly accented but clear.

"Not until you tell me what I want to know," Natasha replied coolly. "Who are you? What do you want with Vision?"

The alien's laugh was like stones grinding together. "We are the Children of Thanos. The Great Titan's Will made flesh."

"Thanos sent you for Vision?"

"No," the alien replied, his eyes gleaming with malice. "We came seeking the traitor Gamora. Our mission was to find her, bring her to justice."

Natasha kept her expression neutral, though the name meant nothing to her. "Then why attack Vision?"

"We felt it," the creature said, a note of reverence entering his voice. "The Stone. Its power called to us across your planet. A signal so strong, so pure... we could not ignore such a prize."

Clint had approached silently, standing just behind Natasha with his knife retrieved and ready. "The Mind Stone," he said quietly.

The alien's gaze shifted to him. "Yes. One of six that our father seeks. When we sensed its presence, our mission changed."

"Does Thanos know you found it?" Natasha pressed, her grip tightening.

The alien's mouth twisted in what might have been a smile. "Not yet. But he will, once we return with our prize."

"So he doesn't know where it is," Natasha confirmed, exchanging a significant look with Clint.

"He will soon enough," the alien growled. His hand moved suddenly, a hidden blade sliding from his gauntlet as he struck at Natasha's exposed side.

The attack never landed. Clint’s knife whistled through the air, embedding itself in the alien's eye with devastating precision. The creature convulsed once, then went still.

Natasha jerked back, glancing up to see Clint recomposing himself, a grim expression on his face. "Found one more," he explained, nodding toward the corpse.

"Nice timing," she acknowledged, rising to her feet. She surveyed the battlefield, where the last of the aliens were being dispatched by Wanda and Cassandra.

"Thanos doesn't know!" she called out, her voice carrying across the park. "They were here for someone else, but sensed the Stone by accident. We need to leave no witnesses – if none report back, he won't know where to look!"

Across the park, Wanda nodded grimly, and with a sharp gesture, she sent a concentrated beam of hex energy straight through the remaining alien's chest. It hung suspended for a moment, a perfect hole burned through its center, before collapsing in a heap of smoldering armor.

Cassandra tried to do the same, charging a series of ki infused punches to one of her aliens. But as she did she exposed her side leaving an opening for the other to hit.

The alien seized the opening with terrifying speed. A flesh of silver arced through the air as its weapon— a serrated blade with an outworldly sheen— plunged toward Cassandra’s exposed ribacage. The angle perfect to reach just her vital organs. Time seemed to slow as she registered the incoming strike, knowing she couldn’t dodge in time. She desperately tried tugging the Ki flowing around her, but for some reason— she deemed as a mixture of exhaustion and panic— the energy felt impossible to plasm. The blade’s edge caught the dim light, already so close to her body, promising death.

She heard her teammates from across the battlefield shouting her name in horror, too far to reach her. The only thing she could do to give herself a slight feeling of control was brace for the impact.

Soon enough her vision streaked with crimson and she felt like she was being swept from the ground. She thought she had died, but then her conscience held strong, she didn’t see any light, no flash of her life behind her eyes. The blade that would have pierced her heart sliced through empty air.

When she finally reopened her dark jades she found herself floating at least twenty feet away, held by the Scarlet Witch.

Wanda’s face was one of concern, eyes blazing with crimson fire, as she intently stared at the girl she had between her arms. “You almost died,” she whimpered. There was something raw in her voice—more than concern for a teammate. Her hand tightened around Cassandra’s arm as if grounding herself, unwilling to let go just yet. Cassandra recognized the haunted look in her eyes. She had felt it too, but never from someone looking at her.

“I… did.” She muttered under her breath, too stunned to complete a sentence properly.

There was a fraction of time in which the two of them decided they had enough of battle and remained floating, to just catch their breath, contemplating life and holding each other; alive.

Their breath slowed, but neither moved. The space between them felt charged—uncertain, but real.

When that beat passed Wanda flew them both on the grass, scarlet tendrils still wrapping around them protectively. The Witch’s hair whipped around her face like a living flame, power radiating from her in palpable waves.

“Thanks for the save,” Cassandra managed, struggling to her feet. Her side throbbed where her ribs had cracked earlier, but the pain was distant compared to the rush of adrenaline. “Let’s finish this together.”

Wanda nodded beside her. “Together it is,” she agreed, a grim smile playing at her lips.

The two aliens regrouped, circling warily as they assessed this new alliance. The larger one—the one that had nearly killed Cassandra—charged first, its blade cutting a deadly arc through the air.

Without a word exchanged, Wanda and Cassandra moved in perfect synchronization. Wanda thrust out her hand, hex energy coalescing around the alien's weapon arm, slowing it just enough. Cassandra darted in, sliding beneath the restrained strike to deliver a punishing blow to the creature's knee joint. As it buckled, she rolled clear, drawing the alien's attention while Wanda gathered her power for a more devastating attack.

The second alien tried to flank them, but Cassandra was ready. "Behind you!" she called.

Wanda spun, one hand still maintaining her hold on the first alien while the other sent a burst of energy that caught the flanking attacker square in the chest. It staggered backward, armor smoking where the hex bolt had struck.

"I'll hold this one," Wanda called, increasing the pressure on the first alien until its armor began to creak. "Finish the other!"

Cassandra nodded, drawing her last reserves of Ki as she charged the wounded alien. It met her with surprising ferocity, its staff whirling in complex patterns designed to keep her at bay. She feinted left, then right, looking for an opening.

"Need a boost?" Wanda called, her voice strained from the effort of restraining the larger alien.

Cassandra grinned, instantly understanding. "Do it!"

Scarlet energy wrapped around her, lifting her several feet into the air before hurling her directly at the alien with devastating speed. As she flew, Cassandra angled her body, concentrating all her remaining Ki into her right fist. The energy manifested as a visible aura, her hand glowing with concentrated power.

The alien raised its staff to block, but Cassandra's enhanced strike shattered the weapon on impact. Her fist continued through, connecting with the creature's chest plate. The armor caved inward with a sickening crunch, the force of the blow driving the metal shards deep into whatever passed for the alien's vital organs.

It dropped like a stone, dark fluid leaking from the seams of its armor. A quiet “ew” came from both girls as the burnt and bleeding corpse fell into the ground with a dull thud.

Without pausing, Cassandra spun to see Wanda still struggling with the larger alien. The creature fought against her telekinetic grip, its strength gradually overcoming her restraint. Wanda's face was pale with strain, blood beginning to trickle from her nose as she poured more power into her hold.

"I can't hold it much longer," she gasped, her hands trembling.

"You don't need to," Cassandra replied, snatching up the fallen alien's dagger. "Just keep its head still."

Understanding flashed in Wanda's eyes. She adjusted her grip, focusing all her remaining energy on immobilizing the alien's head and shoulders. The creature thrashed wildly, its limbs breaking free of her control, but its upper body remained locked in place.

Cassandra charged, ducking under a wild swing from its freed arm. With a final surge of effort, she leapt, driving the alien's own blade deep into the narrow eye slit of its helmet. The creature convulsed once, then went rigid as the blade found its brain.

Wanda released her hold, collapsing to one knee as the last of her energy drained away. The alien toppled backward, the dagger still protruding from its ruined face.

Cassandra finally allowed herself to let go of the tension that had been keeping her upright by sheer willpower, and she collapsed onto the ground. Her body stretched out, her eyes scanning the sky as she tried to catch her breath and calm her racing thoughts.

For a moment, the only sound was their ragged breathing.

"That was..." Cassandra began, searching for the right word.

"Messy, but damn—nice hit," Wanda finished for her, as she stumbled over to Cassandra, offering her a hand to get back up. As their fingers touched, a spark of something passed between them—not Wanda’s magic or Cassandra’s Ki, but something quieter, more dangerous. Their eyes met for a moment too long. Neither pulled away.

"I've never seen anyone move with shadows like that," Wanda said, studying Cassandra with new interest as they made their way back toward the others. "You weren’t born with that, were you?"

Cassandra shook her head. "Ancient discipline. Ki-based. Most people don’t even know it exists."

"It's beautiful," Wanda said simply. "Dangerous, but beautiful."

Cassandra felt an unexpected warmth at the compliment. Not because it flattered her, but because it came from someone who had also been shaped by forces others feared. In Wanda’s eyes, she saw recognition—and something unspoken.

"Your magic saved my life," she acknowledged quietly. "I owe you one."

Wanda’s smile was tired but genuine. She looked away for half a second, then back again, like the words she needed were caught somewhere between thought and instinct.

"That’s... what this is, right? Teammates?" she said—softly. But the word landed oddly, as if she were trying it on for the first time. Her voice held something uncertain, caught between duty and something warmer, more fragile.

"Yeah," Cassandra said after a moment, her voice low. She didn’t quite buy the word teammates —not yet. But Wanda had pulled her back from the brink without hesitation, and that counted for something. Cassandra didn’t trust easily. Not anyone. But maybe, just maybe, Wanda had earned the start of something close.

They rejoined the others, where Natasha was helping Steve to his feet while Clint stood guard over Vision. The synthetic man was still weak, but the worst of the damage seemed contained. His eyes found Wanda immediately, relief washing over his features.

"Let’s move," Natasha said as they approached, already scanning the area for civilians or surveillance. "Cops’ll be here any second, and there’s no explaining this mess."

"I'll call Strange," Cassandra declared, her voice steady as she reached for her phone, fingers brushing against the cool surface. "Get us a ride."

The phone rang twice, and on the second ring, Strange picked up. His voice crackled with tension and concern, like a distant storm rolling in. "Gastaldi, I was waiting for your call. What happened?"

"We found Steve," Cassandra replied, watching as Natasha and Clint helped the wounded super-soldier sit on a nearby bench. "And Vision and Wanda. But we also found some of Thanos's advance scouts. Ten of them. They're dead now."

There was a pause on the line. "Ten?" Strange's voice had taken on a new urgency. "Describe them."

As Cassandra described the aliens, her words slowed. Wanda knelt beside Vision, fingers brushing his forehead, palms steady on his cheeks. She whispered something soft; Vision’s hand found her wrist.

Cassandra’s breath caught—just a flicker. A heat stirred beneath her skin.

It wasn’t the moment itself. It was the contrast.

She shifted, trying to shake the sudden pulse in her chest.

The tenderness in the gesture struck something in her— maybe it was a reminder that even in the midst of cosmic threats, it was personal connections that gave the fight meaning.

She cleared her throat and kept talking.

"You need extraction," Strange said, not a question but a statement. "I'm on my way."

"We'll be ready," Cassandra confirmed, ending the call.

She walked back to the group, where Steve was insisting he could stand on his own despite the blood still seeping through his shirt.

"Strange is coming," she announced. "ETA five minutes."

"Good," Natasha said, her expression grim as she surveyed the battlefield. "Because I think we just entered a new phase of this war."

"At least we still have the upperhand on information," Clint added, his voice low. "Things could have been real bad if we had let them live through this."

Cassandra’s face went grim, “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot, if these scouts reached earth already, more will come. I don’t think Thanos is stupid, he’ll know something’s up the moment he realizes his first troops will never report back.”

Steve nodded gravely. “Then we need to be ready. All of us, together.”

Cassandra found her gaze drawn to Wanda again. The witch had risen to her feet, her hand still intertwined with Vision's as she stared out across the darkened park. There was a new resolve in her posture—the stance of someone who had found something worth fighting for.

Feeling Cassandra's eyes on her, Wanda turned. For a moment, they simply looked at each other, a wordless communication passing between them. Then Wanda offered a small, fierce smile—an acknowledgment of what they'd accomplished together, and a promise of what they might yet do.

Cassandra returned the smile, feeling something settle within her. They had survived this battle, but the war was just beginning. And when the next fight came, she knew exactly who she wanted fighting at her side.

The air began to shimmer as Strange's portal materialized, casting golden light across their battered forms. One by one, they stepped through, leaving behind the silent park and the bodies of their fallen enemies.

As the portal closed behind them, erasing all evidence of their presence, Cassandra found herself thinking that perhaps—just perhaps—they stood a chance after all.

Chapter Text

Natasha’s body woke her at six a.m. sharp, in defiance of the sedative she’d begged off Vision the night before. Her head throbbed dully and her shoulder ached where one of the aliens’ weapons had grazed her, but compared to the sensation of surviving Chechen with a perforated lung, it barely qualified as discomfort. The rest of the compound was still in the early stages of post-battle hibernation: lights low, heating system on overtime, all the subtle signs that yesterday’s adrenaline had finally burned off and the only thing left was collective exhaustion.

The kitchen was empty except for the smell of burnt toast. Someone had left the loaf end-down in the toaster, where it now smoldered in quiet, stubborn rebellion. Natasha yanked the cord from the wall and dumped the offender into the trash, then set about making real coffee, the kind that wouldn’t induce war crimes in Florence if consumed. The familiarity of the routine—a scoop, a click, the gurgle of water over grounds—helped clear the cobwebs.

Outside the windows, the gray late November sky hovered just above freezing, but inside, the compound kitchen glowed with warm light. The new Stark-designed bulbs mimicked sunlight so convincingly that Natasha’s body almost believed it was spring. Her hands moved on autopilot as she filled three cups and set them out, one for her, one for Clint and one for Cass, as she thought she might appreciate. Then she turned to survey the damage left by last night’s impromptu celebration. She counted two empty whiskey bottles, an upended bottle of Advil, and a single bloodstained dishtowel that suggested someone had attempted amateur first aid at the kitchen island.

Footsteps dragged down the hall—measured, deliberate. Natasha guessed Steve first, but it was Cassandra who appeared, looking like she’d been through the wringer and back. The shadow-walker had ditched the black suit for a plain T-shirt and flannel pants, her hair a tangled mess of copper and gold.

“You’re up early,” Natasha said, sliding a cup across the counter.

Cassandra wrapped her hands under the cup like it was the only source of heat in the world. She didn’t answer at first, just sipped and leaned against the counter, eyes fixed on the snow-dusted grounds outside.

“Mhmm… caffé” she muttered under her breath.

Natasha's lips curved into a small chuckle. Suddenly it felt like something clicked in her mind, she got back to their previous conversations and the Italian lilt in Cassandra's pronunciation was now unmistakable. She didn’t catch it at first in the way she spoke English, but she couldn’t unhear it now, after that single Italian word that slipped out in her pre-caffeine haze. Caffé . Not coffee.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she eventually offered. “Kept hearing those things in the vents.” Her voice was flat, but Natasha recognized the undercurrent of nerves.

“Been there,” Natasha said, and left it at that.

They stood in silence while the sun inched up over the trees, the only sounds the faint hum of the compound’s systems and the soft click of Cassandra’s chipped cup on the granite. Natasha wondered if the new girl had ever done this—stood in a kitchen after a war and not spoken of the war at all. It was a luxury that took practice.

The coffee did its subtle work, worming warmth through Natasha’s chest and drawing a little more color into Cassandra’s face. For the first time since returning from London, the compound was beginning to feel less like a bunker and more like a home, albeit the kind of home that regularly got invaded, exploded, or both. The silence stretched, neither oppressive nor awkward, just the quiet of two people who knew better than to fill the air with unnecessary noise.

After about ten minutes, Cassandra stirred at last. It was almost imperceptible: she straightened her posture, flexed the fingers around her mug, and let her gaze travel—not just to the windows, but to the perimeter, the ceiling, the seams of every vent and entry point. Natasha recognized the ritual; she’d done it herself in the early days, the after-action sweep for any signs that the threat was only sleeping rather than dead. Satisfied, Cassandra’s eyes finally landed on Natasha, who was watching with quiet, almost maternal amusement.

“I think I’ll be going to the infirmary,” Cassandra announced, slipping the “infirmary” into her accent like a card up her sleeve. “Check up on Steve.”

There was a weight to the declaration, again, something that went beyond concern for Cap’s battered ribs and bruised ego. It wasn’t the first time that Natasha had heard it, Cassandra seemed to care for him like a sister more than a friend. For a girl who stated she didn’t trust easily he had quite grown on her in little over a year. She wondered, briefly, if Steve had any idea how much this girl cared for him.

Natasha nodded, resisting the urge to hover. “He’s probably spitting out stitches and telling everyone to go home already,” she said. “Typical Rogers.”

Cassandra half-smiled, a twitch at the corner of her mouth that might have been mirth or melancholy. It was hard to tell, with her. But she set her cup down gently, rinsed it in the sink—always neat, always precise—and left it upside-down on the rack. A soldier's tidiness, even here.

Natasha watched her shuffle out, soft-footed and silent, and realized with a jolt that she missed her already. It was ridiculous, really: she’d known the woman for less than three days, but already there was a sense of familiarity, a shared code written in scars and the thousand-yard stare. She shrugged it off and turned back to the kitchen, running her hands over the countertop until the lingering tension bled out into the stone.

She was about to search for a bagel when she caught herself. There was only one left and Clint would be up soon, she knew he’d expect his bagel as payment for putting up with their parade yesterday. She settled for a protein bar from the high shelf and leaned against the fridge, thinking about all the little routines that made this ragtag crew tick: Steve with his predawn runs and calisthenics, Tony’s post-allnighter omelets, Vision’s philosophical debates with the toaster. Cass would fit in, eventually. They all did. The alternative was loneliness, and that hurt more.

Somewhere in the living room, an old pop song started playing at low volume—FRIDAY’s attempt to simulate a “relaxing domestic environment,” per recent Stark upgrades. Natasha rolled her eyes at the overly cheerful synth, but she let it play. It was better than the silence, and it gave her something to tap her foot to while the caffeine tried to catch up with her metabolism.

A little after Cassandra left, Vision hovered into the kitchen as if nothing had happened. If he was bothered by last night’s injury, he didn’t show it; he wore the same V-neck sweater and corduroys he always did when pretending to be domestic. He nodded to Natasha, then started assembling a truly horrifying number of open-faced sandwiches, each layer precisely measured.

“Morning,” he said, with a levelness that suggested his systems had long since processed the trauma.

Natasha regarded him over her refilled cup. “You feeling better?”

“Wanda performed a remarkable repair job,” Vision replied, not quite meeting her gaze. “My only lasting deficit is a slight tendency to favor my left leg, but I am assured it will resolve with time.”

He set the plate of sandwiches on the counter and then reached for the coffee pot to make himself a longer Americano. The awkwardness of the gesture was almost human.

They were joined, one by one, by the rest of the team. Tony arrived with his hair still wet from the shower, wearing a hoodie and track pants and looking about as approachable as a retired gym teacher. Clint followed close behind, feet bare and socks mismatched, moving like he was hungover even though Natasha knew for a fact he hadn’t touched the whiskey.

By seven, the kitchen had become a small island of battered heroes. Conversation was minimal at first. Tony grunted a “Morning,” and Clint grunted back. The former took control of the coffee pot and refilled everyone’s mugs, while the latter quietly commandeered the granola box. It wasn’t until Vision, apparently oblivious to all human norms, asked if they’d “slept well” that the dam broke.

Clint snorted. “Define ‘well,’” he said, and reached for the Advil with a practiced flick of the wrist.

Natasha watched the mood shift, tension bleeding out of the group as they picked over the leftovers and swapped war stories. The kitchen, which had felt like a field hospital ten minutes ago, now hummed with the normalcy of people who’d seen each other at their absolute worst and found a way to make it funny.

By the time the kitchen had emptied and the last mug clinked into the sink, Natasha felt the familiar tug of restless energy return. She couldn’t sit still with the post-battle haze thickening around her. Once the casual chatter ebbed, she ghosted toward her quarters, moving through the compound’s corridors with the silent intent of someone who had never truly believed in safety. The lights had shifted from their cheery dawn mimicry to a soft, clinical brightness, casting a sterile glow over the battered artwork and half-repaired wall panels. Stark tech and hero memorabilia littered every surface—hard evidence that this was still a home, however provisional.

Her room was little more than a converted office filled with exercise gear, half-packed go-bags, and a wardrobe that alternated between tactical black and soft flannel. She peeled off her borrowed pajama top, shook the stiffness from her arms, and slipped into something more functional: dark leggings, a faded tee, and a zip-up hoodie left over from one of the earlier Avengers missions. Her hair was a mess, but she ran her hands through it and called it good enough. She never bothered with the mirror for more than a second—old habits, hard to break.

She grabbed her tablet from the desk, thumbed through her emails, and deleted the handful of S.H.I.E.L.D. status updates that had trickled in overnight. Nothing urgent. That meant she could focus on the real priority: making sure Steve was still in one piece, and that Cass hadn’t murdered him in some self-destructive act of misguided hero worship.

She made her way towards the infirmary hallway, the soles of her shoes padding noiselessly over the industrial carpet. The closer she got to the med bay, the more she could feel her body tensing, like it was bracing for the next disaster even when she knew it was probably just going to be Steve cursing at the biometric lock again. Maybe she’d find Cass pretending to be deep in thought while actually memorizing every escape route in the room.

The thought gave Natasha a strange kind of comfort. Maybe they were all broken toys, but at least they’d found a place where that didn’t matter. She reached the med bay and paused outside the door, listening for voices—nothing yet, just the soft hiss of the air filtration and the distant thump of someone, probably Tony, running on the treadmill upstairs.

There was a moment—a brief beat—where Natasha let herself stand perfectly still in the corridor, letting the silence wrap around her like armor. She didn’t need a reason to care about these people. She just did.

She palmed the door open and stepped inside.

————————

The med bay was a glass-walled afterthought tacked onto the back of the compound, all chrome and polished surfaces. Even from the elevator, Natasha caught the soft commotion inside: a low, gravelly mutter punctuated by the squeak of medical booties on tile. When she stepped in, the scene was already halfway to slapstick.

Steve Rogers—shirtless and stitched and barely vertical—was bracing himself on the bedrail with one hand and Cassandra’s wrist with the other, his face set in the kind of mulish determination that meant he’d rather pass out than let a nurse wheel him to the treadmill. Cassandra, for her part, was doing a credible impression of a rock climber, legs planted, bracing for whatever idiocy Steve was about to attempt. She held a clipboard in her free hand, her expression somewhere between “amused older sister” and “exasperated parole officer.”

Natasha leaned against the doorframe. "Doing a little light cardio, Cap?"

He gave her a look, then tried and failed to hide the wince that came with straightening his spine. "Doc says I need to keep moving," he deadpanned, voice rough with yesterday’s smoke.

"He’s got the painkillers, too," Cassandra added, unfazed. “I’m thinking of switching his drip for decaf.”

Steve grunted, let go of the rail, and took a lurching step toward the treadmill. Cassandra caught his elbow before he could face-plant. “Slow down, cowboy.”

Natasha snorted and helped herself to a rolling stool, spinning it around so she could sit backwards, arms folded on the backrest. “You know, if you want to impress the staff, you could try not bleeding through your bandages.”

“That’s the stuff I like,” Steve said, and for a moment there was a flicker of something like delight in his battered face. “Old-fashioned encouragement.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes and eased him onto the padded seat next to the treadmill. “He’s impossible,” she said to Natasha, but with a note of unspoken pride. Then, to Steve: “You do this again, I’m taping you to the bed.”

“Promises, promises,” Steve said, but he was already sagging, eyes bleary with fatigue.

Natasha watched the exchange, a golden aura seemed to envelope the scene. Somehow it felt more domestic than it should have had. She was glad that there was someone able to crack through Steve’s stubbornness and somehow Cassandra was doing a great job.

She had known Rogers for years and even though he was extremely open to people he wasn’t very keen on relying on anyone, or really letting them in. Natasha herself didn’t know what passed his mind more than half the time, but Cassandra had known him for a year and they seemed already so in tune.

Natasha let her gaze drift to Cassandra’s hands, steady and certain as she guided him back to the bed. The girl had a way of moving — efficient, controlled, like every gesture had ten thousand hours of rehearsal behind it. She saw the faint purple bruise threading up Cass’s forearm and recognized the telltale impact pattern of alien weaponry. She took a mental note to ask about it later. For now she let her be, taking care of anything but herself, it was a pattern in all their post-battle days.

Steve shook his head as she pushed for him to get back laying, still smiling. There was fondness in the way he looked at her. “You know there’s no need for you to worry this much”, he complained. “I’ll be back to full training by tomorrow, the upper sides of being a lab rat for the States.”

“Which is why it’s even more stupid for you to try and stand right now. I’m sure you can go one day without throwing a punch.”

The words had barely left Cassandra’s mouth when the elevator chimed again, followed by the unmistakable cadence of Sam Wilson’s voice carrying down the tiled hallway.

“Am I interrupting a tender moment?” he called, sticking his head around the sliding door.

Natasha grinned. “Perfect timing, Wilson. Cap’s being a pain in the ass. He could use a sparring partner.”

Sam walked in with his usual easy stride, but there was a new tightness at the corners of his eyes. He was in street clothes—dark jeans, battered Nikes, a faded Barksdale Rec t-shirt—and even in civvies he looked more like a soldier at ease than a man at rest. He gave Steve a long, critical once-over, then flicked a quick salute. “You look like crap, man.”

Steve managed half a smile, the color returning slowly to his cheeks. “You should see the other guys.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “I did. Someone livestreamed it already. The Internet thinks the aliens were a publicity stunt.” He perched on the edge of an exam table, hands clasped between his knees. “How’s the patient?”

Cassandra let her glance linger on Sam for a split second longer than usual. He was, in a way, her predecessor as Steve’s right hand. She hadn’t known how the dynamic would shift with her in the mix. Now, watching the way Steve’s entire bearing softened at the sight of his old friend, she felt no prick of rivalry—just relief. There were people in this world willing to drop everything for Steve Rogers, and that club was smaller than most assumed.

“Patient’s noncompliant,” she reported, deadpan. “Refuses to stay in bed, abuses pain meds, bullies staff.”

Sam snorted. “Old habits die hard.” He looked at Steve. “Don’t make her duct tape you again. That was embarrassing for everybody.”

Steve’s laugh came out as a cough, but he seemed lighter for it. For a while they just talked: about the fight, the weather, the small oddities of being alive in a world that never quite stopped trying to kill them. It was the sort of conversation that meant nothing and everything—the glue between the missions.

They were interrupted a few minutes later by the arrival of James Rhodes, who rolled in under his own power, the sleek black braces gleaming at his calves. He paused in the doorway, scanning the cluster by the window. When his gaze landed on Sam, it lingered a beat too long, and the temperature in the room dipped a few degrees.

Natasha, who was skilled at sensing the microclimates of awkwardness, slid off her stool and approached Rhodes first. “Hey, Colonel. Just in time for morning rounds.”

Rhodey nodded, then cut straight to the point. “Heard you guys got knocked around pretty good. How’s the Captain?”

“Still ugly, but alive,” Natasha shot back. “You want to see the stitches?”

Rhodes waved her off. “Let’s save the horror show for after breakfast.” He glanced toward Cassandra, offering a polite but perimetered smile. “You must be the new Shadow I’ve been hearing about.”

Cassandra shrugged. “Shadow’s as good a name as any.” She gestured at the bandages on her own side. “Only slightly less banged up than the rest.”

“Welcome to the steakhouse, where the meat is always bruised,” Rhodey deadpanned. He nudged Sam with a casual elbow but kept his eyes on Cassandra, as if trying to puzzle her out. “No offense, but I hope you’re better at keeping Rogers in line than the last girl.”

“Big words from a guy who let Tony build an AI therapist for the Tower,” Natasha said, hands on hips.

“Hey, you try group therapy with Vision,” Rhodey countered. “Four minutes in, everyone’s contemplating the heat death of the universe.”

Rhodey’s joke landed, and Natasha noticed the tension in the room dissolve for a brief moment. She observed Cassandra first feel the relief—like a gentle wave rolling off her shoulders—then it reached Steve, and eventually the rest of the group. Natasha's eyes instinctively swept the room, searching for any lingering resentments or unhealed wounds, but instead, she saw a hint of a smile forming on Sam's lips and an unspoken camaraderie blossoming among them.

It was a careful peace, but a peace nonetheless.

Steve, still pinned down by Cassandra’s gentle but unyielding grip, managed to look grateful for the chaos suddenly not being about him. “You boys want to take your therapy session outside?” he asked, voice softer now. “We’ve got a perfectly good lawn for that.”

“Maybe after breakfast,” Sam said, and shot a glance at Rhodey. “Assuming Tony didn’t repurpose the kitchen for a new suit upgrade.”

Rhodey shook his head. “No way, not after last time. Mrs. P told him she’d serve his heart on a salad if he reprogrammed the espresso machine again.” He grinned, glancing at Natasha. “She’s scarier than Ross, some days.”

The conversation picked up, shifting easily from battle scars to old missions to the ongoing disaster that was the compound’s laundry situation. For a moment, it almost felt like the old days.

Then FRIDAY’s voice crackled through the intercom. “Apologies for the interruption, but we have inbound spacecrafts on final approach to the compound. Two units. Estimated touchdown in six minutes.”

The group went still. Natasha could feel the tension coil back into the room, but this time it was different—less fear, more anticipation. They all knew what that meant.

“Rest of the team’s here,” Sam said, patting Steve on the back.

Steve stood, still wobbling, but confident. “Let’s go greet them.”

Cassandra slipped to his side, arm at his elbow, she knew she couldn’t win this battle and she settled for help in steadying her friend.

Natasha lingered a moment, watching as the group filed out toward the hangar. She caught herself thinking—in the hush as the elevator doors sealed behind them—how easily she could picture these people in some alternate, softer universe. The easy bickering, the shared jokes, even the way Cassandra hovered at Steve’s side: it was all so ordinary, so nakedly human, that she almost forgot they were getting ready for a war.

———————-

The compound's main hangar was an architectural marvel, crafted to elicit awe—though Natasha had seen it enough times to mostly ignore the effect. Still, the way it soared three stories into the sky, its sleek glass and brushed steel gleaming in the morning light, gave the place a kind of cold majesty. Futuristic. Impersonal. Perfect for what they were about to walk into.

She stood near Wanda and Strange, arms crossed, her gaze fixed on the pair of spaceships touching down in perfect tandem. The morning sun refracted off the wet tarmac, casting shimmering streaks up the hangar’s walls. Natasha tracked them for a moment, distracted. Then she tuned back in—into the tension thickening around her like humidity before a storm.

Clint’s impatience, Cassandra’s restless shifting, Steve’s statue-still posture.

All of it registered. Especially Tony.

He was the wild card. Slightly removed from the rest, sunglasses on despite the cloud cover, hands buried deep in his coat pockets. Natasha didn’t miss the way his eyes kept darting toward the end of the runway—half-expecting something to go sideways. A habit she understood better than most.

But this wasn’t Berlin. No traps this time, even if the ghosts felt similar.

The first ship halted with a screeching mechanical whine that made her jaw tighten. Around her, some of the team winced and brought hands to their ears, but Natasha remained still. Waiting.

Then the doors slid open, and Thor Odinson stepped into the morning light.

She felt her stomach dip.

It wasn’t the same Thor who'd once clapped her on the back after missions, or traded jokes with Steve in downtime. This Thor was leaner, harder. Dust and soot clung to him like a second skin, and his long hair hung in clumps. But his posture was unbroken—shoulders squared, eyes sharp. Haunted, but standing.

Natasha took all that in silently, reading the spaces between what he showed and what he didn’t. She remembered that look from Sokovia, after Wanda had cracked his mind open. That shadow hadn’t left him.

Still, he greeted the others one by one, offering firm handshakes and quiet words. He made the rounds deliberately, including her—his grip warm and steady, the faintest flicker of recognition in his tired eyes.

Then came the others.

Three figures trailing Thor, only one fully human. The smallest—a raccoon, of all things—walked with the swagger of someone who didn’t care what anyone thought.

“Well, at least we’ve got numbers,” he said, voice dry with sarcasm. “Still a whole army to deal with, but you get the picture.”

Natasha watched him like she would a loaded weapon.

The human, tall and disheveled with a cocky smirk, rolled his eyes. “Rocket, shut up.” Then to them all, “Sorry about him; he grew up alone. By the way, I’m Peter Quill.”

Before Natasha could file that away, a tree—yes, a tree —stepped up behind Quill and added solemnly, “I am Groot.”

Her brow lifted slightly. This was the crew they were betting the galaxy on?

The second spacecraft’s doors hissed open. Natasha shifted her weight as a green-skinned woman descended first. Precise, cool, assessing. She scanned the team like she was running threat diagnostics.

"You look awful," she said, eyes landing on Steve’s bruised jaw, then drifting to the way Cassandra guarded her ribs.

Natasha’s arms remained folded, but internally she bristled. Not at the bluntness—she respected that. At how right the woman was.

Rocket snorted. "That’s what I said too. Bunch of you look like you went ten rounds with a Gorgantula.”

The green woman didn’t flinch. “I’m Gamora,” she said, voice balanced between steel and caution. “I’m glad you decided to help with our common threat.”

Natasha studied her closely. The stance. The awareness. The predator's stillness. She knew that body language. She’d worn it for years.

Behind Gamora came two more. A petite woman with antennae, eyes wide with wonder—too open, too soft. And a mountain of a man covered in red tattoos, whose stoic expression gave away nothing.

“This is Mantis,” Gamora said as the woman waved tentatively. “And Drax,” with a nod toward the man, who responded with a grunt.

Natasha didn’t wave back, but she didn’t look away either.

Tony stepped forward, always the diplomat when it suited him. “Tony Stark. I got that you were the ones who brought this to our attention. If we somehow make it out in one piece, we’ll owe it to your warning.”

The introductions faded into background noise the moment she spotted the next figure at the top of the ramp.

Bruce.

Her breath caught—barely, just a half-second stutter. But it was enough to betray her to herself.

He looked exhausted. But he was whole.

He found her across the crowd instantly. Of course he did. And there it was—that space between them, filled with everything they’d left unsaid. The Quinjet. The argument. Her insistence that she wasn’t built for relationships.

Nothing had changed. Except maybe it had.

She gave him a small, neutral nod. He returned it with a weary smile that hit her harder than it should have.

Then it passed.

That was it. The past remained past, but she was glad he was still in one piece.

"Banner!" Tony called.

He crossed the hangar quickly, a rare burst of open relief on his face. “Banner! Thank god you’re here. Finally, someone who doesn’t want to throw me out an airlock.”

Bruce frowned faintly, reading something under the surface. “And someone who actually understands what I’m talking about when I use words with more than two syllables.”

Bruce sounded like gravel—dry, frayed. Like sleep hadn’t found him in weeks.

Tony, predictably, plowed ahead. “I’ve been working on something. Started just a couple of days ago, but I think it could turn the tide of this war.” His voice dropped, conspiratorial. “Containment systems. Weapons, technically. But more like vessels. Something that could harness gamma radiation from the stones—”

"Excuse me," came a quiet voice.

Natasha turned to find Mantis standing nearby, unnoticed until now.

“I am sorry,” she said, her tone gentle but unwavering. “But I think your friend needs to rest before he can talk about killing people. I can feel his exhaustion—it’s… overwhelming.”

Tony blinked, thrown. “It’s not about killing people. Well. Not directly, at least.”

Mantis just stared at him. Unblinking. Judging.

“Bruce has been through a lot on Sakaar,” she said softly. “I saw it in his head.”

When she placed a hand on Tony’s arm, he stilled. Natasha noted that. So did Bruce.

“The fatigue is like an ocean,” Mantis said. “If he does not sleep soon, he will drown in it.”

Bruce shrugged apologetically. “Rain check? Haven’t exactly been on vacation.”

Tony exhaled, deflated. “Fine. But after you’ve had your beauty sleep, lab. We’re talking game-changing tech, Bruce.”

“Promise,” Bruce mumbled, already halfway to collapsing.

Across the hangar, Thor had reached the second ship and begun his royal round of greetings. Natasha watched him brighten slightly at the sight of Bruce, though he stayed on mission.

"Lady Gamora," he said, extending a hand. “Your warning has united warriors across the realms. Asgard stands with you against Thanos.”

Gamora clasped his forearm, meeting his formality with strength. “Let’s hope it’s enough.”

Then Thor moved on—Drax, then Mantis—until only one figure remained.

The armored woman who’d hung back, all distance and edge.

Thor approached with the same noble grace. “Well met, warrior. I am Thor, son of Odin, prince of Asgard.”

Natasha’s gaze narrowed as the woman’s eyes met his—recognition flashing there, fast and sharp. Then, cold dismissal.

She brushed past him with deliberate force, her shoulder colliding with his.

Thor froze, hand still extended, expression flickering with confusion.

“Did I… offend her somehow?” he asked, looking toward Bruce.

Bruce shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “That’s Valkyrie,” he said after a pause. “She’s… complicated.”

Natasha said nothing. But she watched Valkyrie’s retreating form, filing away everything she’d just seen.

Complicated was an understatement.

Natasha caught the shift in Thor the second the woman brushed past him. The crack in his expression wasn’t loud, but it was there—like a tremor before a quake.

"Valkyrie?" he called after her. The word left his mouth not as a title, but as a question. A plea. Sharp with disbelief.

She didn’t turn. Just kept walking, her head high, the soft clank of her armor echoing with every step.

Natasha watched the way Thor’s eyes stayed locked on her, as if sheer will could drag the truth out of her spine or slow her retreat. He looked like someone chasing a ghost that refused to haunt him properly.

Then he turned abruptly, hand latching onto Bruce’s sleeve.

"Banner. The Valkyries are all dead. How—"

Bruce’s response was quiet. Too quiet for most to hear, but Natasha had trained herself to catch what others missed.

"Not all of them fell," he said, the words dense with history. With loss.

Natasha watched the way Bruce patted Thor’s arm—a small, almost fatherly gesture—and then stepped away, retreating toward the corridor with a pace that made it clear the subject was closed. That kind of retreat, she understood. You gave the truth, but no room for follow-up.

Thor didn’t chase him. He just stood there, too full of questions and not enough rage to scream them out loud.

Natasha kept her distance, but she didn’t look away. Thor was unraveling—not the thunderous, dramatic kind, but the quieter sort that cracked from the inside out. She knew what it looked like. She’d worn that look herself more than once.

His fist clenched at his side, and for a moment, she wondered if he even noticed it. He wasn’t angry—not really. It read more like grief. Grief tinged with guilt.

She could guess what was running through his head. Childhood stories, myths turned to mourning, the songs of warriors lost in battle. The Valkyries had been Asgard’s legends. And now one had walked right past him without a flicker of acknowledgment.

Natasha knew what that felt like too.

Thor stared at the hangar doors where Valkyrie had vanished, his shoulders tight. Not braced for war—but for regret. The past had come back wearing a scowl and armor, and it hadn’t even said hello.

Whatever he wanted to say—to yell, to ask, to confess—he swallowed it. Natasha watched it die on his tongue.

“Not all of them fell,” he murmured again, softer this time. Maybe just for himself.

She studied his profile for another second. There was more going on behind his eyes than he’d ever say out loud. And whatever Valkyrie had survived, Natasha knew the cost hadn’t been cheap.

Behind them, the hangar hummed with tired bodies and unfamiliar dynamics. Avengers and Guardians mingled in a clumsy kind of alliance. Everyone was worn thin, held together by adrenaline and duct tape—figuratively and maybe literally.

Thor finally drew in a breath, squaring his shoulders. Natasha caught the subtle shift in him—the way he tried to realign, to pull himself together. Not just as a warrior, but as someone who still had people to protect. That was something she understood deeply.

He turned from the empty doorway and rejoined the group, slow but steady, the echo of the past trailing just behind him.

Natasha let her arms drop to her sides and exhaled. No one was saying it, but they all felt it: something had just changed. Again.

——————————

Later that day Cassandra stood on the training room balcony, a silhouette against the amber light. From where Wanda stood in the doorway, she looked both isolated and grounded—like someone suspended between standing guard and seeking peace. Below them, the lawns stretched out in neat symmetry, perfect and artificial. The kind of paradise designed by someone with a blueprint instead of a heart.

The sun was low enough to cast long shadows across the field, warping the gym’s lines into geometric abstractions. Wanda stared at them for a moment before stepping forward, slow and quiet. Cassandra didn’t startle. She never did. She just stood there, loose at the shoulders, gaze fixed on nothing in particular.

Wanda could feel the aftershocks still humming off her. Not from fear or nerves—fatigue, maybe. Pain. She didn’t have to probe to know that Cassandra’s body was a map of bruises and worn-down energy.

She moved to stand beside her, and for a while, neither of them spoke.

The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was full of possibility—like a blank page instead of a wall.

“This place is nicer than the last safehouse I was in near Edinburgh,” Wanda said softly, barely louder than the breeze.

Cassandra grunted her agreement. “Better views than mine too.”

That earned a faint smile from Wanda. Her fingers drifted along the metal railing, tracing lazy circles. “When I was a kid, I used to pretend the city was a chessboard. I’d watch the lights in the buildings and imagine each one was a move. Sometimes, I still do.”

She didn’t know what pushed her to connect with this woman, it probably was a consequence of the shared fight.

Cassandra didn’t respond immediately. Then, a shrug. “I never learned chess.”

“I’ll teach you,” Wanda offered, letting it hang between them—part invitation, part dare. She wanted to get to know her better, Cassandra had built some high walls, that much she understood immediately, but she hit her as someone worth trying to crack.

Another pause. Wanda let it stretch, staring out over the manicured grass, then glanced sideways at Cassandra. She was twisting her rings again—subconsciously. A nervous habit. Wanda noticed she’d been doing it since the moment she arrived, fingers fidgeting like they needed something to hold onto.

“About yesterday…” Wanda began, her voice catching just a little. “I wanted to say thank you. If you hadn’t pulled Vision from that mess, I don’t think—”

Cassandra cut her off with a shake of her head. “He’s your priority. I was just playing backup.”

The words were even, but Wanda could feel the flicker beneath them. She’d seen that look on Cassandra’s face when Vision came back online—the weight she’d carried in her arms, the soot, the damage. She hadn’t hesitated. Not for a second.

Wanda reached out, fingers brushing Cassandra’s forearm.

The contact was brief. Light. But she didn’t miss how Cassandra tensed—not out of discomfort, exactly, but like someone whose reflexes were always just beneath the surface. Still, she didn’t pull away.

“We protect each other now,” Wanda said gently. “That’s what teams do, right?”

Cassandra stared at the spot where Wanda’s hand had been, then looked up. “I wouldn’t know.”

No sarcasm. Just quiet honesty.

Wanda smiled—tired, but real—and turned her gaze back to the horizon. “You don’t like teams?”

“I never had a team.” Cassandra’s voice was calm, but something cracked open in it. “Before meeting Steve earlier this year, I’d always been on my own. I never wanted burdens. But now I kind of think I could be a burden… if something were to happen.”

Wanda didn’t hesitate. “You’re not.”

She meant it. Cassandra had saved her life. Saved Vision. Showed up when she didn’t have to.

“You saved my life too, you know.”

Cassandra snorted. “Sure as if.”

“Well,” Wanda said, nudging her shoulder, “if you and the others hadn’t shown up, me, Steve, and Vision would all be dead.”

A blackbird landed at the far edge of the balcony, tilted its head at them, then flitted away. Wanda followed it with her eyes. Everything in the compound felt suspended—like time had thinned around them, just for a breath. These were the moments that happened after battle. Not celebration. Not mourning. Just… stillness.

They leaned on the railing together. Not touching, but not apart.

Wanda turned toward her. She studied Cassandra’s profile for a moment before speaking again. “Do you ever talk about your family?” She hesitated, then added, “I always wished for a sister. Pietro used to say I was too stubborn, too angry for anyone else to deal with me. Maybe he was right.”

Cassandra shrugged. “You’ve got friends now. Not the same, but better than nothing.”

That made Wanda laugh—a short, surprised sound. “Is that what we are? Friends?”

Cassandra’s smile was small, barely there, but Wanda saw it. “I think so. Or at least not enemies.”

Wanda smiled back, something warm settling in her chest.

“What about you?” she asked.

Cassandra’s expression shifted, but she didn’t look away. “Not much to say. I hardly remember my parents. I know they sent me to the monastery. Nothing more. I was pretty good at keeping people away.”

“That’s a skill,” Wanda said before she could stop herself.

“It’s a habit,” Cassandra corrected. “But I’m working on breaking it.”

Wanda nodded slowly, absently rubbing a bruise on her shoulder. “You know, when I was little, I thought my powers made me a monster. Now, I think maybe they just make me weird.”

“Everyone here is weird,” Cassandra replied. “Or they wouldn’t be here.”

Their laughter surprised them both. It broke something open, and Wanda felt the tension between them shift—loosen, just a little.

The sun dipped lower, gold spilling across the field like paint. Wanda watched it settle into the trees.

“Do you think it ever gets easier?” she asked.

Cassandra followed her gaze. “I think you just get better at hiding the bruises.”

Wanda didn’t respond, but the answer felt true. She let it settle between them.

They stood together, still and quiet, but no longer strangers.

As the last light of day slid behind the treetops, Wanda straightened. “Next time, you’re letting me buy you a drink. Deal?”

“Deal,” Cassandra said, and this time, she smiled wide enough for Wanda to see it clearly.

They stayed that way, side by side, as the sky dimmed and the night began to take its turn. Neither of them moved to leave.

When Wanda left the balcony, she did it with Cassandra’s words still sitting sharp behind her ribs. The silence of the courtyard wrapped around her like fog, familiar and distant all at once. She knew Vision would be there—precise, patient, waiting like he always did.

But tonight, something in her was different. And she wasn’t sure if he’d notice, or if he’d try to calculate it away.

————————-

The compound’s courtyard was at its best in the dead of night, when the building’s electric buzz gave way to silence and the soft chorus of crickets. Wanda and Vision walked the gravel paths, hand in hand, the hush between them so absolute she could count every step.

The grass gleamed with dew. The sky was a vault of deep, bottomless blue, the stars indifferent in their brilliance. The city was far enough to be almost beautiful—ghost lights behind the hills.

Vision’s hand was cool in hers, his thumb moving in precise, calculated circles against her pulse point. He always touched her like he was trying to understand something about being human—about her. Wanda liked that. Liked the way he tried. The way he sometimes got the cadence of a sigh just slightly wrong. It made the world feel less impossible.

They stopped at a small fountain. Wanda leaned her elbows on the edge of the stone, eyes tilted to the sky. “Do you think it’s different now?” she asked. “The sky. After everything.”

Vision followed her gaze. “The stars are the same. But perhaps you are not.”

Wanda considered that. “Maybe,” she murmured. “But I don’t feel different.”

He studied her, head tilted. The faint red of his irises pulsed once. “You were extraordinary in London,” he said. “You held the line long enough for the rest of us to regroup. You saved lives.”

Wanda smiled, small and private. “It’s what we do.”

There was a pause—just long enough to feel it.

“I reviewed the data from your vitals,” he said. “Your body was under extreme stress. Cellular degradation. Cortisol spikes. Afterward, you were barely conscious.”

Wanda stiffened, the warmth in her chest flickering out. “I said I was fine.”

“I do not doubt your resilience,” he replied gently. “But perhaps you should sit out the next mission. Only until you're fully recovered.”

The words dropped like a stone in water—quiet, but with consequences.

Wanda didn’t answer right away. She stared down at the rippling surface of the fountain, her reflection breaking into fragments.

“Is that what you want?” she asked, voice low. “For me to stay behind?”

“I want you to be well,” Vision said. “You don’t need to prove anything. Not to me. Not to anyone.”

She pulled her hand away—not abruptly, just enough to sever the circuit of his touch. “It’s not about proving anything. You saw what happened—if I hadn’t been there, if Cassandra hadn’t—” Her voice caught. “You might not have made it out.”

Vision looked at her, puzzled. “Wanda—”

“You couldn't stand, Vision.” She turned toward him fully now. “You were down. You were vulnerable. I had to pull you out of the wreckage. You remember that?”

“I do,” he said carefully.

She nodded, jaw tight. “Then why are we pretending like I was the one who crossed a line?”

“I’m not pretending—”

“No? Because that’s what this feels like.” Her voice wasn’t raised, but it had sharpened—thin and precise as wire. “You were the one who needed saving, and now you’re telling me I shouldn’t have been there? That I should have left it to someone else?”

“I’m not saying that, no one else could have done what you did. But I worry about the cost. To you. To the team.”

She stopped for a second, studying his face for something—doubt, fear, resentment. She found none of it. Just calculation. Cold, perfect logic.

“But you were the one in danger.” Her arms folded across her chest now, like she was holding herself together. “You keep talking about risk, but I put one foot over the edge and suddenly I am a liability.”

“I never said you were a liability.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Vision didn’t flinch, but he hesitated just long enough to make it feel like confirmation.

She was trembling, eyes shining—not with tears, but with fury restrained by a hair’s breadth. “You think I’m dangerous. Admit it.”

“I think—” He stopped, composing the sentence like a line of code. “I think your power is immense. And if unchecked, it could cause harm. To yourself. To others.”

Wanda let out a quiet laugh, short and sharp. “Right. There it is.”

“Wanda—”

“You know, it’s funny,” she cut in, voice low. “You try so hard to be human. To feel things. And sometimes it’s beautiful. But other times… you just calculate risk and call it love.”

