Author's Note: Oh my gosh! AT LAST! I have had this idea in mind for a YEAR now, and I finally managed to get it written. Once I finally found a way to get it going then it finally settled, and that was nice. Yep. Haha. I hope you enjoy it, sorry for any mistakes, I edited this through tears, haha.

Rated for: Some violence, bullying,vague mentions of past child abuse, some gore, character death, and paranoia on my part. Language is all K. No smut, no slash, no incest, no non-con.

Summary: Ten years after a failed mercy mission turned disaster, Hela is released from prison to learn her family was forced to seek asylum in the US. Struggling to adjust to normal life, deal with the disaster that is her family, and help her country, Hela's optimism for the future is waning.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Odin/Frigga, Thor/Jane

For your information this story is cross-posted on Archive Of Our Own under the pen name of "GalaxyThreads"

Just a personal note, if you could refrain from using cussing/strong language if you comment (no offense to how you speak! Promise! =) It just makes me uncomfortable) I would greatly appreciate that. ;)

Notes**

-Asgard, Jotunhiem and the other Nine Realms are countries in Europe in this story, not planets. ;)

-Time in this story is mostly told with the 24 hour format, sorry for my stars who don't run on that. ;)

-Ages are as follow: Hela: 34, Thor 21, Loki 17.

-Hela does not view Frigga and Odin in the best light, so...heads up. ;)

"Felt like nothing could hurt me, 'till you hurt me,

I wish there was a sugar coated pill for it,

I wish you had some words that wouldn't make me sick,

'Cause this time you can't make it all better again."

-Au/Ru "Medicine"

Black, White, and Gray All Over:

This is their fault, and she hates them for it.

Forgiveness is a dream, and acceptance a joke.

That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

With a steady, but cold hand, Hela slowly wipes smeared blood away from her beneath nose. The metallic, sweet smell makes her want to heave a little, but she bites at her tongue to keep herself in check. Hard enough to draw blood with her teeth, but the taste doesn't bother her. Her mouth as already pooled with such substance today, so it's not terribly distracting.

There was more blood under her nose than she first thought, so now her fingers are smeared with red and it looks disgusting. She doesn't look presentable in the slightest—at least, beyond her clothing. Her hair is a mess from the fight, and her face is beginning to bruise from where she got hit. Her right hand is beginning to swell, as well, and the ice hasn't helped much. She looks like she got mugged, which isn't too far from the truth. Her parents are going to be humiliated by her appearance, and a quiet, sickly part of her is vindictively pleased by that fact.

Shifting uncomfortably in the plastic black chair, Hela lifts her gaze up from her left hand to the police officer seated beside her with a distant expression. His dark hair is recently cut and well cared for, suggesting a great deal of patience with it; he's quietly tapping on the arm rest of the chair to a rhythm she can't make out.

She believes that he thinks he's helping by keeping her company until she gets picked up, but all he's doing is reminding her that she's still stuck here. Yes, someone needs to watch the proceedings when her ride finally arrives, but the fact that he's here reminds her that the last decade happened, and that very fact draws up a deep irritation from within her for him. Nonetheless: "Do you have a tissue?" she questions, keeping her voice flat.

The officer looks up at her, startled, before processing the words and nodding. "Uh—yeah, give me a sec," he turns in the chair, scrambling to move items off of a small table, and then shoves a box without looking towards her. Hela bites back a word of annoyance, and grabs three of the clean pieces to set in her lap.

She begins to wipe the smeared blood off of her left hand and leans back further into the chair as she flicks her gaze pointedly up towards the clock in the corner of the waiting room again. She was already late by nearly an hour and a half given the small brawl she got into earlier, but she's yet to see anyone arrive for her.

They were supposed to be here two hours ago, and yet, here she is.

Still sitting.

Still waiting.

Still stuck.

"Is it bleeding again?" the officer questions, and Hela looks up at him with a raised eyebrow, but tries not to let her frustration with him show beyond that. Why does he think that she has to keep wiping blood? She didn't get it the first thousand times previous?

Hela flicks her gaze up towards the ceiling, and wipes sharply at her hand. She needs to be nice to him or they can make her stay longer. She needs to be nice to him so she can leave the United States and be done with all of this. She cannot wait until she has taken her final steps off of the ground they own.

She is never returning again.

"Yes." Hela answers through gritted teeth, wiping at her face with another one of the clean tissues and winces a little as she touches the still tender area. Her inmate really didn't bother to withhold himself when he took the swing this morning, and she can feel that spectacularly.

She didn't throw the first punch. Not really. Her words could have been better phrased, perhaps a little more gentle, but, by all that is good above—for whatever her word means now—she didn't hit him first. This does not, however, mean she didn't throw the last.

She's certain that without the political attachments intertwined with her case, the fact that she's leaving today would have been postponed. Given that it isn't her problem anymore, she doesn't care much for how badly she broke Surtur's nose or cracked his jaw. He was always nasty to her, anyway, a bottle of fire that he kept spraying her with. What more was he expecting? Her to calmly walk away?

But he threw the first punch today.

And she is the less damaged between the two of them.

Hela lets her eyes stray around the room, trying to find something more entertaining to look at than her feet or the bruises beginning to form on her right hand. There isn't much. The waiting room isn't exactly small, but it still feels cramped. There's a woman working behind the desk blocked with glass, and a few pictures without much pattern across the room. Some are certificates, she's pretty sure, but what for is evading her.

The paint is a pale cream that seems wretchedly out of place, and the floor is tiles that are cleaned to the point they reflect. She's been doing her utmost not to look down since she realized this half an hour ago, because she doesn't want to see what she looks like now.

She hasn't seen a proper mirror in more than a decade, and she's not about to start gawking at how awful she looks now. She's ugly, and she's long since come to accept that as fact. This entire debacle wasn't meant to help with her good looks anyway.

Another fifteen minutes pass without a trace of her parents, and she watches another man get reunited with his wife from across the room with a thin bitterness. They look so happy to see each other, but she's not stupid enough to hope for the same with her parents.

That would be ideal, but not realistic.

It's another five minutes before the officer beside her, Bell, finally looks down at his watch. It's the first indication of impatience she's seen from him beyond the drumming fingers and the sight makes something within her squirm.

They...they are coming, yes? The details were discussed over letters some months ago, and her stepmother had promised that they'd be here. And yet…

Officer Bell looks up at her, "They know it's today, right?"

How is she supposed to know!? She hasn't exactly had the means by which to call them! She hasn't even seen her parents face-to-face since she left Asgard a little over a decade ago. Hela stays her impatience, and shakes her head a little with a small shrug, "I don't know," her voice feels pathetically small.

Officer Bell's frown deepens and he hums, "I really only have another twenty minutes of free time before I'm supposed to meet another parolee."

Another?

She's not his parolee.

Hela tilts her head back and gives a bitter smile, "Perhaps they've decided to leave me here. I shamed them far to greatly for anything else." She muses aloud. Truthfully, if she was alone, she has her doubts that she wouldn't be descending into an open panic by now. They were supposed to be here.

Officer Bell gives her a nearly disturbed look, but seems unsure how to respond. A thin laugh escapes her lips at that, and she throws her left hand over her eyes to block out the worst of the glow from the overhead lights. "You don't know my parents as I do, Officer," she says.

She doesn't even know them.

She thought she did before this happened, but evidently not.

Officer Bell's agitation grows audible over the next seven minutes, and Hela quietly wishes she hadn't insisted that she was being picked up. Then they would have given her five dollars, and she could have gotten means of transportation somewhere. She doesn't even know where her parents would be if they are in New York, and that is equally discomforting.

The front door opens, but Hela doesn't look up. It's been for someone else every time thus far, and she's not even going to give these people the satisfaction of her attention. It's far too much effort, and she is exhausted.

Hela would have been perfectly content to continue and slip off into her shaky doze, but Officer Bell nudges her boot with his foot, hard. She snaps her hand away from her eyes, flicking her gaze towards him in annoyance and opens her mouth to offer a retaliation, but she stills as she sees the two familiar figures walking towards them.

An irrational terror seizes her.

She is not ready for this. Oh, all that is good above, she is not ready for this.

Old; they are so old. It's the first true thought that settles into her mind that isn't part of a disjointed mess of tumbling anxiety, and the second is the awful realization that she doesn't recognize these people anymore.

They aren't the people she left in Asgard a decade ago.

A little noise slips through her lips, and her stepmother's eyes widen with relief and seem wet. Hela's on her feet, though she can't remember standing, and a tumbling mess of emotions she can't quite tap into is washing over her.

"I'm so sorry we're late!" her stepmother exclaims, coming to stop in front of her. Her father's gripping a walking stick, though she has her doubts that he really needs it. His steal blue eye settles on her face, and Hela pointedly flicks her gaze away from him.

Frigga's hands reach out as if to touch her, but Hela flinches back from it.

A tightness spreads on her stepmother's tired face, and Hela's stomach clenches. This was an awful idea; she has had more than a decade to prepare for this moment, but she's still not ready. And she isn't happy to see them—alright, maybe somewhere, distantly, she is; but not at the forefront.

Hela's tongue slips before she can stop it, "Yes, well, what's three hours to ten years?"

Her father's lips thin, and some of the joy slips off of her stepmother's face.

Neither appears to have a response, yet her stepmother's lips part a few times. Hela flicks her gaze to her feet and clenches her fists tightly, breathing a little deeper as her right hand stretches with discomfort.

Officer Bell rises to his feet, "Mr. and Mrs. Aesir," he says and offers out a hand, "it's good to finally meet you."

He says that like she's said more about them than a few bare sentences since they met this morning.

Her father grabs his hand first, giving it a firm shake, "Thank you. What must be done before we leave?" he asks, and Officer Bell begins to go over the finer details, paperwork and such, leading her father over to the front desk; and this leaves her and her stepmother alone.

Silence strains the space between them for a long moment, before Frigga sighs a little, "Your face is bruising," she gestures towards the general area, and Hela withholds the instinctive urge to lift her hands and feel it, "are you alright?"

Hela barely withholds a snort, "Yes." Frigga looks visibly uncomfortable, and Hela tilts her head to the side blowing a loose strand of dark hair from her face, "'Mrs. Aesir'?" she quotes back from Officer Bell to her, "Is that an attempt to avoid the press?"

Has she really embarrassed them that much? (Good.)

Frigga's gives a strained smile, "In part. Your father and I also believed it would be simpler for now."

What saints.

Hela breathes out carefully, and folds her arms across her chest to stuff her hands into the confines of a little warmth. Unlike her stepmother, Hela isn't wearing a coat, or a jacket. When she was arrested ten years ago, it wasn't raining, so there wasn't the need. It's the middle of October, and New York's weather has decided on attempting a flood from her understanding. She's heard the guards complaining about the rain, and even now she can see droplets of water falling from the sky with the intent to drown something.

The clothing she's been given is stiff and rubs in uncomfortable areas, but what she was wearing when she arrived ten years ago was a bloodied mess, and disposed of sometime within the first months. Her boots are the only evidence that she existed as something other than a prisoner here.

A locked up animal, put away until she might offer further use.

Her fingers are freezing.

"I am sorry that we weren't here," Frigga says softly, and Hela lifts her gaze up to meet the woman's, "we didn't forget."

