So I bought Thor: Ragnarok on DVD as soon as I could, and since then I've rewatched it three times and did a full Thor marathon, which I will likely do again. This is officially my favorite corner of the MCU. I love me some immortal space Vikings, and the brother dynamic between Thor and Loki is some of the most compelling stuff I've ever had on my screen. It was pretty much inevitable that I'd come up with a fanfic idea sooner or later, and here we are.

"What news of Midgard, Gatekeeper?" said Odin. Hugin and Munin had brought him word that Heimdall had spotted something troubling on the isolated realm of little magic and primitive science. The native sorcerers, amateurs though they were, had succeeded in keeping several threats that might have needed Asgardian intervention at bay, while exhibiting no ambition to cause alarm. And of the many human nations, only one was anywhere close to developing the technology needed to break free of the planet's confines, but that people appeared to be peaceful and keen to keep well to themselves. Indeed, Laufey's invasion had been the last time Asgard's aid was truly needed.

"The last descendant of the house you entrusted the Tesseract to centuries ago has been slain, my king," said Heimdall. "It has been removed from its place of safekeeping by men who wish to harness its power in the war that has swept the realm these last years."

Odin frowned. "The mortals are yet too primitive to harness the power of an Infinity Stone indirectly." He cast a significant glance at Heimdall's breastplate, then met those all-seeing golden eyes. "And too fragile to survive using one directly. But keep me informed. I shall decide when and if any action should be taken on our part."

Heimdall inclined his head respectfully. "Yes, my king."

X

Heimdall continued his watch over the deadliest war the Midgardians had ever waged. It was nothing to the interplanetary wars of conquest Asgard had once fought to establish the nine realms and the other colonies and protectorates, in the days of Odin's forebears and the Allfather's own early rule, before he lost his eye and became the wiser king they had known for a thousand years. It was nothing even to wars they had fought since then, to protect the realms against outside invaders such as the Kree, Skrull, and Shi'ar empires. There was, however, something peculiarly tragic about watching a single race do its best destroy itself.

But while this Johann Schmidt had, contrary to Odin's expectations, succeeded in manufacturing weapons using the Tesseract, he was thwarted at every turn by one Steven Grant Rogers. The same science that had turned Schmidt monstrous had been refined and used on a young man, frail even by mortal standards, granting him a stature comparable to that of Asgard's crown prince. Rogers and his brothers-in-arms were the reason Heimdall had little of concern to report to his king, who remained uninterested in interfering with the war at large. Heimdall would always do his duty to his king, but men of valor like these were what made his watch a burden he was glad to bear, even through all the suffering he saw.

It had not escaped Heimdall's notice that the king seemed unusually keen to keep discussion of Midgard's war to a minimum whenever his heir was on Asgard. Thor was boisterous and eager to throw himself into a battle whenever he could, and his friends followed his lead, as did his brother, if less enthusiastically. Heimdall was not certain Odin's discretion was necessary in this case, but he understood why he might be wary of offering a child of his the temptation of a weaker realm in disarray. Historically, it was a temptation not often resisted by their line. But Thor was not Hela, the sister he had never known. What he liked best was an adventure or a challenging fight in defense of Asgard. He would find neither on Midgard.

X

Almost three years to the day from the theft of the Tesseract, Thor, Lady Sif, and the Warriors Three called Heimdall to open the Bifrost so they could return from Muspelheim. They had gone to the fiery world on the rumor that lost relics from King Bor's war against the Dark Elves had been hidden there. As there were no disputes they were needed to help quell, Odin had indulged them, even though he shared Heimdall's skepticism that this quest would bear fruit. Sure enough, they stepped out of the brilliant vortex sooty and bearing various trivial battle wounds, but no Gem of Infinite Suns or Horn of the Faerie. And yet they hardly seemed troubled by it. All Hogun and Volstagg required of an adventure was a story to bring back to their families. Fandral would use the same story to impress Asgardian maidens. And as long as Thor was there, Sif could come back empty-handed a thousand times over and be content. Thor was the only one who seemed at all disappointed, but he bore it well in the face of his friends' excitement.

The companions all greeted Heimdall warmly—particularly Sif, who was always happy to see her (much older) brother, and he her. Heimdall listened with a smile to their eager account of their adventures. They knew he had seen it all himself, but he always enjoyed their exaggerated descriptions. His gaze turned, however, to the bridge, where stood a lone figure clad in green. Thor was the first of the group to notice, and his face lit up. "Loki! You won't believe what happened on Muspelheim!" He went to his brother and pulled him into a hug, which Loki tolerated stiffly.