He flinched—barely, but enough.

“That’s not—” He stopped, searching for the precise phrasing. “Wanda, I am trying to act in the best interest of the team. If something had gone wrong—”

“But it didn’t.”

“Next time, it might.”

Her stomach twisted.

“I think—”

“No. I know what you think. You’re calculating the odds. You’re assessing risk. And you’ve decided that I’m too dangerous to trust.”

“I trust you,” he said, but there was no weight in it. No fight.

She stared at him, feeling something cold settle behind her ribs. “No, you don’t.”

He didn’t answer. Not with anything real.

Wanda turned away, heart pounding, the sound of water breaking rhythm in the fountain behind her. “If you want safe,” she said, “you’re with the wrong person.”

The words hung between them, heavy and bitter. Wanda stared at the fountain, at the broken shards of herself staring back. She thought of Cassandra’s words on the balcony, the promise of something better than survival.

For a second, she thought he might speak. That he might step forward, might apologize. But all he said was, “Goodnight, Wanda.”

She didn’t look at him. “Goodnight, Vis.”

Her footsteps were silent on the gravel. She didn’t look back until she reached the doors, and by then Vision was already a silhouette against the fountain, still and perfect and utterly alone.

Wanda pressed her forehead to the cool glass, letting the night air sting her cheeks. The stars above burned with ancient light, indifferent to the messes they left behind.

She squared her shoulders, and went inside.

Chapter Text

Cassandra stepped into the cool air of the underground garage, her boots clicking softly against the concrete. The place always smelled faintly of metal and ozone — a sterile hum below the chaos upstairs. She wasn’t here to pace, but she found herself doing it anyway. Ross was stirring, and she kept thinking about London. Things could have been much different if only Steve had trusted her, the only person she hoped that would. She hated when things shifted without telling her how.

“Where the hell is Stark?” Her mind kept flaring, and she had places to be.

Then she heard it — a low mechanical purr, too sleek to be tactical.

Stark’s car.

It slid into the compound like it owned the place. Because in a way, it did.

The passenger door flew open before the engine had finished to sigh, and a kid tumbled out like he’d just been launched from a trampoline. He was all limbs and questions and momentum.

“Did we miss it? Did we miss everything?” He was practically vibrating with anticipation, backpack bouncing up and down, hanging off one shoulder. "Mr. Stark, come on! You said we'd be here for the big meeting!"

“Too young,” she thought. “Too loud. They shouldn’t have brought him here.”

Tony emerged from the driver's side with the unhurried movements of a man who knew the world would wait for him. He adjusted his cuffs—a habit that had survived both cave imprisonment and alien invasions—and gave Peter a look that was equal parts affection and exasperation.

"The 'big meeting,' as you so eloquently put it, isn't until the day after tomorrow. But yes, we missed the impromptu alien brawl in London. Consider yourself lucky—I hear it was a real mess." His head nudged at her in acknowledgment.

Peter's face fell like someone had punctured his enthusiasm with a pin. "We missed a fight? Against actual aliens? Are you kidding me?" He dragged his hands down his face, the teenage melodrama cranked to eleven. "This is so unfair. I've been practicing that move where I swing and then—"

His arms windmilled through the air as he pantomimed web-slinging, body twisting mid-demonstration with the unconscious grace of someone who'd practiced the move a thousand times in front of his bedroom mirror. Lost in his imaginary heroics, eyes bright with possibility, he pivoted blindly—and slammed chest-first into Cassandra, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs with an audible "oof."

In a second he was ramrod straight, his arms snapping to attention like a recruit on his first day of basic training. His hands hung awkwardly at his sides, fingers splayed then curling into uncertain half-fists. His head tilted upward, eyes widening as they traveled from Cassandra's tactical boots to her impassive face, his expression cycling rapidly from confusion to embarrassment and barely concealed wonder.

“Uh — I’m So— Sorry. Hi! Uhm, are you…?” He began stuttering as soon as he finally noticed her presence.

"Cassandra Gastaldi, they call her Shadow." Tony replied without looking up from his phone, his thumb swiping through what appeared to be security footage. "Former... something classified. Does a shadow thing. Broody, sharp, very few documented hugs. Works with Rogers. Led the backup team in London. Do not follow her unless you want to end up crying in a broom closet. Ask Rhodey.”

Cassandra raised an eyebrow, but didn’t correct him, instead she kept looking at the boy with intrigue. “Kid,” she acknowledged. “And Stark, thank you for the classified briefing.”

"Not a kid," Peter protested automatically, then flushed. "I mean — I'm Peter. Parker. Peter Parker." 

His eyes widened as the truth hit him. "Hold on, she was in London as well? Why am I always the last to know?" He slumped slightly, looking hurt and betrayed.

He then seemed to stop for a moment, to think something before frowning. “Shadow… I’ve never heard that name before.”

“That’s the point,” Cassandra said flatly. “No name, no trail.”

Tony nodded, “she’s great at it too. We searched everywhere in the records— but found nothing. Not even FRIDAY could dig up a file.”

Peter perked up again, “Wow. That’s so cool,” his tone hitting a high pitch for a second. But then there was a long pause. “And kind of terrifying.”

“At least he’s honest.” She thought to herself.

She squared her shoulders and turned to Tony, her voice dropping to a confidential tone reserved for mission parameters. "The meeting's been moved up. Eight p.m. tomorrow. Steve wants full prep by morning."

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Any particular reason for the schedule change, or is Rogers just feeling extra patriotic?"

"It’s Ross, we need to make a move. Steve will go on a diplomatic as soon as we’re finished." She rolled her shoulder, a small wince crossing her features before she masked it. "I'm heading for the gym. If anyone needs me, call."

Without waiting for a response, she moved past them towards the elevators. Her gait was smooth despite the obvious discomfort, each step placed with deliberate care.

The elevator doors hissed open with a sharp ping. Cassandra paused in the threshold, steel and mirrored walls framing her like a still from some old noir.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, and Stark? If you’re running a child soldier program now, maybe don’t let them ride shotgun.”

Her voice was cool, but there was a flicker at the corner of her mouth—something that almost resembled amusement.

Tony, already halfway to the elevator, knocked his knuckles against the wall. “He’s got skills, Shadow. You’ll see. Desperate times, desperate interns.”

The doors slid shut before she could fire back.

Inside the elevator, she let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding. Her spine touched the wall, posture still perfect, but the tension leaked from her shoulders in slow degrees. The quiet was absolute, humming like a sealed vault.

She glanced at her reflection—eyes tired, scar sharp at her jawline, hair a little undone from the day’s chaos. The kind of face that uses to disappear into shadows on command. She likes to think of this as her “being somewhere safe” look.

Her phone lit up in her hand. A check-in from Fury. A gif from Scott—Rocket in a tank. And Steve’s message: Tomorrow. 0800. No fluff. Just him.

Her thumb hovered over the screen. She didn’t reply.

Instead, she closed her eyes, letting her mind drift—not far, just back. Back to smoke and alarms, back to the way she had to steady Steve’s bruised body in the London wreckage. Back to the way she’d bitten down the hurt, told herself they’d talk later. That she could pretend everything was fine, for now.

But later was creeping closer. And the pretending never really lasted.

The elevator opened. She stepped out into the corridor, muted gym noise thrumming from around the corner—weights clinking, someone blasting classic rock through busted speakers.

She caught her reflection again, faint in a passing window. A shadow inside the glass.

She didn’t blink.

Her steps were measured. Sharp. The kind of walk that said she still owned the pain. Maybe even preferred it that way. Routine had become its own kind of shield.

She scanned her badge. The lock clicked.

Valkyrie was already in the gym, a cyclone of motion at the far end of the mat. She wore shorts and an old Asgardian tank top, sweat-slicked and duct-taped where the seams had split. Her hair was unbound, dark around her face, but her eyes were focused and cold. Each strike of her sword hit the padded dummy with force enough to make the structure rattle on its base. There was no grace to it, not in the way ballerinas had grace. This was violence as honesty: a line of power drawn directly from some still-burning place inside.

In full contrast Cassandra stood quietly in the doorway, her presence hidden in the shadows. Her movements were precise and deliberate—she shifted her weight onto the ball of her foot, her arm swung in a perfect right angle, and her shoulder rolled fluidly, as if guided by an invisible ruler. Her actions embodied a blend of efficiency and geometry, each motion calculated and every cut executed with the precision she had been meticulously trained to achieve.

“You ever try fighting something that fights back?” Cassandra called, voice echoing just enough to be a taunt.

Valkyrie’s next blow buried itself in the gym floor, splinters leaping from the boards.

She looked up. “If I wanted an audience, I’d have asked for one.” She yanked her sword free, resting its point on the mat. “You here to judge my form, Shadow?”

Cassandra shrugged one shoulder, letting her bag slide to the ground. “Just don’t see the point of destroying equipment if you can spar instead.”

Valkyrie considered her a long moment, then sheathed her sword with a dull clack. “You have a weapon?”

Cassandra smiled thinly. “I’m the weapon.” She took off her shoes, dropped into a low crouch, and beckoned. “We going, or do you need to smash another mannequin first?”

Valkyrie gave her a stern look “I’m not looking for a street brawl sorry, I like swinging swords better” she said.

“Oh, but I never said you needed to drop your weapon. It wouldn’t be fair if you did.” Remarked Cassandra. There wasn’t taunt in her tone, more like a gentle edge paired with a tight smile.

Valkyrie’s eyes went red. “Alright, you asked for it. Just don’t think I’ll hold back, I’m not here to do that.” And so she charged, sword first.

They met in the center of the mat, Cassandra’s first feint dodged easily, Valkyrie’s counter a hammering knee that would have shattered ribs if it landed. Cassandra rolled with the movement, grabbing for the back of Valkyrie’s shirt, but the other woman slipped free and spun, catching Cassandra’s jaw with the pommel of her sword.

It wasn’t a fight, not really. Not in the way humans fought, with rules and boundaries. Valkyrie’s style was pure chaos, an onslaught of limbs and blunt force, but Cassandra’s was all angles, evasion, and using the other’s momentum. She let herself get thrown, knowing the floor would give, then rebounded, locking her legs around Valkyrie’s waist and twisting until they both tumbled, breathless, to the mat.

Valkyrie bared her teeth, almost laughing. “You’re good,” she panted, pushing Cassandra off with one massive arm. “But you’re holding back.”

Cassandra rolled to her feet, brushing a spot of blood from her lip. “I don’t see the point in breaking you before breakfast.”

Valkyrie charged again, she seemed determined to get her to give.

She feinted left and circled, pressing the attack just enough that Valkyrie would have to respond. They fell into a rhythm—strike, parry, clinch, reset. Each time, Cassandra let their bodies close, searching for a seam in the other woman’s defenses, and each time she found more steel than softness.

“Wasn’t expecting an Asgardian to care about personal space,” Cassandra said, letting her own accent flatten to a blade. “I thought you got all that out in the brawling pits.”

Valkyrie stilled, a flicker of something—hurt? memory?—across her face. “The brawling pits are for drunks and cowards,” she said, each word a shot glass slammed on a table. “Not warriors.”

Cassandra shrugged, letting her arms fall loose. “Plenty of warriors end up drunk.”

Valkyrie’s mouth thinned. “Only the sad ones.”

There was something in her tone that told Cassandra that probably she had ended up being one of them.

The next exchange was slower. Valkyrie’s strikes were heavier, but Cassandra saw the intention draining from them, replaced by something like calculation, like wariness. They were both keeping score.

When Valkyrie tried for a headlock, Cassandra twisted free and caught her off-guard, pinning her with a knee on the chest and a forearm across the throat. “That's all you got?” she murmured.

Valkyrie laughed, voice hoarse. “Not even close.”

But she didn’t try to break the hold. Instead, she lay still, chest heaving, her eyes locked on the ceiling.

Cassandra waited, feeling the thunder of Valkyrie's heart through her knee. Sweat stuck her hair to her cheeks, the taste of copper thick in her mouth. The silence held, neither of them moving—each testing the other for weakness.

Finally, Valkyrie shifted her gaze, the ceiling’s white glare mirrored in her dark eyes. “You gonna let go, shadow-girl? Or do Asgardians need a written invitation for mercy?”

Cassandra eased her grip, rolling off and giving a hand up. “You just looked like you needed a minute.” She hesitated, then added, “That, and I think your shoulder’s about to pop.”

Valkyrie took the hand but didn’t look at her. She got to her feet like someone lifting herself out of a trench, then stepped back, rubbing her jaw with the edge of her wrist. Her eyes were on the floor, not on the blood on the tip of her sword neither of them noticed, or the mat or Cassandra—just the empty space between them, as if something might crawl out of it.

Cassandra straightened, breathing steady now, the sting in her lip already fading. “Didn’t realize early morning temper tantrums were an Asgardian tradition,” she said lightly.

Valkyrie rolled her neck, then spat something dark and bitter onto the mat. “Careful,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her arm. “You’re starting to sound like Banner.”

“Not my goal.”

“Good.”

Cassandra took a small step closer, arms loose at her sides. “So what’s the problem? Too many rules here? Not enough?”

Valkyrie’s shoulders tensed again—fast, like a reflex. “You think I give a shit about rules?”

“No,” Cassandra said. “I think you’re angry. And trying hard not to look like you are.”

That got a reaction. Valkyrie turned her head slowly, eyes sharp. “Keep talking, shadow-girl. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find the line.”

Cassandra didn’t flinch. “Already found it. You drew it yesterday—when Thor walked in and you didn’t even glance his way.”

For a second, nothing. Then Valkyrie laughed. Short, ugly, humorless.

“I didn’t come here for old reunions,” she said. “Didn’t come here for him, either.”

“No one said you did.”

“Then drop it.”

But Cassandra didn’t. “Is he the reason you were hacking the hell out of a training dummy like it owed you something?”

Valkyrie stepped forward—two strides, close now, her chest still rising and falling fast. Cassandra didn’t move.

“You know what your problem is?” Valkyrie said. “You think reading people is the same as understanding them. You look, you measure, you catalog. But you don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you’re Asgardian,” Cassandra said. “I know you’re dangerous. I know you’ve been walking around like your skin doesn’t fit.”

Valkyrie’s jaw tightened. “Then stop staring at it.”

“I’m not.” Cassandra’s voice lowered. “I’m staring at you trying not to fall apart every time someone says Thor’s name like it doesn’t burn.”

Valkyrie’s eyes went cold. “He’s a prince. Raised with gold in his blood. You think that makes us the same?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you just came in here swinging like you wanted to know why I didn’t bow to the pretty boy with a hammer.”

“I wanted to know if he was why you looked like you were about to gut the mirror,” Cassandra said. “You don’t need to tell me a story. I just want to know if you’re gonna lose your mind in the middle of a real fight.”

That stopped her. Not because it hurt, but because it hit something.

Valkyrie turned her face to the side, exhaled slowly. “I don’t freeze.”

“Didn’t say you did.”

“I don’t break.”

“Didn’t say that either.”

She looked back at her now, and the anger in her face wasn’t theatrical—it was thick. Not hot, but dense. A kind of pressure you felt in your bones before the collapse.

“I know who dies in these wars,” Valkyrie said. “It’s never the golden boys. It’s the ones who follow them.”

Cassandra’s stomach turned—briefly, a flash of something she couldn’t name. But she kept her face still.

“You here to follow?” she asked.

Valkyrie’s lips twisted. “I’m here to kill something.”

The words landed like steel on concrete. For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Cassandra stepped back, picking up her shoes. “Fine. Just try not to kill the training room next time.”

Valkyrie didn’t respond. Her eyes had already returned to that same fixed point on the floor—like something down there was still bleeding.

It was one of those days, Wanda thought as she lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling while the world outside her window gleamed with indifferent brightness. The sunlight came slanting through the blinds, slicing her quarters into a neat pattern of bars and stripes, and for a moment she almost imagined herself caught behind them, suspended in that golden hour where everything looked beautiful and nothing felt right.

She rolled onto her side, eyes tracing the dust motes caught in the sharp morning rays. It was way too late for getting up, might as well ignore the world a little longer, but as much as she wanted to just get back to the bliss of drowziness, the sleep was long gone. A strange apathy had settled over her since the previous night—an ache, not sharp enough to be painful but persistent enough to be impossible to ignore. She spent long minutes listening to the ticking of a clock she didn’t remember unpacking, counting the seconds as they dissolved quietly into the next.

If she were honest, she would’ve said she felt nothing. But honesty, she reminded herself, was a luxury for people who hadn’t seen their home flattened by falling cities, or watched the people they loved torn away by war and ideology.

She got up, eventually, peeling herself from the mattress with all the enthusiasm of a washed-up tide. She pulled on a T-shirt and running shoes, and left the room without bothering to tie her hair back. The corridors of the Avengers compound were empty —probably they were off to do something important, or maybe they were simply out of sight, hiding from the day in their own ways.

She made her way outside, the heavy glass doors hissing open with a hydraulic whine. The courtyard stretched in front of her, landscaped within an inch of its life, all precise hedges and ornamental trees and little clusters of flowers that looked like they’d been arranged by a catalog designer. It should have been peaceful. Maybe once it had been.

Wanda started along the path, she had intended to run, but when it came to it her body just disagreed. Her legs dragged, steps devolving into a shuffle.

She passed by the training field, where the earth was still scarred by the years of exercises it witnessed —solcs had formed where Tony and Steve and the others had sparred. Memories of the banters came to her, like the time Vision and Banner tried to outmatch each other, Vision’s laughter echoing faintly in the back of her mind. She avoided looking at the burn marks near the far wall. Those, she knew, were hers.

She kept walking, past the edge of the property, up the gentle slope that led to the perimeter fence. Beyond it, wild grass waved in the breeze, dotted with bursts of dandelions and Queen Anne’s lace. The world on the other side was untamed, stretching straight to the river and the tree line beyond.

She stopped by the fence, hands gripping the cool metal. She pressed her forehead lightly to one of the posts, closing her eyes and letting the wind tangle in her hair. She tried to focus on the sensation—the bracing chill, the earthy tang of cut grass, the far-off static of insects beginning their day. She breathed in, slow and careful, and found that the hollowness inside her chest had only grown. It wasn’t fear, exactly. Or grief. It was the absence of both, like the dead air after a hurricane, so still and empty you almost wanted the storm to come back, just so you could remember what it meant to feel something.

A bird landed on the fence next to her. A robin, red chest puffed out, head cocked sideways as if sizing her up. They watched each other, silent, for several seconds. Wanda thought about moving her hand, maybe scaring it off, but she lacked even that small ambition. The bird hopped once, then took flight, leaving her alone with the world again.

She stood on the hilltop for a long time.

The estate below was wide awake—she could see Tony’s staff beginning their rounds, a groundskeeper pulling a battered cart down the paths, two security officers chatting outside the main gates. In the upper windows, faint movement suggested life, or at least the illusion of it. But up here, alone, it felt like the only real thing was the ache in her legs and the taste of copper on her tongue.

She thought that maybe if she had stepped away from everything for a second she could go back to feeling in control, but all she felt at the moment was just… alone.

Right when that thought had threaded itself in her head, she heard something coming from the slope behind her.

She turned, muscle tense, ready to react.

Then she saw her.

It was Natasha slowly walking uphill, gaze fixed on Wanda.

She relaxed again. Cursing her battle worn mind.

Then she waited for the other woman to reach her.

Once she did, Natasha didn’t greet her, she just sat next to her in silence, mirroring her grip on the top rail. They stood like that for a long time, the hum of the world moving quietly beneath them.

Wanda wanted to speak, but the words burrowed deeper each time she tried, like they were afraid to meet daylight. She waited for Natasha to break the silence.

She didn’t. Natasha just stood, patient, as if she could outlast anything.

The breeze picked up, snagging loose strands of Wanda’s hair and leaving them plastered across her cheek. At last, she heard herself say, “I think I broke something last night.”

A beat. Natasha’s voice was even: “Like what?”

Wanda kept her gaze on the sky. “Vision. He said I was too dangerous. That if I wasn’t careful I could… lose it.” The word tasted sour. “He said it like he was scared, not for me, but of me.”

Natasha’s jaw ticked, barely visible. “Did you believe him?”

Wanda let her hands slip from the rail. “Maybe. Sometimes I see what I do—what I am—and I think he's right. I’m not like the rest of you.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment, Wanda felt the weight of that attention settle on her shoulders. “That’s not true. Not even close.”

Wanda almost smiled, but the expression dissolved before it could form. “It doesn’t matter. People are afraid of what they don’t understand. Even the ones who love you.” She thought of her brother: his hands, his laugh, the way he’d always called her ‘little witch’ when no one else could hear.

Natasha turned her body, squaring off. “Vision isn’t people. He’s Vision. He calculates risk the way you breathe. But that doesn’t mean he gets to define you.”

Wanda let that sit. “Maybe. But he wasn’t wrong, was he? I could have lost control in London. If Cassandra hadn’t been there, maybe I—” Her throat closed up, just for a second. “You saw what happened last time, in Sokovia. They still play those newsreels, the ones where I’m the villain.”

There it was, the thing she never said out loud: that no matter how many times she saved the world, she could never erase the story people told about her.

Natasha’s hand landed on her shoulder, solid and real. “You want to know what I think?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Everyone here is dangerous, Wanda. That’s the job. The difference is, you still care about what happens when you lose. That’s more than most of us can say.”

Wanda looked down at her own hands—scarred at the knuckles, palms flecked with old burns. “Sometimes I wish I could turn it off, like a switch,” she said, softer now. “Just be normal, even for an hour.”

Natasha snorted, but not unkindly. “There’s no such thing. Normal’s a story people sell to make themselves feel better.”

A small, involuntary laugh. Wanda breathed a little easier.

“Vision will come around,” Natasha added, voice gentle. “He’s just worried. The only way he knows how to care is by fixing things. Doesn’t mean you’re broken.”

Wanda hesitated, then said, “I don’t know if I believe it, but thanks.”

Natasha squeezed her shoulder once, then let go. “You will. And if you can’t trust yourself yet, trust the team. You’re not alone anymore. We’ll make sure you’re always covered,” She paused briefly. “I will.”

Wanda let the words soak in, it was a weird feeling, but she felt loved , even if she knew Natasha was just trying to reassure her. Nonetheless, she let herself imagine what it might be like to believe her. She watched the wind ripple through the trees, each trembling leaf as bright as a drop of blood in the dim grass.

She wiped her eyes before the tears could fall.

Natasha stayed at her side, silence settling over them again, but this time it was a warm quiet, not the brittle emptiness from before.

“Cassandra scares me,” Wanda said, surprising herself. “But in London, it was like she knew exactly what to do. Like she’d been in my head before I even—” She broke off, embarrassed.

Natasha smiled, a real one this time. “She seems good at that, being always two steps ahead.”

“I’d like to be so assertive,” Wanda said softly.

Natasha nodded. “And yet, you’re the one who saved her.” Her voice was calm, but the point landed.

This time, Wanda did smile, the small, real kind that made her cheeks ache.

“Thank you,” she said—soft, but clear.

Natasha tipped her chin up, then motioned back toward the compound. “We should head back. Want to help me clean out the fridge before Thor gets to it and eats everything we own?”

Wanda blinked, then nodded, letting herself turn away from the fence and the wild world beyond. “Yeah. I do.”

They walked back together, step for step, the air a little lighter and the ground a little more solid beneath their feet. The sun hadn’t moved, but it felt warmer. Closer.

And for the first time in months, Wanda let herself believe that maybe—just maybe—she belonged here, after all.

The lab was alive in a way that made Cassandra’s skin prickle—low light, the steady thrum of generators, and in the center, something that pulsed like a heart. The rig wasn’t large, but it radiated presence: rings of alloy, crystal inlays, threads of light crawling through conduits as if the machine itself were breathing.

She stepped inside silently, scanning the chaos: glass boards scrawled with floating equations, benches cluttered with tools and fragments of failed prototypes, the faint sharpness of ozone curling in the air. Two men occupied the eye of this storm. Banner, hunched over a console with his glasses pushed up, face etched with fatigue and worry. Stark, circling the rig in tight arcs like an animal pacing its cage, stylus tapping against a tablet in restless staccato.

“…explain it again,” Banner said, voice pitched low but taut. “Because right now, what I’m hearing sounds like a very expensive way to get someone killed.”

Tony didn’t look up. “That’s a pessimistic spin. It’s a stabilizer. A conductor.” He flicked a command, and the rig’s inner rings rotated with a soft metallic sigh. “The only shot we have at channeling a Stone without anyone dying.”

“Tony—”

“Don’t start. Thanos isn’t coming here for a tea party, big guy.” His voice cracked on the word and he covered it with a brisk gesture, zooming the model closer. “Either we build this buffer system, or someone else takes the Stones and uses them raw. Guess who survives that scenario? Spoiler: not us.”

Cassandra stepped farther in, the word stamped in light above the design catching her eye: A.R.M.A .

“Cute,” she said evenly. “You do know arma means ‘weapon’ in Italian, right?”

That earned her his attention. He blinked at the name, then at her. “…No. No way.”

“Way,” Cassandra said, leaning against the doorframe. “Pretty ironic, Stark.”

“Since when do you speak Italian now?” Tony accused, trying to defend himself.

“Since birth.” She shrugged.

Banner’s mouth twitched. Tony stared a second longer, then gave a humorless laugh. “Well. Nothing like leaning into the branding.”

Cassandra let her gaze sweep over the rig, its rings and conduits like the ribs of some mechanical beast. For a moment, something almost like admiration stirred—the elegance of the design, the audacity of it—but it was drowned out by the chill in her gut.

“Why shouldn’t someone be able to use a stone without blowing up? Strange does it all the time.”

Tony nodded, serious now. “He does, but Strange had years to learn and connect to the same magic that powers those things, he’s attuned to them. If either of us tried the same stunt, we’d hit the floor—or worse—before it even started.”

Cassandra didn’t tell him she’d learned something like that too, even if she never called it magic. Different methods, same current running through the world. Even though about one thing Stark was right, her “ magic ” —her energy, was slightly different than Strange’s. Still, the thought crept in, uninvited: could she bend one of those stones, shape it to her will? Maybe there was one that would complement her Ki best.

“How many things’ll blow up before you call it safe?” she asked instead.

Tony’s jaw tightened. “None, if you let me work.”

She almost smiled. Almost. “You mean if it works.”

Before Stark could fire back, the door slid open behind her.

The door hissed open behind her. Cassandra half-turned as Scott Lang stepped in, balancing two paper cups like peace offerings and wearing a grin that faltered the second he saw the rig.

“…Wow,” he said after a beat. “Okay. That is definitely not a coffee machine.”

“Observant,” Tony muttered, eyes still on his schematics.

Scott’s gaze flicked from Stark to Banner to Cassandra. The air felt wired, like static before lightning. He tried for lightness anyway. “So… I brought lattes. Extra foam. Thought I’d be the hero of the day. But you guys look like you’re, uh…” His eyes darted to the humming rig. “…planning to fight God?”

Banner choked back a laugh. Cassandra didn’t move.

Scott powered on, voice climbing with forced cheer. “Cool. Love that journey for you. Totally casual Tuesday stuff.” He stepped forward and set the cups down with exaggerated care, like laying flowers at a grave. “Anyway—coffee. Very non-lethal. Unlike… whatever that is.” The rig pulsed violet as if answering him. Scott flinched. “Oh, great, it’s alive. Nope, I’m good, don’t explain.”

He raised his hands, backing toward the door. “I was never here. Forget the coffee. Forget me. And if this explodes? Called it.” A pause. “Also, Stark—if you die, can I have your car collection? No? Cool. Leaving now!”

The door whispered shut behind him, and the silence returned sharper for having been broken.

Cassandra let out a slow breath. Her eyes stayed on the rig, but her words were for Stark. “You’re gambling with something none of us understand. If it works, you get a weapon. If it doesn’t…” She held his gaze. “You don’t get a second chance.”

She turned for the door, pausing once at the threshold. “Banner,” she said quietly, eyes still on the rig, “Rogers was looking for you. Common room.”

Then she was gone, her shadow swallowed by the corridor’s glow.

Tony stared after her, hands curling around the edge of the console until his knuckles blanched. For a moment, the hum of the machine was the only sound in the world.

Banner’s voice came quiet. “She’s not wrong.”

Tony didn’t answer. Couldn’t—not without admitting she’d voiced the question he hadn’t let himself think.

The rig pulsed again, slow and steady, like something waiting to wake.

The rooftop was deserted except for Steve Rogers. He stood at the compound's edge, hands braced against the metal railing, elbows locked straight as if he could hold up the entire night with brute force. The sunset bled color out of the world, draining everything into a gradient of cold blue and rusted orange. Steve's silhouette looked etched into the twilight—broad, unmoving, a monument to stubbornness. 

Cassandra took the stairs two at a time, making no effort to mute her steps on the exposed concrete. If Steve wanted solitude, he should have picked a better hiding place. Her boots rang hollow as she reached the roof, the slap of rubber on cement slicing through the hush. She stopped five feet behind him and waited, arms folded, eyes on the back of his neck. The hair there was bristled with tension, a pale nape above the line of his battered navy hoodie.

Sunlight traced the healing lines across his face, catching on yellowed bruises stippling his jaw and the faint swell around his right eye. Yesterday, he’d been flat on a hospital bed, ribs bound tight and a stitched gash bleeding through gauze. Now he stood — a living bruise in a dozen fading shades — battered, but ready for another fight. Yet again super soldier healing had done its work, turning weeks into hours, and making the impossible look routine.

He didn't turn. Instead, his fingers flexed tighter on the railing, until the knuckles went bloodless.

“I heard you were up here,” she said. She meant it to sound casual, maybe even wry, but the words came out cold.

Steve’s jaw flexed, a twitch so small most people wouldn’t have seen it. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to people who know you.”

He exhaled, the sound lost to the evening wind. “Then I guess I’m losing my touch.”

Cassandra closed the distance, stopping just beside him. She rested her own elbows on the rail, mimicking his posture but with none of his rigidity. The wind bit at her, sharp enough to make her eyes water, but she didn’t flinch. If anything, the cold helped. It made everything clear.

For a while, they just stared out at the horizon. The woods beyond the compound ran up to the edge of shadow, their branches tangled against the strip of fading sky. Somewhere below, the team’s voices drifted from an open window—distant, harmless. Safe.

Steve broke the silence first. “I screwed up in London.”

Cassandra flicked her eyes to him, but his face was fixed on the middle distance. She gave him nothing, not even a nod.

“I should have called for backup sooner,” he continued. “Should have trusted you to handle it.”

She waited. The words hung between them, heavy with things he wasn’t saying.

“Yeah,” she said eventually. “You should have.”

That got his attention. Steve’s eyebrows ticked up, not surprised so much as caught off guard. He turned to face her, really face her, and she saw the exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes.

“Wasn’t expecting you to agree so fast,” he admitted.

Cassandra shrugged, looking down at the parking lot three stories below. “You don’t need me to sugarcoat it. You kept me in the dark. Vision and Wanda could have died.” She delivered the words flat, no accusation in the tone, just fact. But that only made them cut deeper.

He winced, as if the sentence physically hurt. “I know.”

She studied him—jaw tense, mouth compressed, the muscle just beneath his left eye flickering. He wanted to apologize. She could feel it pressing against his teeth, begging to get out.

“I didn’t want you hurt,” he said, voice suddenly hoarse. “Didn’t want anyone getting dragged in for no reason. I thought I could handle it alone.”

“Classic Steve,” she said, and though she tried for teasing, the ache in her chest made it come out brittle. “Take the whole war on your back, so the rest of us can sit around and play Monopoly.”

He snorted, and for a moment it almost became a laugh. “You’d hate Monopoly,” he said. “Too many rules.”

She glanced away, hiding a smile. “You’d hate losing.”

They let that hang for a minute, the tension ebbing, but only slightly.

Steve ran a hand over his face, fingers digging into his temples. “I underestimated the threat. I overestimated myself. And I…” He struggled, then shook his head. “I let you down. I’m sorry.”

Cassandra nodded, slow and deliberate. “That’s a start.”

She felt his gaze flick to her, searching her face for forgiveness, maybe for understanding. She let him look. “But it’s not enough,” she said. “You know that, right?”

He nodded once, jaw clenched. “Yeah.”

She braced her hands on the rail, turning her body toward him. “I spent years being the person who got left out of the plan. Who got used for what I could do, but never what I could decide.” Her voice thinned, her accent sharpening with each word. “For a while I thought that changed with you.”

Steve looked down, the muscle in his forearm knotting. “I do trust you, Cass. More than anyone.”

“Then act like it,” she snapped, sharper than she intended. “Don’t keep me as a backup plan. Don’t lie and tell me you’ve got it handled when you’re bleeding out alone in a train station.”

The words echoed, then dissolved into the blue air. Below them, a car door slammed—someone arriving late, maybe Clint or Natasha, returning from a supply run. The sound was irrelevant. The real noise was between them, and it was deafening.

He breathed out, long and slow. “You’re right. I keep doing this. Trying to be… indispensable.” The word tasted bitter in his mouth.

She could have left it there. She should have. But something in her wanted the wound exposed, wanted it raw. “You’re not the only person who cares about these people,” she said. “You’re not the only one who can protect them. But if you keep this up, you’ll end up alone.”

It was a low blow, but true. Steve took it like a punch, straightening up and squaring his shoulders. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he turned his back to the view and leaned into the rail, hands gripping until the metal groaned.

“I know,” he said finally, his voice hollowed out. “But I don’t know how to be anything else.”

Cassandra let the silence stretch, her pulse rattling in her chest. She hadn’t meant for this to turn into an exorcism, but now that it had, she wasn’t backing down.

“Try,” she said. “Let people in. Let me in. Or the next time you decide to play martyr, don’t expect me to be there to bail you out.”

She regretted it the second the words left her mouth. It wasn’t true. She’d be there, always, until one of them was dead. But he needed to believe it.

Steve nodded, his gaze fixed on the pool of shadow at his feet. “Understood.”

She could see the apology trembling in his chest, could feel the way he wanted to reach for her shoulder, to bridge the gap. But he stayed put, giving her the space she demanded.

A long minute passed. The air grew colder. The world below them faded into indigo.

“I’m not used to having someone who…” he started, then faltered. 

“Someone who actually gives a damn about what happens to you?” She completed, rolling her eyes. 

“Someone who’s so adamant to help, who pushes me to improve.” His smile, crooked and tired as it was, brought her a sense of warmth.

She let her arms uncross, the tension draining from her body. “Get used to it, Captain.”

He looked at her then, really looked, and she saw the relief in his eyes— the comfort, even if it was faint.

They stood that way, side by side, as the wind picked up and the sun finally drowned behind the trees. No more words. No more need for them.

When Cassandra finally turned to go, Steve called after her, voice softer than she’d ever heard it.

“Cass?”

She paused, not turning back.

“I mean it. I’ll do better.”

She nodded, and this time, she meant it. “Me too.”

She took the stairs back down, boots thudding in a steady, measured rhythm, and didn’t stop until she hit the first floor. Only then did she let herself breathe, the cold air burning in her lungs like the start of a new season.

Behind her, Steve stayed at the railing, watching the night roll in. He looked less like a monument, and more like a man. It was a start.

The gym’s lighting was harsh, fluorescent, a cold sun overhead that washed the color from everything below. Steve Rogers didn’t seem to notice. He’d stripped down to a t-shirt and sweats, both already dark with sweat at the chest and ribs. The heavy bag was his enemy and his confessional, each strike a report echoing through the empty compound. 

He’d wrapped his fists too tight; Cassandra would have mocked him for it, but it kept the ache in his knuckles sharp and honest. He worked the bag with a rhythm that was all self-punishment: jab, jab, cross, left hook. The chain creaked, strained, until with a sudden wrench and a sound like a gunshot, the whole apparatus snapped and the bag crashed to the mats.

He stood over it, chest heaving. For a second, he looked unsure whether to fix the chain or punch the bag where it lay. In the end, he just sat down hard, back against the wall, sweat running into his eyes.

In her quarters, Natasha sat cross-legged on her bed, a single lamp casting her shadow against the wall in elongated distortion. Between her fingers, she held a photograph worn soft at the edges from handling. The image showed a younger Clint, his face less lined but his eyes carrying the same watchful intensity. Beside him stood a woman Natasha recognized with a jolt—younger, softer-edged, but unmistakably her own face looking back through time. A mission from another life, identities long since burned, but evidence that some partnerships survived even the harshest winters.

Natasha's thumb traced the edge of the photo, her expression giving away nothing as she memorized every detail. The room around her was spare, almost impersonal—a space she occupied rather than inhabited. Only the small collection of artifacts on her nightstand suggested permanence: a ballet slipper, a bullet casing, a postcard from a city she'd once burned to the ground. She slipped the photo into a folder filled with intelligence reports, a piece of the past tucked away among preparations for the future.

Outside in the garden, Wanda walked the stone paths alone, her steps silent against the smooth pavers. The night air carried the scent of rain that hadn't yet fallen, electric and sharp. She extended her hand before her, palm up, and allowed the red energy to bloom between her fingers—a small, controlled demonstration of the power that coursed beneath her skin. The crimson light illuminated her face from below, casting her features in sharp relief against the darkness.

For a long moment, she let the energy dance across her knuckles, weaving between her fingers with the complex precision of a concert pianist. Then, with a subtle shift of focus, she closed her hand into a fist, extinguishing the light as completely as if it had never existed. Control. Precision. Purpose. The conversation with Natasha echoed in her mind, not as a balm but as a challenge—not to suppress what she was, but to wield it with intention.

Three stories above, on the compound's highest accessible roof, Cassandra stood with her back to the central air units, a living shadow against the mechanical landscape. From this vantage point, she could see the entire facility laid out below—the hangars where the Guardians worked on their ship, the training fields where tomorrow's strategies would be tested, the living quarters where temporary alliances were being forged over coffee and shared fears.

Her face remained impassive as she scanned the perimeter, noting security measures, blind spots, evacuation routes. Old habits from a life spent anticipating betrayal. The cool night air carried scents her enhanced senses could parse like a chemical analysis—ozone from approaching weather, jet fuel from the hangar, the distant green tang of the forest beyond the compound's boundaries. She registered them all without emotion, filing them away as tactical data rather than experience.

Elsewhere in the compound, a quiet fell over the halls—not silence, but a lull, the kind that comes just before a storm. Rooms dimmed, screens powered down, gear was stowed. Behind every closed door, someone prepared: running diagnostics, checking armor, memorizing faces of teammates and enemies alike.

In a quiet stairwell, Peter Parker sat on the steps, his legs drawn up, chin on his knees. He should’ve been asleep. Should’ve been anywhere but here, with a borrowed suit too advanced for comfort and a mission way beyond neighborhood-level stakes. But he stayed where he was, hoodie pulled up over his curls, quietly scrolling through photos on his phone. Aunt May. Ned. Midtown. A dog in a sweater. He paused on that last one. Smiled.

Then he tucked the phone away and rested his head against the wall, whispering softly to the dark: “Don’t screw this up.”

And in his lab, dimly lit and nearly empty, Tony Stark stared at the blueprint of a weapon he hadn’t finished. Something built to hold the Tesseract, channel its power—something they’d need soon, if the intel from Thor and Gamora proved true. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, unmoving.

Behind him, Bruce entered without a word and set two mugs down on the console.

“You okay?” he asked.

Tony didn’t look away from the schematics. “Just thinking.”

“Dangerous pastime.”

Tony snorted, finally taking the mug. “I know.”

They didn’t speak again for a while. They didn’t need to.

As midnight struck, the compound seemed to exhale—one long, shared breath through its halls and power lines and restless occupants. Above it all, clouds began to roll in, veiling the stars.

A storm was coming. And everyone could feel it.

But for now, they rested in the pause before impact. Together. Just long enough.

Chapter Text

Cassandra Gastaldi woke to the peculiar sensation that the compound had grown a new heartbeat overnight.

It wasn’t the usual footfalls or mechanical hum that threaded through the high-tech facility at all hours. This was subtler: a low, persistent vibration that seemed to ripple through the steel bones of the building, stirring the air above her bed and making the shadows on her ceiling slither in tiny, half-conscious ways. She blinked at the faint gray light leaking through the curtains, let her mind adjust to the idea of morning, and sat up.

Her feet found the floor before her thoughts had finished assembling. Cassandra shrugged on a threadbare black robe, swiped her phone from the nightstand, and padded barefoot toward the hallway. She could have blamed the sensation on her own nerves—their night in London had been a catalogue of close calls and narrow escapes—but she’d trained herself to trust these low-level hunches. The world never really reset to zero after a fight. Not for people like her.

The hall outside was brighter than she expected, the autumn sun strong enough to bleach the artificial lighting into near invisibility. As she walked, Cassandra noticed the odd way the corridor's shadows bled away from her, lingering just a second longer than they should have, like ink refusing to dry. The vibration grew stronger as she moved toward the heart of the compound. It wasn't unpleasant; if anything, it reminded her of the monastery’s tuning fork—the one the masters used to clear the mind before meditation.

She reached the open atrium that linked the living quarters to the kitchen, where a wall of glass looked out on a strip of pine forest and the training fields beyond. Someone had left the back doors open. The air was cold and fresh, heavy with the scent of dew and fallen leaves. It was incredible to her how quickly she had grown accustomed to the compound spaces. That morning the usual kitchen noise was absent, replaced by a hush so complete that Cassandra heard her own pulse in her ears.

She wasn’t alone. On the far edge of the kitchen counter, Steve Rogers perched with the casual assurance of someone who’d never once worried about furniture giving out under his weight. He wore a navy blue thermal shirt and faded jeans, feet bare, mug in hand. He didn’t look up as Cassandra entered, but the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth said he’d been expecting her.

“Morning,” he said, not moving from his spot.

She grunted, scanning the kitchen for signs of sabotage or surprise. “You planning an ambush, Rogers?”

He shook his head, the motion lazy. “Just wanted to see who’d show up first. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Your fault for leaving the windows open,” she said, grabbing a cup and scrunching her nose at the coffee swirling in the coffee pot. “The wind is playing games with my head.”

She moved to the cabinets, opening a few of them, still not remembering where the little moka pot Natasha had used the other day was stored.

He finally looked at her, blue eyes sharp despite the relaxed posture. “Not the wind,” he replied. “Fury’s up to something. You can feel it?”

“More like taste it.” She said pouring the ground coffee into the moka. “I’ve been on edge since I woke up.”

He nodded, as if this confirmed some private theory. Then, with an almost comical deliberation, he hopped down from the counter and crossed to the wide dining table. “We’re supposed to have a strategy session tomorrow morning,” he said, setting his mug down. “But I have a feeling the schedule’s about to get rearranged.”

Before Cassandra could respond, she heard the first signs of life from the rest of the house. The rumble of feet on the upper floors, the thud of someone slamming a locker, and the faint but unmistakable sound of Rocket cursing out a malfunctioning bathroom fan. Within minutes, the kitchen filled.

First came Banner, hair sticking up in all directions, eyes blinking owlishly behind thick glasses. He wore a Stark Labs hoodie and mismatched flannel pajama pants. Next was Natasha, who managed to look fully put together in black leggings and a white tank top, her copper hair tied up in a severe knot. She and Banner exchanged a brief glance before both zeroed in on the coffee.

Vision floated through the far wall precisely one second before Wanda entered via the actual doorway, as if they’d coordinated their arrivals down to the millisecond. Vision wore a crisp dress shirt buttoned to the throat, while Wanda looked like she’d pulled her entire outfit—leggings, oversized gray sweater, slipper boots—from the first laundry pile she’d found. Her hair was half-tamed and her eyes held a suspicious brightness, as if she’d already downed a liter of espresso.

More filtered in: Clint, rubbing sleep from his eyes and muttering about kids and nightmares; Rhodes, crisp in Air Force sweats and a “Run to Remember” T-shirt; Quill and Gamora, arriving together and instantly splitting up to claim opposite ends of the counter; Drax, who entered shirtless and beaming, declaring “Good morning, new teammates!” with a sincerity that clashed violently with his body-builder intimidation factor; Mantis, trailing behind, and Groot, who ducked through the doorway with a polite “I am Groot” and headed straight for the fridge.

By the time Tony Stark strolled in—button-down shirt open over a worn Black Sabbath tee, sunglasses perched low on his nose—the kitchen was as crowded as a Manhattan subway at rush hour. Tony surveyed the chaos, then tilted his head at Steve.

“Rogers. Did you take up yoga or is that a new brand of stoic brooding?”

Steve grinned. “Neither. Just enjoying the peace and quiet before you showed up.”

Tony turned to Cassandra, gave her a conspiratorial wink. “You see what I have to deal with? Avenger Barbie here, always playing the humble giant.”

She didn’t rise to the bait, but she did notice the undercurrent in Tony’s banter. Less bite, more habit. Maybe he was saving his real snark for later.

The team milled around, gathering breakfast from the kitchen island—eggs, protein bars, cut fruit, the absurd number of Pop-Tarts that Quill had dumped into a bowl labeled “Universal MREs.” Conversation hummed at a low, companionable level, but everyone kept a nervous eye on Steve. Even the Guardians, who barely knew him, seemed to sense that he was up to something.

When the last of the crew arrived—Thor, hair wet from a shower and wearing what appeared to be someone else’s bathrobe—Steve finally called them to order. He stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, waiting for the din to subside.

“Thanks for showing up early,” he said. “I know some of you aren’t morning people.” He shot a look at Rocket, who was already face-down on the table, arms around a carafe of black coffee.

“Speak for yourself, Captain,” Rocket mumbled, not lifting his head.

Steve’s smile didn’t fade. “I’ll keep it brief. I know all of you got the notice that our first briefing has been moved to this evening. That means today is free for team-building.”

A chorus of groans erupted. Tony rolled his eyes so hard they nearly disappeared behind his lenses. “You have got to be kidding me. You’re telling me I hauled myself out of bed at six a.m. for trust falls and paintball?”

“Not paintball,” Steve replied, “but you’re close.”

Mantis perked up, antennae waving. “I have always wanted to try trust falls! Is it as painful as it looks?”

“Not if you do it right,” Steve said, deadpan. “But we’re not starting with that. There’s a schedule.” He picked up a folded piece of paper from the table and read from it. “0930: light warm-up on the main field. 1000: mixed sparring, random partners. 1100: obstacle course, teams of five. 1300: lunch. 1400: Mirror Arena, courtesy of Doctor Strange.”

The room quieted a little at that last part.

Steve set down the paper. “I know some of you would rather be prepping for the mission. So would I. But we don’t have a week to run trust simulations, and we’re going up against the kind of threat that punishes the tiniest mistakes. Fury’s orders. I agree with him.”

Gamora glanced around the room, eyes sharp. “You’re worried we’ll get each other killed if we don’t start acting like a unit.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Steve said.

Tony raised a hand, palm out. “Question. If we’re going to have a real live actual mission debrief tonight, why not just jump to whatever this Mirror Arena is and skip all the fitness stuff?”

Steve gave him a cool look. “Because some of us haven’t even met yet. And some of us”—here, a pointed look at Rocket and Quill, who were now elbowing each other over the Pop-Tart bowl—“have a learning curve when it comes to teamwork.”

Clint, half-awake and chewing on a bagel, grunted. “Just so I’m clear, are we supposed to be beating the crap out of each other, or learning to hug?”

Steve thought about it, then shrugged. “Both, maybe. But the main goal is to get everyone moving in the same direction for more than five minutes at a time.”

Wanda and Vision exchanged a look. Cassandra didn’t catch the details, but there was something in Wanda’s expression that didn’t quite sit right with her.

Meanwhile Natasha’s lips twitched in a smile, but she hid it behind her mug.

Rhodey muttered, “Could be worse. Could be a full day of trust falls.”

Rocket raised his head. “Agreed. I’m pretty sure tree-boy here would drop me just to watch what happens.”

Groot spread his hands, affecting innocence. “I am Groot.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Rocket grumbled.

Steve waited for the banter to die down, then finished: “I expect everyone to participate. Information will be given in due time. And no, it’s not optional.”

There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by the sound of Drax crunching through a raw carrot and the distant, defiant sigh of Tony Stark.

But then, as if the mood had turned on a dime, Natasha reached across the table and clinked her mug against Cassandra’s now full coffee cup. “To surviving trust falls,” she said.

Cassandra didn’t smile, but she tipped her cup in return.

The day was going to be a mess. But if nothing else, at least they’d get to punch something that wasn’t an alien this time.

Outside, the sun burned off the last traces of dawn and sent shadows racing across the empty field.

Cassandra watched them from the kitchen window, letting the strange, humming energy of the building settle into her bones. It wasn’t just Fury’s orders that had her on edge.

It was the sense that, for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t the only one who could feel it.

The grass on the compound’s main field was slick with dew and shorn close as a marine buzz cut, the perfect surface for destroying one’s dignity and/or kneecaps. Even in sunlight, the morning air nipped at exposed skin, and Cassandra found herself grateful for the extra thermals she’d layered under her black training suit. She arrived early, but not first; Steve was already on the field, running tight sprints with the kind of relentless precision that made spectators feel lazy just watching.