"I wouldn't have been surprised if you had." Hela snips, but at Frigga's crestfallen look, her stomach churns with guilt. They have put the effort into retrieving her rather than leave her in the United States to fend for herself, and she should be grateful for that.

But they left her here in the first place, and a decade has done nothing to lessen that blow.

Hela blows out a breath, worrying her lip between her teeth, "I knew you were coming," she says; whether it's a reassuring lie or the truth isn't something she can determine properly. Maybe a little of both.

Frigga looks somewhat relieved by it, though, "Good. They changed the days on us, and we didn't have everything quite as cleared as we were hoping; which is one of the major reasons we couldn't be here sooner. Your siblings were hard to work around, but we all managed to get here, so that's something."

Hela feels her expression visibly drop. Her parents brought her siblings? Why would they all hop onto a plane from Asgard to the United States when she and her parents would be arriving in the country within the next few days? It seems like an utterly useless amount of travel time.

Yet still—they're here.

The last time she saw her brothers neither one of them was up to her elbow in height and still running around and whacking each other with wooden swords. They were still children. Her mother has sent a few scarce photos since Hela's sentence, but she has her doubts it will be a true preparation for this.

Thor is what? Twenty now? Twenty-one? Loki seventeen or sixteen. She has lost so much time to these walls. Ten years. Years. Not months, not weeks, but years. Oh, how she can't wait to get off of the U.S.'s soil. She hates it here.

Hela is not ready for this. She's going to make a mess of it like she does almost anything else.

She digs her nails into her sides, and breathes out slowly trying to ground herself, but the following few minutes are a blur. Her parents deal with the remainder of the paperwork and other, flashing their identities to Officer Bell, who, to her amusement, stutters all over himself to address them by their proper titles.

At least, it is amusing until he turns to her and says, in what she's certain is without much thought: "You're the foreign princess that killed all those people ten years ago—Lady Death? That's you?"

Wonderful title, that.

Quite encouraging.

Hela's lips thin into something she's sure isn't very pleasant, and the sharp pang of her right hand serves as a reminder that she's already hit someone today, and she shouldn't continue the streak. Besides that, this is a police officer, and she could get detained for reacting violently. Her parents are still as they watch her, and Hela pulls her gaze off of Officer Bell towards a small section of peeling paint on the far wall.

Tension still present, but not acted upon, conversation begins to leak between the three once more as her parents grind the young man for details until their questions have been exhausted. That settled and another round of handshakes passed around, Hela is trailing her parents, at last, from the building.

It took less than twenty minutes, but felt akin to hours.

The air is bitterly chill, and Hela's teeth grind into her gums sharply at the sensation, a little puff of air escaping her mouth. It is the oddest sensation to know that, should she choose, she can simply walk away from this building, exit the gates, and wander off into the streets.

She is free.

Her feet stumble a little at this realization, but she rights herself before either parent can notice, and follows them through the rain towards an awaiting car. Given the brutal war that's been taking place with Jotunheim for the last thirty years, her mother country hasn't had much of an opportunity to advance technologically, and she remembers being startled by the sheer amount of cars when she arrived in New York at first.

She still hasn't adjusted to that fact.

Outside of the car she spots three figures. One is Heimdall, and the sight makes her pause a little. He's been her family's trusted steward for about as long as she can remember, but he never seemed to age before she went to prison, and this remains a true fact even now. She knows he must be as old as her parents, but it's impossible to tell.

His yellow eyes settle on her, and she feels some relief in the familiarity of that. The infection that took his eyesight before she was born left his irises a sickly yellow color; most people think it's disgusting, she is just grateful that that, at least, hasn't changed. Without prior knowledge of his blindness, it would be almost impossible to tell that he is so, which is why she's not surprised that his eyes land perfectly on her, despite her parents attempts to block her.

Hide her.

Like an unwanted smear on their shoe that needs to be cleaned off.

Standing side by side on Heimdall's right are two tall young men, and it takes her a second to place these as her younger brothers. Thor has bulked considerably since the last time she saw him, with broad shoulders and a lean, but clearly well toned body. She's pretty sure, given the sheer amount of muscle, that he wouldn't have trouble taking down a large wrestler.

The sight reminds her of many of her prison inmates, and that makes her strangely ill.

His blond hair is cropped a little above his shoulders, and he looks up from a phone as she approaches with something that looks like irritation.

Loki looks almost pathetically small beside him. His eyes are shadowed, face gaunt, and he's more bones and skin than much else. Most of his frame is hidden behind loose clothing, and his hands are stuffed into the pockets of his jacket as he looks up towards the sky. His black hair is slicked back behind his ears, but it isn't as long as Thor's, stopping a little above the neck.

Both of them look so old, but still so young.

Neither of them give off the indication that they are anything more than a normal, American family. Her parents don't either, and something within her is quietly restless about that. There is something they aren't telling her.

"Hela," Heimdall greets with a slight dip of his head when they're close enough, and her siblings draw their attention towards her. The combined focus unsettles her more than she cares to admit, and she lifts her gaze up towards Heimdall, drastically unnerved by the name. No one has called her much of anything other than "you" and nasty nicknames over the last decade, so the sound of her own name is foreign.

"Heimdall," she answers cryptically.

"My sons," Frigga says with a smile, and reaches her hand back to grasp Hela by the shoulder. Her spine locks at the physical contact, and she spies Loki shift from the corner of her eye. "We have at last been reunited as a family, God has blessed us."

Thor audibly snorts, muttering something like "'blessed' is a little too strong word" under his breath, and a cold feeling pierces her stomach.

This is all pretend. They all hate her like everyone else does. She doesn't want to do this. It's too hard; prison was awful, but it wasn't this. She heard mutters between the other convicts that received another sentence that prison was the easy part, and readjustment the actual punishment. At the time she'd thought it foolish, or terribly dramatic, but now she agrees completely.

No one liked her in prison, no one likes anyone in prison, but it is so much harder to be discarded by those that she's supposed to trust. Those that she knows.

"Thor," Frigga chides, giving Hela's shoulder a squeeze that causes the tightness of her shoulders to rise. There's no need for reassurances, for platitudes, she's well beyond that now. It was foolish of her to expect that Thor and Loki would...she doesn't know what she was hoping for, but it was stupid of her to want it.

Thor looks up at their mother, blowing out a breath, "It's freezing. Can we go?"

He brings up a point, though she's a little too numb to feel the chill properly. Their mother's lips purse, but after a quick look with her father that seems to trade an entire conversation telepathically, she sighs and nods. "Yes, I think that probably best. We can talk when we arrive home."

That's a bit of a distance from here.

Hela's not sure she wants to wait that long.

The details of the war have been so thin since she was imprisoned, and she needs to know how her country is fairing. It is what she was sent here to do ten years ago, and she'd rather see that it wasn't all for not.

Loki shakes his head slightly, as if in disagreement with something that has been said, before he pulls away from the car first and grabs the door to the back seats, pulls it open, and disappears inside. Thor quickly follows the younger, and Odin moves to stand beside Heimdall to trade a few quick words.

Her stepmother gives her shoulder a quick squeeze—can she stop doing that!?—and smiles reassuringly, "I'm sorry, it's been a long day. They really are glad to see you, I promise."

For an utterly bizarre reason, she really has her doubts about that.

000o000

The drive is taken in almost complete silence; and the general aura of the space is confined and uncomfortable. Thor keeps his head down, flicking through various items on his phone, and Loki stuffs in earbuds and silently looks out the window with an expression so blank it unsettles her. Frigga's attempts at a conversation Hela doesn't respond to, burying her head in her hands and ignoring everything.

She probably should have cleaned up better from the fight, but she hadn't expected her siblings to be here. Maybe she would have put a bit more effort into it if she'd known. She hasn't showered in four days, her clothing is smeared from her bloodied nose leaking everywhere, and the bruise she can feel forming likely gives off the impression that she has spent the last ten years in a gang.

She hasn't.

She kept to herself there, and looks like that pattern is going to continue everywhere else. She is a disaster, and no one wants to handle that. She understands—no, she doesn't!—but it doesn't make the sensation of knowing she isn't wanted anywhere sting any less.

They hobble out of the car after more than two hours, and Hela's entire body feels stiff and numb beneath her knees. The place they've exited to is not an airport, and a feeling of deep discomfort washes through her at this fact.

It's pavement.

A driveway.

She lifts her gaze up from the ground towards the house. It's two stories with a long front porch that gives off the impression it's meant to be a mock replica of a Victorian styled home. It's a pale yellow with a washed out brown roof and has clearly been standing for at least thirty years.

And she has no idea why they're here.

Hela flicks her gaze up towards her stepmother anxiously, "Why are we here?" she questions, trying, and failing, to keep discomfort from her voice.

Frigga stills, and looks up at Odin as he exits the car. There's a moment where her stepmother studies her father before her eyes narrow. "You were supposed to tell her." Frigga says. Her tone isn't quite angered, but it's getting there.

"Tell me what?" Hela demands, looking between both of them.

Odin's lips thin, and he looks disappointed. Bloody—does he expect her to have read his mind!?

"It slipped my mind—" her father admits, and Hela makes a disbelieving noise. Her father does not forget easily "—but it is something better discussed behind closed doors, come," he waves at them to follow, and Hela does so stiffly.

She is still cold.

Odin inserts the key into the house and twists it, pushing open the door to the home and steps inside without any restraint. He leans against his walking cane again, but Hela can clearly see nothing is wrong with his leg. It's for show.

After a hesitation, Hela follows after her father into the house.

The smell is what grabs her attention first. A faint whisper of cut wood, old clothing, buttered bread, and, oddly enough, rotting milk. The last one makes her want to gag, but she's smelled worse in prison, and this is not nearly as awful as that. Still, though, she feels her face scrunch up in disgust.

The door immediately opens into a small living area with a couch stuffed against the far wall. The fabric has seen better days and the room, save a coffee table, is almost bare. There's a clear attempt at some decoration with a few homemade paper chains and a photograph of some forest hanging above the ratty couch. The room is hideous.

Her father doesn't stop here, though, leading them past a set of stairs into a humble kitchen. The table sits past the counter, looking dangerously like it's going to tip over. A few chairs are pushed around it, and Hela immediately despises the floral wallpaper. It's far too cheerful.

Odin comes to a halt in the space, turning around and setting his walking cane on the ground with a dull click.

Behind her, Hela hears the sounds of the rest of her family stopping. She doesn't turn around. Doesn't want to meet their eyes again because she isn't brave enough to face their disappointment.

Pathetic.

"Why don't we sit down?" Frigga suggests, "It's been a long day."

"Most of which was spent stuffed in a car, I'll pass." Thor says idly behind her. Hela resists the urge to clench her fists in discomfort, but only just.

"Alright," Frigga's tone is still so placid. Has it always been like that, and she doesn't remember it? Frigga steps forward until she's beside Odin and visibly gathers herself, then she turns to Hela. "We're not going back to Asgard. Not now."

Hela struggles to keep her jaw from freely falling. "What? Why?"

Odin gives a deep sigh. "We can't."

"Why?"

"We shouldn't, because it's…" Frigga hesitates. "We are losing the war, Hela. We were forced to seek asylum in the United States when Laufey claimed the capital six months ago. I'm sorry, but we really won't be leaving for a while. Not until that's settled."

Hela's teeth grind.

Six months. Six. And no one bothered to mention this to her before then!? Hela's eyes narrow with frustration and she clenches her fists deeply, "You've been in the US for half a year and didn't think it important to mention to me?" she doesn't bother with keeping her voice calm.

Let the rage come out and pour all over them. Maybe then they'll finally take her seriously.

Ten years of her life were given to prevent this from happening, and now they smear her failure across the space as if it will provide salvation. Her fingernails break the first layer of skin; she doesn't care.

"We couldn't." Frigga counters, reaching a hand out as if to touch her shoulder, but Hela flinches back from it.

She doesn't want this woman's comfort.

She wanted to know that the last decade of her life wasn't wasted!

Look at what good that did.

"When we sought protection, the U.S. instructed us not to reach out to you. We're supposed to have vanished, and it would have seemed odd and pointed if you suddenly got visitors after more than nine years without any." Frigga explains, her voice earnest.

Hela laughs out loud. "I wasted an entire decade of my life so we could lose the war anyway!?"

"...You didn't waste it—" Frigga starts, but Hela slams her fist on the wobbly table. From the corner of her eye, she sees Heimdall shift closer to her younger brothers, both of which look like spooked cats.

Calm down.

"We haven't lost the war, daughter." Odin says harshly.

Hela lifts an eyebrow. Right. Because people flee the country when they're about to claim victory, silly her for having forgotten that. She sucks in a breath through her teeth, trying her best not to pick something up off the table and hurl it like she would very much like to.

Her hand is stinging at the force of the blow.

"If you've been here for six months, who is ruling Asgard? Laufey?" Hela guesses, "So noble of you to have abandoned our people when they needed you most."

But really, that's all Odin's good at, isn't it? Abandoning people when they need him.

Thor takes a step forward, and Hela flicks her gaze up to him to see his face contorted with rage. "We did not abandon Asgard!"

Hela's head tilts, a bitter smile pulling at the edges of her lips, "Darling, I think that you—"

"Aunt Freya and Uncle Buri agreed to rule before we left. The citizens are those that forced us out." Frigga explains, rubbing at her forehead softly. "Given a choice, I'm certain that all of us would gladly return to help fend off Laufey, but we can't. Not now. Laufey is seeking our heads, and it would be unwise to put our necks in a place he can cut at."

Hela nearly rolls her eyes, "Of course. Because danger has stopped you before. Why don't you just send Loki in as a negotiator to plead for Asgard? I'm sure his birth father would be more than happy to listen to the child he left for dead."

She meant it as a joke, but silence thick and heavy settles over the room. Loki's face has gone white and his hands fisted. There's more she wants to ask, but she doesn't dare. The flare up of tempers would be inevitable, and she's already gotten hit in the face—among other places—today. She shifts her weight uncomfortably.

The silence seems to tinge on dreadful.

Frigga clasps her hands together, spreading her lips into a falsified smile as she changes the subject completely: "How about some dinner? I just need to warm up some food and then we can eat as a family." Her simper grows more genuine, "It's wonderful to be together."

Is it?

Hela can't tell.

Loki snorts audibly and Hela's gaze flicks up to him before he shakes his head. "In that case, I suppose I'll need to be excused. So sorry to tread on these family affairs of which I'm not wanted. I am, after all, expendable."

Hela's eyebrows raise. "That wasn't what I meant."

Loki scoffs, "Certainly."

What the—?

Frigga's smile drops. "Loki—"

Loki turns on his heel and storms towards the stairs, tromping up them a moment later. There's the sound of a door slamming and Thor lets out a soft groan, his shoulders dropping. Odin sighs heavily, turning to his wife. "I can't stand another minute of that boys incessant moods. Do something about your son, would you?"

"You claimed him just as much as I." Frigga's voice is ice. "You would do well to remember that it wasn't my decision to keep the adoption a secret from him."

"And I would have kept going had he not gone digging through the archives!" Odin retaliates.

"How would that have helped him? You know that it wasn't our secret to keep!" Frigga snaps, temper raising, "I never wanted anything like this to happen, but because of your—"

"I am not at fault here!"

"Yes, you are!"

Hela straightens, looking between her parents. "You...didn't tell him?" she questions, and they both look up at her, as if surprised to see her there. Hela's teeth set. "We've been at war with his birth father since I was born and you didn't bother to mention that to him?"

She thought he had. Maybe not before she left for America, but after, certainly. Loki is a handful of years from adulthood now, he should have known this long before.

Odin breathes in deeply. "He discovered it by accident. I had meant to wait until the war was over."

The war of thirty years that they all knew they were losing when Hela was sent on the mercy mission a decade ago? That war? Odin never intended to tell Loki and was using this as an excuse. She shouldn't be surprised, but she is.

Hela blinks. "You are an idiot."

Odin draws back, "Beg pardon?"

Hela shakes her head, "I thought you'd told him already. When did he come across this?"

"Two weeks before we left," Thor inputs, and a quick glance towards his face shows that he seems to be a mix between horrified and surprised at her blatant words. Hela isn't one to shy away from the truth, no matter how ugly it is. There are only a handful of people who don't fear Odin enough to call him out on his crap, and Hela is among them.

Two weeks. Loki has only known for six months?

Hela tips her head. "Oh, Father," she sighs.

"You would sit here and slander me over my sins?" Odin demands sharply. "You? I withheld information, I did not slaughter twenty-seven on an impulse when all I was supposed to be doing was receiving military aid. We wouldn't be in this situation if you had just accomplished what you were sent here to do in the first place!"

Hela draws back sharply.

"That is enough, husband," Frigga cuts in sharply.

Hela looks between her parents, and then Thor, seeing no shade of disagreement on them. They really think she did it. That's why they left her there. They really think that she went after all those people because she was bored and not because it was in self defense. And half of it not even her.

She didn't murder anyone.

She's innocent!

Hela's lips split into a bitter smile, "So glad to be back. I've missed the lot of you." She says, drawing up as much sarcasm and insincerity into the statement as she can muster. With it stated, she slips around the table towards the back door she spotted when she entered the room and wrenches it open.

She slams it shut behind her and heatedly moves down the steps, resisting the urge to grab one of the small pots dotting the edges and hurl it into the surrounding grass. The space is mostly the plant with a garden towards the far left and more than a dozen leaf-less trees looming overhead. It looks nothing like the rocky cliff sides of Asgard, and she's hit with a wave of homesickness powerful enough to make her sick.

She's not a child anymore.

She hasn't been in more than twenty years.

But oh, she wants to go home.

000o000

The sun is well past set when the door opens behind her. Hela has shifted to sitting on the porch, varying between moodily glaring into the trees or tracing shapes on the cement padding at the bottom of the steps with a bark chip she found two hours ago. She was never much of an artist before she left Asgard, and that hasn't changed since her prison sentence.

Hela withholds a scowl, but doesn't look back.

It's probably her stepmother, ever trying to be the mediator.

How she thinks that slandering Hela for being frustrated about her father is going to help, she doesn't know. It's all that she's ever discussed with Hela when she dares to admit her frustrations. She has learned from this that it's better not to talk about feelings. For all her claims, Frigga is an awful listener. She just wants to defend.

"I thought you might be hungry." Hela startles at the voice, twisting around fast enough that her hair smacks against her face. She blows it away and looks up at Heimdall, standing behind her with a plate of some sort. His face is placid, but he holds an aura of calm that never ceases.

His blind eyes are resting forward.

Her stomach gives a twist in reminder that, yes, she is hungry and hasn't eaten since the disastrous breakfast. Blowing out a breath, Hela submits, "I am."

Heimdall shuffles forward, "Good." He takes a seat next to her with caution, clearly making sure he's not about to go tumbling over the edge. He then hands the plate to her, and Hela takes it with two hands. It isn't anything fancy, and she wasn't expecting more. Some salad with chopped things in it—she can't pick them out in the dark—a sandwich she's about sixty percent sure is peanut butter and honey, and a weird substance that looks faintly like jello.

It's not prison food. It might as well be a seven course meal for all she cares.

Hela smiles faintly at the sandwich. She was obsessed with honey when she was an adolescent. Heimdall bothered enough to remember that, though she got quieter on her love for it, she is still fond of the food.

She picks up the plastic fork with her left hand, balancing the paper plate on her knees. If she grips anything with her swollen fingers, she doesn't think it will end well. She stuffs in mouthful of salad and once she's swallowed, asks, "And who sent you out to feed the monster?"

Heimdall's head lifts towards her. "No one."

Hela scoffs, "Don't play this game with me. I'm not a child anymore, Heimdall."

"I know," the blind man assures, "and I am not playing anything. I came because I wanted to, not at the request of your mother."

Hela stabs at the salad aggressively, and then admits, "I thought she would be out here first."

Heimdall sighs. "I expect she wanted to be, but couldn't. Thor quickly left the house after you did, and your parents furthered their argument before I interfered and Frigga went to talk with Loki. Afterwards, she and Odin started talking, and haven't stopped. Given another thirty minutes, I imagine she would have found you."

Salt—that was a lot of salt. Hela makes a face and spits something back onto the plate. Oh. A nut, a salted nut to be precise, but still just a nut. Hela bites at her inner lip for a second.

"I don't want to talk to her," Hela mutters truthfully. She doesn't know why she keeps saying any of this. No, she does. Heimdall is a man who keeps secrets, and is not afraid to actually listen. Not just listen long enough to reply, but listen-listen. She remembers being frightened of him when she was younger, but in her twenties, before all of this happened, she learned to appreciate his quiet presence.

"And there is no shame in that." Heimdall promises. "It has been a long day for everyone."

"It's not going to get better tomorrow," Hela grumbles, picking at the sandwich and is privately pleased when it is indeed peanut butter and honey. She's not brave enough to poke at the jello-thing yet.

"You don't know that," Heimdall counters.

Hela scoffs. "I do. My family fell apart while I was gone, you know that? I don't recognize any of them. They don't want me here, either, I'm an inconvenience that was slapped onto them." She worries her lip between her teeth before admitting, in a low whisper, "They think I'm a murderer."

"I do not," Heimdall counters, and she looks up at him with some surprise. He doesn't back down from the claim. "I have no reason to."

"You heard what happened," Hela says, "that's enough reason."

Heimdall gives his head a slight shake. "No, it isn't. Have more faith, Your Highness. This is not the end. It is a beginning."

And a miserable one at that.

000o000

She spends the night on the porch, slumped against Heimdall's shoulder. After he left inside to get a thick blanket when her intentions of not returning inside the house became clear, they shifted so they're leaning against a wall and Hela's head had dropped onto his shoulder unintentionally. The night is cold, but not enough to prevent her exhausted body from slipping off.

She awakens embarrassed, but Heimdall says nothing of it, only helping her to her feet and shepherding her inside. It's barely past six thirty now, but the house is alive with movement anyway. Frigga is rapidly going back and forth across the small kitchen, attempting to make something with egg, judging by the smell. Thor is stuffing books into a backpack and gathering various miscellaneous into the pack.

Heimdall mentioned that he left last night, but sometime before she fell asleep, she can recall the sound of the front door opening and assumes this was his return.

Odin is seated at the table, looking over a newspaper as he idly picks at a bowl of cereal.

It takes a second before she spots Loki, coming down from the stairs with a laptop in his hands. His hair is more ruffled than it was yesterday and he's wearing what are clearly American pajamas. Hela has to keep herself from openly gaping at the sight in surprise. They fled the country half a year ago, she doesn't know why she thought he'd be in anything different.

Her family has had to adjust to this way of life, and she hasn't been here to do it with them.

Loki thrusts out at Thor. "Is there a day that you won't forget this?"

Thor grabs the device and offers a sheepish smile, "I don't think so."

Her youngest brother sighs, "You're hopeless."

"Overbearingly." Thor agrees and manages to shove the laptop into the backpack with considerable strain. "Thank you again, brother."

Loki waves a hand flippantly, "Stop forgetting it." He insists before moving forward towards the counter. Hela watches the exchange with something pinging in her chest that she doesn't understand. No—she doesn't want to admit such an emotion.

Longing.

How many nights had she spent restless in her cell as she waited to return to this family? This family that is not even hers anymore. She was foolish to expect that things would pick up the way they left off a decade ago. She is a stranger in this house, and this is becoming more and more obvious the longer she lingers here.

Thor releases a curse in their native tongue before moving forward to press a kiss against their mother's cheek, "I need to be off if I plan to make it in time."

Frigga smiles at him gently, "Be safe."

"I will! Goodbye Father, Loki," Thor's gaze flicks up and then lingers on her. His jaw tenses, but he still adds anyway, "Heimdall...Sister."

The title is unfamiliar to her—even in their youth, Loki and Thor hardly addressed her as anything other than Hela—but she gives a curt nod anyway before Thor swings the pack over his shoulder and exits the house through the garage door.

Frigga looks up, "Oh, Hela! I hadn't realized you'd come in yet. How long have you been standing there?"

Are they seriously going to pretend that nothing said last night happened? Completely disregard it in favor of—what? Acting like everything is okay? That's not how this works. That's not how this should work.

Hela holds her gaze to the granite countertop. "Not long."

An uneasy tension is still prominent. Maybe it's just from her. Frigga scoops some scrambled eggs onto a plate, and then looks up at her.

"Hungry?"

"No."

Frigga's gentle face falls some, but she nods anyway with a plastered smile. "That's alright. If you get hungry just grab whatever's available. Except the peanut butter, because Thor hoards it. Sometimes I fear he'll start a war for it."

She laughs softly. No one follows. Frigga sets the plate down on the table as Odin rises from it wordlessly. He scoops the documents into one hand and gives her a pointed glance before walking off, likely to find somewhere more private or quieter.

Well it's not her fault that Frigga wants to talk, is it?

Hela shares an uneasy glance with Heimdall before shifting forward some so she can lean against the countertop. "What's peanut butter?"

Loki, diligently staring into the cupboards as if they'll reveal the world's greatest secrets to him stops, and then looks at her. His green eyes are blazing with an intelligence she remembers well from their childhood. Before it was there, but it was tamed with a gentle curiosity. Now it appears to be nothing more than sharp edges and the ability to soak in a person's character with a single glance.

And, judging by his face, her lack of understanding on the simple American (not American?) food has made her fail the test.

She's not worthy.

Her teeth grit.

"You don't know?" Loki's voice is quiet. "Weren't you here for weeks before the incident? It's a basic household item."

The incident?

Is that what they call it here?

Banishment would be better. Caging. She might as well have been Odin's private executioner.

His tone is so chiding. She's been in the U.S. for a decade, yes, but it's not as though she was able to learn the customs or common household items. What does he think this has been? A vacation? "I was requesting military aid from a foreign country, brother; I didn't exactly have time to try quantities of their foodstuffs." She tries to keep her voice patient. She fails.

Loki's pale hands tighten around the cupboard door before his eyes settle on her face again. "Of course not. My apologies."

Before she has time to muster up a response, he's gone. With quiet, but hurried steps he slips from the kitchen. Any faster and she'd label it as running. She did something wrong, and it's her fault that he ran off. She doesn't understand why. She doesn't understand much of this.

"Hela, there's something else that...we didn't really get the opportunity to speak about the terms of the asylum last night." Frigga breaks the silence softly, and Hela tilts her head.

Great.

"And that would be?" she questions.

Frigga presses her lips together, "Well, given the concern for our safety, the government provides us with very loose shadows occasionally. We were allowed to take what security detail we trusted, but in order to remain discreet that was only Heimdall. Additionally, we've been given false names. You'll have to call us them outside of the house. Our last name is "Aesir", and I am Felicia, your father Oscar, Thor is Theo, Loki is Luke, and you are Helena."

Hela can't help the slight raise of her eyebrow. Helena? That's a lovely name. "You planned me into your asylum? I assumed that you would've left me to fend for myself."

Frigga flinches.

Heimdall shifts behind her.

Something close to guilt squirms in her stomach. Fine. All her thoughts are nasty out loud anyway, she should just keep them private. Why can't she control her tongue? Barbs used to be easier to refrain from spitting out loud, but she guesses that was before all of this happened. Where a verbal defense was just as important as a physical one.

"I'm sorry," Hela says, but the words taste bland. Insincere. Offered because they will placate, not because they hold any real meaning.

Frigga releases a quiet sigh, and her fork plays through her eggs. The exhaustion is so very there. When was the last time any of them slept? Asgard, ten years ago? Twenty? More? When Hela was eleven and war was still spoken of quietly and ignored in favor of happier times? No, not then, because Hela's birth mother was murdered in the streets of Serenity, their capital, when she was eleven.

A slaughter worthy of history books. There was so much blood, enough to drown a building in. People often forget that Hela was there, and she saw everything. Odin wasn't. He only saw the aftermath, but Hela...Hela watched Laufey's blade swing and her mother give out that ragged gasp and her own voice crying out "mama!" before it all went south.

Her fists clench, and her jaw sets.

Odin married Frigga a year later. Political advancement for the oncoming war, she's been taught. They needed allies. Jotunheim was drawing what they had thin, and Vanaheim was better than nothing, wasn't it?

Frigga looks up at her through blonde bangs and smiles faintly, "Won't you sit down, please?" she gestures towards the empty chairs across from her. Hela remains where she is, and Frigga's face grows tight. She turns to Heimdall, "Loki needs a chaperone today. Can you walk with him to school? I'll arrive to pick you up so long as you're alright with running a few errands."

Heimdall bows his head. "It would be my pleasure, Your Majesty."

"Please," Frigga's voice is soft, "just Frigga. How many times must we go over this?"

Heimdall's blank face gives no indication of mirth, but Hela can sense some when he says: "As long as it takes you to realize that the respect I bare for you holds more meaning to me than a first-name basis, my Queen."

Hela's head tips, but before she can say anything, Heimdall is already walking off towards the stairs. Where Loki retreated to. Where Odin is hiding; because of her. She thought they'd be happy to see her. Evidently not.

"What do you mean 'walk to school'?" Hela questions conversationally, shifting so she's facing Frigga better. Her stepmother blows out a breath and shoves some of the rapidly cooling eggs into her mouth. It's clearly a ploy so she can think about an answer, but Hela doesn't call her out on it.

Doesn't have the energy to.

"Just because we're in the U.S. doesn't mean that I'm going to deprive my children of an education." Frigga says levelly, "Loki is attending a nearby High School. Thor was accepted into one of the universities, that's where he headed off to. I don't suspect...I hope we won't be here long enough for him to finish getting his degree in electricity." Her head shakes, "He's working with a company called Stark Industries on clean energy, did you hear about that in your stay here?"

Hela wracks her memory. "Somewhat. Multi-billion, isn't it? I thought they traded weapons."

"They did." Frigga agrees, "But an accident occurred five years ago that killed the CEO and his wife. Their son inherited the company and disbanded the weapons business. Now they're the biggest name in clean energy, phones, computers, cars—anything really." Her stepmother's proud smile fades some. "Thor is on good terms with the current CEO; they're friends, I think."

That sounds good, but Frigga says it with an air of sadness. Maybe disappointment. "Why does this upset you?" Hela questions.

Frigga swirls the eggs around the plate, and then stops, exhaling deeply. "Because this asylum was only supposed to be two weeks, Hela. Three if they pushed it. We've almost been here nearly seven months. How are we ever going to get back to Asgard if Laufey isn't taken care of?" Her hand clenches around the fork, she breathes in deeply. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to dump all my troubles on you, come dear, sit. Tell me how life has treated you this last while. I haven't seen your letters."

She beat someone up and got beat up yesterday.

The week before that she stopped someone from taking out another's eye with a plastic knife.

The week before that she successfully helped a young man receive more time to talk with his distraught mother by kicking a guard in the gut. Most of her stories would be nothing short of terrifying to the gentle queen, and hopelessly dull otherwise.

Her teeth set, but she slowly takes the seat across from her stepmother. "It was prison. What more can be said?"

"Did you meet anyone?" Frigga's pushing now, trying to get Hela to discuss feelings. What does she think this is, therapy? This woman may be her stepmother, but she hasn't had a right to the private thoughts inside of Hela's head since she and Odin left Hela here.

"Plenty of people. Anyone I liked is a bit of a stretch." Hela blows out a breath. "Your eggs have gone cold."

Frigga looks down at the plate. She looks surprised, as if she'd forgotten about them entirely. "Oh. Oh yes. I wasn't hungry much anyway, just going through the motions."

Aren't they all?

Frigga doesn't say anything else, and Hela doesn't ask. The cold eggs end up scooped into the trash, and it seems to bare a significance Hela can't place at the moment.

000o000

Odin leaves on "urgent business" after Loki, Frigga, and Heimdall have already departed from the house. It leaves it cold and strangely empty, so Hela doesn't spend any longer than required inside of the space. She still hasn't been upstairs yet, still has no idea where she's supposed to be sleeping that isn't the porch, and doesn't even know if it has a basement. The only rooms she's seen are the kitchen, living room, and a brief glimpse towards a mud room, complete with a washer and dryer.

The house feels so empty.

Outside is hot, but it's better. There's noise. Cars in the distance, children screaming as they play, lawnmowers (what is it with people's perpetual desire to care for their lawns at all hours of the day?), and basic white noise. It's disorienting after hearing nothing but the prison for so long, but not unwelcome.

She doesn't even like flowers, or gardening, but she needs something to do with her hands before she self combusts and this seemed good as any. There's flower beds on the side of the porch, and flowers almost anywhere else. They're stuffed into pots and on the corner of the house, leading out towards the backyard.

Her stepmother's doing, she suspects. She'd always loved gardens. Hela knows she had one in Asgard, but any memories of it are faint and blurry, lost to time. It makes her angry. There's so much that she's missing because of the stint in prison. Watching her siblings grow up—having a relationship with them period—how the war was faring, memories of her country—she's lost it.

Ten years of her life wasted for those deaths.

Thanks a million, Papa. Glad to know I can trust you.

Hela tears out the weeds with a force that surprises her. She's not into gardening, so she can't tell if half of what she's pulling are weeds or unbosomed flowers, but she rips anyway. She's so intently into her project that it takes her nearly a minute to realize that someone is clearing their throat loudly behind her to grab at her attention.

Sweaty, hot, and having very little desire to engage in conversation, Hela turns slowly. Behind her is a tall woman with to-wide lips for her thin face. She's past the prime of her life with graying hair and the clothing style she's adorned in. In her hands is a pair of rose clippers.

"You from 'round these parts?" the woman questions, voice careful.

What does she think Hela is? Some sort of murderer planting her killing devices in the shrubbery? That's ridicu—oh. Hela glances down at herself. She's still in the shabby clothing the prison gave her, now muddy from the wet ground, her hair is a mess from sleep and her face is flushed from cold. She probably looks like a murderer preparing their prey for an untimely death.

She lifts her chin up. "Who are you?"

"Mrs. Debar," the woman says, smile unchanging. She's wearing far too much makeup. That can't be healthy. It gives her face a lopsided look. "I live over the'r in that nice littl' home." She points at the house across the street. "Nice" isn't the word that Hela would use. It's clearly in need of repainting, and the lawn looks squishy from all the rain. The plants are drooping, and several are climbing up the house as if they intend to drag it down into a great abyss once they reach the top.

"Can I help you?" Hela questions briskly.

"Well, I haven' seen you 'round here before, and I just want to make sure that you ain't doing no harm to that sweet Aesir family. You mind me asking what you're doing here?" Mrs. Debar questions, shifting her grip on her rose cutters. Good grief, does she actually intend to beat Hela with them if she's not meant to be here? This woman must be in her late sixties.

"Oh, well, I'm planning world domination and decided to start here. Do you mind if your "sweet littl' home" gets an abrupt remodeling when I ignite the ton of explosives I've planted in the basement of this home?" Hela questions, her voice flat.

Mrs. Debar's eyes narrow and her lips smack together. It's obvious that she can't tell if Hela's telling the truth or not.

Hela nearly rolls her eyes. "It's come to my attention that you don't know who I am. I'm Helena," the word rolls off her tongue with some fumbling, "Od-Oscar's firstborn." Other titles threaten to slip from her lips, but she manages to stop herself. Here, in the U.S., as it has been for a decade, she is not High Commander of anything, not the Crown Princess, not the heir to the throne. She is just Hela.

"I thought that Theo was the oldest." Mrs. Debar seems skeptical.

Yes, well, when you hide the existence of your shameful daughter, people will, won't they? "No. I am." Hela corrects. "Tho-eo is my younger brother."

"Aren't you a little old to be staying with your parents?" Mrs. Debar frowns. "You have to be in your late twenties at least."

Her teeth set. "I'm going through a rough patch and they offered to provide me shelter. I'm out of work."

"No husband? At this age?" Mrs. Debar's hold on her rose cutters has loosened. She's not as wary. Something in Hela gives a hollow snapping noise as the question. She'd wanted marriage, but Odin had insisted that it wait until after the war cooled down. She didn't have a particular man in mind, anyway, but she'd wanted it. To start a family, to have a partner that would be hers—and she couldn't. Because she got stuck here, and who would want to marry the insane, murderous, Lady Death? She's been in prison now. No one will want her.

Thank you Laufey. Wish your attempt on my life had been successful.

"My life story is not one for you." Hela snaps. "I'm not an invader intending to murder my family. If it bothers you so, come back later and inquire of my mother. I'm sure she'll be happy to confirm my existence. For now, leave me alone."

Mrs. Debar's eyes narrow further and she gives an indignant huff. "Well, fine. I was just trying to be nice."

"Gossip gathering, I think." Hela corrects, and makes a shooing motion with her hands. "You're on private property. Go away."

Mrs. Debar shakes her head. "This generation. A lost cause to us." She storms off as Hela glares daggers into her back. She doesn't stop until Mrs. Debar is off of the driveway and making her way across the road. She doesn't even have any roses in her yard, Hela realizes. At least the front yard.

That went well.

She's just a social butterfly, isn't she?

Hela glances back at the verdure, but the thought of touching it again makes her want to tear out her hair. She grits her teeth before storming back inside and slamming the front door with a force she wouldn't have dared back in the palace. It clicks shut with a rattle, but only brings a margin of satisfaction.

No one knows who she is. She is a stranger to this home, to this place, to these people.

Hela storms back into the kitchen and shoves her hands beneath the sink, scrubbing at her fingers to get the dirt to come off. Her hands are thin. They don't hold the strength hours with a weapon granted her. She hasn't lost her skills completely, but a decade without proper practice is more than enough time to lose a majority. She only had access to the plastic utensils and the occasional long stick or rod.

She stares down at her fingers, feeling a strange hopelessness wash over her.

What is she doing here?

She's not a part of this family, she's not a part of anything. She is alone, and that's not going to change. Hot tears slip down her cheeks, and Hela bites down at her tongue as a sob builds in her throat.

Pathetic.

"I don't understand," Hela whispers, looking down at her shaking hands. "I don't understand." If she'd known that being released from prison would be worse than being stuck there, she doesn't know that she'd have counted down the days. (She wouldn't have. Those years were a mercy. This is the punishment). What is she doing here? What, what, what—?

Her only purpose in life has been to stop this war between Asgard and Jotunheim. Ever since her mother's murder in the streets and Odin retaliated by handing her a sword when he arrived and shoving her towards the training grounds. It hadn't mattered. Thirteen years of slaving away to Odin's every whim, of taking action where they needed it and leading more battles and sieges than she can even count, and it doesn't matter.

She won back territories, gained them allies, but when Jotunheim had finally managed to get their hands on modern warfare, she'd been sent to the U.S. to plead for help, because she is an expendable tool and Odin hadn't fought to bring her home.

She doesn't know why she thought he would.

Without Odin's pressures, without his encouragement, she has no purpose in this life. She doesn't even know herself. She doesn't have any hobbies or interests, never had the time to build any in Asgard. If Laufey would just keel over then they could return home and things could go back to normal. She would take up the throne and wouldn't have to endure this hopelessness.

Her hands tremble.

She is sobbing now.

"Stupid," Hela whispers, "your ambition is going to be the death of you."

If Laufey would just—

Just—

Just...what if...what if…

What if she handled the problem?

Hela stops, her spine straightening as breath stills in her chest. Oh. Oh. Laufey is the center of all of this, isn't he? If she just kills him, this all stops. Her family can go back to Asgard. Laufey has to die...and she can do that. She's not an assassin, but it can't be that hard, can it? She can kill him. She'll return to Asgard and win this war, as she's been raised to.

All she has to do is get out of the U.S., and for that she needs money.

Where on earth is she going to get a job?

Hela turns off the sink, flicking her fingers to dry them. Her vision is still blurred from tears, but they don't matter.

Laufey's dies, and it fixes everything.

(Please let it fix everything.)

000o000

She's managed to explore some more of the house and is working on wiping down the kitchen—she needs something to do with her hands before she drives herself crazy—when the front door slams shut a little past fifteen-ten. Someone releases a quiet cuss and kicks something before storming upstairs and Hela catches a brief glimpse of Loki's thin frame before it vanishes and a door upstairs closes.

Her head cocks.

She should...he's upset. She should...do something about that, shouldn't she? (She wants to, she just doesn't know what. She has the emotional range of a sorry brick, she's been assured). Hela bites at her lower lip and sighs before setting the rag down and swiping some of the stray pieces of hair away from her face. She pulled it up about three hours ago, but it keeps falling apart.

She really needs to find a different pair of clothes.

Hela rocks on her feet before silently slipping up the steps and staring at the hallway. Most of the doors are closed, but Hela peaked inside earlier and has a fifty-fifty chance between Thor's room or Loki's.

She gently raps her hand against one of the doors and prays she didn't guess wrong. She doesn't even know what she's doing. Or why. This isn't the little toddler that got excited about everything and never stopped asking questions. Loki grew up. Loki grew up and she wasn't there to see it.

There's a momentary pause before something shifts inside the room and she blows out a deep breath of relief. The door opens, and Loki stands next to it, half hidden behind the wood. Her stomach twists anxiously. Loki is taller than her, she hadn't realized that until now, but he is. By a good few inches. He looks worse up close than he did by the car yesterday, haggard, thin and tired.

Well, she guessed right. That's something. This room was the cleaner between the two, stuffed with books and barely livened beyond a few origami creations hanging from the ceiling. Thor's is messier, and more lived in.

Loki's green eyes immediately narrow. "What do you want?"

Hela swallows.

Good question. She has no idea. Hasn't for a long, long time. Get it together, you're the High Commander of Asgard and you can't talk to a sixteen year old? Is he seventeen? She can't remember, and that's awful. "What happened to earn your ire so?" she questions, "I heard you slam the door."

There. Pointed. That was probably not the best way to go about that if Loki's slight withdrawal in posture is anything to go by.

"Did you ever attend a public High School?" Loki's voice is flat.

"No." Hela admits with some reluctance, "I was taught by private tutors."

"Mm." Loki voices. "Then don't bother with trying to be nice or understand it. Despite what Mum and Odin would like us to believe, the last ten years of our lives have been spent apart. A magical sibling relationship isn't going to fall into place because you will it there hard enough. I don't want to talk to you."

Hela draws back, a sting washing through her. "What did I ever do to you? I'm trying to help."

Loki snorts. "Everyone is, aren't they? I'm not your brother, Hela. I never was."

"That's ridiculous." Hela counters, "Just because you're adopted doesn't mean that you aren't my sibling. I was there when Odin found you. I've known you since then."

Loki's lips split into a mirthless smile, "I am the son of the monster parents tell their children about at night. Stop trying to pretend otherwise."

"I don't care." Hela throws up her hands, "Fine. You know what, wallow. I'm sure that it's solved all your problems since you got stuck here, hasn't it?" she turns around to storm off, but stops, looking back at him. "Blood doesn't make a family you moron. When you have the time, contemplate that."

She's down the stairs before he can muster up a response, and out of the house before she hears his door close. On situations handled well, that one doesn't really go high on her list.

Hela draws in a ragged breath to stop herself from screaming.

000o000

"—and I wasn't sure what size you'd be, so I mostly guessed off of what it was in Asgard. Hopefully it fits." Frigga lifts up a shirt towards Hela as if measuring it against her. Hela bites at her inner cheek and pointedly steps away from her stepmother to look through the other articles of clothing. Pants, shirts, a handful of skirts, a jacket, scarf and undergarments.

Everything is so colorful. Is her stepmother trying to make a point or did she really forget that Hela wears only black, sometimes deep green, and occasionally dark gray? Does it matter? A majority of this closet she's going to avoid wearing for the sake of her sanity. Who wears pink?

She turns back to glance over the rest of the room. Frigga returned a little over an hour ago to find her fuming on the front steps and, after an initial prodding that Hela didn't answer to, dragged her upstairs to show Hela her room. It's small, without much furniture or carpet, but it has a bed nestled in the center so she won't complain. There's a deep blue rug beneath the bed and spreading across most of the room, but it doesn't hide the hardwood very well around the edges.

Hela backs away from the chest of drawers, keeping her lips thinned.

Frigga, from her position on the bed, tilts her head some; resting the shirt on her lap. "You seem agitated. Is everything okay?"

No. Not really. But who cares to listen anyway? She's only trying to figure out how to purchase plane tickets in America and estimate how much the cost will have risen in a decade, and determine where she can get a job. Funds on Asgard were never much of a problem for her, but she can't exactly go up to her parents now and inquire if she can have upwards to five hundred dollars. Once she has the finances she needs, she'll be in the wind. Laufey will be dead, and perhaps she'll have finally proved herself worthy of being in this family.

Hela sighs deeply. "I'm just exhausted."

Frigga nods, "Yes. You must be. I'm going to start preparing dinner, you could sleep until then."

And enjoy a warm, fluffy meal with the family? No thanks. It will turn into a disaster the moment she arrives because she's great at killing conversations. And jovial moods.

Hela shrugs.

"Alright, well, I'll be back around six to check on you." Frigga says with a tight smile. "I'll go see if Loki will help me with the cooking. I'm trying to make this meal called lasagna. It's apparently a type of pasta-soup, I've heard of it before and wanted to try it."

Hela nods and Frigga rises up to her feet, setting the shirt on the bed and brushing off her pants. Hela really doubts she will ever get used to seeing her stepmother in anything that isn't dresses. Frigga is wearing jeans. Her father was dressed in a suit this morning, which didn't strike her as odd in the slightest, but it's still very much in fashion for the women of Asgard to run around in skirts all day.

Frigga hesitates in the doorway, "Hela, I know this can't be easy for you, but I want you to know that I am glad to have you back. I've missed you sorely."

Her eyes burn, but she nods mutely and Frigga exits the room, closing the door behind her. Frigga missed her? What about her is there to miss? Her identity is Asgard's weapon. Maybe Frigga has somehow guessed what Hela's going to do and is encouraging her on?

Hela doesn't know. She bites at her lip until she tastes blood before gathering up a pair of clean clothing and heading for the shower.

Clean for what feels like the first time in the last decade, Hela does make good on Frigga's suggestion and crawls into bed and doesn't move. She marvels at how soft the bedding is, almost finding it too comfortable to sleep in. Frigga comes to tell her about dinner, but Hela doesn't get up. She's not hungry, hasn't felt properly hungry since before her fight with Surtur the morning of her release.

She doesn't go down to get any dinner, instead remaining on the soft bed and sleeps.

She drifts in a state of deep sleep and a lighter one, and thinks she picks up her parents voices talking above her in soft tones and a gentle kiss against her forehead. Hela doesn't even know how long she's laying there, but by the time her body has decided it has indeed caught up on missed sleep and the bed releases her, the sun is rising in the distance.

The clothing doesn't feel stiff and the throw blanket on top of the comforter is soft. Hela doesn't think she's felt something this soft in a really long time. She gathers up the blanket and wraps it around her shoulders before stumbling down the stairs to the kitchen. Partially to find food, a quieter part of her longing for company. Unlike last night, she is hungry now.

Thor is seated at the table with an open laptop in front of him and dozens of papers stacked around him like a small fort. There's two textbooks open with notes scribbled across the top of one of them, and Thor is diligently writing down into a notebook.

At the sound of her footsteps, he looks up. "Finally decided to rise from the dead, Sister? Mum was starting to worry you'd slipped into a coma."

Hela blinks tiredly, and holds the blanket around her shoulders tighter. It feels like a pathetic excuse for a cape, and her cheeks heat some as he realizes how childish this is. Oh, gosh, she's thirty-four, not five, but still wandering around with a blanket cape.

"What time is it?" she croaks out, and moves to the counter to find something she can hold water for drinking.

"Six-twenty-three, AM." Thor answers without looking up at her, and then adds: "Wednesday. You slept for thirty-six hours straight."

Hela nearly drops the glass she found with surprise. Oh. That would explain why she's so hungry. She bites at her inner cheek before filling up the glass and drinking from it. The water is cold and tastes a little funny, but she doesn't care.

"Where is everyone else?" Hela questions, and Thor looks up at her for the first time, but it's only to send a pointedly annoyed glance in her direction. Hela bites at her tongue. Alright, fine, she should quiet, she knows. She's ruining his...studying? She's really not sure what it is. She flicks her gaze away from him, muttering a quick "sorry" before quickly retreating back upstairs, thoughts of food forgotten.

The house is too quiet.

Hela tosses the blanket onto the bed and blows out a deep breath. Alright. Now that she's wasted an entire day sleeping, she should get things back in order. First things first: a job.

She needs to take a walk.

She leaves a note for whoever might bother to look for her (she doubts there will be many people, if any) on her bed and slips out of the house without much of a hassle. It isn't raining, for which she's grateful, but it is still cold. Hela takes full pleasure in the warm jacket and scarf, stomping out of the neighborhood and quietly hoping she doesn't get lost before she can make it home. She's always had a good sense of direction, so she's really not too worried.

The house isn't too far from Mainstreet. The first "we're hiring" sign she sees is for a Starbucks, and Hela checks the hours to make sure it's open—it is—before throwing open the door and walking inside. She has no idea what Starbucks sells, coffee she's pretty sure, but Hela doesn't really care. If she has to spend the next few weeks sweeping, so be it.

She has to get back to Asgard.

A young woman with fiery red hair is at the counter and looks up as Hela approaches. She can't be any older than twenty, but her green eyes speak of intelligence. "Hello, welcome to Starbucks. What can I get for you this morning?" the woman's words are tainted by the thick Russian brogue, but still dull and lifeless, likely at having been said a thousand times over.

Hela glances at her name tag, which reads "NATASHA" in bolded letters. Hela grits her teeth and swallows her pride before sweeping hair away from her face. "I'm new to the country, and I'm looking for work. I saw you're hiring, can you explain to me how I can acquire a position here?"

At Natasha's raised brows, Hela's fingers curl and she reminds herself of her broken family and Asgard's sorrows. She needs to get out of the U.S., and this is the only way to do it. Laufey has to die, her pride can't get in the way of that.

"Yeah," Natasha seems to snap out of her daze and gives a slight nod. "I help. Give me a minute?" Hela nods wordlessly and Natasha smiles before turning around and shouting, "Clint! Watch the counter for me!" and then points towards an empty table in the corner. "Go sit."

There's two other people in the restaurant, and Hela avoids eye contact with them, taking a seat at the indicated table. The room smells slightly funny, thick with coffee, but also cream. Hela is suddenly reminded of Loki's dairy allergy, and privately wonders if it's gotten any better since she was released from prison.

A young man around Natasha's age, Clint, Hela's assuming, steps out from the back and the two exchange a few words before Natasha vanishes into the back and Clint takes her position at the front. A man has ordered coffee and left before Natasha re-emerges, stacks of paperwork in hand and walks towards her.

She dumps it on top of the table and sets a pencil beside it. Hela's eyes widen some. This seems like an excessive amount of work for a simple job. More than likely she's just been spoiled given her father. Natasha sits down next to her. "This take some time. I'll point you in the direction, but I need to work."

Hela's lips thin with embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I don't mean—"

"It is no trouble." Natasha waves her off. "Honest. I was stranger to America, too. We first start with application, which is normally submitted on the internet. It does not need to be, and the boss is picky. She prefers handwritten, anyway. You'll give her application, and she determines if she wants to interview you, and then you come back and she parses your soul before you get hired."

Hela stares at her, but Natasha seems dead serious.

Parse your soul?

Hela looks over at the paper, fumbling some as she stares at the English alphabet. The words seem to be blurring together. She's a fluent speaker, has been since childhood, but reading suddenly seems impossible. She blows out a breath and squints, trying to focus.

She picks up the pencil and begins to fill out what she can, realizing only now that she's going to have to use the false identity the U.S. gave her (which includes a drivers license, passport, bank account—basic necessities that Hela really wouldn't have thought of, but they did). It looks funny written out on paper. Helena Aesir. That's not who she is.

That's not her name.

That's not—

Natasha stays until Hela finishes and takes the paperwork from her, assuring Hela that she'll give it to Ms. Hill, the owner of the building. Hela just nods wordlessly, wishing she had something to offer in return. As she rises to her feet and prepares to leave, she hears Clint ask, "You help fill out applications now, Tasha? That's sweet. You get paid overtime?"

Natasha swats him with the papers. "Net, Bird-brain I am paying forward what you did for me."

"I didn't help you feel out an application."

"You did more than that." Natasha says sincerely, and Hela nearly rolls her eyes as she exits the store, not wanting to get caught in the lover's banter. She wouldn't be surprised if they were dating, and if they aren't they should be.

Hela stuffs her hands into her pockets and tries really hard to ignore the pang in her heart of longing. It's fine. She doesn't deserve anyone anyway. She is a tool. A weapon. And they don't feel anything. She is to kill Laufey and then her family can return home. Things can go back to the way they were, when there wasn't a gaping hole in her chest and a pit in her stomach.

Everything was easier when she was numb.

Hela spends a majority of the day walking. She gets a general feel of the area, comparing her foggy memories of a decade ago with now and trying to spot the differences. It's not easy, because she really doesn't remember distinct details of the city. People, yes, the hotel she was staying in, yes. The sight of Fenris laying dead in the ally, yes. Her guard's slaughtered bodies laying in the halls, yes.

The streets hadn't been important.

Not at the time.

Hela returns home a little before two, and Frigga is sitting at the table looking over some papers, her eyebrows scrunched together with what is obviously worry. Hela bites at her tongue, wanting to know, but at the same time...she really doesn't. She's really only here for food.

She sighs, drawing out the breath before walking past the table. Frigga looks up. "Oh, there you are. I was wondering when you'd come back. It's been a few hours."

Just a few. Upwards towards nine. Hela shrugs. "I didn't know when I'd return myself. Sorry if I worried you."

"It's alright," Frigga answers, and Hela's teeth grit at the implications of the statement. Fine. Fine.

Hela opens the refrigerator and stares at all the weird labels and containers, feeling strangely helpless. Her stomach is clawing at her insides for some sort of reprieve, but she's...this isn't something she knows how to...it's such a simple thing. It's food, but she has no idea what half of anything is. Ketchup? Pickles? Okay, marvelous name choices, but still.

Hela blows out a breath and closes the door. Maybe she can find some bread. Bread is safe, typically; she at least knows what bread is. "Do you need some help?" Frigga's voice isn't unkind, but still makes a flush of humiliation spread on her cheeks. Grateful that she's facing away from her stepmother, Hela glares into the cupboards.

"Assistance wouldn't go unappreciated." She mumbles out in defeat.

The chair shifts against the hardwood floor as Frigga gets to her feet before moving to open the fridge, pulling out a few items. "Have you eaten anything since you woke up?" she asks. Frigga seems to know the answer already, and isn't surprised when Hela gives a reluctant shake of her head. "I'm not sure you want to eat the leftovers of last night, I don't know what I was thinking. Noodles are not something I should be trusted with...why don't we try making some eggs? Here chop this, it's called celery here, though I don't know why—"

Hela spends a lot longer than she cares to admit being acquainted with the food, but Frigga's patience never slips. Hela isn't a terrible cook, and the eggs don't taste like rubber or cardboard, as they would have in prison. It's a welcomed change.

000o000

Hela gets the job interview a few days later, and is more than grateful to get out of the house. She's spent time reading, but only because she has to. The rain has turned to slushy-snow over the last three days and insists on a downpour at every possible second. The collection in the house is small, and Hela doesn't have a problem tearing through it.

Boredom is usually an unfamiliar feeling to her, but she's become well acquainted to it since she left prison almost a week ago.