"I'm sure you all had great fun," he said.

"I'm sorry you couldn't come," said Thor. "Did Father finally give his reasons for forbidding you from going there?"

Every time Thor and his friends had gone to Muspelheim, Odin had barred Loki from accompanying them—when Frigga could not devise an adequate distraction to keep him from wanting to go along in the first place, at least. They did this with very good reason. A planet of fire and molten rock was no place for a Frost Giant, even one whose lifelong diet of Asgardian food had rendered him almost as Aesir in function as enchantment had made him in appearance. But all Loki knew was that he wasn't allowed to join his brother, and Heimdall could see his resentment over it. It was not the Gatekeeper's place to question his king's decisions, but he had long felt that keeping the truth of Loki's origins from him was unwise, however well-intentioned.

"He never has before, so why bother asking?" said Loki.

"Then what have you been up to while we were away?" said Thor. Sif stalked past them, followed by Hogun and the still laughing and chattering Volstagg and Fandral.

"Is she still sore about what I did to her hair? Surely she's realized by now that this color suits her far better."

Thor laughed and clapped Loki on the back hard enough to make him stagger. "Perhaps, but I don't think she appreciated you deciding that for her, Brother."

Because Heimdall had been watching them, his attention on Johann Schmidt and the Tesseract had waned. Before the princes could go fifty paces down the bridge, a beam of brilliant blue light shot across space and deposited a screaming man right at the entrance to the Bifrost's golden sphere.

Thor and Loki turned, though the others were too far down the bridge to have heard the disturbance.

Schmidt got to his feet and spun around, taking in the surroundings distinctly alien to him and laughing wildly.

"What is that?" said Loki. "It's hideous."

"Whatever it is, it has trespassed where it does not belong," said Thor, his tone dangerous, raising Mjolnir a few inches.

"It hardly seems worth your time," said Loki. The Midgardian man was almost equal to Thor in height but far less impressive in stature.

"Any threat to Asgard is worth my time," said Thor.

As they spoke, Schmidt continued to laugh while drawing a small hand-weapon from a hidden holster in his clothes. It glowed blue like the weapons Heimdall had watched him use to disintegrate men where they stood, and he now aimed it at the approaching princes. Heimdall seized Hofund and charged. Schmidt fired his weapon before Heimdall could reach him, and the blast grazed Loki's left arm and continued on, past the other four farther up the bridge, until it burst against the first solid object it reached, leaving a smoking hole a foot across. Both brothers yelled—Loki in pain and surprise, Thor in rage—but that was the only shot Schmidt succeeded in taking. The next second, Heimdall plunged Hofund through his chest.

The movie makes it pretty unclear whether the Tesseract obliterated Schmidt or beamed him somewhere in space. For all I know, he's going to show up as one of Thanos's henchmen in Infinity War, but it hardly seems that only one destination was possible, so why not Asgard?

Okay, so my ideas for where I want to go with this fic are very rough. It started out as something that could've been a three-panel comic strip, with Red Skull getting beamed to Asgard and then Thor and/or Heimdall immediately demolishing him. But then I realized that this would be a pretty good jumping-off point for a pretty serious canon-diverging fic. Some things I'd like to explore with it are Loki's true heritage (if I can figure out how to force that secret out without a Frost Giant grabbing his arm) and Thor/Sif (her absence in Ragnarok made me grumpy, but at least she's not dead like the Warriors Three). Right now, the biggest obstacle to both of those goals is that I'm working with pre-character development Thor. If I can figure out how to make it work, we're gonna be seeing some Asgardians on Earth soon, interacting with characters from Captain America.

I've noticed a tendency in Thor fics to make Odin much worse than he is in the movies. I will not be doing that. He's definitely made plenty of bad parenting decisions and has an unfortunate tendency to try to cover up unpleasant truths instead of dealing with them, but he's not entirely horrible. Frigga has been an extremely good influence on him (as evidenced by how irrational he gets after her death), and it seems to me that losing his eye was a turning point for the sort of king he was. Now he's terrified that Thor might go down the same path as Hela (hence angrily banishing him after he goes to Jotunheim and forcing him to learn a hard lesson in humility) and then Loki went and tried to destroy the entire planet just to impress him. When I see Odin, I see a man who fears that his line is so drenched in blood that they'll never be free of it—that being ruthless conquerers is in their natures.