He finished a lap, slowed to a walk, and greeted her with a nod. “You ready?”

Cassandra shrugged. “Enough. You?”

He grinned. “Just waiting for the real fun to start.”

They stood in companionable silence as the rest of the team trickled out, most in some approximation of workout gear, though the definition varied wildly. Rocket wore a tiny tracksuit custom-tailored to his frame, its electric blue stripes clashing spectacularly with his fur. Drax and Gamora appeared in sleeveless shirts and shorts, arms gleaming with scars. Natasha was in her standard S.H.I.E.L.D. black, hair down around her shoulders, while Wanda opted for battered sneakers and a scarlet windbreaker.

Rhodes and Tony arrived together, the latter wearing full-length black compression pants and an unnecessarily high-tech set of running shoes, which Cassandra assumed were loaded with at least four experimental features Stark couldn’t resist field-testing. Behind them, Thor ambled out in a pair of basketball shorts and a faded MIT sweatshirt that looked like it might have once belonged to Jane Foster. Quill, Groot, and Mantis followed, their mismatched styles suggesting either a complete ignorance of human fashion or a collective bet to see who could make Steve break first. (If so, Quill’s “WORLD’S OKAYEST DAD” T-shirt was a strong contender.)

At exactly 9:30, Nick Fury appeared with a clipboard and a whistle.

The man was a study in authority, from the polished boots to the starched overcoat that defied even the sharpest wind. He let the group mill for a minute, then raised the whistle and gave a single, surgical blast. Every conversation died at once.

“Good,” he said, scanning the group with a single, cold eye. “I see some of you can follow instructions. The rest, well—today’s about fixing that.”

He pointed to the white lines painted on the grass, forming a grid of sparring zones, obstacle routes, and staging areas. “You’ll be working in pairs for the next two hours. I don’t care who you like, who you hate, or who you think can’t keep up. You’ll fight, you’ll sweat, and you’ll get over yourselves. Because if you don’t, you’re dead weight the next time something tries to turn this planet into a parking lot.”

Rocket muttered something about “galactic scale” under his breath, but Fury ignored it.

“First exercise: One-on-one combat. This is all about showing off your power set— you need to learn each other’s capabilities and limits. Team is nothing if you can’t trust your partner to cover your six and you can’t do that if you don’t know a damn about ‘em.”

He turned the clipboard so the sun glinted off the pairings, reading them off with the finality of a judge handing down sentences.

“First of all, these matchups were designed to frustrate you," he said, voice flat but eyes sharp. "Each pair is balanced to push your limits. You want to win? Study your opponent. Find their weakness. Develop a strategy." He paused, scanning their faces. "Brute force alone won't cut it here."

“Widow, you’re on Valkyrie. Maximoff, you’re with Vision. Parker, up against Groot.” (A scandalized “Seriously?” from Quill, who got Lang instead.) “Stark, Cap. Gastaldi, you’re with Strange. Thor and Drax, you’re the last ones.”

A ripple of surprise went through the group at some of the choices—especially Steve versus Tony. Rhodes raised a hand, voice sharp. “Sir, with all due respect, are you sure it’s a good idea to put those two in a ring together after what happened in Siberia?”

Steve answered before Fury could. “I requested it,” he said, eyes locked on Tony. “Best way to move past something is to face it head-on.”

Tony lifted his hands, palms out. “Hey, I’m game. Just don’t blame me when the old man pulls a hammy.”

Fury’s gaze lingered on the pair a beat longer than necessary, then he snapped his fingers. “Suit up. First round starts in five.”

The teams moved to their designated zones. The field was split into wide mats, each bordered by soft crash foam but otherwise as exposed as any professional arena. Spectators took spots along the edge, some stretching, some snacking, a few (Rocket and Drax) already engaged in a heated argument about proper warm-up technique.

Cassandra found herself paired with Strange near the far end of the field, under the partial shade of a row of pines. She sized him up as he flicked his hands through an elaborate series of finger shapes, a subtle glow beginning to radiate from his palms.

“You do this often?” she asked.

“Only when forced,” Strange replied, lips twitching at the corners. “Let’s make it interesting.”

Cassandra rolled her shoulders, letting the Ki swirl around her bones. “After you, Doctor.”

Cassandra Gastaldi didn't particularly like fighting wizards. In her experience, it was never just a matter of technique or force, but a puzzle box—every move laced with misdirection, the air thick with the possibility of sudden, impossible reversals. Strange was no exception. The man radiated confidence, maybe arrogance, the kind that comes from holding the fabric of reality together with your bare hands and only rarely using it to cheat at poker.

Strange flicked his wrist, conjuring a soft golden glow in the space between them. “Ladies first?”

Cassandra didn’t hesitate. She exploded forward, aiming a strike at the doctor’s solar plexus—testing him, really, to see if he’d rely on his mystic shields or if he had the reflexes to block old-school. The answer was both: her fist met a rippling membrane of light, but she felt the give of muscle behind it.

She pressed the advantage, chaining a flurry of blows—jab, knee, elbow—each one blunted by the golden shell but transmitted through to Strange, who absorbed the impact with a tight grunt. His eyes narrowed, and with a murmured incantation, the air around Cassandra shimmered, rippling like a mirage. Instantly, her vision doubled, then tripled; three Stranges stood before her, each weaving hands in different patterns.

Classic. She let instinct take over, drawing on her training to anchor her in the real. Strange wouldn’t have known what was coming. She closed her eyes to better focus, she tasted the field, drawing Ki from all around her, until she felt it. A thug, coming from a space in front of her, slightly on her left. Human energy, exactly what she was searching for.

She felt the energy moving, coming for her, and she dashed right. The man was now behind her, she could feel his arm outstretched, probably because of the punch she had just missed. She turned, quickly, eyes still shut, and landed a kick into his stomach.

As she reopened her eyes the other two figures were disappearing around her. He had tried for a three way attack with the copies, hoping she wouldn’t be able to know which to avoid. A smirk drew on her face as he recovered from her blow, confusion painted in his eyes.

She knew she was one of the reasons why Fury and Steve had thought of this session, one of the biggest mysteries in the compound. None of them, with Steve’s exception, knew nothing of her, her training or her capabilities. This match was probably the main event given all the people that gathered around to watch the show.

Strange had recomposed himself and now floated six inches off the mat, arms crossed, a ghost of a smile playing at his mouth. “You’re good,” he conceded.

“Just enough to dodge your parlor tricks,” she shot back, teleporting behind him. She landed a solid punch to his shoulder, only for her arm to pass through as if through water—he’d left a damn astral projection in his place. The real Strange reappeared behind her, flicked a finger, and sent a rush of cold wind up her spine.

Cassandra bent into the wind, used its momentum to spin herself low and produce a tactical baton she kept collapsed and attached on her belt, sweeping it at Strange’s feet. He jumped, but she caught the edge of his coat, yanking him off balance. He crashed to the mat with a surprised “Oof,” then flicked his hand, sending a bolt of harmless—but blinding—light at her face.

They reset, both breathing hard, neither quite willing to give the other credit aloud. The onlookers, especially Tony and Wanda, clapped politely. Groot cheered, “I am Groot!” which Rocket translated as “Chop his hands off!”

Cassandra couldn’t help but grin. “Thanks, big guy.”

The match ended in a deadlock: she had Strange pinned with a knee to the chest and his left arm twisted behind him, but he’d conjured a circular glyph over her head, hovering like a guillotine and ready to drop the instant she moved.

Fury blew the whistle. “Draw,” he called, voice flat but not unkind. “Next.”

They rolled off each other, both grinning, and Cassandra helped Strange to his feet. “Nice moves,” he said, brushing invisible dust from his sleeve.

“You too,” she replied, and meant it.

—

The next mat over, Black Widow faced off with Valkyrie.

If Cassandra’s fight with Strange had been a chess match, Widow and Valkyrie was a street brawl written in poetry and blood. Natasha entered the ring with coiled patience, circling her opponent with the slow, confident grace of a dancer. Valkyrie, on the other hand, stalked the perimeter like a caged predator, her movements sharp and slightly desperate.

Cassandra watched, fascinated. She saw it instantly—the way Valkyrie’s rage shaped her stance, how she never quite settled into a rhythm, always telegraphing her attacks with a microsecond of hesitation, as if she wasn’t convinced she belonged here.

Natasha saw it too. She baited Valkyrie with open guards and deliberate feints, drawing out her frustration until the Asgardian rushed in, all strength and speed but lacking precision. Nat slipped the punch, twisted inside Valkyrie’s reach, and drove a palm into her jaw—controlled, but enough to send the message.

Valkyrie roared, swinging with a wild hook that Natasha ducked, then spun behind her and locked an arm around Valkyrie’s throat. It should have ended there, but Valkyrie was pure muscle and bad memories; she hurled Natasha over her shoulder, sending the widow crashing into the mat.

The crowd groaned as one. Quill whistled. Gamora crossed her arms and muttered, “Amateurs.”

Natasha popped to her feet, face unreadable, and reset. This time, she let Valkyrie come at her, absorbing the hits, rolling with them, until she found her opening. Then—like snapping a branch—she dropped low, swept Valkyrie’s legs, and brought her down hard. In an eyeblink, Natasha had a knee in the small of Valkyrie’s back and both wrists locked behind her.

Valkyrie didn’t tap, but she didn’t move either.

Fury gave a curt nod. "Romanoff takes it." His good eye lingered on Natasha for a beat. "Perfect example of reading your opponent." Then he turned to Valkyrie, who was still catching her breath. "You've got power, but it's all fury, no focus. Rage makes you predictable." He checked his watch, then addressed the whole group. "Five minutes. Then we rotate."

Natasha rose, not triumphant but quietly satisfied. She offered Valkyrie a hand up, and after a pause, the Asgardian took it.

Cassandra watched the exchange—the way Valkyrie’s mask of bravado cracked, just for a moment, replaced by a hollowed-out exhaustion. The way Natasha didn’t gloat, didn’t smile, just squeezed the other woman’s hand, a silent acknowledgment of what it meant to lose when losing felt personal.

—

Then came the moment for Wanda’s match. Her face told Cassandra that she wasn’t pleased to be fighting against Vision, but she attributed it to not wanting to hurt him.

But, when the match began she saw something else, reluctance and— was that fear? She could understand wanting to hold back, but her look was of pure horror.

She moved like someone trapped in a nightmare, feet barely leaving the mat, her hands weaving defensive patterns that merely deflected Vision's measured advances rather than countering them. Each scarlet shield she conjured seemed thinner than the last.

The ripples of her magic were lighter in color than usual and the waves came in a staccato pattern, as if there was some kind of interference going on. Her posture was off as well, she seemed to be hunching into herself, as if she was trying to keep something inside her at bay. Was she purposefully containing her magic?

She watched Vision circle Wanda with cautious, almost courtly restraint. Wanda’s feet were still stuck on the mat, her weight shifted back, red energy weaving in and out of her hands like she was nervously braiding her own shadows. She never looked him directly in the eye. Vision, for his part, kept his body language open, inviting, never pressing the attack unless forced. It was like watching a dance rehearsed a thousand times but missing its music.

Wanda flicked a hand, a sluggish arc of scarlet lancing toward Vision’s shoulder. He phased, the magic sailing through him and dissolving in the morning air. He never retaliated. Strange, Cassandra thought—unless he’s picking his spot.

Wanda’s next pulse of hex energy was weaker, slower, just enough to draw a soft “tsk” from Fury. Vision finally moved, a blurring, gentle rush that brought him within arm’s reach. Wanda’s mouth set, and Cassandra saw the internal debate skitter quick across her face: fight or surrender. Wanda chose the latter, barely feigning a block as Vision encircled her wrist and pinched her hand softly behind her back, like a parent subduing a wild child.

“Match to Vision,” Fury called, not bothering to hide his disappointment. “Take a lap, Maximoff.”

Wanda stepped away, keeping her head down, but Cassandra saw the white streak at the edge of her knuckle where the skin was blanched—she’d balled her hand so hard she nearly cut her own palm. When she passed, Wanda glanced at Cassandra, and for a split second, their glances caught—hers sharp, almost pleading, like she wanted someone to say how terribly, perfectly wrong this all felt.

Cassandra just nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.

By the time the one-on-one rounds ended, sweat beaded on every brow, and the mats were marked by more than a few scuffs and flecks of blood. Even the aliens seemed winded, if that was possible. Groot had grown an extra arm mid-match to snatch Peter Parker by the hoodie and dangle him upside-down over the boundary rope.

Thor and Drax squared off with the feral joy of two kids who’d never been told “enough.” The match quickly devolved into bear hugs, shoulder checks, and a contest to see who could toss the other furthest. In the end, Thor won by virtue of leverage and centuries of brawling, but Drax’s bellow of laughter made it clear he’d enjoyed every second.

As the main events wrapped up, all eyes shifted to the far corner of the field, where Steve Rogers and Tony Stark faced off.

The match had the charge of a duel, the kind that draws even the most jaded observer to the edge of their seat.

The field was ringed with bodies, every hero on the squad clustering around the makeshift ring, the air thick with anticipation and a trace of nervous sweat. Steve and Tony faced off in the middle, separated by a wide margin, the grass between them packed flat by a thousand bootfalls. For once, neither wore their signature uniform—Tony sported a smart compression suit that glittered with discreet armor inserts, while Steve had on a battered gray tee and faded track pants, sleeves rolled to the elbow, the muscles in his arms cording and unclenching with each measured breath.

Cassandra could feel the tension rippling off the crowd, see it in the way Thor hovered behind the back line, arms folded tight across his chest, and in how Clint stood with hands on his hips, jaw working like he was chewing through a brick. Even Wanda seemed more alert than usual, her gaze ping-ponging between Steve and Tony with an unreadable flicker.

To her the match didn’t seem balanced. Where Tony could unleash all the power of his tech advancements, Steve was bare-handed, lacking even the comfort of his trusted shield. Cassandra knew that he still grieved the loss of his weapon.

Fury blew the whistle with a short, sharp chirp.

The first ten seconds were all Tony. He opened with a flash of repulsor energy—low-power, but loud enough to make the crowd flinch. Steve ducked the shot, rolled across the mat, and came up in a textbook guard, hands open, ready. Tony didn't wait; he feinted left, then fired a pulse at Steve's ankles, sending up a spray of sod. The hit caught Steve off-balance, and he stumbled, but recovered fast, eyes never leaving Tony's.

"Still got the same moves as 1945, Cap," Tony called, circling with arms spread wide. "I'm not saying they're slow, but—"

Steve didn't give him the chance to finish. He closed the distance in three long strides, slipped under Tony's guard, and landed a heavy shot to his chest. Tony grunted, more surprised than hurt, and lashed out with a snap kick that Steve barely dodged.

The pace accelerated from there, a relentless back-and-forth. Tony kept up a running commentary, most of it needling, all of it calculated to draw Steve into a mistake. Steve answered with silence, each movement crisp, controlled, every advance a study in technical perfection.

For a minute, Cassandra thought the match would end in a stalemate: Tony's technology neutralizing Steve's strength, Steve's discipline making a joke of Tony's showboating. But then Tony shifted tactics. He dialed up the intensity, repulsors flaring brighter, and began firing a scattershot of micro-blasts that forced Steve to backpedal, hands raised, blocking what he could and eating the rest.

At one point, Tony hit Steve with a spinning palm strike, the embedded pulse units sending a shockwave up Steve's forearm. Steve gritted his teeth, absorbed the hit, and countered with a hook that Tony parried, the two men locked together for a heartbeat, sweat and breath mixing in the cold air.

Tony dropped his voice low, just for Steve: "Didn't think you'd actually show for this, Cap. Most people don't like getting their ass handed to them twice."

Steve replied with a small, dangerous smile. "Most people aren't me, Stark."

Then he headbutted Tony—hard enough to make the crowd groan in sympathy—and followed with a takedown that left Tony flat on his back, arms pinned by Steve's knees.

For one dizzy second, it looked like Steve had won.

Then Tony flexed his wrists, fired twin micro-pulses at Steve's legs, and sent the super-soldier flying. Steve landed hard, bounced once, and came up with a fresh rip in his sleeve and a feral grin.

They reset, circling, both breathing heavy now. The crowd had gone silent. Even Rocket, who had been heckling from the sidelines, was watching with rapt attention.

Tony pressed his advantage, closing with a barrage of rapid-fire strikes, each one a little faster and meaner than the last. Steve absorbed the punishment, then feinted a stagger, drawing Tony in. At the last second, Steve pivoted, hooked Tony's leg, and sent him sprawling.

Tony rolled, came up, and fired a repulsor blast at Steve's face. Steve ducked, but the edge of the blast caught his cheek, leaving a livid red burn across his jaw.

Blood beaded instantly, bright against Steve's pale skin.

For a split second, Tony froze.

Steve just wiped the blood away with the back of his hand. "You holding back, Stark?"

Tony hesitated, then shook his head. "Not a chance, Cap."

The next exchange was the fastest yet—too fast for Cassandra to track every detail, though she caught glimpses: Steve driving Tony back with a brutal flurry of body shots, Tony countering with a pulse to the knee that buckled Steve for a moment. Then Tony landed a perfect roundhouse to Steve's ribs, the impact loud enough to draw a wince from Thor.

Steve staggered, but only for a second. He launched himself at Tony, tackled him around the waist, and drove both of them into the crash mats with a force that rattled the entire field.

For a moment, neither moved. Then, slowly, both men got to their knees, chests heaving.

Tony looked at Steve, something raw and unguarded flickering in his eyes. "You know, I never hated you," he said, voice barely above a whisper.

Steve wiped sweat from his brow. "You could've fooled me."

Tony managed a lopsided grin. "Guess I'm just good at holding a grudge."

"Let it go," Steve said. "We can't afford old baggage."

Tony shrugged, as if that was easier said than done.

They stood, squared off, and waited for Fury's whistle. But Fury just watched, silent, letting the moment stretch.

Steve nodded at Tony. "Ready?"

"Born ready," Tony replied, and this time, there was no snark in it.

They clashed again, harder than before, but something had changed. The movements were less angry, more competitive—two men who had been teammates, then enemies, now meeting as equals on neutral ground.

Steve drove Tony back with a stunning uppercut, then tried to sweep his legs. Tony anticipated, leapt, and delivered a flying punch that staggered Steve but didn't drop him. They traded blows, each one ringing with the sound of old grievances worked out through fist and bone.

Finally, Tony caught Steve with a repulsor punch to the chest, sending him skidding across the grass. Steve rolled, came up on one knee, and looked at Tony for a long second.

Tony waited, breathing hard, arms at his sides.

Steve pushed to his feet, straightened, and offered a quick salute.

Fury blew the whistle, loud and final. "Point, Stark. Match."

The crowd erupted, half cheering, half groaning. Clint pumped a fist. Thor clapped so hard the sound echoed off the distant treeline. Natasha just smiled, small and private, watching Steve with an expression Cassandra couldn't quite parse.

Tony walked over to Steve, extended a hand. "Good match, Cap."

Steve took the hand, gripped it tight. "Good match, Stark."

They stood like that for a beat, locked in the kind of handshake that says more than words ever could.

Cassandra watched the exchange, felt the weight of it. She hadn't known either man before the war, but even she could see what this had cost them. And what it might still cost, if they didn't keep finding ways to work together.

Tony turned to the group, lifted both hands. "Who's next?"

After hours of obstacle courses, relay races and altogether all sorts of trusting exercises, Fury called for a break, and the team scattered across the field like seeds in a strong wind. Cassandra made her way to the water station, her body humming with residual energy from her match with Strange. The air had warmed as the morning advanced, but she still felt a chill at the back of her neck—that same vibration from earlier, now more pronounced. Whatever was coming, it was getting closer.

She filled a cup and drank deeply, watching Steve over the rim. He was sitting on a bench, allowing a med tech to dab at the burn on his cheek. Tony hovered nearby, pretending not to be concerned while simultaneously offering unsolicited advice about burn treatments. For all their fighting, they seemed lighter now, as if some of the weight between them had been redistributed.

"Impressive match this morning," came a voice from behind her. Wanda, still flushed from her own bouts, filled a cup beside Cassandra. "You and Strange. I've never seen anyone counter his illusions like that."

Cassandra shrugged. "Wasn't hard. The real one had a heartbeat."

Wanda's eyes widened slightly. "You can sense that?"

"When I focus. It's just Ki manipulation—feeling the energy patterns around me." Cassandra studied Wanda's face, noting the tight lines at the corners of her eyes, the slight tremor in her hand as she raised the cup. "What happened with you and Vision? That wasn't a real fight."

Wanda's expression shuttered. "I… don't want to talk about it."

"Fair enough." Cassandra crumpled her empty cup. "Just so you know, you wouldn’t have hurt him.”

Wanda's eyes flashed. "I know what I'm doing."

"I know," Cassandra kept her voice neutral, but she felt a surprising surge of protectiveness. She barely knew Wanda, but she recognized the look of someone drowning in their own power. "But, do you?"

"It's complicated," Wanda said, her accent thickening slightly.

Cassandra wanted to press, but Thor redirected their focus as the other heroes headed to a brunch buffet set up in the kitchen. SHIELD certainly had no trouble covering the costs for all sorts of events, Cassandra thought.

Lunch was an unhurried, almost ceremonial affair. Cassandra wasn't sure whether it was the adrenaline crash from the morning's sparring or the fact that the entire kitchen had been overhauled into a rolling buffet, but for once, no one seemed interested in rushing. The Guardians loaded up on carbs and caffeine, Thor plowed through three entire roast chickens, and Steve— after having eaten only a serving of rice salad — decided he needed to overwatch the group, walking among the tables and muttering something about the afternoon activity. He was clearly enthusiast and Cassandra honestly didn’t want to know why.

By the time the last plates were cleared, the mood had shifted from wary to outright mischievous. There was a kind of kinetic energy in the air—like the last hour before a high school prank or a midnight raid on enemy lines. Cassandra could feel it prickling under her skin, more present than the steady pulse of Ki she'd used to push through the morning.

Strange was the one who finally set things in motion. He had eaten quickly and left right after. His behaviour hadn’t gone unseen, but nobody commented on it. He finally came back at precisely 1:58 p.m., in full sorcerer’s regalia, the Cloak of Levitation swirling behind him like a sentient stage curtain. He raised his hands for silence—a pointless gesture, but it had the intended effect.

“If everyone could follow me to the south atrium,” he said, “there’s something I’d like to show you.”

It wasn’t a request.

The group filed out, a parade of mismatched egos and bruises, through a succession of glass-walled corridors and out onto a broad mezzanine that overlooked the compound’s inner courtyard. The afternoon sun burned bright and clear, but the air above the center of the courtyard shimmered with visible tension—like a mirage, or the surface of water just before it broke.

Strange stopped at the barrier and turned to face the crowd. “This is your field of battle,” he intoned. “You’ll have two hours to capture your enemy’s flag, using any nonlethal means at your disposal.”

Clint snorted. “Steal the Flag? Did we lose budget for the paintball?”

“Steal the Flag, yes,” Strange replied, ignoring the dig. “But in a custom-built mirror dimension. Every environment, every hazard, is real—so don’t get cute about falling off cliffs or sticking your hand in a reactor core. If you die in the mirror, you’ll just wake up here—eventually. But it will hurt.” He let the last word hang in the air.

With a flick of his fingers, Strange conjured a shimmering, holographic map of the arena, suspended above the courtyard. It rotated slowly, showing a sprawling landscape that looked equal parts nature preserve, warzone, and post-apocalyptic landfill.

Cassandra squinted at the projection, trying to parse its features:

- The northern edge was all marshland: knee-deep black water threaded with tangled reeds, fog rising in lazy plumes.

- To the east, a battered industrial zone: collapsed overpasses, abandoned cars, and what looked like a field of land mines marked with tiny skull-and-crossbones flags.

- The southern quadrant was dense with ancient forest—dark, close, the undergrowth so thick it looked nearly impassable.

- The west was pure urban decay: rows of shattered apartment blocks, open sewers, and a scatter of brightly painted playgrounds half-swallowed by rubble.

- Dead center ran a jagged scar—a ravine, its sheer walls slick with moss and its depths hidden in shifting shadows.

Strange narrated as the map zoomed and shifted, each zone snapping into focus. “You’ll be divided into two teams, each with a flag to defend and a flag to capture. The boundaries are enforced by the Mirror’s own rules, so don’t bother with portals, warping, or cheating the physics. If you attempt to teleport outside the designated arena, you’ll be forcibly returned to your last legal position.” He looked directly at Cassandra as he said this, an eyebrow raised.

She smiled back, not bothering to hide her irritation. Smart man.

“The flags are located here—” He pointed to two tiny icons, one at the marsh’s edge, the other in the clearing south of the ravine. “If your flag is taken, it’s game over. Any questions?”

Rocket raised a paw. “What about weapons? Are we playing nice, or is this full loadout?”

“Full loadout,” Strange replied. “But nonlethal only. The goal is to work together—not reduce each other to meat paste.”

Rocket grinned. “You heard the man, Quill. Time to get creative.”

Quill looked resigned. “As long as you don’t try to blow up the field. Again.”

“Teams are as follows,” Strange continued. “Team A: Rogers, Gastaldi, Maximoff, Stark, Parker, Gamora, Rocket, Groot, Barton, and Wilson.” He let the names settle, then went on. “Team B: Myself, Thor, Vision, Valkyrie, Romanoff, Rhodes, Banner, Lang, Quill, Mantis, and Drax.”

The group exchanged glances—some relieved, some instantly competitive. Natasha smirked across the divide at Cassandra. Wanda, who had been staring at the ground, shot a quick, nervous look at Vision before returning her gaze to her shoes.

Strange snapped his fingers, and the map dissolved into a shower of golden sparks. “You have five minutes to strategize. I suggest you use them well.”

The atrium went electric with motion.

Team A immediately clustered around Steve, who commandeered a bench and started sketching out formations on the back of a napkin. Tony leaned over his shoulder, offering unsolicited edits, while Gamora and Rocket held a side conference, quietly debating the best way to “neutralize” Drax and Thor without getting vaporized.

Cassandra stayed just at the edge of the huddle, watching as the group fell into roles: Tony for tactics, Steve for overall command, Rocket and Gamora for the more ruthless stuff. She admired the economy of it. Nobody wasted time with ego. Even Parker, who looked like he’d just won the lottery by getting drafted to Team Cap, focused in, bouncing from one idea to the next at dizzying speed, she even contributed with a couple of pieces of advices of her own.

Cass surely wasn’t going to be public about it, but the idea of a simulated war against her own allies had her electrified. She loved a good mind stretch and what better opportunity than a strategic game like the one Strange proposed?

Meanwhile, Wanda drifted to Cassandra’s side, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of her windbreaker. “Do you think the shadow zone is a trap?”

“Definitely,” Cassandra said. “But if they’re expecting us to avoid it, we might as well make it our main avenue.”

Wanda nodded. “I can try to create an illusion—maybe split their attention?”

Cassandra eyed her. “You sure you’re up for that?”

Wanda hesitated, but her chin came up. “I can handle it.”

Cassandra didn’t push, but she made a mental note to watch Wanda’s back. Of all the people here, Wanda was the one most likely to get targeted first—by the other team or by her own doubts.

As their team formed ranks, Steve raised his voice. “Alright, listen up. Stark and Rocket, you’re on defense with Clint. I want you to build a perimeter around the flag, use anything you need—traps, sensors, whatever. Gamora and I will push the right flank through the urban zone. Cass, you and Wanda take the ravine and keep the pressure on. Use your powers to disrupt, not to engage head-on. Wilson and Parker, with Groot, you’re our left flank, move through the forest and try to outmaneuver them. Go wherever you’re needed, but don’t get caught. Everyone clear?”

Heads nodded, murmurs of agreement rippled through the group. Tony grinned, glancing at Cassandra. “You heard the man. Shadow ops with the Witch. Don’t make us look bad.”

She gave him a lazy salute. “I’ll do my best, Stark.”

On the other side of the atrium, Team B was already in full debate mode. Thor and Drax argued (loudly) about whether the best offense was a frontal assault or “hiding and waiting like cowards.” Vision stood to the side, arms folded, clearly strategizing with a narrowed intensity. Natasha and Valkyrie exchanged a long, silent glance—two predators appraising each other—before breaking off into their own private conversation. Strange floated above the group, arms crossed, occasionally dropping a word or two but mostly letting the chaos play out.

Rhodes appeared to be the only one paying close attention to the map, quietly running numbers with Mantis and Quill. Banner hung back, looking uncomfortable, as if he’d rather be anywhere else than organizing a war game.

At the four-minute mark, Strange called time.

“Please make your way to your starting points,” he said, waving a hand at two circular portals that had appeared on either side of the courtyard. “You’ll be teleported to your respective start zones. You’ll enter the mirror with your current equipment, so make sure you have what you need now.”

Cassandra and Wanda fell in with Team A as they stepped in front of their portal. The instant the last of them crossed the twisting barrier, the world wrenched sideways and the compound disappeared—replaced by a scene out of a fever dream.

They stood at the edge of a black marsh, water lapping at their boots. The sky was a perpetual dusk, clouds racing overhead in unnatural, silent currents. The air buzzed with static, and every breath tasted faintly metallic, like ozone after a lightning strike. The rest of the team materialized in a tight cluster, taking in the landscape with a mix of awe and professional wariness.

The flag—a tall red pennant emblazoned with the SHIELD logo—stood on a slender pole thirty yards away, surrounded by a raised ring of mud and brambles. Beyond it, the marsh stretched into mist, the reeds rustling with unseen life.

Rocket was the first to break the silence. “Well, this is a dump,” he said. “But at least it’s got cover.”

“Focus, Rocket,” Steve said, already scanning the horizon. “Positions.”

The first thing Clint saw after landing was the edge of a cliff, extending exactly in front of their flag. He immediately shot in that direction, laying torso in the mud, arms dangling from the edge, bow in position. Tony instead began lacing the perimeter with sensors and a tangled web of tripwires, their movements almost synchronized.

Gamora and Steve ghosted away to the right, moving through the edge of the marsh toward the jagged silhouette of a collapsed bridge. Sam and Parker disappeared to the left, melting into the undergrowth with the easy confidence of men who’d both spent years sneaking up on people. Groot followed them, using his branches as stilts, almost floating in the air. That left Cassandra and Wanda facing the gaping maw of the ravine.

It was worse up close. The ravine started a few yards from the cliff that marked the end of what they had decided was their base. The far side looked to be a solid fifty yards across, the drop sheer and bottomless, the bridge spanning it little more than a splintered plank over a grave. Shadows pooled in the crevices, alive and restless, never quite still. The only visible thing underneath them were pinnacles of stones that pointed upwards, menacing, once in a while.

Cassandra set her jaw, feeling the Ki thrum in her veins. “You ready?”

Wanda drew in a breath, then nodded. “Let’s go.”

They moved in tandem, silent as ghosts, picking their way along the narrow ledge that skirted the ravine. Each step was a test: the ground crumbled underfoot, the wind clawed at their clothes, and more than once, Cassandra had to catch Wanda’s sleeve to keep her from pitching forward into the darkness.

Almost halfway across, Cassandra paused. She turned to find Wanda frozen, eyes wide, breath coming in short, sharp bursts.

“Wanda,” she said quietly, “what do you see?”

Wanda shook her head. “Nothing. Everything.” She pressed a hand to her temple. “It’s loud here. Like all the voices are shouting at once. Thoughts.”

Cassandra frowned. “You can filter them out. Focus on mine.”

Wanda’s eyes flicked up, found Cassandra’s, and for a second, the world steadied. “Okay,” Wanda whispered. “Okay.”

Cassandra’s thoughts were racing. Adrenaline was fueling them. She didn’t really want Wanda to creep into her mind, but the girl had to focus on something and Cass could have done the same to keep her thoughts where she wanted them.

She squeezed Wanda’s hand once, then released it. “Let’s keep moving.”

They reached the midpoint of the ravine, where a cluster of slick stones jutted out into open air. Cassandra crouched, scanning the far side for movement. She spotted it almost immediately: two figures—Vision and Strange—moving with deliberate speed along the opposite ledge, their bodies outlined in gold and crimson.

“They’re coming straight for us,” she murmured.

Wanda nodded. “I can feel them. They’re not alone.” She gestured downward, and Cassandra followed her gaze: under them, perched like a gargoyle, passing from pinnacle to pinnacle, was Natasha Romanoff.

Cassandra smirked. “Of course she is.”

She tapped the comm bead in her ear. “Stark, we’ve got incoming. Vision, Strange, and the Widow—ravine approach.”

Tony’s voice crackled back, “Copy that, Gastaldi. Defensive measures engaged. Don’t let them get the jump on you.”

Cassandra and Wanda slipped into the cover of a boulder, pressing their backs against its cold surface as Vision and Strange closed the distance.

“Here’s the plan,” Cassandra whispered. “I’ll create a shadow field—blind them for three seconds. You hit them with everything you’ve got. Don’t hold back.”

Wanda hesitated, then nodded. “On your mark.”

Cassandra gathered the Ki, focusing it into a pulse that radiated outward like a wave. The light around them bled into darkness, swallowing the ravine in an instant. Vision and Strange staggered, momentarily disoriented.

“Now,” Cassandra hissed.

Wanda unleashed a coil of scarlet energy, twisting it through the dark like a living whip. It caught Vision around the chest, pinning him to the wooden planks of the bridge. Strange responded instantly, spinning a glyph with one hand while the other sent a lance of golden light toward Cassandra.

She teleported, reappearing behind Strange. She swung her baton at his temple, but he ducked, catching her wrist in a vise grip.

“Predictable,” Strange said, voice calm even as they wrestled for leverage.

Cassandra smirked. “You’re not as fast as you think.”

She twisted, breaking his hold, and drove a knee into his stomach. Strange grunted but didn’t let go; he flicked his wrist, conjuring a web of glowing chains that snaked around Cassandra’s arms and legs.

On the other side, Vision had already started to break free of Wanda’s grip, his form flickering between solid and intangible as he pushed against the hex’s hold.

“Wanda,” Cassandra called, “break off—he’s about to phase!”

Wanda adjusted, pouring more power into the spell. Vision’s body shimmered, caught between states, but the extra effort was costing Wanda—her hands shook, and eyes shut close.

Strange, seeing the opening, turned and tried to knock Wanda from the ledge with a blast of force.

Cassandra surged against the magical chains, drawing every scrap of Ki she could muster. With a primal shout, she snapped the bonds and teleported directly in front of Wanda, catching the blast full in the chest.

It knocked the wind out of her, sent her skidding a few feet backwards, but she held her ground.

“Not today, Doctor,” she spat, forcing herself upright.

Strange looked impressed. “Nicely done. But you’re outnumbered.”

Cassandra grinned. “Am I?”

She tapped her comm again, “Now, Sam.”

On cue, Sam Wilson swooped down from the sky, wings slicing through the haze. He fired a barrage of smoke pellets at Vision and Strange, blanketing the area in a dense, choking fog.

Parker was next, webbing across the ravine with impossible speed. He landed squarely on Vision’s back, slapping a metal cuff around his arm—a prototype Stark invention designed to suppress phasing.

Vision staggered, his body jerking with the sudden resistance. “Clever,” he conceded, turning to face the new threat.

Meanwhile, Sam and Parker doubled up on Strange, using a combination of webs, smoke, and pure distraction to keep him off-balance.

Cassandra pulled Wanda to her feet. “Can you stand?”

Wanda nodded, though her face was pale. “I can do this.”

Cassandra nodded. “Let’s go. The others have the flag covered—we just need to hold them here.”

They did, for a full minute, ducking and weaving as the battle raged around them. More so, they were able to push them back, at the end of the bridge and onto the other side. Vision eventually broke the cuff, but the effort left him sluggish. Strange, for all his power, was forced onto the defensive, constantly countering the combined attacks of Sam, Parker, and Wanda. She had also kept an eye on Natasha as she followed them from behind, but ultimately lost her as the Widow pressed against the stone wall of the ledge.

Cassandra relished the chaos. For once, she wasn’t the wild card—she was the anchor, the one holding the line.

The comm crackled in her ear. “Cass, this is Stark. You’ve got company. Thor, Drax, and Lang are moving in from your three o’clock. Brace.”

“Copy,” she replied. “See you on the other side.”

She turned to Wanda, who was leaning heavily against a tree. “We’re about to get hammered,” Cassandra said, “literally. Can you handle Drax?”

Wanda smiled, weak but genuine. “I’ve taken worse.”

“Good.” Cassandra looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. She found a chunk of rebar, snapped it free, and tested its weight. “Let’s give them hell.”

She was ready when Drax barreled out of the fog, his war cry echoing off the ravine walls. He came at Cassandra with both fists, but she ducked the first blow and drove the rebar into his ribs. He grunted, more surprised than hurt, and swung again—this time catching her on the shoulder. Pain flared, but Cassandra held her ground.

Drax grabbed Cassandra by the arm, lifting her off the ground. She twisted in his grip, using the momentum to bring her heel down on his knee. He staggered, loosened his hold, and Cassandra slipped free.

She drove the rebar into his thigh, then teleported behind him and kicked the back of his knee. Drax dropped, stunned for a second—long enough for Cassandra to wrap a length of webbing (courtesy of Parker, who’d managed to liberate a canister before getting blasted by Vision) around Drax’s ankles.

Cassandra saw it coming: Thor raised Mjolnir high, ready to bring it down in a finishing move. Cassandra dove forward, tackling Wanda out of the way just as the hammer slammed into the ground, shattering it and sending debris flying in all directions.

They landed hard, rolled, and came up together.

The comm buzzed again. “Cass, it’s Tony. We’re holding the flag, but we got Rhodes and Gamora coming in hot.”

“Understood,” Cassandra replied. “We’ll be there soon.”

She turned to Wanda. “Can you still walk?”

Wanda nodded. “If we get out of this alive, I’m buying you a drink.”

Cassandra smiled. “Deal.”

They sprinted back along the edge of the ravine, weaving through the chaos as Vision, Strange, and the others regrouped. At the far end of the ravine, the marsh opened up into a broad, flat plain—the direct path to their flag.

Something was wrong. Natasha dropped behind their defenses using stealth tech. Clint fired an arrow too late; she rolled out of its path.

"We need to move!" Cassandra shouted to Wanda, breaking into a sprint.

They raced across the marshy ground, feet sinking into muck with every step. Cassandra pushed her tired muscles harder, drawing on reserves of Ki to enhance her speed. Beside her, Wanda's face was a mask of determination, scarlet energy crackling at her fingertips.

Tony's voice burst through the comm: "Widow's breached the perimeter! I'm engaging!"

Through the tangle of reeds, Cassandra glimpsed flashes of repulsor fire as Tony tried to intercept Natasha. But the spy was too quick, weaving through obstacles with the fluid grace of someone who'd spent a lifetime avoiding death. She was closing in on the flag.

"“Wanda, slow her down!” Cassandra gasped.

Wanda’s crimson tendrils snaked toward Natasha’s ankles, but the spy somersaulted over the barrier.

"I can't get a lock on her!" Wanda cried, frustration coloring her voice.

Cassandra made a split-second decision. "Cover me."

She gathered the Ki around herself, feeling it thicken like oil. Then she teleported, shadows swallowing her whole before spitting her out directly in Natasha's path.

The spy skidded to a halt, eyes widening in momentary surprise before her expression settled back into cool professionalism. "Nice trick," she said, shifting into a fighting stance.

"I've got a few more," Cassandra replied, drawing her baton.

Natasha struck first, a lightning-fast jab that Cassandra barely deflected.

Behind them, chaos erupted as the rest of Team B converged on the flag. Vision phased through Tony's defenses, while Strange conjured portals that bypassed the tripwires entirely. Clint was firing arrows as fast as he could knock them, but there were too many targets.

Natasha feinted left, then dropped low, sweeping Cassandra's legs out from under her. She hit the ground hard, mud splattering across her face. Natasha vaulted over her, making a beeline for the flag.

"No!" Cassandra growled, teleporting again.

She reappeared directly in front of the flag, arms spread wide. Natasha didn't slow down—she charged straight at Cassandra, determination etched into every line of her face.

At the last possible second, Cassandra sidestepped, grabbing Natasha's arm and using her momentum to send her sprawling. But Natasha was too good; she rolled with the fall, came up in a crouch, and sprang again.

This time, when they collided, both women went down in a tangle of limbs. They wrestled in the mud, each fighting for leverage. Cassandra managed to pin Natasha's shoulders, but the spy bucked, throwing her off balance.

A flash of scarlet light washed over them as Wanda finally reached the scene. She directed a pulse of energy at Natasha, just enough to knock her back several feet. Cassandra staggered upright, breathing hard.

Their respite was brief. A deafening crack of thunder split the air as Thor descended from above, Mjolnir crackling with electricity. He landed with enough force to shake the ground, sending both women stumbling.

"Your defense is valiant," Thor boomed, "but futile."

Cassandra and Wanda exchanged a quick glance, a silent agreement passing between them. They would make their stand here, together. They needed to push through enough time to let Steve and Gamora take the flag. With all team B here the flag had to be almost without defenses.

Wanda moved first, unleashing a torrent of hex energy that forced Thor to raise Mjolnir in defense. The magic collided with the hammer's enchantment, creating a shockwave that rippled across the battlefield.

Cassandra used the distraction to teleport behind Thor, striking at the back of his knees. The god grunted but didn't fall—instead, he whirled, catching Cassandra with a backhanded swipe that sent her flying.

She pushed herself up, ignoring the protest of her battered body. She had to get back in the fight.

A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to find Strange hovering above, his cloak billowing dramatically.

"Stay down," he advised. "This is almost over."

She spat mud from her mouth. "Not a chance."

Gathering her remaining strength, Cassandra teleported once more—not to attack Strange, but to rejoin Wanda, who was now surrounded by Thor, Vision, and Natasha.

The three of them stood back-to-back, the flag just behind them, as Team B closed in from all sides. Tony and Clint were nowhere to be seen—likely taken out in the initial assault.

"Any ideas?" Wanda asked, her voice strained.

Cassandra scanned the battlefield, looking for any advantage. Their position was desperate, but not hopeless. "We need to buy time," she said. "Steve and the others might still pull off a capture."

As if in answer to her thoughts, the comm crackled to life. Steve's voice, tight with exertion: "We've almost got their flag, we can see it!"

Hope surged through Cassandra. All they had to do was hold out a little longer.

"Stark, we need to move," Cassandra shouted into her comm, hoping Tony was still conscious somewhere. "Steve's got their flag in sight!"

Wanda pressed her back against Cassandra's, her breathing ragged but steady. "I can hold them off, but not for long."

Cassandra felt the familiar burn of exhaustion seeping into her muscles, the Ki reserves running dangerously low. She scanned the approaching enemies—Thor with his hammer crackling, Natasha's cold calculation, Vision hovering just above the ground—and made a quick decision.

"New plan," she said, just loud enough for Wanda to hear. "I'm going to create a diversion. When I do, you need to hit them with everything you've got."

"But—"

"No buts. Trust me."

Cassandra gathered the last of her strength, feeling the shadows respond to her call. The darkness pooled around her feet, then surged outward in a wave that engulfed the entire clearing. Day turned to night in an instant, the only illumination coming from Thor's lightning and the eerie glow of Vision's mind stone.

In the confusion, Cassandra teleported rapidly—appearing behind Thor to land a quick strike, then beside Natasha for a sweeping kick, then in Strange's face for a startling feint. She was a phantom, there and gone before they could react, leaving only disorientation in her wake.

"Now, Wanda!" she shouted, materializing back at the flag.

Wanda unleashed her power, scarlet energy exploding outward like a nova. The blast caught Thor mid-swing, sent Natasha rolling, and even staggered Vision for a crucial moment. Strange managed to shield himself, but the effort cost him precious seconds of focus.

Relief flooded through Cassandra, but it was short-lived. As her shadow field dissipated, she saw Ant-Man—who had somehow avoided detection throughout the entire battle—growing to full size right beside their flag. He had been waiting there all along, hidden in plain sight.

"No!" she lunged, but her exhausted body betrayed her, muscles cramping as she pushed them beyond their limits.

Lang snatched the flag from its stand, his face splitting in a victorious grin. "Sorry, folks! Game over!"

The world around them shimmered, then dissolved like watercolor in rain. The marsh, the ravine, the entire battlefield melted away, replaced by the stark white of the compound's atrium. They were back where they started, sprawled across the polished floor in various states of dishevelment.

Cass noticed with a certain degree of gratitude that all the pain she was feeling cursing trough her body was instantly gone, leaving behind only the exhaustion.

Strange stood in the center, looking annoyingly pristine despite the battle. "Team B wins," he announced, not bothering to hide his satisfaction.

Wanda, still breathing hard, found Cassandra sprawled on the ground.

“Sorry we lost,” Wanda said.

Cassandra shook her head. “Did you see the look on Vision’s face? Worth it.”

Wanda grinned. “He’ll never live it down.”

Tony limped over, clutching a bottle of water. “Next time, I’m putting tracking devices on all of you.”

Peter, swinging by, added, “You already did, Mr. Stark. I just found them all and stuck them on Groot.”

Groot held up a handful of blinking trackers. “I am Groot.”

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

In the locker room, Cassandra pulled off her ruined training suit and sat on the bench, letting the aches settle. Wanda joined her, hair damp from sweat and rain, but her eyes bright.

She glanced at Wanda, who looked steadier now. “You okay?”

Wanda nodded. “Better than I thought.”

Cassandra squeezed her shoulder. “You did good.”

Wanda blushed, then looked away.

They sat in silence, watching the steam rise from the showers. Outside, the rest of the team celebrated or commiserated in equal measure. Tony and Steve had already started a new argument, this time about the best pizza topping. Valkyrie sulked for a few minutes, then joined the Guardians in an impromptu drinking contest. Banner sat in a corner, a small smile playing on his lips even though he wasn’t able to summon the Hulk during the battle.

Cassandra let herself relax, just for a minute. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of laughter, the hum of voices, the distant thunder of someone (probably Drax) breaking a door.

For the first time in a long time, she felt almost home.

She opened her eyes to find Wanda watching her, a question in her gaze.

“What?” Cassandra asked.

Wanda shook her head, smiling. “Nothing. Just—nice, being here.”

“Yeah,” Cassandra said. “It is.”

The announcement for the evening strategy meeting echoed through the halls, reminding everyone that the fun was over.

Wanda stood, offering a hand. Cassandra took it, and together they walked out, headed to the war room, shoulder to shoulder, ready for the next battle.

The day had left them exhausted, but also a little more whole.

But something was still stirring at the back of Cassandra’s mind. She knew that danger remained close.

Chapter Text

Wanda entered the compound’s comm room with Vision’s hand curled around hers, his palm cool and steady in a way that always made her skin tingle. The room was already half-full: Natasha perched cross-legged on the edge of the conference table, idly spinning a pen; Tony and Bruce flanked one of the touchscreens, faces bathed in the faint blue light of an open schematic; Sam and Steve stood at the window, their silhouettes outlined by the last rays of sunset. Even off the battlefield, the group looked battle-worn—shirts rumpled, hair still damp from hurried showers, every motion just a hair slower than it would have been that morning.

Vision nodded to Wanda as they moved to the long table, that little tilt of his head that always felt practiced but somehow sincere. Wanda gave him the smallest smile she could manage, then scanned the room for Cassandra. She found her near the back, arms folded, back against the wall. Their eyes met; Wanda let a brief flicker of gratitude cross her face. The morning's training session with Vision had left her rattled, at both the knowledge of him calculating her every move and the fear he might be right at doing so. His analytical precision during their sparring match had made her feel exposed, vulnerable. And that feeling had lingered through the afternoon's exercises in the Arena. Cassandra had noticed, had stepped in without Wanda having to explain herself. It surprised her; Cass had always struck her as someone who kept to herself, who'd admitted to limited experience with people. Yet there she was, offering support with an unexpected skill that made Wanda both grateful and self-conscious. Cassandra dipped her head, just barely. A promise, or an apology, or maybe both.

Wanda found herself looking for Natasha next. The Black Widow’s gaze was on her, as if she’d expected the glance, and Wanda read a silent question in it: You okay? Wanda gave a shrug and a ghost of a nod. The answer was I will be, but she wasn’t sure Natasha would buy it.

The room was filling in now, the rest of the team trailing in, some alone and some in pairs. Thor entered last, ducking under the lintel with an absentminded grace. He had changed into a clean black t-shirt but still looked faintly like he’d spent the afternoon wrestling wild animals which, well, somehow tracked.

Gamora came in after him, her eyes scanning for threats even in the supposed safety of the comm room. Groot and Rocket found seats near Peter, who looked like he’d been up all night and then ran a marathon in the morning. No one was in uniform, but every motion, every interaction, felt calibrated to the same rhythm: the aftermath of adrenaline.

Steve clapped his hands together once, sharp enough to cut through the ambient noise, and took up position at the head of the table. His blue eyes swept the room, commanding the kind of attention that didn’t need to be asked for.

"I hope you enjoyed the afternoon," Steve began, the corner of his mouth lifting in that way it did when he genuinely meant something but knew nobody would believe him. A ripple of exhausted laughter spread through the room as several team members exchanged knowing glances. His eyes crinkled slightly at their reaction—the same look he'd had watching them in the Arena, when Rocket had nearly taken out Thor with that modified stun grenade. "It was necessary. But now, it's time for serious talk."

He let the words hang in the air a moment before continuing, but before he could, Fury stepped out from the shadowed corner near the door. Wanda hadn’t even noticed him enter—typical, she thought, but the realization still made her pulse skitter. He wore the long black coat like it was armor, every crease and seam in place, the eyepatch giving his expression an extra gravity.

“One second, Captain, will you? I wanted to underline something.” He began, straightening his spine. “This isn’t an official S.H.I.E.L.D. operation, you’re here because you chose to be. Not because the government signed off. Not because anyone authorized it. As far as the world is concerned, you’re all civilians. Understood?”

The room didn't flinch—these weren't people who startled easily—but Wanda felt the collective tightening, like a wire being slowly twisted. Shoulders squared. Jaws set. A few exchanged glances carried entire conversations. No one looked surprised by Fury's words, but the weight of what he was really saying—no backups, no immunity, no protection—settled over them like armor they'd have to wear indefinitely. If nothing they expected them to bite back. Wanda's fingertips tingled with the old, familiar sensation of being hunted.

Fury’s words came fast, as if he wanted to outpace anyone’s reactions. “You answer to yourselves, and to each other. Not to me. Not to some council in D.C. or a committee with a stamp and a seal. You’re responsible for what happens next.” His gaze locked briefly on Wanda, the weight of it a physical thing. “I’ll do what I can, off the grid. But the suits in Washington are already stirring. We’ve intercepted three encrypted messages between Ross's office and the Pentagon all issued between yesterday and this morning. If we let them they’ll shut us down the second we offer an opening. Or worse."

Wanda's fingers twisted together beneath the table until her knuckles blanched bone-white, nails digging half-moons into her palms. The Raft's memory slammed into her—steel walls vibrating with distant screams, the copper-penny taste of her own blood pooling where she'd bitten through her cheek, the guards’ voice dripping with contempt as they called her "the witch" while electricity coursed through the collar at her throat. Never again. Her jaw clenched and her skin crawled. They would have to kill her first.

Fury’s tone softened a hair, but not much. “I know some of you don’t trust me. You don’t have to. But we all had a taste of what’s coming—and I fear it’ll make Ultron look like Sunday brunch.” He nodded to Steve, a silent hand-off.

Steve’s voice was steady, almost gentle. “Thank you, Fury. As he said— we’re here because we want to. Or because we’re the only ones left. Either way, there’s no cavalry. We are it.”

A silence, then a cough from Tony. “Sounds like my kind of party,” he said, but Wanda could see the tension in his jaw. “Just for the record, if anyone asks, I’m in Ibiza.”

Rocket snorted, but the mood barely lifted.

Cassandra’s face was unreadable, but Wanda caught the way her foot tapped steadily under the table, a morse code of nerves. Natasha had gone statue-still, her eyes narrowed just a fraction. Vision, sitting next to Wanda, looked straight ahead, his posture so precise it hurt to look at him.

Fury surveyed the table. “Any questions?”

A long beat. Then Gamora, “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

Steve stepped forward again, taking the room's attention back from Fury with practiced ease. His expression shifted to something more focused, his jaw setting in a way that made Wanda think of mission briefings from their time at the compound. This was the Captain now, not just Steve.

"We already decided that retrieving the Stones before Thanos can get them is our best option," he said. "Now it's time to set that plan in motion."

Wanda felt a surge of energy in the room, the shift from theory to action almost palpable. Even through her exhaustion, a spark of determination flickered in her chest.

"We know the locations of three Stones," Steve continued, gesturing to the holographic display that flickered to life above the table. Three glowing dots appeared – one purple, one red, one blue. "The Power Stone, the Reality Stone, and the Space Stone – also known as the Tesseract."

Wanda noticed Gamora shift slightly in her seat, eyes downcast, something troubled crossing her features. There was more there, something unspoken, but Wanda couldn't read it.

Steve pointed to the blue dot. "The Tesseract is on Asgard, under Odin's protection. Given that Thor is with us, this should be our simplest retrieval. He can go to Asgard, explain the situation, and request the Tesseract."

Thor nodded, his expression grave but confident. "My father will understand the threat Thanos poses. The Tesseract will be surrendered."

"That's our first target," Steve said. "The Reality Stone is with the Collector, and the Power Stone is secured on Xandar. Both will require more complex operations."

Wanda's mind raced. The Tesseract – the same object HYDRA had used to experiment on her and Pietro, the same power that had first awakened the abilities that now coiled within her veins. The irony wasn't lost on her. The source of her nightmare could now be her mission.

"I won't be able to join the Asgard team," Steve said, his voice pulling her back to the present. "I have a diplomatic mission that can't wait – something that might help us both with Ross and with our preparations against Thanos."

He didn't elaborate, but his eyes flicked briefly to Sam, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. Wanda caught the silent exchange, understanding there was more to this mission than Steve was sharing publicly.

"So I need volunteers for Asgard," Steve said, looking around the table.

Wanda's heart skipped. Before she could second-guess herself, she sat straighter, feeling her pulse quicken. "I'll go," she said, her voice ringing with newfound conviction. The words surprised even her, but felt right as they left her lips.

This was her chance – to be useful, to prove herself, to do something besides hiding and being afraid. After the day's exercises, after feeling so vulnerable with Vision, she needed this. Needed to show them all – and herself – what she could do.

Vision's response was immediate. "Then I'll go too."

Wanda's shoulders tensed. She stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge him or meet his gaze. His instant decision to follow her felt suffocating rather than supportive. She didn't need a babysitter.

"I'm not sure that's wise," Banner interjected, looking nervously between them. "With no immediate danger confirmed, it might be safer for Vision and the Mind Stone to remain on Earth. They're still primary targets."

Strange nodded in agreement. "Banner's right. The Mind Stone should stay here, under our protection. In fact, this seems like a straightforward retrieval mission. We should keep the team small – just enough to get the job done while the rest of us remain here to protect the two Stones we already have."

Wanda felt a flush of relief mixed with vindication. She wouldn't have to deal with Vision's presence, his careful monitoring, his analytical assessment of her every move.

But that thought instantly made Wanda's chest tighten with guilt. What was wrong with her? If she truly loved Vision, she shouldn't be feeling relieved at his absence—she should be craving his presence, shouldn't she? Her fingers twisted against each other beneath the table as a wave of shame washed over her. Vision had only ever tried to protect her, to be there for her.

She cursed herself silently, that evening in the courtyard replaying in her mind. How could a couple of words—just sentences exchanged by a fountain—have gotten so deeply under her skin? It wasn't fair to him. It wasn't fair to either of them. Vision cooked for her, bringing those carefully prepared meals to their room when she couldn't face the others. He held her through nightmares, his arms solid and safe around her trembling form. He tried so hard to understand her, even when her emotions made no logical sense to his methodical mind.

Thor's deep voice broke through her spiral of self-recrimination. He had turned to Valkyrie, who had been silent throughout the exchange. "You should come with us," he said. "Your knowledge of Asgard would be invaluable."

But as Thor spoke, Valkyrie's entire demeanor changed. Wanda saw her jaw clench, her breathing quicken. Something dark and painful flashed across her face – a memory so potent Wanda could almost feel its edges without trying to read her.

Valkyrie pushed to her feet, her chair scraping harshly against the floor. Her voice shook with a mixture of fury and naked fear. "I'm not going back there."

The room fell silent. Her fingers curled into the tabletop, nails biting into the wood. Wanda recognized the look in her eyes – it was the same haunted expression she saw in her own mirror some mornings.

"I watched them die," Valkyrie continued, each word seeming to cost her. "Every last one of my sisters, while Odin did nothing. The throne abandoned us, left me to carry their ghosts." She locked eyes with Steve, her gaze unflinching despite the emotion rippling through her. "I'll fight at your side against Thanos. I'll bleed for your cause. But I will never set foot on Asgard again."

She took a breath, steadying herself. “That's my condition."

The silence that followed felt thick enough to touch. Wanda found herself holding her breath, feeling an unexpected kinship with this woman she barely knew. She understood what it meant to be haunted by a place, to have your past become a prison you couldn't escape.

Steve nodded slowly. "You have my word," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "No one will force you to return to Asgard."

Thor looked pained, but didn't argue.

"I want to join the Asgard mission," Gamora said suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen after Valkyrie's declaration. "I know Thanos better than anyone here. I know how he thinks, how he plans. If there's any sign of his forces near the Tesseract, I'll recognize it."

Wanda felt a flutter of relief. Having Gamora on the team seemed right—someone with firsthand knowledge of their enemy, someone who understood the stakes on a visceral level. The green-skinned woman's face was set with determination, her posture revealing nothing of the turmoil that must surely come with volunteering to face her adoptive father's forces.

"I'll go too," Natasha said, her voice cool and measured. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, elbows on the table.

Thor nodded his approval at the two women, and Wanda found herself smiling at the thought of having Natasha with them.

"Um, Mr. Rogers? Captain America, sir?" Peter Parker raised his hand tentatively, like he was still in class.

"I'd like to join too," Peter said, lowering his hand when he realized everyone was staring at him. "I mean, I've never been to space before, and Mr. Stark has been teaching me about the quantum physics behind interdimensional travel, and I think I could be really useful, especially if there's any tech we need to bypass or—"

"Kid," Tony interrupted, his voice gentler than Wanda expected. "Maybe sit this one out."

Peter's face fell, and Wanda felt a pang of sympathy. She remembered being young and desperate to prove herself, to be taken seriously.

"Actually," Thor said, surprising everyone, "the boy might be useful. His abilities are impressive, and his youth gives him perspective the rest of us lack. Besides, it's as safe as it gets, if you want him to face Thanos, he’ll have to get on some missions as well, sooner or later."

Peter beamed, straightening in his chair.

Tony opened his mouth to object, then closed it, shaking his head with a mix of resignation and pride. "Fine. But you stick close to the adults, understand? No wandering off to explore alien tech."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Stark!" Peter's enthusiasm was palpable, and Wanda couldn't help but smile.

Steve nodded, his expression thoughtful as he leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. His eyes moved deliberately from face to face around the table.

"So that settles it," he said after a moment. "The Asgard team will be Thor, Wanda, Gamora, Parker, and Natasha."

Wanda felt a flutter of nervousness mixed with determination. She glanced at Natasha, who gave her a small, reassuring nod. That steadied her.

"When do we leave?" she asked, trying to keep her voice level despite the adrenaline already coursing through her.

"Tomorrow morning," Thor replied. "The Bifrost can take us directly to Asgard's palace. If all goes well, we'll return within a day."

If all goes well. Wanda had learned long ago that things rarely did. But for once, she wasn't going to let fear hold her back.

As the meeting continued, strategies and contingencies being discussed around her, Wanda's mind was already racing ahead to Asgard – a realm of gods and magic, so far from the streets of Sokovia where she'd begun. The irony wasn't lost on her. The girl who had once volunteered for HYDRA's experiments to destroy the Avengers was now volunteering to help them save the universe.

She felt Vision's eyes on her from across the table, but she didn't look his way. His concern, his analytical assessment of her capabilities – she couldn't deal with that right now. Tomorrow she would stand on alien soil, facing a task that mattered, that made a difference. And she would do it on her own terms.

Just as the meeting was about to conclude, Tony stood, a familiar glint in his eye. "Before we pack bags for Asgard, you should see something Banner and I have been working on," he announced.

He tapped a button on his phone, and a pale blue hologram sprang into the air above the table. It was an intricate meshwork of circuits and crystal, suspended in the shape of a tiny ring with an empty slot at the top presumably for a gem to reside. Labels and energy flow diagrams flickered around it. Tony grinned like a magician revealing a final card.

“Meet ARMA,” he said. “Arc Reactor Modulation Array. Or, if you want to be boring about it, a big laser cannon that can channel the energy signature of an Infinity Stone without blowing up the person holding it. It’s a prototype with infinite potential, right now it’s a ring, but think it gun, scepter, bow, nunchukles… whatever swings your boat.”

He paced the room as he spoke, the hologram tracking with him. “Banner and I have been refining this ever since London. If we get our hands on a Stone, this device will allow one of us—preferably someone with a high tolerance for, uh, reality distortion—to wield it against Thanos. Think of it as a last-ditch failsafe.”

Wanda felt a sinking sensation, cold and sharp. She knew before Tony said it what he was about to propose.

Tony looked straight at her, no apology in his eyes. “Wanda, you’re our first choice for operator. You already have the raw output, and more importantly, you’ve survived Stone exposure before.”

The words landed like a punch. Wanda’s stomach twisted, equal parts pride and dread.

Banner stepped in, his voice gentle. “You’d be protected by the ARMA harness. In theory, anyway. But we don’t want to sugarcoat it. If it fails, you’d be facing exposure to the full energy of a Stone. We think you can handle it, but it’s—”

“Risky,” Wanda finished, her mouth dry.

She looked around the room. Vision’s face was a mask, but his hand trembled where it rested on the table. Natasha’s eyes were unreadable, but her posture had shifted—she was ready to jump in, to shield Wanda from something if she could. Cassandra’s gaze was steady, like she was measuring Wanda’s reaction, waiting to see if she would flinch.

For a moment, Wanda wanted to say no. To let someone else be the weapon. But when she tried to imagine it, all she could see was London, and the knowledge that if she hadn’t been there, more people would have died. That if she was going to be turned into a tool, maybe it was worth it if it kept anyone else from breaking.

She nodded once. “When the time comes,” she said, her voice flat and certain.

The room shifted, as if everyone else had been holding their breath, too. Tony looked satisfied, Banner looked worried, and Steve’s expression was more complicated—a mix of relief, concern, and something else Wanda didn’t have a word for.

The meeting did not dissolve quietly. The moment Wanda voiced her decision, the room seemed to catch on a current of doubt and debate, arguments swirling between the brilliance of Stark’s proposal and the blunt reality of what ARMA could do. Peter Quill immediately raised a hand, concern etched across his usually easy-going face. “So, we’re putting a super-laser backpack on someone who’s already got the firepower of an entire planet and hoping she doesn’t blow up?” he asked, aiming the question equally at Tony and at Wanda.

Tony shot him a look over his sunglasses. “That’s why we have the best pilot on the team. It’s like giving a jet to a hawk.”

“Or a bomb to a kid,” muttered Rocket, but he said it quietly enough that only Groot and Mantis heard.

Wanda watched the discussion unfold, her sense of self flickering between pride and a gnawing unease. She could feel the edge of every gaze in the room, measuring her, judging her, not as Wanda Maximoff but as the Scarlet Witch—the one who could bend reality if she lost control. Even when she was wanted, it was only for what she could do, never who she was.

Steve brought the group back to focus with a single word: “Enough.”

“We run this like any op,” he said. “Nobody goes in without a backup. Nobody pulls the trigger unless there’s no other option. We get the Tesseract, we get out. Team Earth, you cover us and keep the Stones here safe. Strange, you’re in command until Sam and I get back.”

When the meeting finally ended, Wanda stood quickly, almost knocking her chair over. Vision was at her side in an instant.

“You don’t have to do this,” he murmured, his voice soft and close.

Wanda looked at him, really looked, and for a second she saw the worry and love there. But she also saw the calculation, the prediction of loss. And again, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was right to be afraid.

She put her hand on his. “I do,” she said. “I really do.”

He didn’t argue, just squeezed her hand a little tighter.

As they filed out into the corridor, Wanda glanced over her shoulder. She caught Natasha’s eye, and saw the same mixture of pride and fear she felt in her own chest.

She was nobody’s weapon, and everybody’s hope. Maybe, just maybe, that was enough.

The team split, some dispersing to the labs for prep, others heading to the bunks or the gym to burn off adrenaline. Wanda found herself drifting through the corridor, not entirely sure where she was headed. The compound was a labyrinth, and her thoughts ran even more tangled. Was she brave, or reckless? Was she doing this to save the world, or just to prove she could—prove to Vision, to the team, to herself, that she was more than the sum of her mistakes?

She heard footsteps behind her, measured and light. Cassandra.

“Hey,” Cassandra said, coming up even with her. The woman moved with an economy that made every gesture count, so when she glanced sideways at Wanda, it wasn’t casual.

“You good?” It was a simple question, but it carried more weight than most people’s entire sentences.

Wanda considered lying, but let the truth out instead. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I said yes, so I have to be.”

Cassandra nodded, her lips twitching in the barest smile. “You don’t have to. Stark can be persuasive, but this doesn’t mean you have to be a chess piece.”

Wanda almost laughed at that—almost. Instead, she looked at Cassandra, really looked, and saw not contempt, but the glint of something else. Concern. Understanding. Maybe even respect.

They turned the corner and found Natasha leaning against a doorframe, arms crossed. “You two look like you’ve just robbed a bank,” she said.

“Or volunteered to be a human nuclear reactor,” Wanda replied, deadpan.

Natasha gave a low chuckle. “I heard. And actually, heard both of you as well and I have to say. Cass’s right. You can step back if you want, one of us will take your place. I refuse to belive you’re the only one in that room that can safely control a stone beside Vision and Strange.”

Wanda squared her shoulders. The irritation she’d felt at being treated like a tool was still there, but now it was alloyed with something hotter. Resolve.

She stopped, faced both women, and said, “No. I’m in.” The words were out before she realized how much she meant them. “It’s what I have to do, I know it. Both for me and the team.”

Cassandra grinned, just a little. “That’s the spirit.”

Natasha’s lips quirked in a rare, genuine smile. “We’ll always be here to back you up, no matter what.”

They stood there for a moment, a little awkward, but not at all alone. Wanda realized then that the irritation didn’t matter—what mattered was the choice. And this was hers.

She nodded once, and together the three of them moved on down the hall, step for step, heading for whatever came next.

Chapter Text

Natasha felt her molecules reassemble in a shower of rainbow light as the Bifrost deposited them onto a crystal bridge that glittered with impossible colors. Her stomach lurched—not from nausea, but from the sudden absence of it. She'd expected interdimensional travel to feel like a violent roller coaster, but instead, it was like stepping through a door and finding yourself a universe away. She steadied herself with the practiced calm of someone who'd jumped out of helicarriers and lived to tell about it, her eyes already scanning their surroundings with professional efficiency. The view that greeted her was breathtaking, but she didn't let herself linger on it. Spies didn't gawk at pretty scenery, no matter how alien.

"Welcome to Asgard," Thor announced, his voice carrying a proud edge that didn't quite mask his underlying tension.

Natasha glanced at her teammates. Peter was practically vibrating with excitement, his head swiveling so quickly she half-expected it to unscrew from his neck. Gamora stood with the practiced stillness of a predator in unfamiliar territory, her hand never straying far from her weapon. And Wanda— Wanda had gone rigid. Her fingers twitched at her sides, scarlet energy flickering between them like static electricity jumping between conductors.

"Something wrong?" Natasha asked, keeping her voice low as Thor led them forward.

"This place..." Wanda's accent thickened, as it always did when she was unsettled. "The magic feels wrong. Like..." She frowned, searching for words. "Like someone singing off-key."

Natasha filed that away. She'd learned to trust Wanda's instincts about these things, even if she couldn't sense them herself. What she could sense, however, were the guards.

Too few, first of all. A realm of this importance should be crawling with security. The ones she did spot moved with a casual lack of urgency that made her jaw tighten. Their stances were wrong—weight unevenly distributed, weapons held for show rather than function. Decorative, not defensive.

"Stay close," she murmured to Wanda as they passed through an archway of gold and into a plaza teeming with Asgardians.

The citizens were dressed in their finest, like they were attending a perpetual festival. Music spilled from open windows, and the smell of roasting meat and sweet wine hung in the air. Nobody seemed to be working. Nobody seemed concerned about anything at all.

"Weird vacation spot," Natasha commented, just loudly enough for Thor to hear.

He didn't respond, but his knuckles whitened around the handle of Mjölnir. Whatever was happening here, he'd noticed it too.

"I thought Asgard was a warrior culture," Wanda whispered, her shoulder brushing Natasha's as they navigated the crowd. "This looks more like—"

"A distraction," Natasha finished. "Or a cover."

The palace loomed ahead, its golden towers knifing up into the heavens with such impossible height and symmetry that Natasha almost missed the subtle wrongness. Waterfalls tumbled from lips of polished stone into a star-lit abyss, their roar muffled by the thick hush that clung to the air. As Thor led the team up the grand staircase, Natasha’s eyes darted over every suspicious detail. She catalogued each cluster of guards—how they lounged against pillars with their helmets askew, how their armor shone more with polish than with practical use. At every major entryway, she counted precisely two sentries, and every time, one of them looked like they'd barely survived a keg stand the night before. She’d seen more intimidating security at junior proms.

She kept her pace measured, her steps in easy sync with Wanda and Gamora, while Peter shuffled alongside, his feet barely touching the ground in his barely-contained excitement. "Look at that! Is that a real rainbow bridge?" he whispered. Thor shot him a look that said yes, of course, but also, please be quiet. Natasha caught Wanda’s nervous glance; the witch was reading the air, and from the way her lips pressed together, she didn’t like what she found.

“You picking up anything?” Natasha asked under her breath, projecting nothing but bored detachment.

Wanda nodded, jaw tight. “It’s like... static. Or feedback. Magic everywhere, but muddied.”

“Keep your eyes open,” Natasha replied. She trusted Wanda’s instincts about the invisible currents. Natasha’s job was the visible ones: the way the crowd parted, the way eyes lingered too long, the hidden hands behind ceremonial swords. She watched Thor’s knuckles go pale around Mjolnir, and she made a note to stay out of the blast radius.

At the top of the stairs, twin guards in ceremonial plate made a show of mustering to attention, but the effect was ruined by their sleepy posture and the obvious stains on their tabards.

“Your Highness,” one drawled, giving Thor a bow that would’ve earned a boot to the ribs in any decent military. “The Allfather awaits.”

Thor nodded curtly and pressed forward. Natasha trailed, letting her gaze flicker behind them to clock the reaction. Nobody followed. Nobody even pretended to escort them. If this was a trap, it was a lazy one.

The interior halls dwarfed even the most decadent palaces she’d infiltrated. Arched ceilings soared above rivers of inlaid marble, every surface gleaming, every corridor so wide you could drive a Quinjet through it. Floating orbs of light hovered in the corners, casting an amber glow that softened the edges of the grandeur. At regular intervals, windows opened to impossible vistas—nebulae swirling just beyond reach, or entire gardens suspended over the void.

Natasha made a mental map of every turn. She kept a tally of exits, stairwells, and blind spots. Every so often, her trained eye caught something small and strange: a servant whose eyes flickered with dread before she vanished down a side hall; a nobleman who clutched his goblet too tightly and stared at the floor as the Avengers passed. It didn’t take a genius to read the collective mood: Asgard was terrified, but not of any external threat. This was the fear you saw in people too aware of the axe hanging overhead.

They wound through a maze of gilded passageways until Thor led them to a set of towering double doors, flanked by yet another pair of indifferent guards. There was a low, pulsing energy behind the doors, something that prickled at Natasha’s skin as they approached.

“The throne room is just ahead,” Thor said, barely above a whisper, but his voice was pure thunder. “Prepare yourselves. Something is very wrong here.”

Natasha drew a slow breath and checked her escape routes: one main door, two side passages behind the dais, high windows. All she needed.

As the doors creaked open, a tide of sound crashed over them: laughter, music, and the faint, cloying odor of sweet wine gone to vinegar. The throne room was packed. Courtiers draped themselves over velvet cushions and ornate benches, many of them in various states of drunkenness. Others played at games of chance, their dice clattering against golden plates. Along the walls, clusters of servants circulated, offering trays heaped with steaming meats and honeyed fruits. No one gave the Avengers more than a passing glance.

In the center of the room, a raised stage had been assembled. On it, a troupe of actors in garish costumes performed to half-interested applause. Natasha recognized the basic structure of the scene: a glorious king in shining armor, a proud son, and a slinking villain painted in green and black. The lines were overblown, the acting terrible, the story familiar enough to make Natasha’s teeth ache.

“Behold!” bellowed the actor playing Odin, his eyepatch held on with a strip of medical tape, “I am Odin, Allfather, and I bear witness to the sacrifice of my son, Loki!”

Natasha’s gaze snapped to the throne. There, at the far end of the hall, the supposed Allfather sprawled across the seat of power. He looked nothing like the stoic, regal figure she’d seen in SHIELD files. This “Odin” barely feigned attention to the play, popping grapes into his mouth and grinning like a cat full of canary. His posture was all wrong, too—one leg thrown over the armrest, head cocked in endless amusement. It was a posture of a man who expected no consequences, ever. Natasha’s gut went cold.

She risked a glance at her teammates. Thor’s face was a rictus of barely-contained rage; Peter looked like he expected someone to shout "Surprise!" at any moment; Gamora’s expression had gone still and dangerous as a knife in water; Wanda, for her part, had pressed herself subtly behind Natasha, eyes darting, red sparks flickering at her fingertips.

The play reached a crescendo. The Loki stand-in wailed a speech about the agony of heroism, then staggered theatrically into the arms of “Thor,” who wept crocodile tears over his brother’s noble demise. The audience cheered and raised their goblets. The real Thor had stopped

moving entirely.

Natasha watched the “Odin” on the throne. His eye (was it really just the one?) darted to Thor, then Gamora, then briefly to Natasha herself before darting away again. She recognized that look. It was the look of a mark who’d finally noticed the con had gone too long, and the real enforcers had just walked in the door.

She leaned in slightly to Wanda. “He’s not Odin.”

Wanda didn’t even blink. “No, but he’s very, very dangerous.”

The play shuddered to a stop, the actors bowing with self-indulgent flourishes. The audience erupted into applause, and the servants rushed in to replenish the wine. Natasha nodded to Gamora, who began moving the long way around the edge of the crowd, eyes fixed on the dais. Peter, sensing the tension, lowered his center of gravity and made himself small.

Then Thor moved. It was only two steps, but the entire room felt it. The crowd quieted in ripples, curiosity giving way to unease. Thor’s voice rang out clean and sharp, slicing the noise in half.

“Father,” he called, and the word was as much an accusation as it was a greeting.

On the throne, “Odin” startled, his hand frozen mid-grape. He stared at Thor, then at the team behind him. The actor’s mask slipped, and for a

heartbeat Natasha saw the calculation in his expression. She’d seen that face in interrogation rooms, in the moments before the suspect bolted for the window.

“Thor!” he exclaimed, the cheer in his voice brittle as spun sugar. “My son! What a—what an unexpected pleasure!”

Thor advanced, each step resounding through the marble. “You seem surprised to see me, Father. Surely your security told you I was coming.”

The “Allfather” laughed, but the sound didn’t touch his eyes. He sat up, rearranging himself into a pose that suggested gravity and wisdom, but his fingers tapped nervously on the armrest. “Of course, of course. I was merely... enjoying the festivities. The people need hope, after recent events.”

Natasha watched him try to regain control, to reassert dominance over the room. He gestured to the actors. “A little theatrical indulgence—helps morale, don’t you think?”

But Thor wasn’t buying it, and neither was anyone else in the room. The crowd had stilled, uncertainty flickering across their faces. Even the guards, useless though they were, had begun to edge closer to the walls.

Thor stopped at the foot of the dais, his voice low and dangerous. “Enough of this. The real Odin would not debase himself, or his people, with such a spectacle. Who are you?”

The “Odin” wavered just for a second, then doubled down with a deep, fake laugh. “Ah, my son, you always did have a sense of humor. Now come, join me! Drink, celebrate! None of this grim business, not today.”

He never saw Thor’s fist coming. Thor’s arm shot out and connected with the intruder’s jaw with the force of a wrecking ball. The “Odin” tumbled from the throne, landing hard on the pavement.

The illusion shattered in a flash of green light, revealing a lean figure in dark leather and gleaming gold.

The crowd gasped in shock. Guards fumbled for weapons they clearly hadn't expected to use. The actors froze mid-scene, mouths agape.

"Loki," Thor snarled, looming over his brother.

Natasha's hand went to her weapon instinctively. The last time she'd seen Loki, he'd been orchestrating an alien invasion of New York. The memory of those days—the helicarrier attack, Clint's blank eyes, the devastation raining from the sky—surged fresh in her mind.

Loki raised his hands in mock surrender, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Now, brother, is that any way to greet family?"

Thor grabbed him by the throat and hauled him to his feet. "Where is Father? What have you done with him?"

Something flickered across Loki's face then—a micro-expression so brief Natasha nearly missed it. Worry. Genuine concern. It vanished beneath his practiced smirk almost instantly, but she'd caught it.

"He was already dying," Loki said, his voice strained by Thor's grip. "I merely... gave the man some peace of mind. Someone his age shouldn’t worry about decrees and people’s complaints.”

Thor's fingers tightened. "Where. Is. He."

Loki's eyes darted to the side, and for the first time, he seemed to really notice the rest of their team. His gaze lingered on Natasha, recognition sparking there. "I placed him in a retirement home on Earth," he admitted. "Quite comfortable, really. He might even thank me."

"You abandoned our father?" Thor's voice broke with fury.

"Not abandoned, just offered him a nice vacation from all this hustle," Loki said with a dismissive flick of his wrist toward the opulent hall, his words rushing out before Thor could haul him upright again.

Thor's grip tightened, his knuckles whitening as he lifted Loki higher. "You will take us to him. Now."

Loki's face contorted, somewhere between a grimace and his perpetual smirk. "I don't see why I should—"

"This isn't a request." Thor's voice dropped dangerously low. The air around them crackled with static electricity, and Natasha felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. The courtiers had begun a hasty retreat, abandoning their goblets and games as they pressed toward the exits.

Loki's eyes darted between Thor and the team behind him. Natasha kept her expression carefully neutral, but she positioned herself to block any potential escape route. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gamora do the same on the opposite side.

"Fine." Loki's shoulders sagged slightly. "I'll take you to the old man."

Thor released him with a shove that sent Loki stumbling back against the throne. "If he's harmed—"

"Yes, yes, you'll do something terribly violent. I understand." Loki straightened his collar with exaggerated dignity.

Thor's response was immediate. He raised Mjolnir, the hammer humming with power.

Natasha barely had time to exchange a glance with Wanda before Thor grabbed Loki by the scruff of his neck and pulled him close. "Everyone, gather around."

"Wait, what are you—" Peter began, but Gamora yanked him into the circle forming around Thor.

Natasha moved quickly, positioning herself between Wanda and Loki. She didn't trust the trickster god, not when Wanda was still visibly unsettled by the magical distortions she'd sensed.

"Hold tight," Thor commanded, raising Mjolnir skyward.

The hammer began to spin, faster and faster, pulling energy from the air itself. Light erupted from its surface, blinding and brilliant. The floor beneath them vibrated, then seemed to dissolve entirely.

Natasha's stomach lurched as reality warped around them. Unlike the smooth transition of their arrival, this felt raw and violent—like being ripped through the fabric of space rather than guided through it. Colors streaked past her vision, impossible sounds filled her ears, and her body felt simultaneously weightless and crushed.

Then, with jarring suddenness, solid ground slammed into her feet.

The air smelled of concrete dust and diesel fumes. Natasha surveyed the construction site with practiced efficiency, taking in the bulldozers, the half-demolished walls, and the workers in hard hats who'd stopped to stare at the oddly-dressed group that had appeared in their midst. Of all the places she'd expected Loki's to take them, a demolition zone in New York hadn't been high on the list. Beside her, Peter coughed, waving away particles of dust that danced in the afternoon sunlight. "Um, guys? I don't think this is a retirement home anymore."

"Your gift for observation is astounding," Loki drawled, but Natasha caught the flicker of genuine surprise that crossed his face before he could mask it.

Thor stood frozen, his gaze sweeping across the rubble where Shady Acres had once stood. For a moment, he looked lost—a god rendered helpless by something as mundane as real estate development. Then his expression hardened.

Natasha shifted her weight, sensing what was coming. A quick glance at Wanda showed the younger woman had picked up on it too; scarlet energy already danced between her fingertips, ready but contained.

Thor moved so fast even Natasha's trained reflexes barely registered it. One moment he was standing beside them; the next, he had Loki pinned against a partially demolished brick wall, his hand around his brother's throat.

"Is this another trick?" Thor's voice broke with raw desperation. "Another lie?" His fingers tightened, the veins in his forearm standing out like ropes.

Loki didn't look frightened—just irritated. He pushed against Thor's grip with surprising strength, breaking free enough to speak. "If I wanted to trick you, I'd have invented a more convincing one than this." He gestured at the construction site with obvious disdain. "This is as much a surprise to me as it is to you."

Natasha moved closer to Wanda, positioning herself where she could monitor both the brothers and the increasingly curious construction workers. "Believing Loki seems like a risky strategy," she murmured.

Wanda nodded, her eyes never leaving the Asgardians. "But what choice do we have?"

None, Natasha knew.

"I can trace him," Loki said, pushing Thor's hands away with a sharp movement. "My magic leaves a signature. I can follow it."

Thor stepped back, his fists clenched at his sides. "Then do it."

Loki straightened his jacket with exaggerated dignity, then raised his hands. His fingers began to weave complex patterns in the air, leaving trails of green-gold light that hung suspended like glowing smoke.

"What's he doing?" Peter whispered, edging closer to Natasha.

"Seidr," Thor answered before Natasha could. His eyes were fixed on Loki's movements, head tilted slightly as if lost in some distant memory. "It's Odin’s own magic, he’s the one who taught Loki to perform this."

In full Loki’s fashion, thought Natasha, using the magic of a man he tried to usurp and exile.

Meanwhile she noticed Wanda’s face, the intensity with whom she seemed engulfed by the scene. After London, Wanda had been pushing herself, exploring the limits of her abilities. Watching Loki's magic seemed to fascinate her on a technical level—like a martial artist observing a different fighting style.

Loki's fingers moved faster, the green-gold light coalescing into a complex geometric pattern that pulsed with energy. His face was a mask of concentration, sweat beading on his brow despite the cool air.

"There," he said suddenly, his voice tight with effort. "I've found him."

With a sharp gesture, he tore open the fabric of reality. A portal shimmered into existence before them—not the neat, golden rings of Strange's portals, but something wilder, its edges rippling like water disturbed by a stone. Through it, Natasha glimpsed a windswept cliff, mist curling at its edges.

"Norway," Loki said, answering the unasked question. "He's drawn to the old places."

Thor moved toward the portal immediately, but Gamora stepped in front of him, hand raised. "It could be a trap," she said, her voice flat with suspicion.

"It's not," Loki replied, sounding genuinely offended. "Believe it or not, I don't actually want our father to die alone on some miserable rock."

"We go together," Thor decided. "And you," he jabbed a finger at Loki, "stay where I can see you."

One by one, they stepped through the portal. Natasha went last, her hand hovering near her weapon as she crossed the threshold. The sensation was disorienting—like stepping from a sauna into a freezer. New York's humid warmth gave way to a biting Nordic wind that carried the scent of salt and ancient stone.

The cliff stretched before them, dropping away to a vast fjord that seemed to reach the horizon. The water below was steel-gray, churning with restless energy. Above them, clouds raced across a sky the color of old pewter, and the wind carried the bite of approaching winter.

And there, at the very edge of the cliff, sat a figure in simple robes.

Natasha's breath caught. Even from a distance, she could see the frailty in the man's posture—the way his shoulders curved inward, the careful stillness of someone whose body had begun to betray him. This wasn't the imposing Allfather she'd read about in SHIELD files. This was an old man, alone with the wind and the sea.

Thor broke into a run, his boots slipping on the wet stone as he crossed the uneven ground. "Father!"

The figure turned at the sound, and Natasha saw Odin's face for the first time. The eyepatch was there, as expected, but everything else spoke of profound weariness. Deep lines mapped his features like fault lines in weathered stone, and his remaining eye held a distant quality, as if he was seeing something beyond the physical world.

"My son," Odin said, his voice carrying despite its softness. "You found me."

Thor dropped to his knees beside his father, his hands hovering uncertainly as if afraid his touch might cause the old god to crumble. "What have you done to yourself? Why are you here?"

Natasha hung back with the others, giving the family their moment while her eyes swept the clifftop for threats. The place felt exposed, vulnerable—no cover, no escape routes except the drop into the fjord. Every instinct screamed that they were too visible, too unprotected.

"I came home," Odin said simply. His gaze found Loki, who stood apart from the group, his expression unreadable. "Hello, my son."

Loki flinched as if struck. "Father, I—"

"I know what you did." Odin's voice held no anger, only a bone-deep exhaustion. "And I know why. The burden of the throne... it was never meant for you. I should have seen that sooner."

Natasha watched Loki's carefully constructed mask slip. For just a moment, he looked like what he was—a younger brother desperate for approval he'd never quite received.

Thor's voice cracked. "We can fix this. We can take you back to Asgard, to the healing chambers—"

Odin shook his head, the motion slow and final. "My time is ending, Thor. I can feel it, like a tide pulling me out to sea." He reached up with trembling fingers to touch his son's face. "But there are things you must know. Dangers you'll face."

The wind picked up, whipping Natasha's hair across her face. She pushed it back, her attention split between the conversation and the growing sense that something was wrong. Not with Odin—his approaching death felt natural, inevitable. But there was something else, a pressure building in the air like the moments before a thunderstorm.

"Ragnarok is coming," Odin continued, his voice growing weaker. "The twilight of the gods. And she will return."

"She?" Thor leaned closer, his brow furrowed.

Odin's eye found his eldest son's face, and Natasha saw fear there—real, bone-deep terror. "Your sister. Hela, Goddess of Death. My firstborn."

Natasha felt her blood chill. A sister. Thor had never mentioned a sister.

"I don't understand," Thor said, his voice barely audible over the wind.

"I had to stop her," Odin whispered, each word seeming to cost him. "Her ambitions, her hunger for conquest—she would have drowned the Nine Realms in blood. So I bound her, imprisoned her. But my death will break those bonds."

Loki stepped forward, his face pale. "Father, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that everything I taught you about honor, about being a worthy king—you'll need it all. Both of you." Odin's breathing had become labored, his chest rising and falling with visible effort. "She draws her power from Asgard itself. As long as she's there, she grows stronger."

Thor grabbed his father's hands. "Then we'll face her together. The three of us."

Odin smiled, the expression both proud and heartbreakingly sad. "My brave son. Always ready to charge into battle." He looked at Loki, then back to Thor. "But this isn't a fight you can win with strength alone. You must be clever. You must be willing to sacrifice everything."

The old god's gaze drifted to Natasha and the others, acknowledging their presence for the first time. "You've brought friends."

"They're here to help," Thor said quickly. "We need the Tesseract, Father. There's a threat coming—"

"Thanos." Odin nodded slowly. "I know. The Tesseract is yours, my son. It always was. But beware—the power you seek may come at a price you're not prepared to pay."

Natasha watched the light in Odin's remaining eye begin to dim. She'd seen enough death to recognize the signs—the shallow breathing, the way his body seemed to be withdrawing from itself. Whatever time they had left, it was measured in minutes.

"Remember this place," Odin said, his voice barely a whisper now. "Remember it… Make it… Your home." His form began to shimmer, like heat rising from summer pavement. "I love you, my sons."

Thor's anguish was raw, primal. "Father, don't go. Please."

But Odin was already dissolving, his body breaking apart into motes of golden light that scattered on the wind like dandelion seeds. The light swirled around them for a moment, warm and gentle, before fading into the gray afternoon.

The silence that followed was absolute except for the crash of waves far below and Thor's ragged breathing.

Then the sky began to change.

Natasha looked up, her heart rate spiking as dark clouds boiled across the heavens with unnatural speed. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in seconds, and the wind shifted, carrying with it the scent of smoke and something else—something that made her skin crawl.

"What's happening?" Peter asked, his voice tight with fear.

The clouds were spinning now, forming a vortex directly above them. Lightning flickered in their depths, but it wasn't the clean white-blue of natural electricity. This light was sickly green, pulsing with malevolent energy.

"She's coming," Loki breathed, his face white as bone.

The vortex tore open with a sound like reality screaming. Through the gap, Natasha glimpsed something that made her mind recoil—a realm of jagged black stone and rivers of green fire, where the very air seemed to writhe with malice.

And then she stepped through.

Hela descended slowly, as if the laws of physics were suggestions she could choose to ignore. She was tall, imposing, dressed in form-fitting black armor that seemed to drink in the light around it. Her dark hair flowed behind her like liquid shadow, and atop her head sat a crown of curved spikes that looked sharp enough to cut the sky itself.

But it was her eyes that made Natasha's blood freeze. They held the cold certainty of entropy, the patient hunger of something that had watched civilizations rise and fall like waves on a beach.

"Hello, brothers," Hela said, her voice carrying the authority of absolute power. "Did you miss me?"

Natasha's threat assessment took microseconds. Goddess of Death wasn't just a title—it was a promise written in every line of Hela's body. The woman's posture spoke of absolute confidence, the kind that came from centuries of never losing a fight. Natasha had faced enhanced individuals before, had traded blows with aliens and robots, but something about Hela made her skin crawl in a way that even the Chitauri hadn't managed. This wasn't just power. This was primordial, patient malice.

"You must be Hela," Thor said, his voice steadier than Natasha would have expected after watching his father dissolve into golden light. She admired his composure, even as she calculated their odds of survival. Not good.

Hela's smile was a knife's edge. "You've heard of me? I'm flattered." Her gaze swept over them all, dismissive as a queen regarding insects. "Though I don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting your... companions."

Natasha saw Gamora move first, the assassin's body coiling like a spring before she lunged forward. Smart—attacking before Hela could fully assess their capabilities. Natasha followed suit instantly, drawing her pistols and firing in a precise pattern that would have dropped any ordinary target. Behind her, Peter's web-shooters made their distinctive thwip-thwip, launching restraints toward Hela's legs.

Hela didn't flinch. Didn't even shift her weight. She raised one hand with languid grace, palm out, and every attack simply... died. The bullets vaporized inches from her skin. Gamora's sword stroke met an invisible barrier that rang like a gong. Peter's webs withered into ash before they could reach her.

"Really?" Hela sighed, looking genuinely disappointed. "Is this the best Asgard's prince can muster for his defense? Mortals and a green girl?"

Natasha had already begun her tactical retreat, mind racing through options. Their weapons were useless. Physical combat was clearly suicide. She caught Wanda's eye across the clifftop, saw the witch's hands trembling with scarlet energy, and gave the slightest shake of her head. Not yet. Don't show all your cards at once.

Thor stepped forward, his shoulders set in a line of raw determination. Mjolnir hung at his side, crackling with suppressed power.

"Stay back! This is a family matter," he declared, his voice carrying across the cliff like distant thunder. Then he turned to Hela, "These people are under my protection."

Loki, who had been silent until now, stepped back. Smart man. Natasha noticed the subtle shift in his stance—the way he'd positioned himself just far enough from Thor to avoid becoming collateral damage, but close enough to retain plausible loyalty.

"Thor," she started to warn, but it was too late.

Thor hurled Mjolnir with all his might, his roar of defiance drowning out the wind. The hammer streaked through the air like a comet, lightning crackling around its head in a corona of white-blue energy. Natasha had seen that hammer flatten mountains, had watched it smash through alien armor like tissue paper. Thor's face showed absolute certainty—he knew what his weapon could do.

Hela caught it with one hand.

The world seemed to stop. The hammer, mid-flight, halted as if it had struck a wall of concrete. Hela's arm didn't even shake from the impact. She simply held it there, fingers closed around the supposedly immovable, supposedly unstoppable weapon, and smiled.

"No," Thor breathed, the word barely audible.

Natasha's mind refused to accept what her eyes were seeing. Mjolnir couldn't be held by anyone except Thor—she'd watched them all try at parties, had seen even Steve Rogers barely budge it. The hammer chose its wielder based on worthiness, and this woman—this death goddess with eyes like black holes—shouldn't qualify by any definition.

Hela examined the hammer like a curious artifact. "Interesting," she murmured. "Father's little trick. I remember when he had this made." Her eyes flicked to Thor, and the contempt in them could have frozen the sun. "But you see, the thing about worthiness..." She tightened her grip. "Is that it's defined by the victors."

Natasha saw what was coming a split second before it happened. She opened her mouth to shout a warning, but her voice died in her throat as Hela's fingers clenched.

Mjolnir—the indestructible weapon, the symbol of Thor's power, the legacy of Asgard itself—cracked. The sound was deafening, a thunderclap so violent it shook the ground beneath their feet. Fracture lines spiderwebbed across the hammer's surface, glowing with otherworldly light.

"That's not possible," Peter whispered beside her.

Then Hela squeezed.

Mjolnir shattered. Exploded. Disintegrated.

The fragments fell like deadly rain, smoking pieces of metal and wood clattering across the stone. A shockwave of power rolled out from the point of destruction, knocking them all back a step. The smell of ozone and something older—something like grave dirt—filled the air.

Thor fell to his knees. The sight shook Natasha more than the destruction of the hammer itself. In all the time she'd known him, through alien invasions and robot uprisings, she'd never seen Thor look defeated. Afraid, yes. Angry, certainly. But never broken. Now, watching the pieces of his hammer scatter across the clifftop, his face was a mask of pure disbelief and horror.

Hela looked bored. She dusted off her hands as if she'd done nothing more strenuous than crush a paper cup.

"Kneel before your queen," she said.

Natasha's hand moved to her belt, fingers brushing the widow’s bite concealed there. Not that her backup would help against someone who could destroy Mjolnir with her bare hands. She caught Gamora's eye, and saw the same cold calculation there. They were outmatched. Catastrophically so.

"You're not my queen," Thor growled, struggling back to his feet. His hands were empty now, but electricity still danced along his fingertips.

Hela sighed. "And here I thought at least some of Father's wisdom might have rubbed off on you." With a twist of her wrist, black blades materialized in her hands, grown from nothing, their edges gleaming with unnatural sharpness. "Fine. Let's play."

Natasha moved instinctively, positioning herself between Hela and Wanda. If they couldn't win this fight—and it was increasingly clear they couldn't— then she would make damn sure she was the first to fall before anyone else did. Wanda's hand touched her shoulder, a brief gesture of understanding. The witch's power might be their only chance, but Natasha could sense her hesitation. Against this level of threat, anything less than full unleashing would be suicide.

"Wanda," she murmured, "if this goes south, don't hold back. Not even a little."

Wanda nodded, her eyes never leaving Hela. "I won't."

Hela stalked toward Thor, blades at the ready. "I've waited thousands of years for this reunion. You know, little brother, I expected more of a challenge." Her gaze flicked to Loki, who had been inching toward the edge of the cliff. "From both of you."

Loki froze, offering a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I was merely getting a better angle to appreciate your return, sister."

Hela laughed, the sound sharp enough to draw blood. "The trickster. Father always did have a soft spot for strays." She looked back at Thor. "What happens next is simple. I'll kill you. I'll kill your friends. And then I'll return to Asgard to reclaim my throne."

She raised her blades, and Natasha felt time slow down. She'd been in enough fights to recognize the moment before everything went to hell. This was that moment, stretched thin as a wire.

They were about to die on this cliff, unless someone did something very clever, very quickly.

Thor's voice cut through the moment like a desperate prayer. "Heimdall!" he roared, face lifted to the roiling sky. "Open the Bifrost!" Natasha recognized the raw panic in his tone—she'd heard it only in men who knew they were about to die. Her muscles tensed, ready to sprint though there was nowhere to run on this exposed cliff. As Hela advanced with her obsidian blades, Natasha calculated their options: zero. Then a peculiar vibration thrummed through the air, like the world's largest tuning fork had been struck.

The sky split open in a torrent of prismatic light.

Natasha had no time to prepare as the Bifrost slammed down around them with the force of a freight train. The energy engulfed her, yanked her upward with such violence that her teeth rattled. Her body felt simultaneously weightless and crushed, her organs seeming to float while her skin burned with the pressure of acceleration. Colors she had no names for streaked past her vision, each one leaving ghost impressions on her retinas. The sound was overwhelming—not the controlled hum of their earlier journey to Asgard, but a screaming, tearing noise that felt like it was coming from inside her skull.

Through the chaos, she managed to locate the others—Peter tumbling head over heels, his limbs flailing as he tried to find something solid to cling to; Gamora somehow maintaining a fighter's posture even in this impossible space; Wanda's hair a scarlet banner against the rainbow light, her hands weaving protective shields that flickered and died in the stream's current; Thor at the head of their group, his face a mask of grim determination.

Then she saw her.

Hela burst into the Bifrost behind them, her body elongating unnaturally as she propelled herself through the energy stream. Her limbs stretched like liquid shadow, reaching, grasping. Her face was transformed by the wild joy of the hunt, mouth open in a silent laugh that Natasha could somehow hear anyway, a sound like icicles breaking. The goddess moved through the Bifrost not like a passenger but like a predator in her natural element, banking and weaving with impossible grace.

"She's coming!" Natasha tried to shout, but the words were torn from her mouth, scattered into the void. She couldn't move, couldn't aim, couldn't reach her weapons. They were all helpless—mice in a glass tube, waiting for the snake to strike.

Hela closed the distance with terrifying speed. Her arms extended like spears of living darkness, her fingers elongating into talons that sliced through the very fabric of the Bifrost. She passed Natasha with barely a glance, her target already chosen.

Wanda.

Natasha tried to warn her, tried to reach for her, but the Bifrost held her immobile. She watched, helpless, as Hela's shadow-stretched hand closed around Wanda's ankle. The witch's eyes widened in shock, her mouth opening in a scream that Natasha couldn't hear but felt in her bones. Scarlet energy exploded outward, a desperate defense that shattered against Hela's grip like glass against stone.

Then it happened—a blur of black and scarlet. Hela twisted her arm in a single, vicious motion, and Wanda was gone. Torn from the stream. Ejected into the void between realms. One moment she was there, fighting with everything she had; the next, she was simply... absent. A Wanda-shaped hole in the universe.

Natasha's mind tried to rationalize what had happened—one down, an important asset gone. The Scarlet Witch represented a significant tactical advantage, now lost. These were the thoughts that should have filled her head, professional assessments born from years of training and emotional distance.

Instead, a cold spike of something else, something sharp and personal, shot through her. It was the same gut-wrenching lurch she had felt when Clint was compromised, the same hollow ache when Banner had disappeared into the atmosphere. It was the feeling of watching family fall.

The thought surprised her, the depth of it. When had the woman burrowed so deep under her armor?

Her memories flashed in rapid succession: Wanda's face, blank with grief after Pietro; her determined stance in the training room; how she sometimes hummed old Sokovian folk songs when she thought no one could hear. The quiet conversations they'd shared on late nights when neither could sleep, the unspoken understanding between two women who had been weaponized by men with agendas. The way Wanda looked to her, not for approval, but for the quiet affirmation that she wasn't alone.

And was family really the word for it?

The realization shook Natasha more than the violent turbulence of the Bifrost. This wasn't just professional concern. This wasn't just the camaraderie of teammates. This was that rare, terrifying thing she had spent most of her life avoiding—genuine attachment. Care, of a kind she'd never expected to feel for the strange, powerful young woman who'd once been their enemy.

She had no time to examine the revelation. Hela was moving again, her shadow-form rippling through the stream like an eel through water. This time, she reached for Natasha.

Cold fingers closed around her wrist—not physical touch, but something deeper, like Hela was grabbing the very essence of her being. Pain exploded along Natasha's arm, a burning so intense it transcended physical sensation. She felt herself being pulled sideways, against the flow of the Bifrost, the energy tearing at her as if trying to keep her in its grasp.

Then she was falling. The rainbow light vanished, replaced by a void so absolute it seemed to have substance. The cold was immediate and overwhelming, flooding into her lungs with her first shocked breath. She tumbled through nothingness, with no sense of up or down, no wind to give her orientation, nothing solid to reach for.

Distantly, through the rapidly closing tear in reality, she glimpsed Peter and Gamora. Hela had reached them too, her shadow-arms wrapping around them like serpents. They were being pulled from the stream just as she had been, their bodies contorting with the violence of the ejection. In their final moment in the light, their hands reached for each other, stretching across the impossible distance—and missed by mere inches.

Then the tear sealed, and Natasha was alone in the dark.

She tried to assess her situation, to plan, to think, but her thoughts kept slipping away like fish through her fingers. The cold was inside her now, seeping into her bones, making it impossible to focus. Was this what dying felt like? She'd come close before, but never like this—never so completely helpless, so utterly alone.

Her vision began to flicker, darkness eating at the edges of her consciousness. She tried to fight it, tried to hold on to something concrete—the mission, the team, Wanda's face as she vanished into the void.

The last thought came unbidden: I hope she's alive.

Then the darkness claimed her completely.

Hela reveled in the hunt. The mortals had been dispatched with embarrassing ease—scattered across the cosmos like leaves in a storm. Now only her brothers remained in the Bifrost stream, their faces twisted with the same fear she'd seen on countless enemies before. How fitting that Thor—Odin's golden child, the precious heir—would be the last to fall. Hela would savor this moment, this culmination of millennia of waiting, of rage nursed in the dark between stars.

She moved through the Bifrost like a shark through water, each stroke bringing her closer to her prey. The stream itself seemed to part for her, recognizing perhaps the touch of Asgard's firstborn. Ahead, Thor struggled against the current, his empty hands still reaching periodically for a hammer that no longer existed. The sight pleased her. Let him feel what it was to be stripped of power, of purpose.

"Did you really think you could escape me?" she called, her voice cutting through the roar of the Bifrost with unnatural clarity. "In my own element?"

Thor didn't waste breath on a response. Smart—not that it would save him. Behind him, Loki drifted, his face a mask of calculation. Hela recognized the look. It was the expression of someone desperately searching for leverage, for some angle to exploit. She'd worn it herself in the early years of her imprisonment, before rage had calcified into patient hatred.

"Your pet mortals are gone," she continued, stretching her arm through the stream, her fingers elongating like shadows at dusk. "I wonder where they landed? Perhaps somewhere with air to breathe. Perhaps not."

That got a reaction—a flash of raw fury across Thor's face. So he did care for the fragile creatures. Another weakness to exploit.

She was close enough now to see the pulse hammering in Thor's throat, to count the beads of sweat on his brow. Her blade manifested between her fingers, the weight of it as familiar as her own heartbeat. One thrust, that was all it would take. One blade through the heart of Odin's favorite son.

"For what it's worth," she said, drawing her arm back for the killing blow, "you never stood a chance."

She lunged forward, blade aimed at Thor's heart—and met unexpected resistance. Loki, moving with surprising speed, had shoved his way between them. His shoulder collided with Thor's chest, sending his brother tumbling backward through the Bifrost stream.

For an instant, Hela's mind refused to process what she was seeing. The trickster, the selfish one, throwing himself into the path of death? Impossible.

But there he was, Loki Laufeyson, his eyes wide with a fear that couldn't be feigned. Her blade struck home, sliding between his ribs with the perfect, satisfying resistance of flesh giving way to steel. His breath left him in a gasp, green eyes fixed on hers with something like accusation.

"How disappointing," she murmured, watching his face contort with pain. "I expected more from you."

Loki's lips moved, forming words she couldn't hear over the roar of the Bifrost. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, surprisingly red against his pale skin. For a moment—just a moment—she saw genuine concern flash across his face as he looked past her toward Thor. Not for himself, but for his brother.

How peculiar. Perhaps there was more to the trickster than she'd assumed.

With a twist of her wrist, she withdrew the blade and pushed Loki away. He tumbled out of the stream, his body disappearing into the void between worlds. One less complication.

She turned back to Thor, only to find him further away than he'd been a moment before. The Bifrost itself seemed to be altering around him, the current shifting direction. A second portal was opening directly in his path—not the steady, controlled gateway that was bringing them to Asgard, but something hastily constructed, raw at the edges.

Heimdall. It had to be.

"No!" The word tore from her throat as she lunged forward, but it was too late. Thor dove through the unstable portal just as it collapsed behind him, leaving nothing but empty space where he had been.

Fury rose in her like a tide, cold and implacable. She'd had him. She'd been seconds away from eliminating the last real threat to her rule.

No matter. She knew where he was going. Where all roads in the Nine Realms eventually led.

Home.

The Bifrost carried her onward, its rainbow light reflecting off the edges of her armor, turning her into a creature of living shadow and gleaming death. She could feel Asgard pulling her forward, calling to her across the vastness of space. The realm that was hers by right, by blood, by the simple, incontrovertible fact of her birthright.

When she emerged at the Asgardian end of the Bifrost, it was with the controlled grace of a queen returning to her throne. The observatory spread around her, its golden dome catching the light of distant stars. The mechanism at the center still turned, Heimdall's sword embedded in its heart.

And there he stood. Heimdall himself, the ever-watchful guardian, his amber eyes fixed on her with a recognition that bordered on dread. His sword was drawn, his stance that of a man prepared to die in defense of his post.

"My lady," he said, the formal greeting at odds with the tension in his voice, "you are not welcome here."

Hela laughed, the sound echoing off the curved walls of the observatory. "Not welcome? I was born here, Guardian. I fought for this realm when you were still learning to hold a sword." She took a step forward, savoring the way he tensed in response. "I am Asgard."

"You are its past," Heimdall replied, his deep voice steady despite the fear she could smell on him. "A past Odin chose to bury."

"And yet, here I stand." She spread her arms, feeling the power of Asgard flowing into her with every breath. It was intoxicating—like stepping into sunlight after an eternity of darkness. "While Odin rots. Fitting, don't you think?"

Heimdall's grip tightened on his sword. "Thor lives. He will return."

"Let him try." Hela's lips curled into a smile that had made hardened warriors beg for mercy. "I'll be waiting."

She stepped forward again, and this time Heimdall didn't retreat. Brave, but futile. With a flick of her wrist, she conjured a blade long enough to match his sword. "You have a choice, Guardian. Kneel to your rightful queen, or die where you stand."

Heimdall's answer was a swift, arcing blow that would have decapitated a lesser opponent. Hela parried it with contemptuous ease, the impact sending sparks cascading across the observatory floor.

"Die, then," she said, and attacked.

Beyond the clash of their weapons, beyond the observatory itself, Asgard spread before her in all its golden glory. Towers that pierced the heavens, bridges that spanned impossible distances, palaces that had stood for millennia. All of it hers. All of it waiting to be reclaimed.

Asgard trembled before its new queen, the golden realm now under the shadow of death. And as her blade found its mark in Heimdall's flesh, drawing the first of what would be countless drops of blood, Hela felt something she had not experienced in eons.

Joy.

Chapter Text

There was a time, Cassandra suspected, when the Avengers Compound could have gone a week without someone breaking the glass on a panic button. But that was before London, before the news feeds began tracking missing gods and blue cubes instead of political scandals, before the war rooms filled up with the dregs of every failed superhero and every obsession they’d failed to bury.

Two days. Forty-eight hours since Thor’s team had jumped the Bifrost, less than an hour’s work by the clock. They were supposed to have signaled back within three. Standard fail-safe: if you didn’t check in, you were probably dead. By hour seven, they’d doubled the emergency frequency. By hour ten, Cassandra had known in her bones it was never going to be that simple again.

The silence from Asgard had become a chemical in the compound’s air, an invisible aerosol of dread. You could measure its concentration by the way people moved. Natasha’s absence was a second pulse, a missing heartbeat. Banner stopped shaving, Tony stopped changing clothes. Even Quill, whose emotional range normally ran from “smug” to “hungry,” had spent the night sitting on the roof, watching the stars. Vision, by contrast, had become a statue in the comm center, his back ramrod straight, eyes fixed on the deep space telemetry as if he could pull a signal from the void through sheer processing power. No one told stories about the good old days. They all acted like there’d never been good days at all.

Every corridor was a watchtower now, every hallway a perimeter. The comm center had become a triage station, its glow ceaseless, its oxygen depleted by the sweat and paranoia of two dozen sleepless staff. Cassandra had been living in a glass cube off the main command deck, subsisting on trail mix and black coffee, eyes locked to a rotating bank of monitors and classified satellite feeds. She was two days into a war she couldn’t name, and she was losing.

She stepped out of her cube at precisely 7:00 am. It was supposed to be a rotation, but she hadn’t slept. She passed the glass wall, ignoring the morning brief being held by Nick Fury—whose silhouette, hunched and spectral, never moved far from the monitors. She made for the hangar, her steps quiet, measured. The compound’s rhythm was so predictable now, you could track it by the minute. At 7:03, the night janitor finished his rounds. At 7:05, the first shift of security replaced the night guards, and at 7:08, Tony Stark would emerge from the lab, trailing the metallic stink of lithium grease and desperation.

Quill and Clint were already waiting at the east-side motor pool, arguing about who would drive the van. Quill had a tendency to shout, even when whispering, and Clint had a tendency to make it seem like everyone else was being unreasonable. Cassandra let the squabble play out while she checked the gear load-out: clean set of SHIELD-issue batons, ceramic blades, two tranquilizer darts (loaded with Banner’s new custom formula, which would supposedly “knock out a supercharged gorilla, or at least annoy it”). She ignored the extra pistol Clint had left for her on the dash. It was, she suspected, meant as a kindness.

“Which of you has the actual lead?” she said, eyes still on the inventory.

Clint raised a hand. “Rhodes pinged three possible contacts in Midtown,” Clint said. “Apparently, someone saw a red-haired woman, a green woman, and a ‘Norwegian looking hobo’ downtown the day our team vanished. Not much, but it’s all we got.”

Cassandra nodded. “Odds we’re chasing ghosts?”

“High,” said Quill, “but I’m bored and my somewhat-girlfriend is probably dead, so let’s do it.”

She drove. Clint was good, but only Cassandra could keep her foot steady with a migraine blooming behind her left eye and two days of sleep debt clawing at her. She drove the old SHIELD van like it was a hearse, silent and with purpose. The city outside the compound was already awake, but nobody paid them any mind. To them, the end of the world was old news. The real show was over.

The route was a blur, every block another checkpoint. They navigated Midtown with surgical efficiency, pulling up in front of a bodega where the first “witness” worked. He was a teenager with a cracked phone and a nervous tic, convinced he’d seen aliens on 43rd street. Cassandra let Clint do the talking; his face was the kind people trusted, especially when he wanted them to. Quill hung back, arms folded, watching the flow of foot traffic, occasionally mouthing “liar” when the kid’s story wandered into the realm of science fiction. There might have been a chance he had actually seen something, but it just wasn’t strong enough. Cassandra could have only hoped one of those calls would point somewhere.

They ticked through the interviews, watched the security cam footage (nothing), and checked the “sighting” against the timestamped logs from the compound. By noon, it was clear it was probably just another in a long line of bad tips. But they weren’t done yet, they would have gone back to the compound and checked the surveillance again, amplifying the time frame, rewatching the last 48 hours if they had to. Cassandra signed off on the report, then let herself slouch against the van for a minute, eyes closed.

She considered the weightless dread that had lodged in her chest since Wanda’s disappearance—how it flickered in and out, sometimes a background noise, sometimes an aneurysm waiting to burst. She was supposed to be above this, her training a firewall against sentiment, but the firewall was leaking and every update made it worse. Not only Wanda, Natasha too. Even though they hadn’t got just as close, she, somehow, was another Avenger that had already pierced through her armor, another Avenger who'd managed to matter when they shouldn't. And Somehow Cassandra knew she’ll have to expect this to happen again, and again. She glanced at the rear-view mirror—Clint and Quill slumped in their seats, faces drawn—and recognized her own quiet dread mirrored back at her.

Quill clapped her on the back. “You do this for fun, or does your face just stick like that?”

She didn’t answer. It was too early for jokes, and too late for pretending all of this didn’t matter. She wanted to be back at the compound, wanted to be proactive. Wanted to be there if anything broke.

“Wrap it up,” she said. “We’re done here.”

They were halfway to the expressway when the compound called. The voice on the other end was a security officer, tone clipped, words too fast: “Possible breach. Main entrance. All available personnel respond.”

Clint took the call, barked a few questions, then turned to her with a look that said, “This isn’t a drill.” Quill’s posture snapped straight, gone was the hangdog bravado; now he was a Guardian again, ready to die or kill, whichever came first. Cassandra floored the accelerator. The van fishtailed out of the lane, cut through traffic with the fluid arrogance of the world’s last ambulance.

The trip back was a red-lit panic, every second measured in heartbeats.

The compound gates slid open as she swerved the van through, tires screaming protest. Cassandra barely registered the security checkpoint or the guards waving them through with urgent gestures. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a metronome keeping time with worst-case scenarios flashing through her mind.

"Main entrance," Clint said, voice tight as he checked his bow.

Quill was already priming his blasters. "Any ID on the intruder?"

"Negative," Clint replied. "Just 'unknown', when they called it was too soon to tell."

They reached the hall, Cassandra batons were drawn, every nerve ending was killing her, pulsing, raw and ready. The scene before her made no sense at first—no smoke, no alarms, no visible damage to the sleek glass facade. Just a cluster of security personnel forming a perimeter around something on the ground.

Then the crowd parted, and her breath caught in her throat.

Thor.

Not standing tall with lightning at his fingertips, but sprawled across the concrete like a broken doll, his once-regal form now a portrait of defeat. Blood matted his long blonde hair, his clothing torn and blackened as if he'd walked through fire. His face—gods, his face. The arrogance was gone, replaced by something haunted and hollow that made her skin crawl.

"Thor?" Quill rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside the fallen god. "Hey, big guy, what happened? Where are the others?"

Thor's eyes found Quill's, and Cassandra felt something cold slide down her spine. There was rage there, yes—a fury so deep it had crystallized into something terrible—but beneath it lurked raw, animal fear.

"Get Strange," Clint barked at the nearest guard, who took off at a sprint.

Cassandra approached slowly, her training keeping her movements measured even as her pulse thundered in her ears. She scanned for threats, for signs of pursuit, but the compound grounds remained eerily calm. Whatever had done this to Thor wasn't here—or worse, was already inside.

"Thor," she said, crouching beside him, close enough to smell the acrid stench of otherworldly smoke clinging to his skin. "Where's Natasha? Where are the others?"

Vision had materialized at her side, his voice a low, chilling monotone that cut through the chaos. "Wanda."

It wasn’t a question. It was a demand for data. Cassandra glanced at him, then refocused on Thor, repeating with more urgency, "Where's Wanda?"

His hand shot out, fingers closing around her wrist with bruising force. His grip was weaker than it should have been, but still strong enough to make her bones creak in protest. Thor's eyes met hers, and for a moment she saw something ancient and terrible reflected there—a memory of violence.

The war room was always a few degrees colder than the rest of the compound, even in summer. No matter how many times they rebuilt it, the chill never left. Cassandra liked to think it was deliberate—whoever designed this place knew that warmth bred complacency, and no one made good decisions in comfort.

She stood with her back to the wall, arms crossed, watching the machinery of a world defense council grind itself to dust. Tony, for once, had nothing to say. His face was a waxwork, the only movement in the way his thumb worried the edge of his phone. Strange’s posture was the same as always—upright, hands folded in front, like a priest presiding at a funeral. Banner looked like he’d lost another ten pounds in forty-eight hours, the circles under his eyes now a permanent fixture.

At the head of the table sat Thor. Or what was left of him. He’d come limping into the room an hour ago, dragging a blanket that reeked of antiseptic and defeat, after Strange and a series of paramedic did their best to patch him up. Yet his skin was mottled with fresh bruises, hair tangled and streaked with dust. He didn’t look at anyone as he spoke, his voice scraping the bottom of the well.

“I have failed,” he said, and the words came out raw. “My friends. My family. My world.”

No one interrupted. Even Tony, who’d made a career of masking failure with bravado, found nothing to offer.

Thor closed his eyes, as if the effort of keeping them open was a weight he could no longer bear.

“Odin is gone,” he said. “Slipped away while the world burned.” He flexed his right hand; Cassandra caught the tremor. “Mjolnir is… destroyed. Crushed like it was never more than glass.” He exhaled, a sound full of static. In the room, most eyes went wide. “The others— are gone. They were taken; by Hela, my— my sister. The goddess of death.”

He rolled the word “sister” like it was poison. It was the first time he’d named her. Cassandra felt the room constrict around the word: Hela. The name sounded wrong in a human mouth, like a code for something they had no right to understand.

“Wait”, interjected Tony. “Since when do you have a sister?”

Thor’s eyes went dark, his jaw tightened as he looked at the man. “That was something not even I was aware of, my dear friend.” Then he continued with his story.

“I was not strong enough to stop her,” Thor said. “She pushed us off the Bifrost. Sent us all spinning into the void.” He looked down at his hands, fingers interlaced, as if they could hold the world together if only he squeezed hard enough.

“The last I saw of Natasha and Wanda, they were being dragged into a pit of darkness. They fought, but the darkness…” He trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Across from him, Vision went utterly still. The Mind Stone at his brow, which normally pulsed with a soft, warm light, flickered once, then dimmed to a cold, hard point. His hands, resting on the table, curled into fists so slowly the movement was almost imperceptible. He wasn't breathing. He was calculating.

Cassandra was surprised by how hard the news hit her. She’d expected it, rehearsed it a hundred times in her head—every scenario ending in the same loss, the same regret—but the confirmation felt like a needle under the fingernails. She’d never let herself get attached, she had been raised that way, but Wanda had gotten under her skin, as Steve had done before. And Natasha, too. They were all starting to feel as family. The two of them, most of all, had filled the compound with a kind of unspoken solidarity, a quiet acknowledgment that their damage was not unique, just differently shaped.

The silence in the room was a living thing, growing thicker with each second.

Finally, Strange spoke, his voice soft but clinical. “We are at war, then. And Asgard is the front line.”

“Yes,” said Thor. “And we are losing.”

A beat. “What is the plan?” Banner asked, and the desperation in his voice was almost worse than the fear.

Thor looked up. “We need to go back. To Asgard. It is the only way.” His gaze shifted to each person in the room, as if he was taking their measure for a coffin. “Non of us can do this alone.I’ve seen her, what she’s capable of. I think that if we can beat her, by joining all of our forces, it will already be a miracle.”

Cassandra waited for someone to step up, to say, “Then let’s go.” But instead, the council dissolved into a dozen smaller conversations, each one more hopeless than the last. And then the voices broke, one by one, little by little, as they noticed where Thor’s eyes were landing.

The focus of the room shifted to Valkyrie, who’d been standing in the doorway, silent and unmoving. She was the only one left with even the ghost of Asgardian royalty in her bones, but she wore her fear like a suit of armor.

When Thor finally addressed her, his voice was stripped of its usual grandeur. “I need you,” he said. “Our people need you.”

Valkyrie’s eyes flashed. “You want me to go back there? Where she slaughtered my sisters?”

A long pause. The air in the room curdled as they took in the implication. That, no one had ever mentioned.

Thor's face hardened, his voice cold as stone. “You knew her.”

Valkyrie's face twisted, a collage of grief and rage so raw it sucked the air from the room. She stepped forward, and the movement wasn't smooth—it was jagged, like something breaking.

"Knew her?" Her laugh was all edges. "I was there when she bathed in the blood of my sisters." She looked at Thor with eyes that had seen too much. "You want to know why I'm afraid? Why I ran? Why I've been drowning myself for centuries?"

Cassandra felt her pulse quicken. The woman before them was unraveling, her composure dissolving like salt in water. This wasn't the cocky, hard-drinking warrior who'd strutted through training exercises. This was someone haunted.

"We were Odin's elite. His Valkyries." Her voice dropped to something hollow. "When Hela tried to break free from her prison, he sent us," she spat, the word catching in her throat. "His loyal shield-maidens, to force her back into Hel. We were the best. We flew on winged horses, leaving a golden sky behind us, and we thought we were invincible."

Cassandra watched the story unfold not just in Valkyrie’s words, but on her body. The way her hands clenched into fists, knuckles white. The tremor that ran through her shoulders as she forced the memories out.

"She met us in the heart of her own realm. She didn't have an army." Valkyrie’s eyes went distant, seeing a past no one else could. "She was the army. Blades of obsidian erupted from the very fabric of that dark place. A sea of spikes that blotted out what little light there was. We rode into it, singing our battle songs… and the songs turned to screams."

Thor had gone pale. The anger had drained out of him, replaced by a horrified understanding. This wasn't just a story; it was a secret history of his own kingdom, a massacre his father had buried.

"I saw our commander impaled on a spire she raised with a flick of her wrist. I saw the girl who taught me how to braid my hair torn in two by shadows." A single, hot tear finally broke free, tracing a clean path through the grime on her cheek. It wasn’t a tear of sorrow; it burned with a rage that had been simmering for centuries.

Her jaw clenched, the muscle jumping as the words came faster, tumbling out, each one a shard of glass. "There was no honor. No glory. Just a butcher's work in the dark. And one by one, the lights of my sisters went out."

Her breath hitched, a single, ragged gasp. "One of them… she shoved me. Toward the portal Odin was holding open. Shoved me toward the light, away from a blade meant for my heart. I saw the look in her eyes as it took her." Valkyrie stared at nothing, her own eyes mirroring the ghost of that final moment. "She didn't even scream."

The room was a vacuum. Every breath was stolen.

"I tore through, landed on a world of trash and nightmares, and I never looked back. I drank until I couldn't remember their faces." Her voice broke, finally, but the fury remained. "But I always remember their faces."

She finally looked at Thor, her expression stripped of all bravado, leaving only a raw, bleeding wound. "So don't you talk to me about choice, Prince of Asgard. Your father sent my family to die in hell to clean up his mess. And now you want me to go back and do it again?"

She snatched her bottle from the table and stalked out of the room, leaving a silence so profound it felt like a scar.

Cassandra waited until the last echo of Valkyrie’s fury had faded from the war room, until the space was poisoned by a silence that felt heavier than any sound. The others had dispersed, fleeing the raw honesty of the moment for their own corners of the Compound, but Cassandra found herself unable to move. Valkyrie’s pain had left a resonance in the air, a frequency of grief and rage that Cassandra recognized in the quiet, scarred parts of her own soul.

Without making a conscious decision, her feet began to move, following not a sound, but the cold trail of that feeling.

The hangar was a cavern of steel and shadows, the only light coming from the red status LEDs on the hulking shapes of dormant Quinjets. They looked like sleeping beasts, their metal hides cool to the touch. She found Valkyrie in the shadow of one, a boot braced against its landing strut, a fresh bottle dangling from her fingers. She didn’t look up when Cassandra approached.

“You here to tell me to get back in line?” Valkyrie’s voice was rough, scraped raw.

Cassandra stopped a few feet away, letting the hangar's cold, metallic air settle between them. “No. I— I don’t actually know why I’m here. But I think I wanted to thank you. For sharing that kind of pain with the rest of us.”

That made Valkyrie pause. She took a slow drink, the sound of it loud in the quiet. “The truth is ugly. People don’t usually thank you for it.”

“It’s not ugly,” Cassandra replied, her voice a low murmur that didn't carry. “It’s just heavy.”

They stood in the shared darkness, the only sound the faint, electric hum of a nearby charging station. It was the sound of potential energy, of power held in reserve, waiting for a war.

“You ever freeze in a fight?” Valkyrie asked, the words sudden and sharp. “Ever just… watch it happen?”

Cassandra thought back to the monastery, to a memory sharp as a blade: the scent of incense and blood, a training brother on the floor, and her own hands refusing to form a fist, paralyzed by the sight of a pain that was no longer theoretical.

“Yes,” she said. The word was a stone dropped into a deep well.

Valkyrie let out a sound that was not quite a laugh. “Doesn’t feel like something your kind does.”

“My kind bleeds the same as yours.” Cassandra met Valkyrie’s gaze in the dim light. “The trick isn’t not falling. It’s getting up after.”

The bottle clinked against the hull, a hollow, metallic note. “What if I freeze again?” Valkyrie whispered, the bravado gone, leaving only the terrified question she’d been drowning for centuries. “What if I run?”

Cassandra took a step closer, her voice steady and sure, forged in the discipline of a thousand failures. This wasn't advice she was giving; it was a scar she was showing.

“When that happens to me," she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, "I run. I run until I can’t hear the screaming in my head anymore. And then I turn around, I raise my fists, and I get back in the fight.” She held Valkyrie’s gaze, letting the personal truth of it settle. “That’s what I do.”

Valkyrie stared at her, eyes glassy in the dim light. For a long moment, she seemed to be weighing Cassandra, assessing the wounds that weren't visible on her skin.

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

“It’s how I’m still standing here,” Cassandra said.

Valkyrie was silent for a long time. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, she lifted the bottle, turned it over, and poured the remaining amber liquid onto the hangar floor. It spattered against the concrete, the smell of it sharp and sweet before it evaporated into the cold. She set the empty bottle down with a soft click. She wasn't sober. She wasn't healed. But she had made a choice.

Cassandra gave a single, sharp nod, an acknowledgment passing between them that needed no words. She turned to leave, the silence of the hangar once again her own. The war had already started. It had been raging inside people like Valkyrie for centuries. The rest was just details.

The hangar wasn’t built for reflection. It was built for war: high ceilings, steel ribs, the stink of fuel and ozone. But on days like this, with the lights low and the world silent, it became a kind of waiting room for the damned.

The hours after the council were filled not with speeches, but with the slow, methodical rituals of soldiers who suspected they’d never see another sunrise. Fury’s shipment had arrived at 5:00 pm on the nose—a fresh batch of rations, water, and enough ammunition to level a small country. The crates stacked up against the wall like tombstones.

Rocket got first pick of the gear. He prowled the stacks with a scavenger’s greed, snout buried in every box, paws sorting the tech into rough categories: “useful,” “garbage,” and “potentially explosive.” Cassandra watched him work, marveling at the precision with which he stripped a rifle for parts or rewired a grenade to suit his taste. It was a kind of artistry, she supposed. Even rats got to be Picassos if they lived long enough.

Clint occupied a corner of the hangar, back to the wall, fletching arrow after arrow with the focus of a man trying to think of anything else. His movements were so practiced that he didn’t even have to look at what he was doing. Every so often, he would glance up at the catwalk, as if expecting to see Natasha there, legs swinging, waiting for him to finish. The emptiness above him was a wound, but he never let it show. And yet, he had already called home, letting Laura know he might not come back.

Cassandra chose the floor, a patch of concrete as clean as she could find. She sat cross-legged, blades spread out in front of her like a shrine. Each one was wiped down, sharpened, checked for defects. She moved through them with a discipline that bordered on religious. It wasn’t about being ready for a fight, they weren’t even for her, she already had her baton, and her fists. It was more about having something to do with her hands, something that didn’t require thinking about how little time they had left.

The Guardians took their time prepping, packing light—Quill with his battered leather jacket, Drax with nothing but a harness and a smile, Mantis hugging herself like she was expecting to shatter at any moment. Groot paced the length of the hangar, arms— or branches— folded, eyes scanning every exit. Cassandra never saw him so agitated, but she could relate.

In the evening only Tony was left packing. He’d been in the lab for eight hours straight, the glass wall fogged with equations and half-drawn schematics. When he finally emerged, he looked like a ghost wrapped in a T-shirt and sweat. But his eyes were alive, and he’d come armed.

The bots moved first, gliding across the hangar in perfect sync, each one hauling a piece of the new Iron Man armor. It wasn’t a single suit—it was a modular array, each piece designed to snap together or come apart at a moment’s notice. They assembled on the far side of the room, silver and red gleaming under the fluorescents.

Then came the War Machine. The first thing Cassandra noticed was the color: not the flat military black of the old models, but a gunmetal so deep it drank the light. The armor moved with a confidence she hadn’t seen in any previous iteration, the servos whispering instead of shrieking. It was taller than Rhodes, broader at the shoulders, the helmet designed to mimic a skull more than a soldier’s helmet. When it walked, it didn’t march. It prowled.

The faceplate split open with a hiss, and there was Rhodes—standing. Not just upright, but easy, as if he’d never been in a wheelchair at all.

The silence in the hangar was absolute. Even Rocket stopped rummaging, ears perked. Rhodes stepped forward, the suit disengaging with a shimmer. He took a breath, then walked. One step. Another. No crutches, no exoskeleton, just him and a pair of gleaming, skeletal braces that hugged his legs beneath the suit. They moved in perfect rhythm, every motion calibrated to minimize the effort.

He made it halfway across the hangar before anyone exhaled. Tony stood to the side, tablet in hand, pretending to check diagnostics. But Cassandra saw the way his jaw worked, the way he didn’t look up until Rhodes made it all the way to him. They exchanged a look—nothing dramatic, just the kind of silent acknowledgment that could have only been forged in fire.

“Good work,” Rhodes said, voice steady.

Tony nodded. “Don’t scratch the paint.”

Rhodes grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Cassandra felt something loosen in her chest—a thread of hope, thin and trembling, but real.

Vision, however, was in none of those places. He stood alone in the center of the hangar, eyes closed, the Mind Stone glowing with intense, fluctuating light. He was reaching, pushing his senses across dimensions, searching for a trace of Wanda's unique energy signature. It was an impossible task, a search for a single grain of sand on an infinite shore, but he did not stop. The effort left faint trails of ozone in the air around him, a silent testament to his desperate, logical grief.

The feeling lasted until Banner walked in.

Banner came empty-handed, shoulders hunched, sweater two sizes too big. He moved through the hangar like a man walking into his own execution. The others watched him, waiting for him to join the pack, to grab a weapon or a backpack. Instead, he just stood there, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the floor.

“Ican’t go,” he said, and the words landed like a hammer. He looked up, the shame in his eyes stark. “I’ve tried. For days. I can’t… I can’t bring him out. Not since Sakaar. I don’t know if he’ll ever come out again.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous tic. “I can’t risk being a liability. I can’t risk hurting any of you.”

No one said anything. Not at first.

Then Tony, voice softer than Cassandra had ever heard it: “You did your best, Bruce.”

Banner smiled, a weak, fleeting thing. “That’s never been enough, Tony. Not for this.”

Thor stepped forward, the new lines on his face shadowed by the harsh hangar light. He put a hand on Banner’s shoulder. “You are stronger than you think,” he said, quietly.

Banner shook his head. “Not this time.” He turned to go, pausing at the door. “I’ll stay here. Help Fury. Maybe figure out how to track the Stones. Just… just don’t get dead, okay?”

No one promised.

He left, and the hangar went back to its clockwork rhythm, but the gears had shifted. Cassandra felt it. The sense of doom had deepened, calcified into something solid and inescapable.

She packed her blades and walked to the med-bay. Thor was there, alone, bare-chested, a line of fresh sutures across his ribs. He was methodically re-dressing the wound, each motion slow, deliberate. On the counter next to him was the loop of leather that used to hold Mjolnir. He picked it up, turned it over in his hands, then set it down with infinite care. He stared at it for a long time.

Cassandra knocked on the glass. He looked up, eyes rimmed red, but clear.

“You ready?” she asked.

He nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

She stepped into the room, closed the door behind her. For a moment, they just stood there, two soldiers in a field hospital with no war left to fight.

Fury entered, carrying an axe. It was nothing special. Single-bladed, oak handle, but not the kind you’d buy at a hardware store if you needed to split firewood, more the kind you’d find in an ancient armory if you needed to split a skull.

He set it on the table. “It’s not a magic hammer,” he said. “But it’ll cut what needs cutting.”

Thor looked at the axe, then at Fury. “Thank you,” he said.

Fury nodded, then left, his footsteps fading down the hall. Thor picked up the axe, tested the balance. It wasn’t perfect, but it was heavy and real. He swung it once, a slow, cautious arc, then let it rest against his shoulder.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Cassandra believed him. She walked with him back to the hangar, the pulse of the place now a steady drumbeat of finality. She joined the others, slung her bag over her shoulder, and waited for the order.

This was it. No more speeches. No more plans. Just the next fight.

Dusk always found the compound at its most honest. The lawns glowed a sullen orange in the last light, and the shadows crawled up the walls, exposing every crack and patch where the world’s greatest minds had tried to hold things together with duct tape and genius.

They gathered on the main lawn, a battered parade of misfits and monsters. Cassandra stood off to the side, arms folded, watching the rest of the team align themselves in a rough arc around Thor. He was the axis; everything else orbited his pain. The air vibrated with a tension so raw she could feel it in her teeth.

Quill whistled softly, rocking on his heels. Rocket had a repurposed sonic blaster clutched tight, thumb running anxious circles over the safety. Tony’s jaw was set hard, the lines of his face drawn tighter than Cassandra had ever seen.

The open space was necessary. They were about to try something so reckless, so desperate, that even the war room felt too small for it. They needed the sky.

“Everyone ready?” said Thor, voice gravel. He didn’t wait for a response. He squared his feet, lifted his head to the dying sun, and called out.

“Heimdall! It is I, Thor! Answer me!”

The words slammed into the open air, rolling across the lawn and then vanishing into the indifferent sky. There was no echo. No response. Only the sound of wind and the faint, distant thrum of a power grid fighting to stay online.

The silence was a verdict.

Quill’s hopeful grin faded. He looked away, scuffed a sneaker against the grass. Tony let out a slow breath and muttered something under his breath—Cassandra caught only the word “hopeless.”

Thor tried again, louder this time. “Heimdall! I command you—open the Bifrost!”

The second shout felt less like a call and more like a scream at the void. Still, nothing.

The team was a mosaic of defeat, every face angled away from Thor, from each other, from the possibility of more loss. Cassandra watched the arc break, the energy draining away from the group like blood from a severed artery.

It was Quill who finally spoke. “We sure he’s got the right frequency? I mean, maybe he’s on do-not-disturb.”

Tony bristled. “The universe doesn’t have a dial tone, Quill.”

“Pretty sure it does,” Rocket said. “And we can boost the signal.”

Before anyone could object, Rocket was already digging through his satchel, pulling out a tangled cluster of electronics—half Stark, half alien salvage. He jammed it into the ground, connected three cables to Tony’s arc reactor, and barked, “Go!”

Tony looked skeptical, but at this point, skepticism was a luxury they couldn’t afford. He triggered the power surge, and the device began to hum, then howl, then shriek. The grass around them flattened, scorched black in a widening circle.

Thor braced himself, voice shaking as he tried again. “Heimdall! Hear me! Bring us home!”

The words came out amplified, fractured by the device—echoing and re-echoing until the whole compound shook with the sound.

For a second, Cassandra thought it had worked. The sky seemed to ripple, and a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer of color twisted in the clouds above. Then it was gone. The shimmer faded, the hum died, and the silence returned, heavier than before.

Thor staggered, the effort leaving him doubled over. He looked up at the sky, eyes rimmed in red, and for a moment, Cassandra saw not the god of thunder, but a son mourning a father who would never answer. The axe he was holding slipped from his grasp, thudding softly onto the scorched grass. He sank to his knees, head bowed, the fight draining out of him completely.

A single, sharp sound cut through the silence—the thud of a heavy duffel bag hitting the grass with decisive finality.

Every head turned. Valkyrie stood at the edge of the lawn, perfectly still. She wasn’t the broken woman from the war room or the haunted scavenger from the hangar. Her hair was pulled back, her posture was ramrod straight, and she wore a simple, dark tunic that looked like a uniform. She was no longer running. She had arrived.

She ignored the stunned looks from the rest of the team, her eyes fixed on one person only. She strode onto the field, her boots leaving deliberate prints in the scorched earth, stopping directly in front of the kneeling Thor. She didn't offer a hand; she offered a command.

“Get up,” she said. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it resonated with an authority that cut through the defeatist air. “You’re doing it wrong.”

Thor looked up, his expression a storm of confusion and grief. “He doesn’t answer.”

“He probably can’t,” Valkyrie corrected, her tone sharp and precise. “Hela has shrouded the pathways to Asgard. He’s fighting her influence just to see, let alone open the Bifrost. Your grief is unfocused, a shout in a hurricane. He can’t find you in that noise.”

She crouched, not in sympathy, but to meet his eyes on his level. Her gaze was intense, unwavering.

“Heimdall is a soldier. He needs a beacon to lock onto, a signal clear enough to cut through the storm she’s created. He doesn’t need to hear a son’s plea. He needs to hear an order from his king.”

She pointed to the axe lying on the grass. “Odin is dead. The prince you were died with him. That throne is yours now. Act like it.”

Valkyrie stood, her part said. She didn’t retreat. Instead, she took a half-step back and turned to face the sky with him, falling into a guard position at his flank. It was an ancient, instinctual posture: the Valkyrie protecting her king. With that single movement, she made her allegiance, her change of heart, an undeniable fact.

The team watched, silent and awestruck. This was not the broken soldier from the debrief; this was a legend reborn.

Thor stared at her for a long moment, the truth of her words sinking in, reforging his despair into something hard and bright. He reached for the axe, his hand closing around the handle with renewed strength. He rose to his feet, not as a grieving son, but as the monarch he was born to be.

He raised the axe, planted its blade in the earth, and spoke. His voice was not a shout, but a resonant command that seemed to shake the very ground.

“Heimdall. As per my father’s wish. By blood and by death. I am king of Asgard. Open the way.”

The words lingered, suspended in the blue-black air. For a long, terrible moment, nothing happened. Then, above them, a thread of rainbow light pierced the clouds. It wasn’t the usual spectacle—no dazzling arc, no roar of energy—but a single, flickering filament, weak and unsteady, fighting to hold itself together.

Through the static of their comms, a voice—faint, strained, but unmistakable—reached them. “…My king. I hear you.”

Thor closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were full of new resolve. He looked at Valkyrie, and the gratitude in his gaze was a vow.

Chapter Text

The Bifrost opened not in a palace of gilded towers and sun-drenched spires, but in a wound in the world. One second Cassandra was staring at a flickering ribbon of rainbow, a promise of light in the bruised New York sky. The next, her boots struck something cold and wet, and the impact sent a tremor of disquiet through her bones. Her teeth rattled, a percussive beat of fear against the stillness. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe.

The transition was a violation. The Bifrost’s chill vacuum had not only atomized their bodies, but had stripped them of their hope, flinging them through the void and reassembling them with neither care nor ceremony. The cave they found themselves in had no patience for the soft, the uncertain, or the hopeful.

The stone beneath Cassandra’s boots was too cold to be natural, as if the planet had given up its geological processes and simply let the chill of deep space infest its bones. She stumbled, catching herself on all fours, biting back a curse as her hands scraped on a surface slick with slime and mold. Every inhale sliced at her sinuses, rife with spores, chemical tang, and the iron taste of slow-dying blood. The Bifrost left a streak of afterimage in her vision, a phantom light in the suffocating darkness.

The others arrived not as heroes, but as broken things. Quill landed on his ass, a graceless heap of crumpled dignity, while Groot toppled like a felled redwood, a silent monument to a fall too great to comprehend. Thor was the only one who held his feet, swaying with his shoulders hunched inward as if trying to shield a world he had already failed. His face was a mask of shuddering repression, every line of it screaming with a silent grief too vast to be spoken aloud. Valkyrie, by contrast, emerged from the rainbow’s afterglow already low and coiled, blade in hand, her eyes sweeping the endless dark with a predatory, almost feral alertness. There was nothing to strike but the dripping stalactites and the echo of a dozen shattered heartbeats, yet her stance remained—a portrait of a warrior prepared for a betrayal that had already come.

A sense of scale disoriented her. The walls pressed in, but somewhere above, the cavern opened outward into a hollow vast as a cathedral. The acoustics amplified every drip, every footfall, every ragged exhalation. It was as though the cavern itself was a lung, a breathing tomb that inflated and deflated with their collective arrival. Every shift of a boot, every sigh, every accidental scuff against the glassy walls was magnified, echoing through centuries of empty stone. Valkyrie’s hand hovered at her sword hilt, but there was nothing to fight except the cold and the dark. Yet Cassandra could see the tension in the woman’s posture—the unshakeable conviction that nothing was only a word, and that something far worse awaited them.

Then she saw the people, and something inside her broke. Asgardian civilians—a couple of hundred souls—clustered in the deeper pockets of the cavern, a silent tide of human misery. Most wore what might once have been ceremonial garb, now torn and mud-stained, their faces smeared with smoke and grime. Some watched the new arrivals with a mixture of awe and terror, a desperate hope clinging to the edges of their fear. Others didn't look at all, their eyes fixed on a blank spot in memory, lost to a trauma that had stripped them of the will to even hope. A little girl, her hair as pale as bone, hid behind her mother’s dress, her tiny body trembling with a fear that resonated through the damp air. This was the true Asgard, a testament not to a glorious past, but to an unimaginable tragedy.

Heimdall looked nothing like the sentry Cassandra remembered from mission briefings. His armor, once the pristine uniform of a god, now dented and scorched. A fresh, crude bandage was wrapped around his forehead, stained with what looked like fresh blood, and he leaned against the cold stone like a condemned man waiting for the hangman’s hour. His sword, once a weapon of celestial power that could cut the sky, was grounded at his side, the point buried in a mossy crack.

Rocket was the first to break the silence, his voice a rasp in the hush. “This is it? You gotta be kidding me.”

Heimdall straightened, slow and deliberate, the effort visible in every strained muscle. “It was all I could manage.” His words were a low, dragging grate of gravel over rock.

“She hunts the skies. The Bifrost is a banner for all who look for it. If I had not masked your entry, Hela’s warriors would be here already.” He gestured with a hand that trembled almost imperceptibly at the crowd—at the old men and the limping, at the mothers with hollow cheeks and the children with haunted eyes. “This is the last sanctuary. The last breath of Asgard.”

No one spoke. Even Tony, who’d been prepped for an all-out assault, stared at the refugees with his mouth open, the mask of his usual sarcasm wiped clean. The cold, stark reality of the refugees had reached even him. He was quick to retract the armor, the small drones collecting in a pouch dangling at his waist. The citizens, for their part, seemed to take some comfort in the lack of a glowing metal suit, their shoulders dropping just a fraction. Somewhere behind Cassandra, Drax let out a low, involuntary groan, a sound of grief ripped from the depths of his soul.

Thor pushed past them, his boots scraping sparks from the damp rock, a sound of desperate rage in the suffocating silence. He stopped just shy of Heimdall. The two men faced each other, the gap between them a chasm of unspoken grief. “Thor,” Heimdall said, barely audible. “I did not expect to see you alive.”

Thor’s jaw worked, but no words came out. Cassandra watched the shape of his sorrow—the way his shoulders curled inward, the way his fingers fidgeted with the axe handle. She saw the rage, the guilt, the exhaustion, all of it held in check by a will of pure steel. “I am alive,” he managed, his voice a broken thing. “And so are you. That’s enough.”

Heimdall shook his head, a gesture of profound, bone-deep weariness. “It is not.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, as if weighing the very tons of rock above them. “Every hour she grows stronger. Every hour the dead walk farther from her grave and closer to ours.”

Strange moved forward, his cloak trailing behind him, a small island of order in the sea of chaos. “How bad is it?” he said, his voice stripped of all performance, all magic, all theatrics. He was just a man asking a question for which he already feared the answer.

Heimdall’s gaze snapped to him. “She controls the palace and the city. Her magic corrupts the land—what was green is now black and twisted, the soil itself poisoned by her presence. Her army grows with every soul that falls. She has already claimed the northern passes. By nightfall, she will sweep the rest. There is nothing left to save.” He said this flat, with no dramatics, no emotion. It was a statement of physical law, an unchangeable fact that had been etched into the very core of this dying world.

Tony, ever the pragmatist, shook off the shock, his eyes flickering as he began mapping options. “We’re going to need to move fast. Can we access the city from here?”

Heimdall exhaled, a slow and bitter sound. “The tunnels run beneath the throne room. It will take you close, but it is not safe. She has set traps for those who try to run, and her magic has infested the very stone itself. Every shadow, every echo, is her eye.”

Quill raised a hand, his fingers twitching in a nervous tic. “So, I’m sorry, you want us to sneak into the most heavily fortified palace in the cosmos with, what, a bunch of refugees and a rusty sword? Is that the plan?”

“No,” Heimdall said, his voice a low, empty thing. “The plan is to hold out as long as possible and pray that you have a better one.”

It wasn’t bravado, Cassandra realized. The man wasn’t trying to play the martyr. He was telling them, with what little strength he had left, that there was no cavalry coming, that they were it, that they were alone. She looked at the crowd again—old soldiers, the sick, children so pale that seemed to have never seen sunlight—and felt the first real spike of panic since London. The raw, unfiltered panic that made her want to run and scream and find a hole to hide in. But she couldn’t. Not now. Not ever.

She forced herself to focus. “How many others made it?”

Heimdall turned the question over, his face a mask of grief. “Just the ones you can see, but many others are held captives in the city.” He hesitated, then, “Your missing friends, I saw a flicker of them, but not together. Hela took them as trophies and scattered them through her land.”

A shared, ragged gasp of relief swept through the group. They weren't dead. Quill’s tear stopped mid-path, replaced by a glint of angry determination. Even Rocket, who had been silent, let out a low growl. The despair that had suffocated them a moment ago was replaced by a furious, terrible resolve.

Cassandra stared at her hands, nails bitten raw. Her blood was singing with a rage she hadn’t felt since she was a child, a low, constant hum that thrummed in her veins. She knew this was not going to be easy, but she would have fought, even if the only plan was to go against the inevitable.

Only Valkyrie’s shoulders, which had been hunched in grief, remained that way, her jaw set, her eyes fixed on some point in the distance that only she could see, a vision of horrors yet to come.

Heimdall sank to the ground, spent. Strange knelt beside him, murmured something in a language of pure vowels, a last desperate prayer. Cassandra wandered to the mouth of the cave, pressing her palms to the icy rock and listening to the drip of water, the distant, endless shuffle of frightened feet behind her. The only light was the faint bioluminescence of the lichen, making every face a mask, every shadow a warning.

This was Asgard, she thought, and shivered. Not the shining kingdom of legends, but a pressure cooker with nowhere left to run. A tomb that waited for the darkness to consume it. And with every passing hour, the darkness grew.

Cassandra spun away from the cave wall, her heart a drum against her ribs. She couldn't just stand here. She couldn't just wait. Not with Wanda and Natasha somewhere out there, captives of a death goddess. The panic she’d been holding at bay for what felt like an eternity surged up like bile, a hot, bitter wave of fear and despair. The need to act, to do something, anything, consumed her.

"No." The word tore from her throat, a raw and desperate cry. It cut through the hushed conversations, a blade of defiance in a cave of quiet defeat. "We're not going to just sit here and wait for her to find us. We're not going to let her come to us. We’re going to her."

She pushed past Quill, her boots scraping on the wet stone, the sound a ragged protest against their shared helplessness. She strode toward Heimdall, who still sat slumped against the wall, a monument to a world that was already dead. The shadows around her grew thicker and flickered menacingly, as if feeding on the desperation that radiated from her.

"You said our friends were seen. You know where they are," she said, her voice a low, dangerous rasp. The words were a prayer, a plea, and a command all at once. "Then take us there. Right now."

Her pulse hammered in her temples. Images of Wanda flashed through her mind—not as the powerful woman she knew, but as a broken thing, discarded in some dark corner of an alien palace. The thought made her stomach clench, a knot of pure agony twisting in her gut. She imagined all of them, she could feel their pain, their fear, their loneliness. And she was doing nothing to help.

Heimdall’s gaze seemed to look through her, beyond the cave walls to something only he could see, a world of pain and suffering that was far worse than anything she could imagine. "I cannot take you there," he said, each word seeming to cost him. "My strength... the Bifrost requires more than I have to give. Opening it for your arrival has drained what little power I had left. I am a husk. A ghost of a man."

Cassandra knelt beside him, her hands clenched into fists, her body trembling with a rage that had nowhere to go. "Then tell us how to get there. We'll find our own way. We'll crawl if we have to." She turned to Thor, to Strange, to anyone who would listen. "We'll find them. We'll save them."

Heimdall’s eyes clouded. It seemed as if he was seeing right trough her soul. "You don't understand. Hela's power grows with every moment she spends on Asgardian soil. Even now, she raises the dead to serve her, her army of the damned growing with every second that passes. The palace is a fortress of nightmares. A grave for all who try to enter."

"I don't care," Cassandra said, and meant it. Fear had crystallized into something harder, something that wouldn't bend. It had become a shield, a weapon, a fuel for the fire that was burning inside her. "We didn't come here to hide. We came here to save our friends. Whatever’s the cost."

Thor stepped closer, his face lit by the pale blue glow of the lichen. "How long?" he asked Heimdall. The words were not a request but a demand, the voice of a king who had lost his kingdom. "How long until you can open another path? Another hour? A day?"

Heimdall’s gaze slid to the refugees, to the scared and the wounded, the last remnants of a dying race. "Days at best.”

"If it’s a passage we need, I can open one."

Strange's voice cut through the despair like a blade. His cloak, a thing of impossible magic, billowed despite the stale cave air. Cassandra turned to him, hope flickering in her chest like a match struck in darkness, a small, fragile light in the endless gloom.

"You can create portals between realms?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, a sound of fragile, desperate hope.

Strange's face was grim, the lines around his eyes deeper than she remembered. "Not exactly. My sling rings could open portals across the universe, but..." He turned to Heimdall, his voice a low murmur. "If you can see them, if you can show me exactly where they are, I can create a pathway."

Heimdall's amber eyes narrowed. "I could, but with Hela’s veil even to use my sight I need to focus. Give me at least a day, I should have enough energy by then."

"A day," Cassandra repeated, the word tasting like ash in her mouth. "A whole day.” She felt depleted, a caged animal denied its hour of air.

Heimdall nodded weakly, his body trembling with exhaustion. He watched her and she felt naked. His gaze, ancient and heavy with loss, met hers, and she felt him see past her—as if he knew all her secrets, even the ones she wasn’t yet ready to accept. "I’m sorry, Cassandra.”

Cassandra's chest tightened, her lungs suddenly unable to draw enough of the cave's thin air.

She stalked away from the group, needing space, needing to move. She had to find a way to get to her friends. A way to save them. Even if it killed her.

The hours in the cave had no beginning and no end. Light never changed; time meant only the intervals between waking and not-waking, hunger and not-hunger, dread and not-dread. The pressure built with every heartbeat, an invisible tonnage that seeped into bone and marrow and stayed there.

Every attempt at sleep was a mockery. The bodies of the refugees radiated warmth, but the cave itself radiated death. Wet mineral stink, chemical tang of lichen, the sweet iron perfume of Asgardian blood that never quite faded from the air. Water dripped in uneven metronomes, and the sound became a clock by which Cassandra measured her slow disintegration.

Tony and Rocket had claimed a side-chamber for “work,” but everyone knew the real labor was not doing anything catastrophic. They argued constantly, bickering in overlapping code and engineering jargon that meant nothing to anyone but themselves.

“You want to signal our position with a four-gigawatt plasma torch?” Tony hissed, voice echoing off the stone. “Why not just run up the Jolly Roger and tweet Hela our coordinates?”

“Better than sitting here picking our noses!” Rocket snapped back. “This is what you call strategy? I thought humans were supposed to be the dominant species.”

“Yeah, and I’m the poster child. Which is why I’m not letting you build an arc reactor out of garbage and hope.”

“You never let me have any fun,” Rocket said, tail lashing, but his voice faltered, the bravado already decayed.

Cassandra passed their “lab” on her endless circuits of the cave, seeing the bright schematic projections flicker on the uneven stone. Sometimes she caught fragments of their plans—stray notes about power draw, about explosive yields, about the necessity of “off-switches if it starts to wake the dead.” They were both geniuses, both liars, and both so terrified they could barely look each other in the eye.

Further in, Strange was a silhouette, cross-legged on the dampest patch of rock, his cloak drawn tight around his shoulders, his hands curled on his knees. A faint, sourceless light played over his features: the furrowed brow, the twitching of lips as if he argued with someone invisible.

He looked nothing like the sorcerer from the London incident, nothing like the cocksure master of the Kamar-Taj Cassandra had once observed from a very long, very safe distance. Here, his eyes were sunken. He muttered Latin, sometimes the fragments of ancient prayers. Once she caught a snatch of what might have been Russian, but it made no sense. The man was running through every psychic technique in the book and none of them worked. Hela’s magic was not a thing you could read; it was a black hole, a negative, a subtraction of power that left only the bitter taste of loss.

Thor was everywhere and nowhere. Sometimes Cassandra saw him helping an elderly woman across a patch of slick moss, or lifting stones to make beds for the children who could not sleep. More often, she saw him at the mouth of the cave, watching the horizon that never changed. His face had collapsed in on itself; the lines around his eyes had become fissures, his mouth a bloodless line that would not break. There was a time, she guessed, when Thor would have drunk himself into a stupor and woken up ready for battle. That time was over. Now he just stood, a battered sentinel, his axe resting on his shoulder, the knuckles of his free hand gone bone-white.

No one spoke unless they had to. The darkness in the cave was an organism, it sucked up small talk, chewed it, spat it back out as silence. Sometimes a child cried, or a man coughed for too long, but the cave always returned to its equilibrium: the symphony of water, the shuffle of hopeless feet, the endless hum of defeat.

Cassandra couldn’t stay still. She walked the periphery, avoiding the light, scanning for patterns. She mapped the whole system in her head—every curve, every crack, every possible way in or out. She knew where the soldiers kept their battered weapons. She knew where the civilians gathered to share thin soup and thinner stories. She knew which alcove Thor retreated to when he thought no one was watching.

She did not know how to kill a god of death, but she knew how to endure. She’d done it before.

Clint was sitting cross-legged by a cluster of glowing fungus, sharpening arrows with methodical intensity. The shafts were local wood, knotted and unreliable, but he handled each one with the care of a craftsman. He wore a battered SHIELD field jacket, the left sleeve still torn from the last battle.

She hesitated on the edge of the circle, not sure if she wanted to speak or not. He didn’t look up.

“Hey,” she said.

He kept at the arrowhead, the rasping sound a kind of punctuation. “You’re up late. Or early. Hard to tell.”

She took a breath, felt it burn in her chest. “Doesn’t matter. No one’s sleeping.”

Clint nodded, set the arrow aside, picked up another. “You’ve been pacing since we got here,” he said, his voice flat. “Is it about Wanda?”

Cassandra shrugged. “All of them. But yes, her too.”

Clint finally looked up from his arrow, meeting her gaze. His voice softened, but the weary edge remained.

"Natasha always said the waiting was the worst part." His knife moved in slow, practiced strokes. "Before a mission, before a fight. She said the anticipation could kill you faster than any bullet."

Cassandra watched her feet, “Well, she’s never been more correct.”

Silence. Only the slow, deliberate scrape of metal on stone.

“I’m not sure we’re making a difference,” she said.

He finally looked up. In the pale light, his eyes were two mismatched marbles—one blue, one brown, both ringed with a weariness that made her shudder. “That’s not the job,” he said.

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

He set the arrow down, massaged the bridge of his nose. “We’re not here to fix the world. We’re here to buy time for the ones who still have a shot. Sometimes you win, sometimes you get a stay of execution. But the job is always the same: don’t die until you’re supposed to.”

“That’s defeatist.”

“No,” Clint said, and his voice was suddenly so cold and so clear that she wanted to back away. “Defeatist is quitting before you’re dead. This? This is just the grind.”

They sat together in the hush. Cassandra stared at her hands, watched the way her fingers curled and uncurled, hungry for action. She tried to imagine what it would feel like to give up, to stop fighting. She couldn’t do it. There was always one more move, one more hour to survive.

She looked at Clint, at the line of his jaw, the scar running under his ear, the careful, measured movements of a man who had nothing left but still refused to die.

“Every hour we sit here,” she said, “is an hour they can use to hurt them. To break them. You know that, right?”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Then why not try?”

He looked away. “Because you and I? We’re expendable. But we’re also the only hope they’ve got. If we move before we’re ready, we get dead. Then there’s nobody left to get them out.”

Clint’s voice was flat, a dull edge that cut all the way to the bone. “We wait for the signal. That’s the job.”

She didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.

She got up, her legs shaky, her mouth full of acid. She walked back through the cave, past the huddled children and the silent sentries, past Rocket and Tony and their schematics, past Thor and his ghosts. She stood at the mouth of the cave and looked at the black horizon, the twisted trees, the world that had been beautiful once and was now only a grave.

Every hour they waited was an hour she had to keep her rage on a leash. Every hour was a war against the impulse to run, to fight, to do anything at all.

But Clint was right. Sometimes the job was to wait, to absorb the pressure, to outlast the dark.

She let the cold air fill her lungs. She let the silence wrap around her.

When the time came, she would be ready.

Cassandra couldn't stand the waiting anymore. The pressure of inaction built in her chest like a scream she couldn't release. Twenty hours had passed since their arrival, and nothing had changed except the growing desperation in everyone's eyes.

"I'm going out," she announced, approaching Valkyrie who stood apart from the others, sharpening her blade with methodical precision. "We need to find food. These people are starving."

Valkyrie looked up, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Heimdall said no one should leave."

"Heimdall also said these people haven't had a proper meal in days." Cassandra kept her voice low, conscious of the refugees huddled nearby. "Look at them. The children can barely stand."

It wasn't just about food, and both of them knew it. Cassandra needed to move, to act, to do something besides pace the perimeter of their prison and count the seconds until they could rescue Wanda and Natasha. The thought of them in Hela's grasp made her stomach twist with nausea. Every moment they waited was another moment her friends suffered.

Valkyrie studied her for a long moment, then gave a sharp nod. "Fine, but we go together."

Cassandra's shoulders loosened a fraction. Valkyrie was a formidable fighter—she'd seen the woman cleave through steel like it was paper—but what if they had to face Hela’s forces, would she fight, or run again? She glanced at the warrior's scarred knuckles, the set of her jaw that never quite relaxed.

"Fine," she said.

They left the cave at dawn, though there was no sun in this sky. Just a bleak, featureless gray that seemed to grind the world flatter with every passing hour. The mission was simple: scout for food and water, look for survivors, map a path to the city if they could. In reality it was a suicide run, but nobody called it that.

The air was so cold it hurt to breathe. Every inhalation grated the throat, left a film of ice on the teeth. Cassandra felt the freeze burn through her jacket, numbing her ribs and turning her joints to stone. She kept moving, counting every step in her head, the only way to keep the panic at bay.

The world outside was worse than she’d expected. The trees stood in perfect rows, each trunk bleached to the color of old bones, every branch a rack of dry, splitting antlers. The ground was layered with leaves that had rotted and dried at the same time, crisp but sour, a chemistry experiment gone to mold. There was no birdsong, no animal cry, nothing but the wind’s faint hush—a language of endings, and not of hope.

They’d walked a mile before Cassandra noticed the raven.

It perched atop a broken branch, feathers slick with midnight oil, head cocked as if it was listening to a conversation only it could hear. Its eyes were coin-bright, as if forged from cut glass and polished obsidian. The thing was too big for a regular bird, maybe even for a monster, but it didn’t move. It just watched them, impassive, waiting. Valkyrie noticed too, but said nothing. She just stared at the bird for a long moment, then spat in the mud and kept walking.

They found a river, or what was left of one. The water was thin, a black ribbon threading through the dead grass. Cassandra tested the bank, boots sinking an inch in the silt, and tasted the air. It smelled like nothing, which was worse than poison—whatever had killed this place left no trace at all. She scraped a sample into a plastic tube, for Tony to analyze later, assuming there was a later. She wiped her hands and glanced up at the raven. It hadn’t moved.

They’d trudged a mile—by Cassandra’s count, one thousand eight hundred and forty-two paces—before she felt the prickle between her shoulder blades, the evolutionary gift of prey-animals and survivors. It was not the wind, nor the bone-white trees crowding the horizon; it was a presence, a weight that pressed down on her skull, static and absolute. She resisted the urge to glance behind. If something was following them, it wanted her to know. Predator psychology: you didn’t stalk unless you meant to be seen.

A bird resolved out of the fog as they crested a low ridge, a slab of frost-shattered stone. It perched atop a broken branch, feathers slick as fresh oil, talons sinking into the wood as if it could bleed the tree back to life. Its head swiveled toward her, slow and deliberate, eyes like twin obsidian marbles set in a mask of hunger and perfect calculation. The raven—it had to be a raven, though its size suggested a genetic experiment or the final product of a witch’s blessing—watched her with the forbearance of royalty. It did not blink. It simply marked her, as a ledger marks the debt.

Valkyrie clocked it at the same moment, the minute tightening of her jaw belying the casual pace of her stride.

They kept moving, boots breaking the crust of earth that had once been green and was now the color of old war wounds. The trees grew denser, their branches a weave of pale fingers grasping for lost sunlight. Every few yards, Cassandra caught another glimpse of the raven: perched on a stump, outlined against the ash-bright sky, always present, always patient. She considered shooting it, just to assert the illusion of agency, but she didn’t like the odds of missing. She’d seen things like this before, on missions where the supernatural was just a word for "something that doesn’t want you to have an explanation."

It became a game, then—how many times could she spot the raven before it moved? Four, then five, then six. The terrain changed with every hundred yards. Once, she and Valkyrie passed a clearing where the grass had been flattened into a perfect spiral, the center marked by a stack of animal bones. A warning, or an offering, or both. Cassandra didn’t ask for clarification; she knew the kind of answer Valkyrie would give. They pressed on, oxygen burning in their lungs, the tempo of their march dictated by the knowledge that they were not, and never would be, alone.

Cassandra found herself thinking of Wanda. Not the Wanda she’d left in the hands of Hela, but the girl she’d first met in London: clever, scared, desperate for connection. Wanda would have known what ritual it was, would have had a spell to create them a path towards some sort of food.Cassandra’s own toolbox was more limited. She mapped the forest with her eyes, committing every out-of-place rock and shadow to memory. She listened for footsteps behind the susurrus of the wind, but heard only the click of her own teeth as she clenched down her anxiety.

Two miles in, the landscape began to slope down, the trees thinning as they approached what had once been a river. Valkyrie paused at the edge, hackles raised. Cassandra scanned the banks. The water was a black thread, barely thick enough to drown a rat; the rest of the channel was a graveyard of pebbles and old reeds. She advanced to the water’s edge, boots sinking into silt, knees locking against a spasm of memory. Once, in another life, she’d been good at this—a field agent, a scientist, a living engine of analysis and prediction. Now, everything was inference and dread.

She knelt, careful not to let her shadow cross the water. The smell was absent, like someone had vacuumed all the rot and bacteria out of the universe. That was wrong, fundamentally. Even a dead river should have a scent. She scooped up a sample, let the viscous liquid pool in a plastic tube. For Tony, she thought, in the same way one makes a mental note of a favor for a friend hoping to live enough for them to collect. She capped the tube and straightened, glancing back at Valkyrie.

The Asgardian hadn’t moved. She stood sentinel, eyes fixed on the far side of the river, hand resting lightly on the hilt of her sword. Cassandra followed her gaze and found the raven, now perched on a boulder across the channel, closer than before. Its wings flexed once, a shudder of muscle and intent. It was so close Cassandra could see the individual filaments of its feathers, the way they caught and scattered the weak light. A normal bird would have flinched, would have acknowledged the presence of two armed women by the water. This one simply waited, as if it had all the time in the world.

When Valkyrie finally spoke, her voice was thin enough to snap. “I shouldn’t have come back here.” She didn’t look at Cassandra, just stared out into the wasted world. “Not after… everything.”

Cassandra shrugged. “You’re here now. That’s not running.”

Valkyrie laughed, a single exhalation, instantly lost to the wind. “You don’t get it. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of freezing. Of seeing her, and just… locking up.” She flexed her free hand, as if testing the concept. “If she’s out here, I’ll know it. And I’ll lose everything.”

Cassandra shook her head. “No. You lose when you quit. Not before.” She looked at the warrior, tried to read what was written in the lines of her face. Saw only exhaustion, and a bitterness so dense it was almost a mineral. “I don’t have anything left to lose. Maybe that’s why I keep moving.”

Valkyrie snorted. “That’s not courage. It’s just emptiness.”

“It works,” Cassandra said.

They both looked at the raven. It was still there. Watching. It hadn’t blinked once.

They crossed the river, or what was left of it, and pressed deeper into the woods. The further they went, the less the world made sense. The terrain didn’t match the topography Heimdall had described; valleys sloped the wrong way, ridges terminated in midair, and entire stands of trees seemed to vanish if you looked at them directly. Once, Cassandra turned her head and caught a glimpse of a clearing that wasn’t there a second before. It was gone when she doubled back to check.

The raven never left them. Sometimes it appeared on a branch beside the path, other times it materialized ten feet ahead, always waiting, always silent. If Cassandra tried to ignore it, she’d catch it reflected in the sheen of Valkyrie’s sword, or in the mirrored surface of a frozen puddle. Its presence was a physical pressure, a bruise in the air.

The attack came without a sound.

The first arrow missed her eye by a quarter-inch, so close it parted a few strands of her hair before thunking into the trunk behind her. The second arrow wasn’t an arrow at all—it was a dart, spined and barbed, and it hit Valkyrie in the shoulder with a wet, meaty sound. She didn’t scream; she just spun, sword extended, and hacked the projectile out with a single, surgical stroke.

They came out of the trees in total silence, not even the crunch of boots to warn of their presence. Each wore the ruined armor of Asgard’s glory days, now overgrown with black moss and streaked with grime. Their eyes were empty sockets, dark and endless, but they moved with a precision that made Cassandra’s blood run cold. There was no hesitation, no wasted motion. Just killing.

“What are these?” Asked Cassandra, already in a fighting stance.

Cassandra ducked the next shot and closed with the nearest one, channeling every lesson from a childhood spent on the edge of death. She dodged the opening lunge, swept low, and shattered its leg at the knee. The thing barely reacted. It fell, and in the same motion, stabbed upward with its blade, scoring a deep line along her side. She grunted, spun, and slammed her baton through its neck. Only then did it fall still.

“Einherjar. They were once the best warriors of Asgard.”

Valkyrie was a dervish, a hurricane of steel and muscle, but the dart had slowed her just enough to make her mortal. Three Einherjar boxed her in, blades flashing, each strike designed to wound rather than kill. She gave ground, step by step, until she was back-to-back with Cassandra, both of them breathing hard, each inhale a struggle.

“Any plan?” Valkyrie said, between gritted teeth.

“Yeah. Don’t die.”

The first seconds of combat were not an escalation but a perfect, sickening stillness—a mutual recognition of death’s inevitability, where the only variable was who it would claim first. Cassandra met the charge with clinical detachment, every move distilled from a lifetime of streetwise desperation. Her baton flicked out, shattering a helmet’s visor and the skull beneath with the same hollow crack. She pivoted, slammed an elbow into a jaw, and dodged the retaliatory sweep of a rusted blade by a hairsbreadth. The Einherjar fought in coordinated silence, their formation so flawless it rendered them less like men and more like a plague, an advancing rot. It took her less than a heartbeat to understand: pain meant nothing to them. Wounds didn’t slow them, didn’t even register.

Valkyrie fought beside her, a geometry of violence. Each swing of the Asgardian’s sword cleaved through bone and ancient metal, spattering the snowpack with oily ichor. But even wounded, the Einherjar did not fall away—they closed the gaps, pressed harder. Cassandra parried a spear thrust and rolled under the counterblow, landing behind one. She drove her baton through the base of its skull, dropping it instantly. She was already moving, trusting Valkyrie to guard her blind side. They fell into an accidental rhythm—Valkyrie’s brute strength opening gaps, Cassandra’s speed exploiting them. No wasted motion, no time for fear.

A helmeted skull split open under Valkyrie’s boot. “They don’t stop,” she grunted, voice taut with the strain of holding the line. “They never stop.”

“Neither do we,” Cassandra said, and surprised herself with the certainty. Her baton snapped a wrist, swept a leg, then pressed into the soft tissue below an armored chin. Three down, two more filling the space before the bodies could hit the ground. She caught a glimpse of the raven overhead, circling, its shadow slicing black arcs across the pallid earth.

For the first time since landing on this nightmare world, Cassandra felt the faintest pulse of hope. They were thinning the numbers—barely perceptible, but real. And in that infinitesimal shift, she saw the possibility of survival, even if it was only a rumor.

The next Einherjar came at her with a net, its mesh laced with hooks. She ducked, slid under it, and drove her knee up into the attacker’s chin, then smashed the baton into its temple with enough force to send it reeling. Valkyrie caught it on the backswing, cleaving the thing from clavicle to pelvis. The Asgardian’s breath came ragged, but she did not falter; if anything, the pain and exhaustion made her more dangerous, distilling the fight to its essentials.

They moved as one, as if the violence had fused their instincts. Valkyrie’s sword flashed, Cassandra’s baton darted in the gaps. The Einherjar began to hesitate—minutely, but enough that Cassandra could sense it. A rational enemy might have retreated; these just reconfigured their attack vectors, adapting fast. It turned into a contest of endurance, a test of which would run out first: their muscle or the enemy’s grotesque persistence.

It almost seemed winnable.

Then, from above, the raven opened its beak and let loose a scream.

It wasn’t a sound so much as a weapon, an uncanny vibration that made Cassandra’s teeth ache and her vision strobe with black stars. It was not the call of a bird, not anything that belonged in nature—it was a crystalline note of predation, sharpened by eons of hunger and want. For one terrible instant, every Einherjar froze, pivoting in perfect unison toward the source. Valkyrie hesitated, her blade dipping just a fraction lower, and Cassandra felt the same hitch in her own chest—a primal impulse to run, to cower, to surrender.

And that was all it took.

The Einherjar stopped attacking. Instead, they surged forward, overwhelming Cassandra and Valkyrie, pinning them in place. Their touch was freezing, electric, not quite real. Cassandra fought, but there were too many; they held her down, faces inches from hers, breath cold as dry ice. She twisted, tried to use her shadows, but Hela’s corruption was a lid over everything. The power fizzled, left her as empty as the sky.

The air shimmered above them, and the world tore open.

The air above them parted like torn silk, and through the wound they descended.

Cassandra's breath caught in her throat as more warriors, dressed like Valkyrie emerged from the rift in reality. They moved with unnatural grace, their once-gleaming armor now blackened and fused to their bones, their bodies elongated and warped by whatever process Hela used to make them. Their armor was slick with oil, and their faces were not faces at all but masks of bone, each one carved with a rune that pulsed with green fire. Their wings were shredded, yet they hovered, moving as if gravity was only a rumor.

For a moment, all was still. Even the wind held its breath.

Valkyrie’s eyes went wide. She saw them, recognized them, and the scream that tore out of her was not a sound but a vibration, a rupture in the fabric of what it meant to be alive. But she didn’t freeze as she dreaded, she held stronger of her sword and even through the trembling of her muscles she charged forward.

Cassandra tried to move, to intervene, but a hand closed around her throat and held her in place. The corrupted Valkyries ignored her; their entire attention was on their sister, and the message was clear: You are ours now.

The leader—her hair a cascade of static, her mask etched with the mark of war—leaned close to Valkyrie, and whispered something in a language that bent the air. The obsidian chain tightened. Valkyrie struggled, she fought them, but it was useless. The only thing in her face now was horror, and the kind of grief that could kill a god.

Cassandra’s mind raced. She calculated odds, routes, the trajectory of every possible move, and knew in a flash that any attempt to save Valkyrie now would only add her to the inventory of the damned, but she didn’t care. 

She fought with all she had to break free of those monsters, but with her lungs empty, all her strength seemed to have vanished. Soon her vision faltered and black spots started to appear at the edge of her sight. For a moment, she thought of Steve, and how he’d hate her for giving up. But then she thought of Wanda, and how she’d understand. And at that, all went dark.

When she woke up the Einherjar had already hefted Valkyrie and disappeared through a rent in the world. With the pressure on her throat vanished, Cassandra slumped to the mud. The raven landed beside her, cocked its head, and then lifted off, flying toward the dead city. A black dot, receding.

She got up, not knowing how long she’d been down. Her hands shook, but she made herself walk, step after step, back to the cave. She followed her footprints, but they vanished at intervals, as if the world was trying to erase her too. By the time she saw the cave mouth, every muscle burned, every nerve was flayed raw.

She stopped at the threshold, cold wind pressing at her back. The cave mouth gaped, dark and familiar, a promise of shelter that now felt more like a sentence. She stood there for a long time—seconds, minutes, it stretched into something shapeless—her insides pulped by the memory of what she’d done, and more pointedly, what she’d failed to do. Each breath tasted of smoke and rot, and the world outside was drained of even the pale hope that had drawn her this far. Valkyrie was gone.

She stared up at the sky, expecting some celestial damnation, but it was only the same bruised gray, cut by a single drift of ash. She thought of the others, scattered across the realms, and wondered distantly who else had already been subtracted from the equation. It was supposed to be a rescue. It had turned into a disappearance, and she was left holding the receipt.

She tried to move forward, but her feet refused. Even the smallest act, the simple pivot of a hip, felt fraudulent. She could still feel the hands of the Einherjar at her neck, the knuckles grinding against bone, the freeze of their inhuman grip. That was nothing compared to the memory of Valkyrie, her face contorted into something unrecognizable, a kind of terror that belonged only to the betrayed. Cassandra had never believed in gods, but she’d seen them fall, and in that collapse she recognized her own smallness. That was the worst of it—the ordinary, human failure at the core of everything.

She clenched her fists until the nails bit in, trying to coax the anger back to the surface, but it was gone, replaced by a bottomless ache. The mission was over. She’d lost her only ally in this place, and she was not dead—she was still here, and would have to carry that with her. The knowledge tingled up her spine and sat there, cold and inert.

Behind her, in the branches of a dead tree, the raven waited. Its eyes, a cold, perfect green, were still watching.

Chapter Text

Cassandra stumbled through the hidden passageway, the weight of her failure a physical thing pressing on her shoulders. The cavern’s familiar damp chill did nothing to cool the hot shame coiling in her gut. She emerged into the faint, spectral light of the main chamber, and the low hum of conversation died instantly. Every eye turned to her, and in their collective gaze, she saw the question she couldn't bear to answer.

Clint was the first to move, his face a mask of hardened concern. He met her halfway, his voice low and sunken. “Cass? Where’s Valkyrie?”

Cassandra looked down, the words lodged in her throat like shards of glass. She could only shake her head, the simple movement a confession that tore through the cavern’s fragile hope. No words were needed. Two had left; one returned.

"She's alive," Cassandra managed, her voice scraping out like a rusty hinge. "But they have her. I couldn't—" The words died in her throat.

The shadows in the corners of the cavern seemed to deepen, pulsing with a rhythm that matched her own frantic heartbeat, a drumbeat of failure echoing in the oppressive silence. The sound was so loud in her ears she was surprised no one else could hear it. Her head throbbed, the persistent drumming clouding her thoughts. She felt as if she was losing control over her own body. Her legs trembled beneath her, and she staggered sideways, palm slapping against the cavern wall, fingers splaying across the slick, cold stone. The ancient chill of the rock seeped into her burning skin as she pressed her back against its rough surface, desperate for an anchor. This wasn’t just panic, she realized— she had survived thousands of operations, she knew the difference between standard mission anxiety and whatever was clawing through her now.

This was a fracture. A complete system failure. The drumming in her head intensified, and her vision swam. The shadows in the far corner of the cavern weren't just dark; they seemed to writhe, coalescing into a patch of absolute void that her eyes couldn't properly focus on. A trick of the light, a hallucination brought on by extreme stress, she told herself, but the explanation felt thin, useless. The cold dread washing over her was absolute. This wasn't a reaction to her failure; it felt like the failure itself had poisoned her, short-circuiting her mind.

"Cass!" Clint was at her side now, his hand on her shoulder, his voice a distant rumble. "Hey, look at me. Breathe."

She fought to obey, to drag air into lungs that felt like stone. She slammed a mental door on the rising tide of sensory chaos, forcing the discipline she had honed over a lifetime to the front. She recited mission parameters from a decade ago, weapon serial numbers, anything to anchor her spinning thoughts. For a terrifying second, the chaos pushed back, a wave of cold static that threatened to overwhelm her completely. Then, slowly, painfully, it receded.

The drumming quieted to a dull ache behind her temples. The shadows in the corner settled, returning to their normal, inanimate state. Cassandra gasped, a shuddering intake of air, her entire body trembling with the strain of a battle no one else could see. The cold cavern wall was the only thing holding her up.

Clint’s face swam into focus, his expression of hardened concern now mixed with genuine alarm. "What the hell was that, Cass? You were gone for a second there."

She shook her head, pushing herself off the wall, though her legs still felt like jelly. "Just... exhaustion," she lied, the word tasting like ash. She couldn't tell him the truth. How could she explain that her own mind had just completely betrayed her? That for a moment, she wasn't sure what was real? Her failure on the mission had pried open a door inside her, and something utterly alien had peered out. This terror had nothing to do with Valkyrie's fate, but with the chilling fact that for a moment, she hadn't been in control of her own mind. For the first time, Cassandra was afraid of a weakness within herself she never knew existed.

—————————————

The cavern air, already thin and cold, seemed to solidify as the team gathered. There was no formal council table, only a grim circle formed around a cluster of camp beds, their occupants lit by the unsteady, spectral glow of Stark's jury-rigged arc lamps. The light carved their faces out of the gloom, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to mock the gravity of the moment. Thor stood apart, his silence a void that pulled all sound into it.

Cassandra forced herself to the center of the circle, the focal point of their collective dread. She felt like a specimen under a microscope. She locked her knees to keep them from trembling and began her report. Her voice, when it came, was an unnatural monotone, scraped clean of all emotion. A voice designed to deliver facts, not feelings.

"The ambush was professional," she began, her gaze sweeping over their faces—Clint's grim resignation, Tony's frantic energy, Strange's unnerving stillness. "A squad of what had to be arround ten Einherjar, moving with perfect coordination. They used the terrain to their advantage, emerging from the tree line without a sound. Standard hunter-killer tactics."

She detailed the fight, her words painting a clinical picture of parries, thrusts, and desperate tactical retreats. She described the shift in their objective, the chilling moment they stopped trying to kill and started trying to capture. She spoke of the undead Valkyries, their dead eyes glowing with Hela's green magic, and saw a muscle twitch in Thor's jaw.

Throughout the debrief, the picture of the raven was a searing afterimage behind her eyes. Valkyrie saw it too, a voice in her head insisted. It watched us. It was intelligent.

Cassandra crushed the thought. It was a feeling. An instinct. Valkyrie had only glanced at it. To report an enemy's hyper-intelligent gaze based on a feeling, right after her mind had short-circuited, was a risk she wouldn't take. An instinct she couldn't quantify was a luxury she could no longer afford.

So she lied. Not with words, but with silence. Her omission was a tactical decision, a way of protecting the mission from its most damaged component: her.

It was Vision who opened the debating, his tone a little less formal than usual.

“We have a problem,” he said. “If Hela is sending agents so far beyond the palace, she’s extending her reach faster than expected. If she can project her warriors—her will, her magic— this far, she might get to other realms as well, and that completely changes the calculus.”

"It was a targeted patrol," Tony argued, already pacing, his hands tracing unseen equations in the air. "She's sweeping the wilderness. They got lucky. Dammit."

"Then we can no longer afford to wait for them to get lucky again," Strange said, his voice a low baritone that cut through the tension. "Our position here is temporary at best."

As if summoned by the sheer force of their crisis, Heimdall pushed himself from the wall he had been leaning against. His face was a mask of pale, strained exhaustion, but his eyes... his eyes burned with a faint, flickering amber light. He looked like a dying star mustering its last rays. He glanced directly at Strange, his voice a strained rasp. "I think I can help. Ideally one more day of rest would have been wiser, to avoid straining myself, but wisdom is a luxury for peacetime.”

Heimdall’s hand came to rest on Strange’s temple with the delicacy of a priest administering last rites. For a full second, nothing happened—then Strange went rigid, his entire body drawn taut as piano wire. His eyes, never far from calm, widened with animal panic. A tremor ran through his jaw, a tic of pain that betrayed what looked like centuries of self-mastery.

Cassandra watched from the periphery of the light, arms folded so tightly across her chest she felt bone grind on bone. There was something indecent about watching Heimdall transfer his Sight—she had always hated invasive magic, hated the way it blurred the boundaries of self—but the violence of the act was mesmerizing.

A faint corona of orange light built around Heimdall’s hand, bled into the white at the edges of Strange’s hair, crept down his face in fine lines. It looked like the slow march of infection. Heimdall’s own eyes had gone nearly pure gold, the whites eclipsed by a burning sun.

Then the cavern itself flickered, as if caught between frames of two warring films. The echo of Heimdall’s vision leapt into the room, visible even to the uninitiated. Strange’s hands came up, almost of their own accord, weaving signs in the air as if to grasp the images and make sense of them.

The first portal opened with a sound like a baby’s first cry: thin, wet, and slightly obscene. It wobbled in space, an ovoid of living fog. Cassandra could see nothing through it but a wall of gray so dense it ate the shine from Stark’s lamps. In the fog’s womb, she caught a flicker—something tall, hunched, moving in a rhythm that had no relation to normal time. Behind it, the faint suggestion of trees, so warped and swollen by darkness that they no longer resembled anything of Earth.

Strange’s brow knitted. His hands twitched again, the ring on his index finger pulsing in time with his heart. The portal collapsed, leaving behind a scent of mildew and rot.

The second tear was deeper, black as a collapsed lung. This time, the image was clearer. A mine shaft, broad-gauge rails crusted with rust, splinters of dead lanterns on the crossbeams. The air in the vision was heavy with coal dust and something sweet, almost sickly. She caught a glimpse of a cart, overturned, with something slumped in it—she thought it might be a body, or what was left of one.

Strange flinched as another vision took hold. He clenched his jaw, sweat popping on his upper lip.

The third portal was a mistake. The gesture was the same, the light the same sullen orange, but nothing happened at first. Then a pulse, like a negative of a camera flash. For a heartbeat, Cassandra saw a white, marbled surface—flawless, radiant, and alive—and in the next instant it was gone, replaced by nothing. No image. Just the blank face of the cavern wall, unchanged except for a faint rim of darkness around where the portal had been.

Heimdall’s hand dropped away from Strange’s skull. The wizard nearly fell, catching himself on the table and panting through clenched teeth. Heimdall staggered back two steps, his eyes now dull and almost blind, and he crashed to one knee with a sound like a felled tree.

Tony broke the silence first. “What the hell was that last one? Looked like a misfire.”

Strange shook his head, still sucking air. “Not a misfire. She’s blinding the Sight. Closer to her, it gets thicker. It’s not just shadows—she’s built a wall of oblivion around the throne.”

Heimdall’s voice was a gasp, his words breaking against the back of his throat. “I can… sense the Red Woman—your Widow. But I cannot see her. The palace… is a fortress of darkness. She knew I would have scoured there.” He was shivering now, sweat slick on his skin despite the cold. “Even my own home, now… beyond reach.”

For a long time, nobody moved. The knowledge hung in the air: they could see the approach, but the final target was a black hole from which no vision could escape.

Thor looked at the floor, hands clenched so hard his knuckles shone bone-white. “Then we go in the old way,” he said. “By foot, through the roots of the palace.”

Strange nodded, his composure trickling back one drop at a time. “We’ll need a two-pronged entry. One through the palace tunnels, one from above.”

“Valkyrie is likely in the cells below,” said Cassandra, her voice returned to its usual monotone. “Widow too, if she’s alive.”

“Always the optimist, Cass,” Clint muttered.

She didn’t answer. She was already sketching the breach points in her mind, already practicing tactics, switching his teammates in her mind to find the perfect combination. She felt the old, familiar comfort of mission clarity return. The earlier terror seemed far away now, a fever memory.

Tony paced the room in tight, angry circles, muttering calculations. “If she’s jamming magic, we’re on our own until we’re back. No comms, no GPS. Christ.”

Rocket had a toothpick in his mouth, but it wasn’t moving. He stared at the dying portal, his face unreadable. Even Groot, usually a font of unnecessary commentary, was silent.

“You don’t know that.” Rocket pondered. “Tecnology reacts in the weirdest ways sometimes. Let me think, I bet I can find a way to push electronic signal through.”

Thor’s voice boomed out, final and absolute. “Then do that now, weird raccoon. We go at dusk, use the favor of the night. All of you, you better prepare your weapons. And say your words.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, just stalked off into the deeper shadows of the cave. The others watched him go, then, slowly, began to move as well—each to their own ritual of preparation, or denial, or prayer.

Cassandra remained perfectly still, letting the silence pool around her. When she was sure no one was looking, she allowed herself a single exhale, slow and controlled.

The mission was back in her hands. This time, she would not let it slip.

——————————

Valkyrie’s last memory of the outer world was the taste of copper and snow.

The Einherjar dragged her down a corridor that had once pulsed with royal pageantry—now it was bare stone, unadorned, every surface purged of warmth. She recognized the stains on the walls as not merely the work of centuries but of recent, desperate battle: here, a smear of green magic, as if Hela herself had burned away a tapestry; there, a boot-print still wet with blood. Her feet scraped and caught on the uneven ground, but she refused to stumble, refused even in shackles to grant her captors that satisfaction.

They brought her to the new throne room.

It was colder than she remembered. The columns had been stripped of their gold and stood like skeletal reminders of Asgard’s decay. The high windows were bricked in with slabs of black stone, killing all natural light. The banners had been replaced with funeral drapes in a sickly green, each one hung to accentuate the darkness rather than dispel it.

The new queen of Asgard waited at the far end, collapsed into Odin’s throne with a lazy, almost petulant indifference. Her face was carved from obsidian—no softness, no humor, only an unsettling serenity. Hela draped herself in silence, her hair a black shroud, her eyes fixed on Valkyrie with a disdain so casual it might have been amusement.

The guards threw her to the floor, the impact igniting stars behind her eyes. She struggled upright on her knees, refused to bow her head. All her training, all her pride, fused into that single act of refusal. She heard the clang of the doors, the march of her captors withdrawing, but the new queen did not acknowledge the spectacle. It was beneath her.

Valkyrie’s mind flickered through possible responses. Attack now and die—maybe buy the rebels a few hours, but nothing more. Or listen, and endure. Her stomach turned at the calculation, but she endured.

“You’ve aged, Brunnhilde,” Hela said at last, her voice a velvet blade. “I remember you taller.”

Valkyrie ground her teeth, tasted blood. “And I remember you as a rabid dog, barely worth the leash.”

A slow smile. “You’re all that’s left,” Hela said. “I seriously thought I was finished with you valkyries. Weird how the world turns, you fought me, accusing me to be a traitor of the throne, and yet you ran...”

The word hit her like a physical blow. Ran. For a searing moment, the throne room vanished, replaced by a sky filled with screaming and the glint of obsidian blades. She saw her sisters falling, heard their cries, and felt the phantom shove of the one who pushed her out of death’s path, her sacrifice buying a life Valkyrie hadn't wanted. A life she had promptly wasted.

Hela saw the flicker of pain in her eyes and descended from the throne, circling her like a predator. “You abandoned your sisters to the slaughter and fled from the highest honor an Asgardian can know.” she continued, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper as she stopped in front of her prisoner. “You threw away Valhalla to become a coward.” Her words weren't an attack; they were a perfect, clinical recitation of the truth Valkyrie had lived with every single day. “You fought me for betraying my father’s throne, only to become a traitor yourself.”

Every syllable was a nail hammered into the coffin of her pride. The shame was a physical thing, a cold weight in her gut that threatened to pull her down through the floor. Hela was speaking the words Valkyrie's own soul had screamed at her in the bottom of a thousand bottles.

“Now look at us,” Hela said, gesturing around the corrupted hall. “I am the rightful heir. I sit on the throne that is mine by birthright. That makes your new ‘king’, and all his little friends, the traitors. You are no different from me, Brunnhilde. You simply lack my conviction. If I was condemned for wanting what was mine, what does that make you, who abandoned everything you swore to protect?”

Valkyrie had no answer. The anger was gone, burned away by the acid of Hela's truth. All that was left was the hollow ache of a coward who had lived too long.

Hela rose and gestured dismissively. "Put her with the other spy. Let them contemplate their poor choices together."

She gestured. Two of her creatures slithered from the gloom behind the throne. Burnnhilde flinched—these weren’t Einherjar, but something else, twisted even by Hel’s standards. The first was stitched together from what might have been two different Asgardians, its joints wrapped in green-lit iron, eyes mismatched and wrong. The second moved in a way that suggested neither life nor death, its skin drawn tight over bones that were too long, too thin. She had faced death in every form, but these were an insult to the dead themselves.

Burnnhilde tried to meet her gaze, but the eyes behind that mask seemed to look through her, as if reading every flaw, every uncertainty, every secret she’d ever buried. The pressure was unbearable, as if something inside her skull was being compressed, inch by inch.

Hela rose from the throne, a black wave unfurling itself, and stepped down to the marble. The abominations fanned out behind her, shuffling in time with the queen’s heartbeat, a rhythm Burnnhilde found herself involuntarily matching.

Hela knelt, a mockery of mercy, and reached out with a single, cold finger. She lifted Burnnhilde’s chin. The touch burned like dry ice.

“Do you want to know how it ends?” Hela whispered, so close Burnnhilde could smell the void on her breath. “Not in battle. Not in glory. Just like this—on your knees, begging for scraps.” Her hand closed, nails biting into Burnnhilde’s jaw. “And then, nothing.”

Burnnhilde did not flinch.

The abominations grabbed Burnnhilde by the arms, their grips like steel bands. They hauled her through the ruined corridors of the palace, past a procession of dead—some of whom she recognized, most of whom she did not. Their eyes followed her, blank and endless, the green witchlight inside them flickering with an alien hunger. The descent felt eternal.

They reached the dungeons, once a place of order, now a museum of suffering. The cell doors were twisted out of true, half-melted and frozen into place. The creatures flung her in, and Burnnhilde collided with the far wall, the world spinning sideways, her senses smeared by the blow.

She spat blood, forced her eyes open, and saw a figure sitting cross-legged in the far corner. Red hair, chopped short; arms wrapped in bruises and restraint marks. Romanoff. Burnnhilde barked a laugh, low and hopeless. “Well, mission complete, I found you.”

Natasha did not rise, but the glimmer of recognition in her eyes was sharp as glass. “They always said Asgardian hospitality was overrated.”

Burnnhilde crawled upright, her joints creaking in protest. She sized up the cell: two bunks, no water, no visible cameras. Only a vent, high above, leaking a faint, green-lit mist. The floor was thick with the stink of ozone and blood.

Natasha watched her, silent. “You look like shit,” she said.

Burnnhilde grinned, bloody. “You should see the other guy.”

For a moment, there was nothing but breathing and the drip of water somewhere beyond the walls.

Burnnhilde slumped to the floor beside her, closer than she would have ever dared with anyone. The silence in the cell felt not like defeat, but like a truce between doomed soldiers—no pretense, no illusion. Just two women cataloging their wounds, measuring the shape of the cell and the certainty of the end.

She did not cry. She did not beg. She simply waited for the next move, whatever it might be, and resolved to hold onto herself a few more hours, or days, or years.

The dark pressed in, thick as earth.

But if Hela was expecting them to break, she had misjudged the living.

————————————————

The plan assembled itself like a tourniquet: crude, necessary, choking off hope to save the limb. Nobody called it bravery, not even in the silence after Cass laid out the facts. If there was a word for it, it was survival—anesthetized, joyless, and absolute.

They convened at the dead center of the cave system, beneath the leaking ultraviolet glow of Stark’s last portable arc lamp. Half the team was still bandaged from the week prior. Clint had his quiver and bow, but his eyes never left the battered wristwatch at his pulse point. Cass could tell by his stance he was running countdowns in his head, one for every team member left behind enemy lines. Tony’s mask was up, but the skin around his mouth was colorless. Rocket checked the same device in his paw every thirty seconds; he’d stopped pretending it was a diagnostic.

No raised hands, no debate, just an efficient, lethal triage. They all already knew what mission was theirs, because even in the depths of loss, nothing drives an avenger more than the knowledge of who needs saving. Cass said she’d go after Wanda, and the word “after” wasn’t perfunctory, it was religious. Vision, who had barely spoken since the last debacle, said the same, his voice trembling with a vibrato of need that Cass pretended not to hear. Clint didn’t even look up from his gear when he said he was going to find Natasha—"I'm bringing her home," his voice flat as a statement of fact, like announcing the weather. His thumb paused briefly on the arrowhead he was testing, a half-second of pressure that left a white mark on his skin before he moved to the next one. The others knew it was a promise he'd made a thousand times before, in a dozen countries, through comms crackling with gunfire, and he maintained it, every time.

Quill made some stupid joke about “picking up his girlfriend from space jail,” but nobody laughed, not even Quill. They all understood that the only reason Peter Quill was still standing was because he was wired directly to the thought of having to find her. Stark, who had lost more than he ever admitted, didn’t refer to Parker as “the kid” anymore—Cass noticed he said his name, Peter, each time, as if by invoking it he could keep the boy alive. Everyone else fell in as the missions required; nobody needed their role explained.

When the final groupings were made, the assignments sounded like a roll call for the damned. Clint, Thor, Scott, Rocket and Mantis were to sneak into the palace, they were the ones that had the highest possibilities of not being caught. Vision, Cass, Drax and Strange himself were “Team Witch,” tasked with entering the forest, which had become a living labyrinth of traps and psychic warfare. Quill, Stark, Groot and Rhodes drew the Svartalfheim’s mines, brute force for a raw hostile environment.

In the moments before action, it was not the grand speeches or battle cries that united the group, but the tiny, specific rituals: a last sip of water, a muttered curse in a language nobody else knew, a glance at a photograph or locket. They were condemned, maybe, but not broken. And Cass found herself, for one sick instant, almost admiring that.

As the hour approached, they took up their armor. No one was talking, no funny jokes about Drax’s prebattle rituals or Scott’s suit. Instead, there was the precise, meticulous ritual of a condemned man lacing his boots before the gallows. Cass watched the others, eyes narrowed, memorizing the set of each jaw, the velocity of each hand—she had always been good at recognizing when a group had given up hope. This was not that. It was the opposite: they would drag each other across the finish line if it meant leaving teeth marks in the dirt.

At 2100, Strange drew the first portal.

His fingers traced the familiar patterns they were now expert in recognizing, his hand slicing through the air with a deliberate precision that felt almost surgical. A gash of searing orange tore open the fabric of reality, a hungry maw that pulsed and writhed as if alive. It quivered, slick and unsettling, before revealing the gaping, iron-stained entrance to the lower mine. Waves of heat surged outward, dry as dust, wrapping around them like a suffocating shroud. The air was thick with a miasma that clawed at the throat—decay, rust, and an acrid tang that stung the nostrils, the unmistakable scent of old blood, marinated too long under an unyielding sun. Each breath felt like inhaling the very essence of despair, a reminder of the darkness that laid ahead.

Strange’s voice cut through the oppressive heat, sharp as a shard of obsidian. "Move."

It wasn't a request. It was the setting of a final, irreversible course.

Without a word, Tony’s faceplate snapped shut with a pneumatic hiss. Cassandra watched as the man vanished, replaced by the cold, impassive mask of Iron Man. He didn't offer a final quip or a glance back. He just stepped through the portal and was gone, a machine heading into the fire. He didn’t look back; as if there was nothing behind them but a world they were trying to save.

Rhodey followed a half-step behind, his War Machine armor a bulwark of military-grade certainty. He moved like a man who had crossed a hundred hostile thresholds before this one. His gait was steady, his focus absolute.

Then she saw Quill falter. It was barely a tremor, a split-second pause as the portal’s foul breath hit him, but she saw it. His hand tightened on his weapon, a reflexive gesture of a man steeling himself against a fear he couldn't show. He was thinking of Gamora. Cassandra didn't need to be a telepath to know it. Then he too plunged forward, chasing a ghost into the darkness.

Last came Groot, his woody form shrinking in on itself. With a shudder that sent a cascade of tiny, withered leaves to the ground, he too crossed the threshold, his branch-like fingers already curling into hardened fists.

One by one, they were swallowed by the mine’s maw. The searing orange of the portal snapped shut behind them, silencing the universe and sealing them in the suffocating blackness. There was no retreat. There was only the descent.

Next was Clint’s crew. There would be no portal for them. Thor led the way to a side shaft cut through eons ago by dwarves, the entrance now half-collapsed and weeping with black moss. “It’s a straight shot if you don’t mind the dark,” he said, not bothering to convince anyone. The silence was total; even Mantis, who usually filled such gaps with comforting nonsense, looked away.

They lined up. Lang flicked his suit to minimal profile, shrinking instantly to a smear at the edge of the tunnel. Clint pulled back his bow, then thought better of it, letting his arm fall to his side. He looked at Cass as if about to say something. Instead, he squared his shoulders and followed Thor into the dark.

Cass turned to her own team. Strange was already prepping the portal, hands moving in taut, angular strokes. Vision’s face was unreadable, all micro-tics and numbers running in his synthetic mind. Drax stood off to the side, looking at the back of his own hands as if puzzling out the riddle of skin.

This time the tear in the air looked more like an infection than a doorway, its rim crawling with shadows that weren’t just absence of light but something worse, as if the idea of dark had gotten stuck in the world and begun to rot. Vision glanced at Cass. “Ready?”

She steadied her breathing. “Do it.”

He went first, Drax close behind. Strange gave her a final, searching look—one that lasted just long enough for Cass to wonder if he’d seen more in her mind than she intended. Then they both stepped through.

—

The forest had died, but nobody had told the trees.

They stood in formation, blackened and skeletal, each trunk split by wounds that oozed with pale green resin. The ground was a sponge of old leaves and the shrapnel of bones, not all of them animal. Cass felt the change in air immediately—her skin prickled, her vision swam at the edges, as if she’d stepped into a pressure chamber.

She instantly reached for her Ki in the desperate attempt to ease their presence.

She drew the Ki into herself, closing her eyes briefly to concentrate. The familiar energy clung to her figure at first, accumulating and growing thicker and stronger. As soon as she felt it was powerful enough, Cassandra pushed, focusing on her breathing, on the memory of control. Slowly, her Ki wrapped around them as a blanket of sorts. She knew the others couldn’t perceive it, but the energy she'd summoned now cloaked their presence, dampening the sound of each footfall, each breath, each whisper of fabric against skin.

Cass tensed, scanning the area.

She felt the wrongness before she saw it. The air was too thick, laden with the stench of decay and something else—something colder, more ancient. The Ki blanket wavered around them as she struggled to maintain focus, her power meeting resistance from whatever magic saturated this place.

"Something's watching us," she whispered, the words barely audible even to herself.

Strange nodded, his eyes scanning the skeletal canopy above. The trees creaked despite the absence of wind, their blackened limbs swaying in unison like the appendages of some vast, submerged creature.

Vision moved ahead, his synthetic body gliding soundlessly over the corrupted earth. His mind stone pulsed with a steady yellow light—the only color in this monochrome hell besides Strange's cloak and the sickly green resin that oozed from the wounded trees.

Drax remained uncharacteristically silent, his usual bravado tempered by the oppressive weight of their surroundings. His hand never left the hilt of his blade.

Cass expanded her awareness outward, letting her senses probe the shadows between the trees. The forest felt wrong on a fundamental level. Not just corrupted or dying, but twisted into something that defied natural law. Her Ki registered disturbances all around them—patches of emptiness where life energy should be, and pockets of concentrated malevolence that made her skin crawl.

"We need to move faster," she said, careful to keep her voice steady despite the unease coiling in her gut.

“How can we find the red sparkling witch?” Drax's voice crashed through the silence of the dead forest, shattering Cassandra's carefully woven spell.

Cassandra's eyes darted between shadow-filled spaces between trees. "Drax," she hissed, "keep your voice down. We might be watched."

Vision tilted his head. "Red sparkling witch? An interesting classification. Are there others requiring distinction?"

Drax's chest puffed out as he continued at full volume,"Of course. You have yellow sparkles." He jabbed a thick finger toward Strange. "He has orange ones." He counted off on calloused fingers. “I’m pretty sure the thunder guy shoots blue.”

Strange's mouth twitched. “That’s a very broad definition for witch.” Cassandra caught the flicker of indignation in Strange's eyes, remembering how Stark's "wizard" nickname already irritated him. She made a mental note to share this with Tony later, when the nightmare will be behind them.

"I should note," Vision added with academic precision, "that Doctor Strange's abilities bear more resemblance to Cassandra's than to Wanda's."

Drax's brow furrowed deeply, his expression caught between genuine confusion and stubborn certainty.

"I’m sorr to be the one killing your fun," Cassandra interrupted, her fingers tightening around her weapon. She glanced at the shifting shadows between the trees. "But we need to move. And Drax—if Wanda's powers work the way I think they do, she should already know we're coming."

Strange matched her pace, his cloak rippling behind him like a living shadow. "What’s the plan?”

“We keep going, peel our eyes, and let her help us.” Cassandra shrugged, her shoulders rising and falling beneath the worn leather of her jacket, fingers absently tracing the edge of her weapon's hilt. The dead forest seemed to lean in around them, listening.

“So, no plan” concluded Vision.

“Do you have a better idea?” Cassandra's eyes narrowed as she scanned the twisted tree line, where shadows moved in ways shadows shouldn't.

Before Vision could answer her a sound cut through the stillness—a high, thin wail that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It raised the hairs on the back of Cass's neck, a primal reaction to something that shouldn't exist in nature.

"What was that?" Drax growled, his blades now drawn and ready.

Strange held up a hand for silence, his head cocked to one side, listening. The sound came again, closer this time. A low growl, not quite animal, more primordial —a keening that slipped between registers like something testing the boundaries of its own voice.

Cassandra's skin crawled. Her Ki flickered around them, straining against whatever force permeated the dead forest.

"It's drawing closer," Vision whispered, the stone in his forehead pulsing with anxious light.

Drax spun in a slow circle, his knuckles white around his blades. "Let it come. I will gut it like—"

"Shut up," Cassandra hissed. "All of you."

She closed her eyes, filtering out the others' presence, reaching beyond the immediate surroundings, enhancing her vision to see beyond the dark. The forest was a tangle of sensations—pockets of emptiness where life should be, nodes of concentrated malevolence that made her teeth ache.

"This place is so wrong." She muttered under her breath, “I can’t feel anything.”

Another guttural growl echoed from the dead trees around them, a sound that vibrated in Cassandra’s bones. But this time, before they could react, a monstrous shape of shadow and fury burst from the treeline. It was a wolf, but impossibly large, its fur the color of clotted blood and its eyes burning with green, malevolent fire.

It moved with an unnatural speed, a blur of muscle and fang. It wasn’t trying to kill them; it was trying to break them. It slammed into their formation like a battering ram. Strange was thrown left, scrambling for cover. Drax, roaring a challenge that was more joy than fear, met the beast head-on, his blades ringing against its armored hide as the two crashed deeper into the woods. Vision phased to avoid the initial charge, his attention immediately drawn to protecting the others.

The wolf’s massive shoulder caught Cassandra in the chest, sending her flying. She landed hard, the impact knocking the air from her lungs. By the time she staggered to her feet, gasping for breath, the sounds of the fight were already receding, muffled by the dead trees.

She was alone, but she pushed forward.

———————————

The forest floor was a graveyard of giants. Cassandra moved through a landscape of fallen, petrified trees, their ancient husks looking like the fossilized bones of colossal beasts. The silence that had returned after the wolf's attack was heavier now, pressing in on her, amplifying the frantic thrumming in her own head. She was tracking the only clues she had: an unnatural stillness in the air, a faint scent of ozone that cut through the decay, and patches of moss that were blackened and crisped, as if touched by a brief, intense heat. Signs of a fight, signs of Wanda.

After an hour that felt like a lifetime, she heard her.

A whisper touched the edges of Cassandra's consciousness—not a sound, but a presence, like someone standing just behind her shoulder. She froze mid-step, her hand instinctively dropping to her weapon. The sensation was unmistakable: a gentle pressure against her thoughts, probing yet hesitant.

Cass?

The voice bloomed directly in her mind, familiar and relieved. Wanda. Cassandra's breath caught, her shoulders relaxing slightly even as her skin prickled with the intrusion. She'd been right—Wanda was using her powers to reach out, exactly as Cassandra had hoped she might.

I'm here, she thought back, uncertain if Wanda could hear her response but trying anyway. The sensation of another consciousness brushing against her own was profoundly unsettling—like someone running fingers along the inside of her skull. Every instinct screamed against this violation, this blurring of the boundaries between self and other.

But this was Wanda. And they needed each other.

Follow my voice, came Wanda's whisper, clearer now.

The faint sound threaded through the stillness, weaving its way into Cassandra's consciousness like a soft breeze. She turned her head, straining to catch the elusive voice, her steps quickening with urgency. The forest around her twisted and contorted, branches bending as if alive, shadows thickening with a palpable tension. Yet the voice persisted, steady and pressing, beckoning her deeper into the darkness. Cass?, it urged, the name echoing in her mind, a familiar warmth slicing through the oppressive chill.

With each repetition, the sound grew stronger, more defined, wrapping around her like a lifeline. Cassandra focused, pushing aside the disorienting sensations that threatened to overwhelm her, trusting the call that resonated within her thoughts. Closer, it whispered again, a soft plea that ignited a flicker of hope in her chest. She pressed forward, driven by an unyielding need to reach Wanda, the path ahead shifting beneath her feet, yet the call remained unwavering, guiding her through the encroaching gloom.

You know, I can feel how much time you've put into protecting your thoughts, Wanda's voice continued, a mixture of relief and strain coloring the words. Your mind... It's extremely hard to read.

Cassandra's heart raced, a subtle unease curling in her stomach as she realized Wanda was reaching into her mind. She felt an instinctive pull to shield herself, but Wanda had to have felt it too because her voice in Cass’s head shut.

A pause lingered in the air, then again, not that I’m trying to read anything, I’m just holding on to the connection. Cassandra felt a flicker of embarrassment radiate through the bond, a vulnerability that felt both foreign and intimate. Another small pause, as if she was choosing the right words, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.

Having someone slip past her defenses felt like losing a limb, but when Wanda’s voice broke through the haze with the apology, a flicker of amusement crossed Cassandra’s mind. At least it’s Wanda, she thought, before feeling the connection grow warmer and a soft shade of red insinuating in the back of her mind. Shit, she heard it. And then again, a small laugh, and a sparkle of gold.

Cass felt her cheeks turn bright red, and the crippling thought of At least she can’t see me starting to make its way into her mind, but she stopped it before it was too late. This time she closed her eyes, drawing on the discipline forged through countless hours in the monastery's meditation halls, and started to focus solely on her surroundings.

The trees here were even more twisted, their trunks bent at impossible angles, branches reaching down like grasping hands. The ground beneath her feet had turned soft and spongy, yielding with each step as if she were walking on the back of some great breathing beast.

The forest opened suddenly into a small clearing. At its center stood a massive, gnarled tree, its trunk split open like a wound. Its roots had been upturned in the tree’s fall, creating a deep, hollowed-out cavity beneath them. The gnarled, overlapping roots formed a makeshift ceiling, a lattice of black wood against the bruised twilight sky. Cassandra recognize it for what it was, a desperate shelter.

As Cassandra drew closer, a figure emerged from the hollow beneath the roots. It wasn't a sudden movement, but a slow, weary unfolding, like someone waking from a long, feverish sleep.

It was Wanda, but a version of her stripped of all artifice. The first thing Cassandra registered was the change in her silhouette. The soft curves of her frame had been pared down, leaving a sharper, more fragile geometry. Her clothes—a sturdy jacket and practical trousers—were intact but grimed with dirt and streaked with damp patches from the shelter's floor.

Her face was a pale, smudged canvas of exhaustion. The skin was drawn tight across her cheekbones and jaw, giving her a gaunt, almost hollowed-out look that spoke of missed meals and gnawing anxiety. Her lips were chapped, and a thin, angry scratch, already healing, cut a line from her temple to her chin. Her eyes, usually so expressive and full of light, seemed to have retreated into their sockets, underlined by deep, bruised-looking shadows. They were dull, unfocused, and held the flat, weary look of someone who has stared into the darkness for too long.

Her hair, though not the tangled mess one might expect, had lost its lustre. It fell in loose, uncombed waves around her shoulders, a testament to her makeshift bedding. She moved with a deliberate, energy-conserving slowness, every gesture measured. As she stepped into the bruised twilight, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through her hands, which she quickly clenched into fists at her sides, as if to still them by force. A species of relief flashed across her face, followed by a wariness that made Cassandra falter, just for a heartbeat.

“Hey,” Cassandra said. Her own voice startled her, brittle as glass.

Wanda smiled softly at her, taking a few unsteady steps in her direction, and just like that Cassandra closed the distance and wrapped her arms around the witch’s thin shoulders. The contact was electric—a jolt that pulsed through every nerve ending. Cassandra felt Wanda’s breath hitch against her neck, and the tremor in the girl’s spine. For a moment she forgot the forest, and the wolf, and the cost of caring about someone.

Wanda pressed her face against Cass’ shoulder, silent but shuddering. The heat of her skin seeped through the threadbare fabric of Cassandra’s shirt, and Cass held her tighter, terrified of what would happen if she let go.

The world stilled. The hollow beneath the tree roots was thick with old air, the only sound the staccato heartbeat of two survivors clinging to each other. Cassandra wanted to say something—some joke, some reassurance—but the words dissolved before they reached her tongue. This was not a moment for words.

Wanda drew a slow, shaky breath. “You found me,” she whispered, voice threadbare.

Cassandra loosened her hold, but only barely. “I did.”

Wanda leaned back, wiping her face with the heel of her hand. The gesture was abrupt, almost angry, but it didn’t disguise the tremor. “I tried to fight it. The wolf. But I couldn’t. It was—” She swallowed, eyes darting to the darkness outside the hollow. “I just ran. I kept running. Hid wherever I could. Sometimes I thought it lost me, but it always came back.” She shook her head, unable to finish.

Cassandra’s own throat ached, but she forced her voice steady. “That thing could eat a tank. You did the right thing. You stayed alive.”

“Only just.” Wanda smiled, a crooked line that never touched her eyes. “Somewhere in the middle I started to hope you’d come. Stupid, isn’t it?”

Cassandra didn’t answer. She didn’t trust herself to.

The silence swelled, heavy with things neither would say. The urge to step back, to fortify herself behind sarcasm and protocol, was overwhelming, but Cassandra couldn’t make her body move. Instead, she studied the fine tremble in Wanda’s hands, the rawness in her voice. The urge to protect was so intense it left Cassandra breathless.

“I missed you,” Wanda whispered, as if it were a dangerous secret.

Cassandra nodded, not trusting herself with the words. She had never been the one people missed. She had been the operative, the asset, the shadow on the wall.

They stood there, close enough for breath to mingle. The intimacy of it was paralyzing. Cassandra could feel the old armor—the one she wore to keep everyone out, even the ones she cared for—crack under the pressure of Wanda’s need. And in that crack, something fragile and new took root. It was like holding an ember, dangerous and bright, and for the first time in her life Cassandra was terrified not of dying but of being seen.

Her gaze dropped from Wanda’s eyes to her mouth. Chapped, pale, perfect. A reckless, suicidal impulse seized her—a desperate need to erase the exhaustion from Wanda’s face, to feel something real after so much death and failure. It was wrong. A voice screamed in the back of her mind that this was a betrayal of a hundred different trusts, but it was a distant sound, muffled by the frantic pounding of her own heart. She saw Wanda’s eyes flutter, her lips part slightly. The only thought running in her head was screaming that this was wrong, to stop and save them both, but she had already lost her control or composure.

Then the world tilted on its axis. Wanda leaned in. She followed.

A voice, quiet and choked with emotion, sliced through the moment like a shard of glass.

“Wanda.”

The sound was a physical blow. They recoiled from each other, a violent, instantaneous separation that left the air crackling with shame. Cassandra snatched her hands back as if Wanda’s skin had suddenly become molten, a wave of cold horror dousing the reckless heat of a moment before. She spun around, her heart hammering against her ribs with a sick, guilty rhythm, a single, panicked thought screaming through her mind: Did he see?

Vision stood at the edge of the clearing. Behind him, Drax and Strange materialized from the shadows, but Cassandra barely registered them. Her entire focus was on Vision, desperately scanning his face for any sign of accusation, any hint of knowledge. But there was none. His expression was a mask of pure, undiluted relief, his eyes fixed only on Wanda. He took in her disheveled state, the weariness etched into her face, and his posture softened with a wave of profound tenderness. He hadn’t seen. The realization did nothing to soothe the frantic, ugly thing coiling in Cassandra’s gut.

Drax broke the silence, his voice booming. “I am pleased. We did not have to fight another wolf.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Strange, his tone dulled by exhaustion. He nodded to Wanda. “You did well to stay hidden. The beast couldn’t be killed by our weapons.”

Wanda took a step away from Cassandra, a small, definitive movement that felt like a chasm opening between them. “I hoped you’d come,” she said, her voice aimed at all of them, but her eyes were fixed on Vision.

“We always do,” Vision replied, and the simple sincerity in his words was a dagger in Cassandra’s gut.

The spell was broken. The four of them stood together under the lattice of roots, breathing the dead air. The moment of raw connection was gone, sealed behind walls of protocol and regret. But something had changed, irrevocably. It was there in the way Wanda refused to meet Cassandra’s eye, in the rigid set of Vision’s shoulders as he moved to Wanda's side, and in the way Cassandra’s own hands felt like foreign objects, still burning with a touch she had no right to remember.

“We should go,” Strange said.

They moved as a unit, leaving the hollow behind. But even as they moved through the corpse-wood, Cassandra felt the memory of Wanda’s warmth on her palms, an unhealed wound she would carry for the rest of the war.

—————————————

Hela stood outside the hidden entrance to the cave, a faint, predatory smile playing on her lips. She closed her eyes, not needing them to perceive what lay within. She could feel the pulse of their terror, a frantic, collective heartbeat drumming against the stone. She could smell the fear, a sour, intoxicating scent in the cold air. They thought they were hidden. She almost pitied their stupidity.

Her gaze fell upon the entrance itself, a narrow fissure in the rock face almost entirely concealed by shadow and overgrowth. Scratched into the stone around it were several faint, shimmering runes, one layered crudely on top of the other. A child’s magic. A desperate, futile attempt at a lock. Hela reached out a single finger, tracing the line of the most prominent sigil. For a moment, it flared with defiant blue light, then, under the sheer weight of her power, it fractured, crumbling into inert dust that scattered in the wind.

She stepped through the hidden passageway, not stumbling like those who had come before her, but with the deliberate, silent grace of a predator entering a den. The narrow corridor opened into the main cavern, and she paused, taking in the scene. It was just as she’d imagined. A vast, open space lit by the unsteady, spectral glow of a few jury-rigged lamps. The last of the Asgardians were huddled in the far recesses, a pathetic tableau of the wounded and the grieving. They saw her, and a wave of silent, suffocating terror rippled through the crowd. Good. Let them taste the seconds.

Her gaze swept past them, dismissing them, until she found the one who mattered. Heimdall. He was propped against the far wall, a broken king on a makeshift throne of stone. His face was bloodless, one eye swollen shut. The other—the one that had once seen all nine realms—was fixed on her, shining with the last residue of defiance. Hela liked that. It made the ritual so much sweeter.

She began to walk, her boots clicking with deliberate precision on the stone floor. The sound was the only thing that moved in the cavern, a slow, metronomic countdown to the end. She did not hurry. The old stories had promised them a Valkyrie’s rescue, a heroic intervention. Instead, all they had was her.

Hela’s eyes drifted back to Heimdall. The sword in his lap glowed with a faint, residual power, but his hands trembled when he tried to lift it. Still, he did not look away. Not once.

“Here to see the end?” she asked, her voice a velvet caress that echoed off the stone walls.

Heimdall did not reply. There was nothing to say.

Hela let herself smile. She had enjoyed the chase. Behind her, she could feel the rhythm of the other battles playing out across the realms, the insignificant struggles of insects caught in her web.

“Let them go,” Heimdall rasped, the words scraping from his throat.

Hela cocked her head, genuinely amused. “Who, these?” She gestured at the cowering Asgardians. “They have nowhere to run, Guardian. Nowhere to be.”

“They are not yours,” Heimdall said.

Hela’s smile sharpened. “They are now.”

She crossed the remaining distance in a fluid, predatory stride, her shadow spilling over the last pockets of light. Heimdall lifted his sword, managing to point it in her direction. It trembled in his hand, the glow guttering like a dying candle. “You’ll not have them.”

Hela moved in a blur. In the next instant the sword was in her hand, Heimdall slumped against the wall, his breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts. She crouched beside him, placing the blade tip against his sternum.

“Do you remember the old days?” she whispered. “When the only rule was strength? I do. And I always win.”

Heimdall closed his eye, the last of the fight draining from his body. Hela stood, the sword glinting in her fist. She turned to the waiting darkness, to the crowd of silent, terrified faces.

“Come out,” she called. “Come and see your queen.”

And one by one, they emerged from the shadows. No heroes, no gods, just the last, shivering scraps of a dying world.

Hela smiled, the wolfish satisfaction of a predator who has hunted every last thing to the end.

She stepped into the black, certain of the final victory, and the cave swallowed her whole.

Chapter Text

The hall had been stripped of everything that made it a palace. No banners, no gold, no light that didn't come from the sickly green sconces bolted into walls at irregular intervals. Clint cataloged the sight lines as he moved: twelve feet to the nearest pillar, adequate cover but the base was cracked and might not hold against sustained fire. Thirty feet to the archway that led deeper into the complex, no door, no way to seal it if they were pursued. The floor was polished obsidian, beautiful and treacherous—every footfall would echo if they weren't careful. He adjusted his weight distribution, rolling from heel to toe with the practiced silence of a man who'd infiltrated worse places and lived to catalog the mistakes. The air tasted wrong. Metal and rot, and underneath it, something sweeter. Ozone, maybe, or the residue of magic that had burned too hot and left a char in the world.

Behind him, Thor moved like a mountain trying to tiptoe. The Asgardian had bulk, presence, and a lifetime of walking through doors as a prince who didn't need to hide. Clint had worked with worse. He'd worked with Hulk. At least Thor understood the mission parameters and kept his breathing controlled. The axe on his back caught the green light and threw it in strange directions, but that couldn't be helped.

Scott was the variable that made Clint's jaw ache from clenching. The man was currently the size of an ant, perched on the fur trim of Thor's cloak, and from Clint's position fifteen feet ahead, he could still see him—a dark speck against the synthetic red of Thor's new cape. If Clint could see him, so could anyone looking close enough. The Ant-Man suit was a miracle of engineering, but it didn't make Scott invisible, and in a hall this empty, any movement drew the eye. Clint forced himself to trust the plan. Scott was their fail-safe, their emergency extraction if things went loud. But Clint hated fail-safes. Fail-safes meant you'd already failed.

Rocket was hunched over the seal fifteen feet to Clint's right, his small, furred body bent nearly double as he worked. The seal itself was a thing of nightmare geometry—lines of green fire etched into the stone, forming patterns that hurt to look at directly. Clint kept his eyes on Rocket's hands instead, watching the delicate, precise movements as he attached leads from a device that looked like a marriage between Stark tech and something scavenged from a junk heap. Rocket's ears were flat against his skull, a tell Clint had learned meant intense concentration or imminent danger. Sometimes both.

Mantis stood watch near the archway, her body coiled tight, hands hovering near her sides. She wasn't a fighter in the traditional sense, but Clint had seen her drop a man with a touch, and he'd adjusted his threat assessment accordingly. Her antennae glowed faintly in the dark, a bioluminescence that seemed to pulse in time with her breathing. Clint filed that under useful intel: her emotional state was readable if you knew what to look for.

He scanned the perimeter again. Entry point clear. Twelve o'clock, the archway, still empty. Three o'clock, a collapsed section of wall that opened onto a courtyard filled with dead trees. No movement. Six o'clock, the direction they'd come from, the hidden passage still sealed behind them. Nine o'clock, a series of alcoves that might have held statues once but were now just empty mouths of shadow. Back to Rocket.

The device sputtered. A spark jumped from one of the leads, and Rocket's shoulders tensed. Clint's hand moved to his bow, not drawing yet, just resting on the riser. The spark died. Rocket adjusted something, and the device hummed, a low sound that vibrated in Clint's teeth. The green lines of the seal flickered, and for a moment Clint thought they'd gone dark. Then they flared, brighter than before, and Rocket jerked back with a hiss.

Clint's internal clock marked the delay: forty-five seconds longer than Rocket's estimate. Not catastrophic yet, but the margin was shrinking. Every second they stayed in this hall was a second closer to discovery.

Movement. Twelve o'clock, in the archway.

Clint's focus narrowed to a pinpoint. A single figure stepped into the hall, its gait wrong in a way that bypassed analysis and went straight to the lizard brain. It didn't walk so much as articulate—each joint moving independently, as if the body had forgotten how its pieces were supposed to work together. An Einherjar. Clint had heard Cass’ report, the daunting descriptions, but seeing it in person was different. The armor was Asgardian, ornate and ancient, but the body inside it was a shell. No breath, no heartbeat, just the mechanical precision of a corpse piloted by something that remembered how to kill.

Clint didn't move. Movement drew the eye. He was a shadow, a statue, a part of the architecture. His breathing slowed to the rhythm he'd learned in a SHIELD training facility a lifetime ago: four counts in, hold for six, four counts out. The Einherjar paused in the archway, its head swiveling in a motion too smooth to be natural.

Clint's mind ran the calculations. Distance: forty-two feet. Wind: none, enclosed space. Target profile: headshot difficult due to helmet, but the neck joint was exposed. Arrow type: broadhead, enough force to sever the spine if the thing still had one. Collateral risk: the body falling might trigger an alarm, magical or mechanical. Rocket had mentioned wards keyed to Asgardian dead. This thing might count.

The Einherjar took another step into the hall. Its head continued to turn, scanning in a pattern that wasn't random. It was searching. Clint's fingers brushed the fletching of an arrow but didn't draw yet. Not yet. Thor stood motionless, acutely aware that his towering presence could never be concealed among these shadowed figures, yet the monster hadn't seem to register the presence at first.The real betrayal was Scott—microscopic against the vastness of the hall, yet somehow the most conspicuous detail in the room. It took a small movement from the ant sized hero for the chaos to ensure.

The Einherjar's head stopped. Its gaze—empty sockets filled with witch-fire green—locked onto Thor's position. Clint saw the exact moment it registered the presence. The body shifted, weight redistributing for a charge or a shout, and Clint's hand moved.

He drew the arrow in one smooth pull, the string kissing the corner of his mouth, his anchor point as familiar as his own name. The bow's tension was perfect, seventy pounds that felt like an extension of his will. His sight picture aligned: the gap between helmet and gorget, the exposed vertebrae that might still be a weakness. The shot was clean. Forty-two feet, no obstacles, a target that had stopped moving to focus on Thor.

But it wasn't looking at Thor. Clint's brain caught up a half-second later, and ice flooded his gut. The angle was wrong. The Einherjar's head was tilted down, its focus lower than Thor's torso. It was looking at the cloak. At the speck of movement that was Scott Lang, exposed and vulnerable and impossible to miss now that the thing had seen him.

The Einherjar's mouth opened. No breath, no sound yet, but Clint knew what came next. It would call out, alert the others, and the stealth mission would collapse into a running firefight in a palace full of the dead. If they were lucky enough to avoid Hela.

His finger was on the string, the pressure familiar as his own pulse. The shot was there. He could take it. But the cost scrolled through his mind in the half-second before release: the body would fall, the wards might trigger, and even if they didn't, the sound of metal on stone would carry. Rocket was still working, the seal still active. They needed seconds, maybe a minute, and killing this thing might buy them less than that.

But not killing it guaranteed discovery. Now. In the next breath.

Thor was too far to intervene silently. Mantis powers might be fast enough, but they required touch, and the distance was too great. Scott was exposed, a tiny figure that had become the fulcrum on which the mission balanced. Clint's mind cataloged the variables and came up with the same answer every time: shoot or lose the mission.

The Einherjar's jaw moved, the beginning of a sound that would end everything.

Clint's training took over. His breath stilled. His vision narrowed to the gap in the armor. The world reduced itself to the shot, the single moment of release where skill and necessity met. His fingers opened, and the string sang.

The HUD warning had been flashing amber for the last ninety seconds, a polite suggestion from JARVIS that the support beam directly above Tony's head was operating at seventy-three percent structural integrity and trending downward. Tony ignored it. He'd been ignoring warnings since they entered the mine—load stress here, seismic instability there, a helpful little pop-up recommending immediate withdrawal that he'd swiped away with the same irritation he reserved for software updates and Pepper's calls during battles. The mine was a death trap, had been for centuries, and standing around cataloging all the ways it wanted to kill them wasn't going to get Peter out any faster.

Peter's heat signature was a bright spot on Tony's tactical display, thirty feet ahead and moving deeper into the complex. The kid's vitals were elevated but stable—heart rate 110, respiration 22, core temp normal. Tony tracked him with the obsessive focus of a man who'd already lost too many people and refused to add a teenager to the list. He was the reason the kid was there in the first place, he should have been more imposing. A kid is no superhero. The suit's sensors painted the mine shaft in overlapping data layers: oxidized iron content 34%, depth below surface 470 feet, air quality marginal with elevated particulate matter. The walls were sweating moisture that reeked of sulfur and rust, and the support beams—what was left of them—were original construction, corroded down to lace.

The warning escalated to red. Structural integrity: 68%. Recommended action: immediate evacuation.

Tony killed the alert. Peter was ahead. Gamora was somewhere in this nightmare. They didn't have time for the suit to second-guess him.

"Tony," Rhodey's voice crackled over comms, "I'm reading some seriously bad numbers on these supports."

"Yeah, well, the supports can file a complaint," Tony said. His voice came out more irritated than he'd intended, but fear had a way of sharpening his edges. "We're almost—"

The sound started as a groan, a low harmonic that vibrated through the suit's frame and made Tony's teeth ache. Then it became a shriek, metal tearing under stress it was never meant to hold, and Tony's brain had exactly enough time to register the physics of what came next: sequential failure cascade, load redistribution exceeding material tolerances, approximately four thousand tons of rock about to redistribute itself according to gravity's inflexible terms.

"Move!" Tony's voice cracked across the comms, but the word was swallowed by the roar.

The world came apart.

Tony's HUD went berserk, a strobe of red warnings and system failures cascading faster than he could track. The ceiling dropped in sections, massive slabs of stone that fell with the inevitability of a collapsing star. His suit's audio dampeners kicked in, reducing the catastrophic noise to a manageable thunder, but he felt the impacts through the armor—percussive, bone-deep hits that rattled his skeleton. A support beam, three feet thick and older than civilizations, snapped six feet above his head and swung down like a pendulum. Tony fired repulsors, the blast catching the beam and redirecting its momentum into the wall instead of his skull, but the power drain was immediate: suit charge dropped four percent in half a second.

He tried to move toward Peter's last position, but the floor buckled, and Tony went down hard. His left shoulder hit first, the actuator joint shrieking with a sound that meant expensive and possibly catastrophic damage. The HUD flickered, momentarily pixelating into static before JARVIS rerouted through backup systems. Dust filled the air, so thick the suit's external cameras were useless. Tony switched to thermal, then infrared, then a composite that overlaid seismic data with structural mapping, and none of it showed him where Peter was.

"Peter!" He tried comms, got static. "Rhodey! Quill! Anybody!"

More static. The interference was total, a white-noise wall that meant either the collapse had severed their relay, or worse. Tony shoved the thought down and focused on the data. The dust was settling in layers, particulate size averaging 2.3 microns, visibility approaching zero. His heads-up display painted the space in wireframe, a ghost image of a tunnel that no longer existed in the configuration he remembered. The path forward was blocked by a wall of rubble. The path back was the same.

They were trapped.

Footsteps, close. Tony spun, repulsor charging, then recognized the heat signature. Groot emerged from the dust, coughing, his bark coated in a gray patina of pulverized rock. Quill followed, his scanner was out, the device held in both hands, and his eyes were wild.

"We gotta move," Quill said, voice hoarse. "Now. Before the air runs out or the rest of this dump comes down."

Tony's HUD was already calculating. Tunnel volume: approximately 1,400 cubic meters. Occupants: six, assuming Peter and Gamora were still alive on the other side of the collapse. Oxygen consumption rate: variable, but averaging 0.4 cubic meters per hour per person. Total air supply at current pressure and composition: 4.7 hours, give or take.

"We're not moving anywhere," Tony said. "Both exits are blocked. We dig out wrong, we trigger a secondary collapse and we're paste."

Quill clenched his jaw. "So we sit here and suffocate? Great plan, Stark. Real genius-level thinking."

"I didn't say we sit. I said we don't blast our way out like psychotic aliens with a bomb fetish."

"First thing, I’m half human. Second—"

"I don't care if you're the tooth fairy. You start setting charges in here, and the whole structure pancakes. We need to map the collapse, find the load-bearing points, and make a controlled breach."

Quill’s scanner beeped. He glared at it, then at Tony. But it was Groot who talked for him. “I am Groot.”

“He's guessing you've never blown up a mine,” translated Quill.

Tony's jaw clenched. "I know structural engineering. I know physics. And I know that—"

His comms crackled. A voice, faint and distorted, cut through the static. "—ony? You there?"

Peter.

Tony's heart lurched. He rerouted power to comms, boosted the signal, and got a partial link. "Peter! What's your status?"

"Uh, not great?" Peter's voice was thin, scared. "We're in a side tunnel, I think. It's pretty small. And my mask is still on. I'm getting some air, but—"

Tony's HUD overlaid Peter's suit telemetry, and the numbers hit him like a fist. Atmosphere compromised. Oxygen mix declining. Estimated time to critical hypoxia: 47 minutes.

"Peter, listen to me. You stay calm, you stay still, you don't do anything that increases your respiration rate. Understood?"

"Yeah, I—Tony, Gamora's here. She's okay, but—"

"Put her on."

A pause, then Gamora's voice, steady and cold. "Stark. We're sealed in. The entrance collapsed. No other exits visible."

Tony's mind raced, pulling up the mine schematics he'd scanned on entry, overlaying them with the new structural data. Peter's location was marked by his suit's transponder: sixty feet away, separated by an estimated thirty feet of collapsed rock. Sixty feet might as well be sixty miles.

"I'm coming for you," Tony said. The words came out flat, certain, a promise he had no idea how to keep. "Just hold on."

He cut the feed. He couldn't watch the oxygen counter tick down, couldn't see Peter's face on the video link, couldn't let the kid's fear bleed into his own. He turned to Quill, he had the same fear in his eyes, tinted with the desperate resolution of someone with no other choice.

"You got a plan?" Quill asked.

Tony stared at the wall of rubble between them and Peter. His HUD painted it in layers: shale, granite, sections of collapsed support beam, pockets of air and voids where the rock had settled unevenly. Every layer was a variable, every void a potential trigger point for another collapse. The math was ugly. The physics was uglier. And the timer in the corner of his vision—Peter's oxygen supply, counting down in steady, merciless increments—made it all impossible.

"Yeah," Tony lied. "We blast through. Controlled. Surgical. And we don't kill anyone in the process."

Quill's face was cold and grieving, but he managed to shoot Tony a smirk nonetheless. "Now you're speaking my language."

They moved toward the collapse, Tony's sensors mapping the rubble in real-time, searching for the weak points that wouldn't bring the ceiling down on their heads. The HUD updated constantly: structural analysis, blast pattern projections, probability of secondary collapse hovering at an unacceptable sixty-three percent. Every calculation ended in failure, or close enough that the difference didn't matter.

But Peter was on the other side. And Tony had made a promise.

He pulled up the repulsor targeting matrix, overlaid it with Rhodey’s demolition plan, and started making adjustments. The math fought him every step, probabilities stacking against success, but he forced it into something that might work if luck and physics decided to cooperate for once in his life.

"Ready?" Quill asked, device in hand, a jury-rigged shaped charge that looked like it belonged in a cartoon.

Tony's HUD showed Peter's air supply: 43 minutes remaining.

"Do it," Tony said.

And prayed the universe was listening.

Valkyrie hadn't moved in forty minutes. Natasha tracked the stillness with the attention of someone who'd been trained to read bodies the way others read text—posture, breathing rate, the micro-adjustments of weight distribution that betrayed intent. Valkyrie sat against the far wall of the cell, spine straight, hands loose in her lap, eyes fixed on a point six inches above the door frame. From a distance, it might look like meditation. Up close, Natasha cataloged the signs she knew too well: the shallow breathing, the absolute rigidity of the shoulders, the way the fingers stayed motionless instead of fidgeting or seeking comfort. Dissociation. Shock. A mind that had detached from a body to escape something it couldn't process. Natasha had seen it in operators pulled from black sites, in civilians who'd watched their worlds end. The pattern was universal.

The cell was twelve feet by eight, stone walls three feet thick if the sound dampening was any indication. One door, iron-banded oak that probably predated most Earth civilizations, hinges on the outside—standard security configuration, harder to compromise from within. The floor was uneven flagstone, cold enough that Natasha's body heat was leaching away through the thin layer of her tactical suit. No windows, no vents large enough for egress, one drain in the corner that reeked of old blood and worse. She'd already memorized the guard rotation: seventy-three minutes between patrols, irregular enough to frustrate pattern prediction but consistent enough to exploit if you were patient.

Valkyrie hadn't talked since the guards threw her into the cell six hours ago. Hadn't moved, hadn't looked up, hadn't done anything but sit there with that thousand-yard stare that Natasha recognized from her own reflection in too many safe house mirrors.

Natasha ran her assessment again, adding variables. Physical condition: Valkyrie had visible bruising on her arms, a split lip that was half-healed, and she favored her left side in a way that suggested cracked ribs. But nothing incapacitating, nothing that would prevent movement if adrenaline kicked in. Mental state: that was the question. Trauma was a spectrum, and Natasha had operated on every point of it, but you couldn't push someone who'd shattered. You had to wait for the pieces to remember how they fit.

She decided on an approach. Validate the emotion, redirect to action, give her something concrete to focus on. It was manipulation, clinical and efficient, but Natasha had stopped apologizing for her skill set around the same time she'd stopped counting bodies. You used the tools you had.

"Valkyrie," she said, keeping her voice low and even. "I don't know what you saw out there. What Hela did to you. What I know is that it feels like it doesn't get better, doesn't get easier. But—"

Valkyrie moved.

It wasn't a flinch or a startle, nothing reactive. It was the smooth, deliberate pivot of someone who'd been waiting for the right moment to act. She turned her head, and her eyes locked onto Natasha's, and everything Natasha had diagnosed evaporated in the face of what she actually saw.

Valkyrie's eyes were clear. Focused. The stare wasn't distant—it was targeted, the gaze of a hunter who'd already chosen her prey and was simply biding time until the moment to strike. Her stillness hadn't been the frozen dissociation of trauma; it was the coiled readiness of a predator in a blind, waiting for the perfect shot.

Natasha recalibrated instantly, her internal threat assessment spiking and then settling into a new configuration. Not broken. Not even close.

"I'm not in shock," Valkyrie said, her voice a low rasp that carried the weight of absolute certainty. "And I don't need a pep talk."

Natasha studied her, running a new analysis. Muscle tension: controlled, not frozen. Breathing: steady, deeper than before—preparing for action, not retreating from it. Eye movement: sharp, tracking, the kind of awareness that marked a tactician, not a victim. She'd misread this completely, and the realization was both humbling and oddly satisfying. Natasha respected competence, and this was competence of the highest order.

"Then what do you need?" Natasha asked.

Valkyrie's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "To kill her."

"Hela."

"For what she did to them." Valkyrie's voice didn't rise, didn't sharpen with rage. It stayed cold, flat, the tone of someone stating a fact. "She turned my sisters into her creatures. Wore their bodies like trophies. And for that, I'm going to kill her. Not for revenge. Revenge is hot and stupid and gets you dead. This is just... accounting. A debt that needs to be settled."

Natasha nodded slowly. She understood accounting. The Red Room had taught her the same arithmetic: lives taken, lives owed, the ledger that never quite balanced but you tried anyway because the alternative was admitting you were just a killer with no purpose.

"That's not a short-term plan," Natasha said. "Hela's a god. You walk at her head-on, you don't get accounting. You get annihilation."

"I know." Valkyrie shifted, and for the first time since Natasha had been thrown into the cell, she moved fully, rolling to her feet with a grace that belied the injuries. "That's why I've been sitting here for the last six hours doing something more useful than feeling sorry for myself. I've been watching. Listening. Learning."

She crossed to the door, footsteps silent on the stone, and placed her palm against the wood. "The guards come every seventy-three minutes. Not seventy, not seventy-five. Seventy-three, like they're following a timer set by someone with no sense of rhythm. Three Einherjar, led by one of her corrupted Valkyries. The Einherjar are muscle, no tactics, just weight and blades. The Valkyrie is the problem. She's got the combat instincts they trained into us, and Hela's magic hasn't burned that out."

Natasha listened, her respect ticking upward with every detail. This wasn't amateur hour. This was a professional doing the same recon work Natasha had done, but with the advantage of having been conscious for the journey here.

"The door," Valkyrie continued, "is an original construction. Asgardian oak, iron banding, hinges on the outside. Strong, but old. The hinges are the weak point. You get leverage, apply force at the right angle, and the whole mechanism gives. But you need two people. One to brace, one to pull."

"And once we're out?" Natasha asked.

"I know the route they took to bring me in. Four corridors, two staircases, one main hall that's exposed but leads to an exit that isn't watched. She's arrogant. She thinks her prisoners are already beaten, so she doesn't waste guards on redundant security."

Natasha's mind mapped the intel, slotting it into the tactical framework she'd been building. It was good. It was better than good. It was the kind of intelligence that only came from a mind that stayed operational even under the worst circumstances.

"You've been busy," Natasha said.

"I had time," Valkyrie replied. "And a reason to stay sharp."

She turned back to Natasha, and the predatory focus in her eyes was even clearer now. "Here's the deal. We work together, we get out of here, and then you do whatever you want. Find your team, call for help, get off this rock entirely. I don't care. But I'm staying. I'm going to kill Hela, and I'll do it alone if I have to. But two skilled fighters have better odds than one, and I'm willing to bet you didn't get thrown in here because you're bad at what you do."

Natasha let the offer sit for a moment, weighing it. This wasn't a rescue. Valkyrie didn't need saving—she needed a tactical advantage, and she was offering the same in return. An alliance of equals, each with their own agenda, operating in parallel until their objectives diverged. That was a dynamic Natasha knew intimately. She'd spent her entire career in the spaces between organizations, working with people who had their own reasons and their own wars. The question was never whether she trusted their motives—it was whether those motives aligned with the mission.

And Valkyrie's did. Kill Hela. End the threat. The fine details of whether it was personal or tactical didn't matter as long as the end result was the same.

Natasha stood, mirroring Valkyrie's posture, and met her eyes. She didn't say yes. Words were cheap in a cell where they might be monitored, where Hela's magic could be listening through the stones themselves. Instead, she shifted her weight, a subtle pivot that aligned her body with Valkyrie's, the physical language of a soldier signaling readiness.

Valkyrie's mouth curved again, sharper this time. She understood.

They faced the door together, two women who'd walked through different hells and come out with the same hard-edged clarity. Natasha had worked with worse partners. At least this one knew how to prioritize.

The next guard rotation was in eighteen minutes. Natasha counted the seconds in her head, syncing her internal clock with the rhythm of the enemy, and waited for the moment when stillness would become violence.

The sound came first, a rumble that started in the ground and climbed up through Cassandra's boots, into her knees, settling in her chest like a second heartbeat. It was too low to be natural, a frequency that bypassed her ears and went straight to the primitive part of her brain that understood predators. She moved without thinking, her body already pivoting to put herself between the sound and Wanda. Not the team—Wanda. The specificity of it should have alarmed her, should have triggered the years of training that screamed about maintaining distributed awareness, but her focus had narrowed to a singular point: Wanda's position, twelve feet to her right, slightly exposed by the gap between two dead trees.

Cassandra's hands moved to her baton, the motion automatic, but her mind was already calculating angles of attack relative to Wanda, threat vectors that terminated at her position, the fastest route to intercept if something came through the trees. This was wrong. She knew it was wrong. Her training had been absolute on this: in a team engagement, you distributed your attention, maintained tactical awareness of all assets, protected the formation, not a single individual. But the thought of Wanda being hurt, of failing to protect her again, was a physical pressure in Cassandra's skull that overrode everything else.

Strange had already shifted into a defensive stance, his hands weaving patterns that left orange afterimages in the air. Drax pulled his blades, his body coiling with the anticipation of violence. Vision phased partially, his density shifting to something between solid and intangible, positioning himself in front of Wanda without a word.

And Wanda stepped away from him.

It was a small movement, a subtle shift to the left that put her outside the protection of Vision's phased form. Cassandra saw it, registered the body language—rejection, defiance, a refusal to be shielded. Vision's posture stiffened, a micro-hesitation that spoke of confusion and hurt, but he didn't move to close the gap. The space between them felt like an open wound.

Fenris came through the tree line like a collapsing building.

It was massive, bigger than anything that should have been able to move that fast. Blood-red fur matted with something black and oily, eyes that burned with green witch-fire, jaws that could swallow a man whole. It didn't charge—it exploded into the clearing, a blur of muscle and fang that defied physics and made a mockery of Cassandra's threat calculations. Her mind screamed at her to move, to coordinate, to call out positions and targets, but the only thought that crystallized was: It's going for Wanda.

Vision moved first, his body shifting to full density as he threw up a barrier—a wall of compressed air and phased matter that should have been impenetrable. "Wanda, on your left. Projected trajectory indicates—"

Wanda fired. A bolt of red energy that cut through the air like a scream, not at the wolf, but past Vision's barrier, deliberately outside his protection. "I see it."

The blast hit Fenris in the shoulder, a searing impact that left a charred crater in its hide, but it didn't slow. The wolf twisted mid-charge, its trajectory shifting from a straight line to a serpentine weave that made it impossible to track. Vision tried to reposition, his calculations visible in the way he moved—optimal intercept angles, predicted paths—but Wanda was already moving in a different direction, her body language screaming that she didn't want his help.

They were a broken unit, two fighters occupying the same space but operating on different frequencies. Cassandra watched it unfold with a sick, hollow feeling in her gut. This was her fault. She'd put this fracture between them, and now it was going to get them killed.

Fenris lunged, its jaws wide enough to split the world. Cassandra didn't think. She moved, her body acting on the pure, irrational need to intercept, to put herself between the wolf and Wanda. She reached for her Ki, felt it respond, and prepared to step in the shadows.

The world folded.

For a single, frozen moment, she was in the space between. It was cold, a cold that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with absence. Her Ki formed the seal, the dimensional tear that would let her through, and she pushed.

The exit was wrong.

She felt it as she emerged ten feet ahead, directly in Fenris's path. The shadow she stepped out of didn't snap shut the way it should have. It writhed, edges rippling with an unnatural, oily texture, like the surface of water disturbed by something underneath. For a fraction of a second, Cassandra saw the darkness move independently, saw it reach for her with a presence that was distinctly, horrifyingly alive.

Then she was fully through, baton up, intercepting Fenris's charge with a strike to its snout that redirected its momentum into the ground. The wolf hit hard, claws tearing furrows in the earth, but Cassandra barely registered it. The sensation of the shadow—the wrongness, the cold, predatory presence—clung to her like oil, and her skin crawled with the certainty that something had touched her from the other side.

Behind her, Strange unleashed a barrage of eldritch constructs, golden chains and binding sigils that wrapped around Fenris's legs and torso. The wolf snarled, a sound that made the air shiver, and shattered the bindings with a flex of pure muscle. Drax charged in, blades flashing, scoring deep cuts along the creature's flank that bled black ichor, but the wounds sealed almost as fast as they opened.

"Wanda, fall back!" Vision's voice, still trying to manage her.

"I'm fine!" Wanda snapped, her hands glowing with red energy. She fired again, a sustained beam that hit Fenris in the face and forced it back three steps. But the angle was wrong, her positioning exposed, and Vision moved to shield her again, his body phasing into her line of fire.

"Move!" Wanda's voice cracked with frustration and something that sounded like desperation.

Vision phased out of her way, his movements mechanical, and Cassandra saw the pain in the rigid set of his shoulders. They were fighting each other as much as they were fighting the wolf, and every second of their dysfunction was a second closer to catastrophe.

Fenris recovered, shaking off Drax's attacks like they were insect bites. Its eyes—those burning, hate-filled eyes—locked onto Wanda again, and Cassandra felt her control splinter. She couldn't let it reach her. She couldn't fail again. The thought consumed her, drowned out tactics and training and every lesson the monastery had beaten into her about maintaining focus.

She reached for her Ki again, pulling harder this time, and pushed it outward in a wave. Shadow Field. Blanket the area, blind the enemy, give them space to regroup. The power responded, flooding out from her in a wave of darkness that swallowed the clearing.

But it was wrong.

The shadows that spread weren't just an absence of light. They had weight, texture, a cold, suffocating presence that pressed against skin and lungs. Cassandra felt it herself—a wrongness in the air, as if the darkness wasn't empty but full, crowded with something that watched and waited. She heard Strange gasp, heard Drax's muttered curse, felt the way even Wanda recoiled from the edges of the field.

This wasn't her power. This was something else, something that had slipped through the cracks her compromised focus had created, wearing her shadows like a borrowed coat.

Fenris snarled, blinded, and the team took the opening. Strange grabbed Wanda and Drax, his hands weaving a portal that flickered orange and unstable. Vision was already moving toward them, his body phased and weightless. Cassandra forced herself to move, to run, but every step felt like wading through ice water. The cold wasn't physical—it was deeper, a spiritual chill that sank into her bones and left her feeling hollow and scraped raw.

They tumbled through the portal, emerging into the relative safety of the forest path that led back toward the cave. Cassandra collapsed to her knees, gasping, her hands shaking so hard she couldn't hold her baton. The shadow field dissipated behind them, collapsing into nothing, but the feeling of it didn't leave. It clung to her, a stain she couldn't see but could feel in every nerve.

"Cass?" Wanda's voice, concerned, and Cassandra couldn't look at her.

"I'm fine," she lied, forcing herself to stand. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else.

Behind them, Fenris's howl echoed through the trees, a promise that the hunt wasn't over. But Cassandra barely heard it. All she could feel was the cold, the wrong, the certainty that something fundamental had broken inside her power.

She looked at Wanda, saw her alive and whole, and felt no relief. Only dread, and the question that screamed through her mind in a voice that didn't sound like her own:

What did I just do?

Strange sealed the portal with a gesture, and the orange light died, leaving them in the spectral glow of the few remaining arc lamps that Tony had left running.

Cassandra's eyes adjusted, cataloging details with the clinical precision of someone who couldn't afford to feel yet. The supplies were still here—crates of rations stacked against the far wall, water containers lined up in neat rows—but they were untouched, as if no one had needed them. The campfires had gone cold, the ash scattered and lifeless. A child's blanket lay crumpled near one of the sleeping alcoves, abandoned in haste or terror or both.

She moved deeper into the cave, her boots echoing on the stone, and the wrongness intensified with every step. There should have been people here. Hundreds of them. The wounded, the elderly, the children who couldn't run. Heimdall, guarding them with his last reserves of strength. Instead, there was nothing. No bodies, no blood, just the scattered evidence of lives interrupted: a water flask lying on its side, its contents long since evaporated. A scrap of fabric caught on a sharp edge of rock. A line of bootprints in the dust that stopped abruptly, as if the person making them had simply ceased to exist.

"They're gone." Strange's voice, flat and certain, echoed from somewhere to her left.

Cassandra turned and saw him standing near what had been Heimdall's post. The guardian's sword lay on the ground, its blade dull and cold, the runes that had once glowed with power now dark and inert. Strange crouched beside it, his fingers hovering over the metal but not quite touching, as if even proximity to it carried a weight he wasn't ready to bear.

"Hela." The name came out of Cassandra's mouth like a stone. Not a question. A fact.

Strange nodded. He picked up the sword, the weight of it visible in the way his arms strained, and set it carefully against the wall. A memorial. An epitaph.

Cassandra felt something crack inside her, a fault line that had been forming since the moment she'd let Valkyrie get taken, since Wanda, since her shadows had broke in the forest. The spiritual chill from the corrupted power was still there, a cold, oily presence that clung to her like a second skin she couldn't shed. It whispered in the back of her mind, not in words but in sensations—hunger, presence, wrongness. She looked down at her hands, half-expecting to see them stained or changed, but they looked the same. Ordinary. Human. The lie of it made her stomach turn.

She'd done this. Not directly, not with her own hands, but the chain of failures that led to this moment had her fingerprints all over it. She'd gone into the forest compromised, her focus shattered by guilt and something she didn't have a name for. And now the refugees were gone, and Heimdall was gone, and the sanctuary they'd fought so hard to protect was just another tomb.

Behind her, she heard Wanda's sharp intake of breath. Cassandra turned and saw her standing near one of the cold campfires, her hand pressed to her mouth, eyes wide with horror. Vision moved toward her, his body language careful, tentative, and Cassandra watched the moment unfold with the sick certainty of someone who knew exactly how it would end.

"Wanda." Vision's voice was soft, concerned. "Are you injured? You should sit down."

Wanda's eyes flicked to him, then away, a rejection so subtle it might have been accidental if not for the deliberate way she took a step back. "I'm fine."

"You're bleeding." Vision gestured to a cut on her arm, a shallow wound from the fight with Fenris that Wanda hadn't even registered. "Let me—"

"I said I'm fine." The words came out sharper than intended, and Wanda flinched at her own tone. She turned away, her shoulders rigid, and walked toward where Drax was checking his blades, her movements stiff and wrong.

Vision stood frozen, his hand still half-raised, and Cassandra saw the pain flicker across his features before he locked it down behind the mask of synthetic calm. He didn't follow her. Didn't try again. Just stood there, alone in the middle of the empty cave, looking more lost than Cassandra had ever seen him.

She wanted to say something, to bridge the chasm she'd helped create, but the words wouldn't come. What could she say? That she was sorry? That she hadn't meant for any of this to happen? The apologies felt like lies, meaningless noise in the face of what she'd done.

A sound cut through the silence—a sharp, rhythmic pulse that Cassandra's exhausted mind took a moment to recognize. The signal. The pre-arranged call from Team Mines.

Strange moved immediately, his hands weaving the familiar patterns, and the portal tore open with a sound like ripping fabric. The color was wrong, the orange light flickering and unstable in a way that made Cassandra's skin crawl, but it held.

They came through in a cloud of dust and chalk, coughing and stumbling. Tony first, his armor coated in a thick layer of gray-white powder that made him look like a ghost. Rhodey behind him, the War Machine suit scored with deep gouges and scorch marks. Quill emerged bent double, hacking up lungfuls of particulate matter, his jacket torn and filthy. Groot was in the rear, his bark cracked and oozing sap, moving with the slow, pained gait of something that had been broken and barely put back together.

For a heartbeat, there was relief. They'd made it. They were alive.

Then Tony's faceplate retracted, and he looked around the cave, and the relief died in his eyes. "Where is everyone?"

No one answered. The silence was answer enough.

Peter came through the portal last, supporting Gamora, who was limping badly but conscious. The kid's mask was off, his face smudged with dust, and he looked so young in that moment that Cassandra felt something twist in her chest. He scanned the cave, his expression shifting from confusion to dawning horror as he realized what he wasn't seeing.

"Mr. Stark?" Peter's voice cracked. "You said there were people, where are the people?”

Tony didn't answer. He just stared at the sword propped against the wall, and Cassandra saw his jaw tighten, the muscle jumping beneath the grime.

Quill straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and his eyes found Cassandra's. "Gamora?"

"She's here," Cassandra said, nodding toward where Gamora was leaning against Peter, and she saw the tension bleed out of Quill's shoulders. A small mercy in the middle of the nightmare.

The reunion was brief—a touch, a whispered exchange Cassandra didn't catch—and then Gamora was limping toward them, Quill at her side, and the group was whole again. Or as whole as it could be with the refugees gone and the sanctuary shattered.

Tony opened his mouth, the beginning of what might have been a quip or a deflection, something to cut the tension and give them all a moment to breathe. But the words died on his lips, and he just shook his head, the exhaustion and grief too heavy to mask with sarcasm.

Another sound, this time from deeper in the cave. Not the hum of a portal, but footsteps—irregular, stumbling, the scrape of boots on stone. Cassandra's hand went to her baton, her body coiling despite the exhaustion, but then she recognized the rhythm. Human. Familiar.

They emerged from the tunnel entrance one by one, shadows resolving into faces. Clint, his bow slung across his back, his expression carved from stone. Thor behind him, the axe in his hand, his face a landscape of grief. Scott, his suit retracted, moving with the careful gait of someone who'd been through hell and wasn't sure they'd made it out. Rocket, muttering curses under his breath, his fur matted with something dark. Mantis, her antennae glowing faintly, her eyes wide and haunted.

And at the front, leading them with the coiled energy of a predator that had just won a fight, was Valkyrie. Her armor was scored and dented, her face streaked with grime and what might have been blood, but her eyes were bright, fierce, alive. She had a blade in one hand and Natasha at her side, and the look on her face was triumph.

They'd done it. They'd escaped. They'd freed Natasha. They'd survived.

The smirk on Valkyrie's face died the moment she saw the cave.

Cassandra watched it happen in real-time, again—the way Valkyrie's eyes swept the empty space, cataloging the absence, the cold fires, the abandoned supplies. The way her steps faltered, her body language shifting from victory to something raw and wounded. She looked at Heimdall's sword, and Cassandra saw her face go white beneath the grime.

"No." The word came out quiet, strangled. "No, they were supposed to be safe. We were supposed to—"

She didn't finish. Just stood there, the blade hanging loose in her hand, staring at the evidence of total failure.

Natasha stepped forward, and Clint was there to meet her, and the assessment was wordless—a brief touch, a hand on her shoulder, a nod that carried more weight than any speech. They didn't need words. They'd been through this dance too many times, survived too many nightmares together, to need the comfort of language.

Thor moved past them, his steps heavy, and knelt beside Heimdall's sword. He placed his hand on the hilt, his head bowed, and Cassandra saw his shoulders shake with a grief too vast to be contained. No one spoke. No one moved. They just let him have the moment, this small, private mourning for a friend and a world that was already gone.

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, until Tony cleared his throat. "So," he said, his voice rough. "What's the play?"

It was Valkyrie who answered. She straightened, the shock in her eyes hardening into something cold and absolute, and when she spoke, her voice carried the weight of a vow. "We go for her."

"Her?" Quill asked.

"Hela." Valkyrie's hand tightened on her blade. "We stop playing defense. Stop trying to rescue people who are already gone. We go to her palace, we find her, and we end this."

"That's suicide," Strange said, but there was no heat in it. Just a statement of fact.

"Maybe." Valkyrie met his eyes, unflinching. "But we don't have anything left to protect, our people are there, dying. So we go in, and we hit her with everything we have, and if we die, at least we die fighting instead of hiding in a hole waiting for her to find us."

Cassandra felt the words settle in her chest, not as hope but as a kind of grim resolution. It was suicide. It was stupid. It was the only move they had left.

Around her, the others began to shift, to stand straighter, to find in the desperation a kind of purpose. Tony nodded slowly. Thor rose to his feet, the axe in his hand, his face set. Clint and Natasha exchanged a look, and whatever passed between them needed no translation.

They were going to die. Probably. But they were going to die fighting, and in the wreckage of everything they'd failed to save, that was enough.

Cassandra looked at Wanda, saw her standing alone near the edge of the group, her arms wrapped around herself. Vision was ten feet away, close enough to protect her but far enough that the distance felt deliberate. They weren't looking at each other. Weren't speaking. Just standing in the same space, separated by a chasm of unspoken words and broken trust.

The others began to move, to gather supplies, to check weapons, to prepare for the assault that would probably be their last. The cave filled with the sounds of preparation, the grim efficiency of soldiers who had accepted their fate.

But Cassandra's eyes stayed on Wanda and Vision, on the space between them that neither would cross. She contributed to this. And now, as they stood on the edge of oblivion, they were more alone together than they'd ever been apart.

The image burned itself into her mind—two people who should have been a unit, standing side by side but worlds apart, isolated in their mutual pain. It was a wound that wouldn't heal, a fracture that would carry them into whatever came next.

And Cassandra, feeling the cold, oily presence of her shadows still clinging to her like a stain, knew with absolute certainty that she'd be carrying it too.

Chapter Text

The cave air had turned to stone.

Cassandra felt it pressing against her lungs with every breath, a weight that had nothing to do with altitude or oxygen and everything to do with the collective understanding settling over them like a burial shroud. In the dim light of the arc lamps— their glow thin and spectral— the Avengers prepared for what they all knew was their last act. There were no speeches. No rallying cries to stir courage from the ashes of failure. Only the small, sharp sounds of a final inventory: the methodical scrape of whetstone on blade, the quiet snap of ammunition clips being checked and rechecked, the hiss of suit seals locking into place with a finality that felt like a coffin closing.

Thor stood near the cave mouth, a silhouette carved from darkness and failing light. Beyond him, through the narrow opening, the sky over Asgard was the color of a bruise left too long, purple-black at the edges and sickly green at its heart. He held the axe Tony had given him—a crude thing compared to Mjolnir, brutish and unbalanced, but it was the last weapon he had. His knuckles were white around the haft, bloodless with the pressure of his grip, and he stared out at the dying realm with eyes that saw nothing but his own failures reflected in its ruin.

His gaze shifted, sweeping across the cave until it found Tony. The billionaire stood near the rear wall, briefly tampering with a compact case near a fissure in the rock wall before turning back to his diagnostics. For a moment, their eyes met across the cavern—god and man, prince and engineer. Tony's jaw tightened, and he gave a single, sharp nod. Thor returned it. The exchange lasted less than two seconds, but it settled something between them, a debt marked but never spoken.

Cassandra crouched near a cluster of supply crates, methodically checking the edges of her baton for stress fractures, running her fingers along the carbon fiber with the focus of someone who needed the distraction more than the information. Her hands were steady, but inside, something was profoundly wrong. It was a chill that had nothing to do with the cave's temperature, a cold that lived in the hollow spaces of her chest and radiated outward like poison in the blood. She'd felt it since the forest, since the moment her shadows had gone wrong, and it hadn't left. If anything, it had deepened, settling into her like a chronic infection she couldn't name or treat.

The shadows in the corners of the cave seemed thicker than they should be, heavier, as if they had accumulated mass during the hours they'd been trapped here. She caught herself staring at them from the corner of her eye, drawn to their edges in a way that felt both familiar and alien. They moved when nothing disturbed them, subtle shifts that could have been tricks of the lamplight but felt deliberate, purposeful. Watching. She tried to focus on the baton, on the smooth, predictable surface of the weapon, but the wrongness pulled at her attention like an itch in the center of her skull. Her power, once an extension of her will as natural as breathing, now felt like something borrowed, something that had terms and conditions she hadn't read. The thought terrified her, so she shoved it down, burying it beneath layers of tactical focus and the mechanical routine of equipment checks. If she didn't look at it directly, maybe it would stay contained. Maybe she could hold it together long enough to die with dignity.

Across the cave, Wanda felt the oppressive silence like a physical pressure. It was too heavy, too absolute, and it left her floating in a void where every thought echoed back at her amplified and distorted. She needed a connection, something to anchor her to the reality of other people, to remind her she wasn't alone in this nightmare. Her eyes found Cassandra first, drawn by the memory of warmth and touch and the reckless, almost-moment in the forest that she couldn't stop replaying. But Cassandra's gaze was fixed on her equipment, her focus absolute, and when Wanda shifted slightly in her direction, the other woman's eyes flicked away so fast it could have been accidental if not for the deliberate way she turned her entire body a fraction to the left, closing the angle. The rejection was silent, surgical, and it cut deeper than any spoken words could have.

Wanda's throat tightened, and she forced herself to look away, to find another anchor. Her gaze landed on Vision. He stood ten feet from her—close enough that she could see the faint glow of the Mind Stone pulsing in his forehead, close enough that in any other circumstance she could have reached out and touched him. But the distance between them felt measured in light-years. He was running a diagnostic, his synthetic body utterly still, his face a mask of calm focus that she knew was a lie. He wasn't looking at her. Hadn't looked at her since they'd returned from the forest. His back was partially turned, a posture that could have been coincidental but felt like architecture, a wall built from angles and negative space. She wanted to say something, to bridge the chasm with words, but every phrase she could think of sounded hollow, inadequate, an apology for something she couldn't name and didn't fully understand. So she said nothing, and the silence between them solidified into something permanent.

The rest of the team moved through their preparations with the grim efficiency of soldiers who had long since accepted the math. Valkyrie sat on a low boulder, her blade across her knees, sharpening it with slow, precise strokes that rang out like a bell in the still air. Each pass of the whetstone was a prayer, or a curse, or both. Her face was stone, her eyes distant, focused on something far beyond the blade—perhaps her sisters, perhaps Hela, perhaps just the raw, animal need to make the enemy bleed before the end.

Natasha checked her weapons in the methodical sequence she'd learned in a facility that no longer existed, maintained by an organization that had collapsed years ago. Pistol: chamber clear, magazine seated, safety off. Knife: edge sharp, grip secure, sheath accessible. Every movement was automatic, muscle memory carved so deep it bypassed thought entirely. Clint stood beside her, testing his bowstring with the concentration of a musician tuning an instrument before a final performance. The string hummed, a single, pure note, and he adjusted the tension fractionally before nodding, satisfied.

The Guardians occupied the far corner, a cluster of battered aliens and one half-human who looked like he'd aged a decade in the last three days. Quill sat with Gamora's head on his shoulder, his hand tangled in hers, and neither of them spoke. Rocket was fiddling with a device that sparked and hissed, his ears flat against his skull, muttering curses that nobody bothered to translate. Groot stood silent, his bark scored with deep gouges that wept slow tears of sap, and even Mantis, who usually radiated empathy like heat from a fire, had withdrawn into herself, her antennae dim.

The silence built, layer upon layer, pressing down until it felt like the cave itself was holding its breath. Every small sound—the scrape of a boot, the click of a weapon, the soft rustle of fabric—was magnified, isolated, turned into a monument to the stillness. It was the silence of a funeral, or a execution, the pause before the final, irreversible act. Nobody moved to break it. There was nothing left to say.

Thor turned from the cave mouth. His face was a landscape of stone, carved by grief and rage into something that no longer resembled the prince who had arrived on Earth years ago with arrogance and thunder. That man was dead. What stood in his place was something older, harder, refined by loss into a blade that had only one purpose left. His voice, when it came, was low and flat, scraped raw by exhaustion and the weight of command he'd never wanted.

"It's time."

The words hung in the air for a heartbeat, two, and then the cave began to move. Slowly, without haste, the Avengers rose. Weapons were holstered, straps tightened, helmets sealed. There was no rush, no urgency, just the inevitable progression toward the thing they'd all accepted. Cassandra stood, her baton sliding into its sheath with a soft click that sounded like a door closing. Wanda flexed her fingers, red energy flickering at the edges of her hands before she clenched them into fists, extinguishing the light. Vision phased to full density, his body solidifying into the implacable form that could withstand almost anything. Almost.

They moved toward the cave mouth in a loose column, boots scuffing on the uneven stone, breath misting in the cold air. No one looked back. There was nothing behind them but failure and ghosts. Ahead, through the narrow opening, the sky over Asgard bled green and black, and the palace loomed in the distance like a monument to everything they'd lost.

Cassandra fell into step beside Natasha, and the assassin's eyes flicked to her, a brief assessment that cataloged everything—the tension in her shoulders, the way her hand hovered near her weapon, the micro-expression of fear she was trying to bury. Natasha said nothing, but her presence was an anchor, a silent acknowledgment that they were walking into this nightmare together.

Wanda walked alone. Vision was six feet ahead, Cassandra six feet behind, and the space around her was a void that nobody moved to fill. She felt the isolation like a physical thing, a bubble of empty air that pressed against her skin and made every breath a struggle. But she kept moving, one foot in front of the other, because that was all that was left.

They emerged from the cave into the dying light of Asgard, and the cold hit them like a wall. The wind was sharp and bitter, carrying the scent of ash and rot, and it cut through their clothes and armor with the precision of a scalpel. The sky above was a ceiling of bruised clouds, shot through with veins of sickly green that pulsed like a heartbeat. In the distance, the palace rose, its spires black against the poisoned sky, and at its base, they could see the faint glow of torches, the movement of figures that might have been guards or might have been something worse.

Thor raised the axe, the crude weapon catching the last light of a dying sun, and began to walk. The others followed, a procession of the damned marching toward the only end left to them. There was no hope. No plan beyond the simple, brutal arithmetic of violence. They would fight, and they would die, and maybe—maybe—they would hurt Hela enough that it mattered.

The cave mouth receded behind them, a dark wound in the hillside, and the path ahead stretched out, a ribbon of cracked stone that led to the palace and the goddess who waited there. They walked in silence, the only sound the crunch of boots on dead earth and the low, mournful howl of the wind.

It had begun.

The path to the palace was the Bifrost itself—not the bridge that had once spanned the cosmos, but its foundation, a ribbon of crystalline stone that pulsed with residual energy like the ghost of a severed limb. Their boots rang against its surface, each step a bell-note that echoed out across the dead valley, announcing their approach to anyone or anything that cared to listen. They were done with stealth. Done with hiding in caves and shadows, done with the pretense that caution could save them. This was an open challenge, a declaration hurled at the throne with the full knowledge that it would be answered with annihilation.

The surface beneath them was smooth as glass, shot through with veins of light that flickered in rhythm with their footfalls. Blue, gold, green—the colors of the Nine Realms, fading now but still present, a reminder of what the Bifrost had been before Hela severed it, before she'd rewritten the rules of Asgard's power. The light pooled around their feet and scattered ahead of them, painting their shadows long and distorted across the crystalline expanse.

They moved in formation, tight and purposeful, the kind of tactical arrangement that spoke of years of training and battles. No one had given the order. They'd simply fallen into it, muscle memory and instinct slotting each hero into their role. Thor at the vanguard, the tip of the spear, his borrowed axe held in both hands like a talisman against the dark. Behind him, Valkyrie and Cassandra, flanking left and right, close enough to provide mutual support but spread wide enough to prevent a single strike from taking them both. Right behind them Natasha and Clint were ready to provide cover. The Guardians along with Scott held the center, a chaotic knot of alien competence and improvised firepower, with Tony and Rhodey providing aerial overwatch, their suits humming with contained energy. Peter was a couple of steps ahead of the rear, the others had purposely covered him, in an attempt to spare him the first moments of battle. And lastly Wanda, Vision, and Strange formed the rear guard, their powers thrumming in the air like a tuning fork struck and left to vibrate.

It was a formation built for assault, not defense. There was nowhere to fall back to, no reserves to call on. They were all committed, all forward, a single strike with every resource they had left.

Thor's grip on the axe shifted, his knuckles cracking with the strain, and he raised the weapon skyward. The motion was deliberate, ceremonial, a king—or the ghost of one—calling on the last dregs of his authority. The sound that tore from his throat was not a word, not a command, but something older—primal and raw, a war-cry that carried the weight of every Asgardian who had ever fallen in battle. It echoed across the Bifrost, reverberated off the dead valley.

It was a display of power, raw and undeniable, the kind of spectacle that should have inspired hope. But every hero on that bridge knew the truth: it was a funeral pyre dressed as a battle cry, a last gesture of defiance from a god who had already lost his kingdom.

Behind him, Valkyrie drew her blade, and the metal caught the fractured light of the Bifrost and threw it back in shards of silver and blue. The sword was ancient, its edge honed by centuries of battle, and it moved in her hand like a living thing, an extension of her arm and will. She spun it once, a tight, economical flourish that left afterimages in the air, and settled into a guard stance that spoke of muscle memory carved deeper than bone. She was a Valkyrie again, not the broken exile who'd fled to Sakaar but the warrior who'd faced Hela and survived. The blade hummed, eager.

Cassandra's shadows rippled around her like living armor, coiling up from the ground and wrapping her in darkness that moved with a liquid grace. They were under control now, responding to her will with the precision she'd trained for years to master. She pushed aside the wrongness from the forest, the cold, alien presence that had whispered in her mind. This was combat. This was the moment where discipline mattered, where the monastery's brutal lessons paid dividends. The shadows extended from her hands, thin tendrils that flickered at the edges of visibility, and she wove them into a cloak that dampened sound and bent light around her. If she moved fast enough, she could become a ghost, a blade in the dark that struck and vanished before the enemy could track her. She had to believe that. Had to trust the power that had defined her, even as a small, insidious voice in the back of her mind whispered that the shadows weren't hers anymore.

Wanda's hands ignited, crimson energy boiling up from her palms and wrapping around her forearms in coils of barely contained chaos. The power crackled, hungry and volatile, the raw stuff of reality warped to her will. She could feel it pressing against her control, eager to be released, to tear and reshape and destroy. Her fingers flexed, and the red light brightened, casting her face in a hellish glow that made her look more specter than woman. Beside her, Vision phased, his body shifting from solid to intangible in a ripple that distorted the air. The Mind Stone in his forehead pulsed with steady yellow light, a counterpoint to Wanda's chaos—order to her entropy, calculation to her instinct. They didn't look at each other. Didn't coordinate. Just existed in the same space, two orbits that no longer intersected.

Tony's repulsors flared to life, twin streams of blue-white energy that left trails of ionized air in his wake. He lifted off the Bifrost, gaining altitude, and Rhodey followed, the War Machine suit a bulkier, more brutal counterpart to Tony's sleek design. They moved in tandem, executing a pattern they'd drilled a thousand times—overlapping fields of fire, high-low coverage, maximum lethality from minimum exposure. From above, the formation looked like an arrowhead, sharp and clean, aimed directly at the heart of the palace.

Strange's hands wove patterns in the air, orange light bleeding from his fingers and coalescing into geometric shapes that hung in space like frozen thought. The Eye of Agamotto at his chest pulsed with a green glow, the Time Stone inside it a silent promise of power and the symbols he drew were weapons in their own right, constructs of pure will given form and function, and they orbited him in a defensive shell that would shred anything that came too close.

The Guardians moved as a unit, chaotic and lethal, their alien weapons humming with charge. Rocket's modified blaster spat arcs of electricity, Drax's blades gleamed with a wicked edge, and Gamora's fire sword—elegant and cruel—cut the air in practice arcs that left scars in the light. Groot's branches extended, hardening into spears, and Quill's guns were out, locked and loaded, his face set in the grim mask of someone who'd run out of jokes.

They were a force. A concentration of power and skill that should have been enough to level armies, to crack planets, to make gods hesitate. And as they advanced across the Bifrost, weapons drawn and powers blazing, they looked like the heroes they'd always been—Earth's Mightiest, the Guardians of the Galaxy, warriors and legends marching to war.

But the palace loomed ahead, vast and indifferent, its spires clawing at the poisoned sky. It was older than memory, built by hands that had shaped worlds, and it radiated a cold, ancient authority that dwarfed their fury. The once white walls were now of black stone, seamless and perfect, inscribed with runes that pulsed with sickly green light. The windows were empty sockets, dark and watching, and the massive doors at its base stood open like a mouth waiting to swallow them whole.

The Bifrost ended at the edge of an immense plaza, a vast expanse of polished obsidian that stretched out before the palace like a killing floor. The stone was flawless, reflective, a mirror that showed the heroes their own faces staring back—grim, determined, already wearing the expressions of the dead.

They stepped off the Bifrost and onto the plaza, their boots striking the obsidian with a sound like the closing of a crypt. The formation held, but it was tighter now, drawn in by the oppressive weight of the space. Above them, the sky churned, green and black, and the wind carried the stench of old blood and burnt ozone.

They stopped. Not because they'd planned to, but because the plaza demanded it, because the sheer scale of the emptiness made forward motion feel like sacrilege. They stood in line, weapons ready, powers humming, and waited for the thing they all knew was coming.

The palace doors showed nothing but void, a darkness so complete it seemed to eat the light. And from that darkness, she emerged. Then closed behind her, anticipating the inevitability of what was coming.

Hela stood on the grand staircase, halfway between the palace doors and the plaza floor, as if she couldn't be bothered to descend all the way. Her posture was relaxed, almost languid, one hand resting on her hip while the other hung loose at her side. She looked at them the way a queen might regard a particularly tedious theatrical performance—one she'd been forced to attend out of obligation, and which had gone on far too long. There was no rage in her expression, no anticipation of battle. Just a profound, ancient boredom that radiated from her like cold from a corpse.

Her voice cut through the plaza, sharp and dismissive, carrying effortlessly across the obsidian expanse. "Such passion. Such fury. And all to defend a pile of dust and a history of lies."

Thor's voice tore across the plaza, raw and stripped of everything but grief and rage. "Where are they?" The words came out like stones dropped into a grave. "Heimdall. The refugees. What have you done with my people?"

Hela tilted her head, the gesture almost curious, as if she were trying to remember something trivial. "Oh, the little refugees?" A smile touched her lips, cruel and precise as a scalpel. "Don't worry about them, brother. They've been given a place of great importance in my new Asgard."

Thor's grip on the axe tightened until the metal groaned. "Where?"

Hela's smile widened, and she gestured behind her, toward the palace, its black stone walls gleaming with that sickly green light. "They’ll make for a lovely foundation."

The words hung in the air for a single, crystalline moment—long enough for the heroes to find them a meaning. Long enough for the full weight of what she'd said to land like a physical blow.

Valkyrie made a sound that wasn't quite human, a guttural thing that came from somewhere deep in her chest. Her blade trembled in her hand, and Cassandra saw the exact moment the warrior's control shattered—not into panic, but into something colder and infinitely more dangerous. Pure, distilled murder.

Thor's face went white, then red, then something beyond color entirely. The axe rose, as if he could physically strike the words from existence. "You—"

Then he charged, his boots striking the obsidian in a rhythm that sounded like war drums. The axe came around in a wide, brutal arc aimed at Hela's neck, the kind of blow that should have split mountains, that carried the weight of grief and fury and a god's desperate need to make the universe hurt the way he hurt. The impact should have been cataclysmic. Instead, there was a dull, absolute thud—the sound of something meeting an immovable object and simply stopping, all its kinetic energy absorbed and negated in an instant.

Hela had raised her left hand, palm out, and conjured a barrier of purple energy that hung in the air between them like a pane of obsidian glass. The axe blade struck it dead center and went no further. Hela didn't flinch. Didn't brace. Didn't acknowledge the attack as anything more than a minor irritation. Her expression remained unchanged—bored, vaguely contemptuous, as if Thor had just interrupted her with a question she'd already answered.

Thor snarled and pulled back, swinging from the side, a horizontal slash aimed at her ribs. The same barrier appeared, instantaneous and effortless, at the exact point of impact. Thud. The sound was identical, a flat, dead note that carried no resonance. He attacked again—a thrust, then an upward cut, then a spinning strike that brought the axe around in a vicious arc—and each time, the barrier appeared exactly where it needed to be, no larger, no smaller, absorbing the blow with the same absolute indifference. Thud. Thud. Thud. The rhythm was metronomic, a countdown to futility.

Thor's breathing grew ragged, his movements more desperate. He rained blows down on her from every angle, using every technique he'd learned in a thousand years of battle, and none of it mattered. The barrier didn't crack. Didn't flicker. It simply was, an expression of Hela's will made manifest, and against it, Thor's godly strength was nothing. Just noise. Just fury, signifying exactly what she'd said it would: nothing.

The ground beneath their feet began to tremble. It started as a vibration, barely perceptible, then escalated into a grinding, tectonic rumble that shook dust from the palace walls. Cracks appeared in the obsidian plaza, thin hairline fractures that spread out in geometric patterns, and from those cracks, hands emerged. Bone-white, skeletal, wrapped in scraps of ancient armor. They clawed their way up from whatever hell Hela had buried them in, dragging their broken bodies into the light with the inexorable patience of the dead who had nowhere else to be.

The Einherjar rose by the dozens, then the hundreds, their bones clicking and scraping as they found their feet. They wore the remnants of Asgard's glory—breastplates etched with runes, helms crowned with wings, swords that had once been forged in starfire. Now, they were just corpses, puppets dancing on Hela's strings. They did not attack. They simply moved, shuffling into formation around the edges of the plaza, forming a perfect, enclosing circle around the heroes. Cutting off retreat. Trapping them on the killing floor.

Hela watched Thor as he staggered back from his failed assault, his chest heaving, his face a mask of disbelief and impotent rage. She smiled, just a slight curve of her lips. "Are you finished?"

Thor's only answer was to spit blood onto the obsidian and raise the axe again, but the fight had gone out of his eyes. He knew. They all knew.

The Guardians broke formation, attempting to flank. It was a smart move—overwhelm her from multiple vectors, force her to divide her attention. Rocket opened fire, his weapon spitting bolts of plasma that streaked across the plaza in overlapping arcs. Drax charged from the right, blades raised, his roar echoing off the palace walls. Gamora came in low and fast from the left, her sword a golden blur aimed at Hela's exposed side.

Hela flicked her right wrist.

The motion was casual, almost dismissive, the kind of gesture you'd use to wave away an insect. But the effect was devastating. An invisible force slammed into the Guardians mid-charge, hitting them with the concussive power of a collapsing building. Rocket tumbled through the air, his weapon torn from his grip, and hit the obsidian fifty feet away with a sickening crunch. Drax's momentum reversed instantly, his body ragdolling backward as if he'd been hit by a freight train. Gamora's sword went flying, spinning end over end, and she crashed into one of the Einherjar, who caught her and held her with skeletal hands that left bruises on her arms.

Hela hadn't even looked at them. Her attention was elsewhere, her gaze sweeping across the plaza until it found Wanda and Vision standing at the rear of the formation. Her smile widened, sharpened into something cruel.

"How touching," she said, her voice carrying that particular tone of someone dissecting an insect under glass. "The witch and her creation. Tell me, do you truly believe he loves you? Can a thing made of stone and circuits feel anything at all? Or does he simply calculate the most efficient response to your emotions?"

The words struck with surgical precision, aimed directly at the fracture between them. Wanda flinched, her hands dropping fractionally, the red energy flickering. Vision's head turned toward her, his expression a complex calculus of pain and denial, and in that moment of hesitation, Hela moved.

A spear of pure darkness materialized in her hand, long and elegant and wrong, as if she'd torn it from the fabric of the void itself. She hurled it with the lazy grace of someone throwing a dart at a board. It crossed the plaza in a heartbeat, too fast to track, and punched through one of Vision's legs, drilling through his synthetic body and erupting out his back in a spray of sparks and fractured circuitry.

Vision's eyes went wide, his mouth opening in a soundless gasp.

“You didn’t!” Wanda screamed, a raw, animal sound that tore itself from her throat, and the red energy around her hands exploded outward in a shockwave of chaos magic. Hela absorbed it with a look of mild interest, her palm outstretched, drinking in the power like wine. When the assault faded, she exhaled, almost disappointed. "That's all?"

Cassandra moved. She couldn't watch this, couldn't stand by while Hela dismantled them piece by piece. She reached for her shadows, pulling them up from the obsidian, weaving them into tendrils that lashed out toward Hela with the speed and violence of striking snakes. The darkness obeyed her will, responsive and controlled, and for a moment, she felt the old certainty return—this was her power, her weapon, and she would use it to cut the goddess down.

Hela didn't block the shadows. She inhaled.

The tendrils halted mid-strike, their forward momentum arrested as if they'd hit an invisible wall. Then they began to move backward, not repelled but drawn, sucked into Hela's outstretched palm like smoke into a vacuum. Cassandra felt the connection snap, felt the shadows tear away from her control, and a cold, sick horror flooded her gut. Hela closed her fist around the stolen darkness, her smile triumphant, and then she opened her hand and released it.

The necrotic energy erupted from her palm in a wave, not aimed at Cassandra but at Wanda. It moved like liquid shadow, corrosive and hungry, and Wanda barely had time to throw up a shield before it hit. The impact drove her to her knees, red energy battling black, and Cassandra watched, frozen, as her own power—corrupted, weaponized, turned into something alien—tried to kill the one person she couldn't afford to lose.

"Shit," Cassandra hissed, the word ripped from her throat. Her eyes stayed fixed on Hela, still refusing to look at Wanda, because if she looked, she'd see the accusation, the betrayal. But Wanda noticed. Even fighting for her life, she noticed, and the hurt in her eyes grew even deeper than before.

"I can't use my shadows!" Cassandra shouted to the others, her voice cracking. "I'll have to reach her in close combat!"

She charged, baton in hand, closing the distance with the desperate speed of someone who knew this was suicide but had run out of alternatives. Hela didn't move, didn't even raise a hand. She just conjured the barrier—the same purple energy that had stopped Thor—and Cassandra hit it at full sprint. The impact was like running into a wall of solid air. Her momentum halted instantly, the kinetic energy slamming back through her body, and she was thrown backward, hitting the obsidian hard enough to crack the stone and drive the air from her lungs.

Wanda started to move toward her, instinct overriding everything else, but Hela flicked her wrist and sent a volley of obsidian shards screaming through the air. Wanda twisted, deflecting them with bursts of red energy, forced back onto the defensive, and Cassandra lay on the ground, gasping, watching the chaos unfold and knowing she'd just made it worse.

It was Natasha who reached her first, skidding to a halt beside her and pressing a handgun into her palm. "Try this."

Cassandra took the weapon, her hands shaking, and forced herself upright. The gun felt alien in her grip, a blunt instrument compared to the elegant precision of her shadows, but it was all she had left.

Tony's voice cut through the comms, tight and furious. "Alright, enough of this. JARVIS, full offensive suite. Everything."

The Iron Man suit lit up like a star going supernova. Missiles erupted from his shoulder mounts, dozens of them, streaking across the plaza in corkscrew patterns designed to overwhelm point defenses. Repulsors fired from his palms and chest, concentrated beams of energy that could punch through tank armor. The unibeam—the most powerful weapon in his arsenal—charged with a rising whine that made the air itself vibrate, and then discharged in a column of blue-white brilliance that carved a trench in the obsidian and vaporized everything in its path.

The barrage was total, overwhelming, a display of firepower that should have leveled a city block. And Hela walked through it.

She didn't run. Didn't dodge. Didn't raise a barrier or conjure a defense. She simply walked, one measured step after another, moving through the storm of missiles and energy blasts as if they were a light rain. The projectiles dissipated as they neared her, their explosive payloads fizzling into nothing, their kinetic energy bleeding away into the void. The repulsor beams bent around her, their trajectories warping in impossible angles, as if reality itself was choosing to avoid her. The unibeam struck her directly in the chest, and for a moment, the light was so bright it bleached the color from the world. When it faded, Hela stood untouched, not even a scorch mark on her armor.

She stopped directly in front of Tony, who hovered ten feet off the ground, his suit smoking and sparking from the strain of the assault. His HUD was screaming warnings, power reserves depleted to critical levels, but he raised his hands anyway, repulsors charging for one last shot.

Hela reached up, moving with the deliberate grace of someone reaching for a piece of fruit, and placed a single finger against the Arc Reactor in the center of his chest.

The blue light flickered. Not like a bulb dying, but like a heartbeat faltering, an irregular strobe that sent spasms of dying energy through the suit's systems. Tony felt it as a physical thing, a coldness spreading out from his chest, and he tried to move, to pull away, but the suit's actuators were already locking up, systems cascading into failure. The HUD went dark, one readout at a time, and then the light in the Arc Reactor guttered and dimmed, the soft hum that had been Tony's constant companion for years fading into a silence so absolute it felt like a grave closing.

The suit crashed to the ground, a dead weight of inert metal, and inside, Tony was trapped in a silent, airless coffin. He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything but lie there in the dark and feel the absolute, humiliating helplessness of having his heart almost extinguished by a single touch. Nothing was moving anymore, only a single little nanoparticle had detached itself from the armor, launched away from the impact, and it flew away as everything else seemed frozen in time.

Valkyrie screamed, a raw, primal sound, and charged. She should have wanted to surrender or to run as she was so used to, Hela had expected her to, and wanted her to be drowned by the same guilt she felt before. Instead Valkyrie’s blade sang through the air as she brought it down in a strike that carried centuries of rage and grief. Hela caught her wrist mid-swing, her grip casual and unyielding, and with a twist of her hand, forced Valkyrie to her knees. The blade clattered to the obsidian, useless.

Hela leaned close, her voice a whisper meant only for Valkyrie's ears, but it carried across the plaza anyway, amplified by the cruel acoustics of the space. "You should have stayed in exile, little Valkyrie. At least there, you could pretend you once had honor."

A flicker of unbearable pain crossed Valkyrie's face, the old wound torn open. But the face did not crumple. The warrior she had become absorbed the blow. The pain was instantly cauterized by a fresh surge of cold, pure hatred. Her eyes, filled not with tears but with a murderous fire, locked onto Hela's. Hela released her, letting her collapse onto the stone, not as a broken victim, but as a defeated—and still defiant—soldier.

The plaza fell silent except for the sound of breathing—ragged, broken, the desperate gasps of bodies pushed past their limits and failing to recover. Hela stood among them, the only figure still upright, and her gaze swept across the fallen heroes with the detached interest of someone cataloging livestock.

Thor knelt on the obsidian, the borrowed axe lying useless beside him, his head bowed and his shoulders heaving. His once mythological presence had long since faded, leaving him looking small and mortal, stripped of the divine fury that had driven his assault. His knuckles were bloody from where they'd scraped against Hela's barrier, and his eyes—when he finally raised them—held a hollow, gutted expression that had nothing to do with physical injury.

Tony lay motionless inside his powerless suit, the metal coffin he'd built around himself now his prison. Through the faceplate, his eyes were open, staring at nothing, and his chest rose and fell in shallow, panicked breaths. The Arc Reactor was blinking slowly, a cold circle of metal where his heart should have been, and the silence of the suit—no HUD, no JARVIS, no hum of systems—was a void that swallowed him whole.

Vision's body lay crumpled where he'd fallen. He could have kept attacking—his calculations had already run a thousand combat simulations—but to what end? In none of them could he have saved them all. He ran the logic again, a desperate, looping subroutine, and arrived at the same sickening clarity: he couldn't save Wanda when it mattered. He couldn't protect her.

Wanda knelt beside him, her hands hovering over his body but not quite touching, as if she was afraid that contact would shatter whatever fragile thread still connected them. Red energy flickered weakly around her fingers, carefully threading back the circuits. Tears carved lines through the grime on her face, and her breathing came in hitching, broken sobs.

Cassandra sat with her back against a piece of broken pillar, the handgun Natasha had given her lying useless in her lap. Her shadows were gone, not suppressed but absent, as if they'd simply decided to abandon her. The cold, oily wrongness that had been building since the forest was gone too, leaving behind a hollow ache that felt like the aftermath of an amputation. She felt the weight of every choice she'd made press down on her chest until breathing was an act of will.

Valkyrie lay face-down on the obsidian, her blade out of reach, her body trembling with sobs she refused to voice. Hela's words echoed in her mind—little Valkyrie, should have stayed in exile—and the shame of it was a physical thing, a brand burned into her soul that no amount of defiance could erase.

The Guardians were scattered across the plaza like debris after an explosion. Rocket lay in a heap, his fur matted with blood, his breathing shallow and irregular. Drax sat up slowly, his face a mask of confusion and disbelief, as if his mind couldn't process the fact that his strength—the one thing he'd always relied on—had been rendered irrelevant. Gamora's arm was dislocated, the joint swollen and purple, but she didn't make a sound, just stared at Hela with eyes that held a cold, absolute hatred tempered by the knowledge that hatred meant nothing here.

Natasha and Clint stood together at the edge of the circle of Einherjars, weapons still in hand but lowered, their bodies language screaming exhaustion and defeat. They'd seen losses before, had survived missions that went sideways and operations that collapsed into chaos, but this was different. This wasn't a tactical failure. This was an existential one.

Hela descended the stairs slowly, each step a deliberate punctuation mark in the silence. She moved through the fallen heroes, her gaze passing over each one with the same detached curiosity, as if she was inspecting a completed project and noting minor flaws in the execution. When she reached the center of the plaza, she stopped and turned to face them, her back to the palace, and for the first time, she spoke not to humiliate but to educate.

"Death is not merely an end," she said, her voice carrying across the obsidian expanse with the weight of absolute certainty. "It is a kingdom—absolute, eternal, and patient. You build your little alliances, your teams, your hopes, and you think that unity makes you strong. But unity is just a prettier word for the herd instinct. You huddle together because alone, you understand how small you are. How brief. How irrelevant."

She gestured to the palace behind her, to the dead sky above, to the circle of Einherjar that surrounded them. "I am the queen of death, and all realms are my dominion. Your resistance was never more than a child's tantrum against the inevitable. You fought with passion, with fury, with every scrap of power you could muster, and it changed nothing. Because this was never a battle. It was a lesson. And now you've learned it."

The silence that followed was absolute. No one moved. No one spoke. The truth of her words settled over them like a shroud, smothering the last ember of defiance, and in that moment, every hero on the plaza understood the same thing: they had lost not just the fight, but the war, and everything they'd fought to protect.

Then the palace doors swung open behind Hela with a groan of ancient hinges. The sound echoed across the plaza, impossibly loud in the stillness, and every head turned toward it. For a single, desperate heartbeat, hope flickered in their eyes—reinforcements, allies, something that could change the equation.

But when Heimdall stepped through the doorway, the hope died.

The Gatekeeper's eyes were milky white, blind and empty, his face a mask of serene acceptance. He moved with the slow, measured steps of someone walking in a religious procession, his hands folded before him, and behind him came the refugees. Hundreds of them, men and women and children, the Asgardians who had hidden in Heimdall's sanctuary, the ones the Avengers had risked everything to protect. They walked freely, no chains, no guards, their faces calm and worshipful, and when they reached the edge of the stairs, they began to kneel.

One by one, row by row, they bowed before Hela, their foreheads touching the obsidian, their voices rising in a murmur of reverence that grew into a chant. The words were Old Asgardian, ancient and formal, but the meaning was clear: they were pledging themselves to her, acknowledging her as their rightful queen, offering their fealty with the kind of devotion usually reserved for gods.

Hela smiled, a genuine expression of satisfaction, and raised one hand in acknowledgment. The refugees saw it and bowed deeper, their chant growing louder, and the sound of it—the worship, the willing surrender—was a blade driven into the hearts of every hero on the plaza.

Thor's face went white. He tried to stand, to move toward them, but his legs wouldn't hold him and he collapsed back to his knees, his hands clawing at the obsidian as if he could dig through it to some reality where this wasn't happening. "No," he whispered, the word barely audible. "No, you—you were safe. We—"

But they weren't listening. They were too busy kneeling, too absorbed in their worship of the goddess who had conquered them.

Tony, trapped in his suit, could only watch through the faceplate, his breathing coming faster now, verging on hyperventilation. He'd built the suit to be invincible, to protect him from anything the universe could throw at him, and now it was a cage that forced him to witness the complete, utter failure of everything he'd tried to do.

Cassandra closed her eyes, unable to look, unable to process the magnitude of what she was seeing. This wasn't just defeat. This was the erasure of meaning, the knowledge that every sacrifice, every risk, every moment of hope had been for nothing.

Valkyrie's hands clenched into fists, her nails digging into her palms until blood seeped between her fingers, but she didn't move. Didn't speak. Just lay there on the cold stone and let the sound of her people worshipping their conqueror wash over her like acid.

Hela turned back to the heroes, her smile widening, and the expression held no malice, no cruelty. Just satisfaction. The satisfaction of a queen who had reclaimed what was always hers, who had proven a point so absolute that no counterargument could exist.

"This is my kingdom," she said, her voice soft now, almost intimate. "And you are nothing."

The refugees continued to chant, their voices rising in devotion, and the heroes lay broken among them, surrounded by the people they'd failed to save, witnessing the final, crushing truth: they had lost not just the battle, but the very thing they'd fought for. The people were gone. Asgard was gone. Hope was gone.

And in the silence of that realization, as the plaza filled with the sound of worship and the cold wind carried the stench of death.