Ms. Hill is younger than Hela thought she would be, around Hela's age. Her short brown hair is tucked into a tight bun and she's dressed in dark blue clothing that could have been mistaken for a body suit. She greets Hela with a cryptic handshake and invites her to sit on the other side of a desk.

"Natasha said she helped you with the application." Ms. Hill says and Hela gives a reluctant nod.

"I just immigrated to the U.S., I'm...not familiar with all of this." She admits. "Miss Romanov was very helpful."

Ms. Hill hums, looking over some papers. "You're an ex-con?"

Hela's teeth set. Well, can't keep that underwraps, even though she'd very much like to. She wets her lips and thinks for a second. Her nerves are jittery and everything feels slightly off. The very fate of her country lies in this woman's hands, and she doesn't even know it. If Hela messes this up, she'll have to find somewhere else to go to collect the money.

She saw a few other stores, maybe—

"Yes." Hela says flatly. "Does that decrease my value as a human being?"

Ms. Hill's eyebrows raise some, clearly surprised. "Not necessarily. I don't want you stealing from my store or murdering my employees."

Hela resists the urge to roll her eyes, but does fold her arms across her chest, leaning back in the chair. "Because I had such fun in prison the first time."

Ms. Hill sighs and puts the papers on the desk. "You clearly have a strong opinion about this."

"I need the work," Hela levels her voice. "If you show me what must be done, I will fulfill the tasks. Without stealing or murderer of your employees."

Ms. Hill nods some, writing something down on the papers before looking up and clasps her hands together. "Why should I hire you?"

Hela stares at her, and blinks. That is the stupidest question she's ever heard. Honestly, what is the point of that? The reasons she should hire Hela are listed on her application. Hela grits her teeth and swallows her first answer: Because I need to leave your country so I can kill the enemy of mine.

"Because I can help your company prosper. I'm a hard worker. Dedicated—" to the point of getting myself thrown in prison for a decade to finish a task "—and able to face the challenges you present me with." It seems like a sappy answer and she inwardly cringes. Well, she failed that miserably.

Ms. Hill nods again, and has a few follow up questions that Hela stumbles through before she sets her pen down and stares Hela straight in the eyes. "I have to admit, I'm a little hesitant about this, but I need the employees. Having only four split between the long hours has not done wonders for their sleep. Congratulations, you start Monday. Arrive here at six AM. I don't have time to do official training, so it will be on the job. I'll have Natasha show you around." Ms. Hill gets to her feet and holds out her hand.

Hela's shoulders slump with relief and a breath escapes her. "Thank you, Ms. Hill," she says and rises up to clasp the tanned fingers. "You're saving more lives than you can imagine."

Ms. Hill looks puzzled.

Hela wisely snaps her jaw shut and refuses to elaborate. Laufey better hide, because she's coming now. There's still weeks before she has enough to buy her way from the country, but she's closer than she was when she started this. Progress is still progress, and she can live with that.

The conquest begins now.

000o000

She arrives back at the house to see Thor sitting on the doorstep beside a young woman. She's clearly a head shorter than Thor with long auburn-brown hair tucked into a braid. She's stuffed into a coat and scarf, which makes sense given the weather. Hela's soaked to the bone and freezing given the snow, but all she has is the warm jacket. Which is not water repellent.

The two are underneath an umbrella, and the woman is laughing at something Thor said. A small smirk tugs on the edges of her lips at this. She had no idea that Thor was seeing someone. Huh.

Hela freezes in the driveway, unsure whether or not to proceed. The woman catches her eye and looks up at her brother. "I'll catch you later, okay? I really should go study for the chem exam."

Thor's face visibly falls. "Right. I forgot about that, my apologies. Do you want me to walk you home?"

The brunette shakes her head. "No." She gets up to her feet and Thor follows, stuffing the umbrella towards her.

"Take it."

The young woman smiles softly and nods before reaching up on her tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow. Love you." She takes the umbrella and smiles before walking down the steps.

"Love you, too, be safe!" Thor calls at her retreating back. The young woman nods her head in greeting as she passes Hela, with a quick "hi" muttered under her breath. Hela watches her go wordlessly and tugs her soaking hood up her head more before finishing the walk towards the front steps.

Thor is still standing there, seeming uncertain what to do with himself. "Sister." He greets.

Hela hums, coming to a stop next to him, and then looks back at the girl. "Who's that?"

A soft smile tugs at Thor's lips, and the expression does wonders on making him appear more approachable. She hasn't seen him do much more than scowl or stare blankly forward. Family dinners have been nothing short of uncomfortable, but Frigga is insistent on it. Hela stares at him before carefully adding: "Dearest brother, I had no idea you favored someone."

Thor stares at her for a second, as if surprised that she's teasing him. Hela bites at her tongue, reminding herself that Thor was ten when she was arrested. He just turned twenty-one two months ago. His memories of the small piece of his childhood she shared with him probably doesn't include many interactions. No one remembers her.

Her, not the princess of Asgard, or Lady Death, but Hela.

Hela sighs softly, but watches the woman's retreating back. "She's a bit short for you. Do you think it would be insensitive if I bought her a step stool for your wedding so she can kiss you?"

Thor's face heats and he buries his head into his hands. "We're-we're not...marriage." He breathes out the last word, and a smirk tugs at the corner of her lips.

"What's my sister-in-law-to-be's name? Victoria? Paige? Natalie? She looks like a Natalie." Hela lightly nudges his elbow playfully. "I do hope she's not attached to her last name. Come now, brother, don't keep me waiting."

"It's Jane." Thor corrects. "Jane Foster." He looks up from his hands and sighs deeply. He's still staring at her strangely. "She's...we are courting, yes, but not with Father's approval. Or Mother's. They don't think I should be making permanent attachments in the U.S., but I just…" Thor looks towards where Jane disappeared to.

Hela follows his line of sight. "Does she know?"

Thor hesitates, and then admits quietly: "She does. Our parents don't know that she does and I really would like to keep it that way. I mean, understand, she is fully capable of keeping a secret, but they'll freak out and I'd rather not deal with that because you know how they can get and it just—she doesn't deserve that. I think that Father would flat out murder me if he knew I'd told her. He takes the secrecy very seriously."

This must be the longest conversation they've held since her arrest.

Hela shrugs. "I'd've told them just to watch the explosion."

Thor gawks at her, and Hela smiles pleasantly, tucking her hands inside of her jacket. The rain is dripping down her nose, and it isn't very comfortable. She's never been the biggest fan of being wet. She hums softly, "You told Loki that Jane knows?"

"Loki told Jane." Thor grumbles. "Not intentionally, but there was an...incident and Loki didn't call me 'Theo' by accident and things kind of escalated from there. I don't know...I just...I love making Jane happy, and she makes me happy and I don't...I…"

Hela pats him on the shoulder. "You gave her your umbrella brother, you're practically promised to each other now. It's far too late to back out of the relationship." She makes a move for the door and hears Thor make a strangled noise behind her. It sounds like laughter.

"That is not—" Thor starts.

"Of course not." Hela calls over her shoulder in agreement. "My mistake."

She shoves into the house, dripping wet with the smirk tugs at the corner of her lips despite the fact that she understands what's not being spoken. Thor wants that permanently. He wants to marry Jane, but he can't. Not with the political gambling that has become of their country and their lives. Hela's teeth set in her mouth, just another reason that this stupid war needs to be over.

Laufey has to die so Thor can marry Jane.

She has to finish this.

000o000

The weekend passes in a blur. She doesn't really leave the house, content to pick through the meager book collection again. Thor and Loki spend hours pouring over Thor's math homework on Saturday, with mostly successes. Hela isn't very surprised that Loki can provide assistance. The math is clearly more advanced than simple high school, but Loki has always been breathtakingly smart.

The two mostly seem to argue and scribble down on paper, but Hela watches from the living room, reading, and has to keep reminding herself this is real. She hardly sees her parents, rushing to and fro with Heimdall trailing behind them like a wary guard dog. The house seems less empty when she can see others.

It's...nice.

It makes her ache in a funny way to see them interacting so easily with each other, though. That terrible feeling of longing tearing at her chest. Hela shakes it off, focusing. She'll be gone in a few weeks anyway. After Laufey's been taken care of, then she can focus on trying to rebuild a relationship with them. (They don't seem to want one, so why should she even try? She's the crazy ex-con sister. No one would want to know her.)

Hela has left the house as much as possible, but no one asks here where she goes or what she's doing, so she has no worries of being caught in her job. It stings—but she refuses to admit it—that no one cares that she vanishes for the entire day.

She's been here almost eight days when she walks in for her first day of work. The Starbucks still smells funny and Hela stands in the shop awkwardly for a moment before Natasha materializes in front of her, wielding a T-shirt in her right hand. "Dobroye utro. Good morning. Are you ready to go to work?"

Hela nods with thinned lips.

Natasha hands her the shirt. "There bathroom you can change into this in that way. It's uniform. Not flattering, but required. Idti—go. Sorry. I am still getting used to English."

Hela shrugs, holding the clothing, "Don't worry about it. Thank you."

Natasha nods and directs her towards the bathroom. Hela changes, and that's about the only thing that goes right that day. Hela is terrible at this and it shows painfully. She's near the point of tears when her shift finally ends and has to remind herself several times that smashing the coffee cup over someone's head would be considered rude and probably get her fired.

The weather has mercifully waned for the moment, so Hela storms through the streets without having to get soaked to the bone. It's a little past six when she returns back to the house and scowls at the door before slamming it shut behind her. She resists the urge to scream, but tugs sharply on her braid.

Can't she do anything right?

It was the stupid, simple things and she just—messed up. Because that's all she's good at, isn't it? She can't do peace treaties, can't be a good daughter or sister, she's just the messy one, who's only good at killing things.

What a wonderful legacy.

What a wonderful identity.

Failure must be written into her name somewhere. It's just taken her three decades to come to that realization.

Hela slams her fist into the wall and swears loudly. Pain radiates up her arm, shooting up towards her elbow and beyond. It helps, it clears her head, offering brief respite. She slams her fist against the wall again and feels skin break. A ragged hiss escapes her lips. (It all starts again tomorrow. She can take these few hours to gather herself together before returning to the place of her failures.) There's blood on her fist.

And the wall.

"Hela? What are you doing?" Frigga's voice, but it's angry. Hela stills and exhales, biting at her cheek. "I didn't know where you were all day, I thought that something had happened...and now—why do you smell like coffee beans? No, it doesn't matter. You can't just run off like that without an explanation—"

Hela laughs loudly. She doesn't even know where it bubbles out of, but it's bitter. She turns around, pointing her bloody finger towards her stepmother. She hesitates for just a second seeing the rest of her family standing at the dinner table. Odin is crossing the threshold.

Then she snaps.

"Now you care where I am?" she demands rhetorically, sharply, "Didn't seem to matter to you ten years ago when I begged you to vouch for me at the trial and you didn't."

Frigga freezes. Odin's stance hardens. "You had just murdered seventeen Americans and ten Asgardians. Were we really expected to claim something so vicious?"

Hela draws back. She suspected, of course, that they believed that she murdered them, but to hear the words spoken so plainly from his lips—it hurts more than she thought it would. She grits her teeth, refusing to back down. "It wasn't murder!"

"So you claim." Odin shakes his head. "All the evidence pointed otherwise. You were drenched in their blood."

"No, I wasn't!" Hela hisses, "That was Fenris's. She was bleeding everywhere, if you recall, but you probably didn't care to look at evidence then and you won't now. Why would you? I'm nothing more than a problem because my ambition outgrew yours. I, at least, wanted this stupid war to be over, but you kept dragging it out and sent me off to the slaughterhouse because you don't care—"

"Hela, that's not true." Frigga interjects, moving forward and attempts to lay a hand on Hela's shoulder. She draws back, refusing to let her stepmother make contact.

"YOU LEFT ME HERE!" Hela screams, and grabs a book off of the coffee table and throws it. It smashes against the far wall, pages fluttering as they hit the ground. "I spent TEN YEARS in hell because you refused to help! You didn't even TRY to save me!"

The silence is deafening.

She wants to throw something else.

Hela exhales slowly, but her temper is still fluttering beneath her fingertips. Begging to be let out. To destroy. Not now. "So excuse me for mistaking the fact that I'm an adult now and have a right to govern my own life, because you clearly know what's best for me."

She races up the stairs before either of her parents can get a word in and slams the door shut, seething. She swears under her breath and kicks the edge of the bedframe before throwing herself on top of the mattress. She digs her hands into her eyes and resists the urge to cry.

She's not five.

Her breath isn't steady. She's still only releasing ragged hisses instead of the normal quiet rhythm. She probably shouldn't have said that, but it doesn't make it any less true. But nasty things like that are supposed to be kept on the inside, because there they can't hurt anyone except her.

And if she's a casualty in this war—well, who's going to care? She'll be lucky if they bury her rather than leave her corpse out to rot.

Laufey. Laufey. Laufey. She needs to save Asgard. She can deal with this mess later. Right now, she needs to focus on Asgard. The only thing that matters is saving it. "God, please," Hela whispers, squeezing her eyes shut. "Either help me do this or kill me, because there's nothing left for me here."

000o000

Hela wakes up a little past twenty-thirty to a light rapping on the door. It's too light to be Odin's, but to uncertain to be Frigga's. Hela grits her teeth and scowls at the wood before clambering out of bed and pulling open the door. A few choice words are on the tip of her tongue, but die when she sees Loki standing there. He's holding a plate of food and his expression is careful.

She blinks.

Loki lifts up the food to her. "You didn't eat dinner, and I doubt you participated in a midday meal. So." He raises the plate pointedly.

Hela takes it after a moment of hesitation. "Thanks." Her voice doesn't sound quite awful, but it isn't as clear as it would normally be.

Loki doesn't turn around and wander off like she expects, instead he stands in the doorway for a moment more before asking, "Can I come in?"

Hela pauses, wondering if this is some sort of prank she's now been subjected to, and who the audience is. Then, she shakes it off, feeling terrible for thinking such. She nods and steps out of the way, letting her youngest brother into the space. Loki's steps are hesitant, as if he believes she'll draw an axe and lop off his head when he gets close enough.

"Do you want something?" Hela's unable to keep the question away.

Loki shakes his head, tracing a finger on the edge of her desk. "I...was just...making sure you were okay."

Hela stares at him. "Why?"

Loki looks back at her, head tilted as if puzzled before he says, "Because you're my sister."

He leaves a few minutes later, no real conversation sparking up between the two of them. Hela eats the food he gave her, though she can barely remember what it was, and slips down the stairs to the kitchen to wash off the plate. On her returning journey, she hears Frigga quietly sobbing and freezes.

"...I don't k-know how to-to fix it, Odin," Frigga is saying. "I don't know…"

"Shh," Odin soothes, "my dear, we'll figure this out."

"Our family is falling apa-apart." Frigga cries. "There is no simple f-fix for that."

Guilt threatens to turn her stomach to lead. Their family is falling apart because of her. If she'd just succeeded a decade ago, none of this would have happened. If she could just hold her tongue, then this wouldn't—"If's" are painful and solve nothing. Shut up.

Any lingering doubts vanish, and her resolve settles. She'll fix this, she swears. She'll make up for her mistake of a decade ago. She'll make it right.

000o000

The next month and four days pass in a blur. Hela hardly sees her family during the process of it, too busy working the crazy shifts and trying not to pass out from exhaustion to do so. She does explain at some point to her parents that she got a job, but she doesn't know if it was on the last week of the month or the first.

She rarely sees her siblings and trades a few sentences when she does. Loki draws further into himself, shadows beneath his eyes getting deeper and bones jutting out more. Thor spends more time with Jane, and delved into homework.

Hela's namesday passes without a word from anyone in her family, but Natasha gives her a pocket knife and smiles sadly before Clint hands her a cupcake. Hela tries not to let the bitter well of despair swallow her, and loses herself into an eternal cycle:

Sleep. Food. Work.

Work. Food. Sleep.

Food. Work. Sleep.

Her other two co-workers are two young adults by the name of Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner.

Steve Rogers is a military vet, working on an art major. Once he's managed to earn enough money, he plans on asking Peggy Carter to marry him. Hela's seen the woman once, mid-twenties, and a school teacher.

Bruce Banner is a doctor, a scientist, and she finds it ridiculous that he's working at a Starbucks when he could clearly have a place at Stark Industries or some other big company. He's a genius. Quiet, but a genius.

Clint Barton and Natasha are indeed dating. No one explicitly tells her, but Hela isn't stupid. She picks up on the cues easily enough. She doesn't know much about the two, private and paranoid, but they're nice. Hela hasn't...hasn't had actual friends beyond Fenris before and it's...weird. Not that she considers them friends, but acquaintances that don't hate her is welcomed.

Apparently all of her co-workers go to the same university together, and their mutual friend, Tony—she still can't decide why he looks so familiar, and has no time to figure it out—often frequents the Starbucks to study and make faces and distract them. Hela's spoken with him a few times, enough that they can trade quips and insults back and forth without too many problems. Despite his outward appearances, he's nice and clearly technologically savvy.

It's for this reason that Hela finds herself sitting across from him during one of the brief breaks from the lapse of customers. Given the late hour, it's to be expected, she thinks. Her body is exhausted and her mind a mushy mess of coffee orders, but she nonetheless takes the seat.

Tony looks up from the tablet he's poking at to stare at her from behind tinted sunglasses. "Oh no. Did I forget to pay? I think I paid. You aren't here to bully a tip out of me, are you, 'cause, hate to break it to you, Hades, but you're the worst employee here."

"And you're the worst customer." Hela promises, leaning forward, and clasping her hands together. "I'm on break, and I'm not here to bargain anything from you. I need a favor."

"Do you?" Tony lowers the tablet, smiling faintly. "Well, Grim Reaper, don't leave me hanging."

She will never understand this man's obsession with nicknames. Nor does she get why she got labeled under "anything bringing death". Hela presses her lips together tightly, blowing out a soft breath as she swallows her pride. "I need a plane ticket. I don't know how to get one in America. Can you show me?"

Tony's expression furrows some before he hums. "Huh. Okay. Yeah, I can do that. C'mere," he scoots over and gestures to the seat next to him. Hela grits her teeth before taking the indicated area, keeping as much distance between them as possible.

Tony lifts up his tablet and opens Chrome before searching for something on the internet. After pulling up a few more tabs and clicking a few links, he looks up at her. "Where you headed?"

Asgard doesn't have an airport, didn't have the means to buy one. The nearest country is Norway. Hela shrugs. "Anywhere in Norway will be fine."

Tony nods and presses on something else. "Norway, eh? If you're looking to get as far away from us as possible, I know of a few islands. What about France? You ever been to London? You kind of have an English accent, so, maybe?"

"Norway's fine, idiot." Hela assures.

Tony's lips thin some and he looks up at her. "A flight for tomorrow sound okay?"

Anxiety thrums in her chest. (She's really doing this. She's really—) Hela gives a hesitant nod and he shoves the tablet over to her. The screen wants bank information, and Hela struggles to recall details before typing them in with hesitation and crossing her fingers that it's right.

It is.

"Okay," Tony nods, "you're booked. Congratulations...do you mind if I pry as to your reasons for leaving? I thought you immigrated to the U.S."

Oh. Whoops. The lies have become a scattered mess in the last few weeks. "I'm—" Hela pauses, trying to come up with a believable excuse. If she went to all the work of getting to the U.S., why would she be leaving?

"Whoa, wait," Clint stops in front of the table, resting his hands on the surface. "You're leaving?"

Hela shrugs helplessly, unable to come up with a response. What is she supposed to say? Oh, well, you see, darlings, I have to leave to protect my family by assassinating King Laufey. Thanks for your understanding. Then smile and wave?

"She hates us," Tony bemoans, "this is all your fault, Barton. If you were a more friendly person—"

"I am friendly you narcissistic—"

"—then she would want to stay and feed me coffee twice a week. Instead, she's running away to Norway because you're an awful friend—" Clint swats Tony with the tray he has in one hand and Tony laughs, ducking away from his attack.

"Wait—who's leaving?" Natasha pokes her head out from the back and Hela groans, dropping her head into her hands.

"This isn't meant to be a public affair." She doesn't know why she expected anything differently. Secrecy isn't something she's known.

"You're leaving?" Natasha's voice is confused. "Why are you leaving? I thought that you were settling."

Ha.

Settling.

What does that look like?

Hela opens her mouth to answer, but the door to the Starbucks dings, and all of them pause before looking up. It's past twenty-thirty and customers have waned considerably. The store closes at twenty-one, which is why she suspects so. Only Tony's still here, but that's because he knows that they won't lock him inside. Drag him out by his ear or hair, yes, but lock him inside? No.

Hela's stomach drops as she sees who's in the doorway. No way. No way. No, no, no. God must either have a sense of humor or outright hate her because it isn't some random New Yorker. That's Thor. She hasn't told the others that she has any siblings, but if they make even one offhand comment about how she's going to Norway, Thor will tell their parents and then they'll corner her and the storm that's been waiting to explode since the argument on her first day will ripple forwards.

She's so close.

She can't be stopped now.

Hela gets to her feet, not bothering to hide her presence here. She's not a coward. Thor takes several steps forward, lips split as if in greeting, but it stops as he sees her. His eyes widen as he looks her up and down, clearly filling in holes and putting things together.

"What are you doing here?" Hela's voice is dead.

Thor gawks for a moment later before snapping his jaw shut, "Getting...I have…"

"Wait." Tony says behind her. "He's here to study with me. You two know each other?"

Hela looks back at the young man. "You know him!?" she gestures vaguely in the direction of her younger brother, startled. How could they have been talking to each other for more than a month and not be aware of this?

"Yeah." Clint's head cocks. "Um, he's…he's our friend?"

"This is awkward." Tony mutters.

This can't be happening. No, no, no—

Hela grabs the stray pieces of her bangs and pulls, looking back at her brother. He's still staring at her, and, with what is clearly effort, pulls his gaze away to look at Natasha. "This is Helena? You said you were working with an immigrant from England, not my freaking ex-con sister."

There's a beat of silence, and then, "Okay, this is way more awkward." Tony announces behind them. Hela ignores him, judging by the tightening in Thor's fist, he ignores him too.

Hela's jaw sets and she takes several steps forward. "Do you have a problem with this?"

Thor's face is tight. "I love what you've done with your clothing. