Chapter 246: HYDRA's Fury and Ethan in Everyone's Crosshairs
Thor hit the Destroyer one final time with the particular commitment of someone who has been waiting to do this for a while and intends to make it count.
The Destroyer's head separated from the rest of it and rolled across the field with the quiet anticlimax of a very large problem being resolved.
Thor didn't watch it go. He was already walking toward Ethan with the open satisfaction of a man restored to himself.
Tony watched the head come to rest approximately two feet from his boot and made a decision to be calm about this.
"Don't," Ethan said, without looking at him.
"I wasn't going to—"
"You were calculating angles."
"I was appreciating the metallurgy from a respectful distance."
"Note the distance," Ethan said. "Keep it."
He started clapping as Thor reached them — genuine, not performative. "Good. That's what I was waiting for."
Thor looked somewhat embarrassed by the praise, which was an unusual register on a man who had spent his life assuming praise was his due. Something had shifted in him, somewhere between the interrogation room and the hammer landing and the Destroyer going down. He wasn't quite the Thor who'd been exiled. Not yet the Thor he'd eventually become. Something in transit.
"It was you," Thor said. "Staying there. Keeping the fight going while I—" He stopped. "Thank you."
"You did the difficult part," Ethan said.
"You did it for longer." Thor looked at his hands, then at Ethan. "I owe you more than I can easily name."
"You can name it later. Who is this?" He gestured at Tony.
"Tony Stark," Ethan said. "Among the smartest people on Earth. He came with me."
Thor assessed Tony with the eyes of someone whose primary evaluation metric for other people was what they could do in a fight.
One hammer strike would do it, Thor thought, not unkindly.
"Thor Odinson," he said. "Prince of Asgard. Thank you for being here."
Tony deployed the professional smile he used for people he'd just met who were objectively more powerful than him. "Honor's mine. Big fan of the lightning."
"I would stay," Thor said, turning back to Ethan, "but Asgard needs me. Loki is—" He stopped. Something complicated moved across his face. "There are things to resolve."
"Go," Ethan said. "Handle it."
"You are welcome in Asgard. Both of you. Any time."
He was in the air before either of them could respond, climbing toward the rainbow bridge coordinates with the urgency of someone who has realized exactly how much he let slide while he was busy being miserable in New Mexico.
The field was quiet.
Ethan looked at Tony. Tony looked at the Destroyer's head.
"Now?" Tony said.
"Now," Ethan said.
Tony picked it up with the careful enthusiasm of someone who has been waiting to do this for the better part of an hour.
The portal home opened. Tony walked through it carrying a five-meter robot's decapitated head under one arm like a particularly large watermelon. Ethan followed.
Pierce arrived at the site forty minutes later.
What he found was a field containing: structural damage consistent with something very large having been in a fight, the inert body of an Asgardian construct, and absolutely no Asgardian construct head.
"Where," he said, "is the rest of it."
Nobody wanted to be the person who answered this question. The answer was self-evidently that Tony Stark had taken it, which was self-evidently something that had happened while Pierce's people were present and not stopping it.
"Find out where it went," Pierce said. "Then find out how."
He looked at the scene for another moment with the specific controlled anger of a man who cannot afford to show how angry he is.
Ethan Cross, he thought. Every time.
Asgard's throne room.
Kaito was sitting on the steps leading up to the throne, which was technically not appropriate, but Kaito's relationship with appropriateness had always been elastic.
"So," he said. "That didn't work."
Loki sat in the throne of Asgard. He had achieved the thing he'd wanted. He was sitting in it right now. He was king of Asgard, or at least of whatever Asgard consisted of while Odin slept and Thor was in another realm and the Warriors Three were somewhere being heroic.
"Everything is within my control," Loki said.
Kaito looked at the rainbow bridge. "Your brother left New Mexico about fifteen minutes ago."
Loki was quiet.
"You froze the gatekeeper," Kaito continued. "That was smart. He can't open the bridge for anyone who doesn't already have a way here." He paused. "Does Thor have a way here?"
Loki's jaw tightened slightly.
"Asking for a friend," Kaito said.
What Loki didn't say, because saying it would require admitting it: Thor was resourceful. Thor was also angry in the way that people became angry when they'd just been lied to about their father being dead. And Thor had spent three days in Midgard making connections, which meant Thor might have access to methods of transit that Loki hadn't accounted for.
Kaito watched him think.
"You know," Kaito said, "I've been watching you since we got here. Genuinely interesting strategy. Everything you've done has worked, technically. You got the throne. You got rid of Thor, or you thought you did." He tilted his head. "You're alone in a very large palace and the person you were trying to impress is unconscious."
Loki's expression didn't change. "I don't need his approval."
"No," Kaito agreed. "You don't need it. You've just been trying to get it for your entire life, which is a different thing." He stood up, stretched. "I'm going to go look at the interesting man I found in Midgard. The one carrying the treasury's artifacts."
"Which artifacts," Loki said, with sudden attention.
"Something called Gram," Kaito said. "And a few other things. The Life Tablet is very nice, by the way. I've been studying it."
He pulled out the Tablet of Life and looked at it with the expression of someone who has been reading something fascinating.
Loki stood.
"That," he said, "is mine."
"You keep saying that," Kaito said pleasantly, pocketing it. "Interesting that something from Odin's vault is yours, specifically. I'd love to hear that argument." He walked toward the exit. "Coming? The interesting man is in New York."
Loki looked at the throne. He looked at the gate. He looked at the empty palace around him.
Then he followed Kaito.
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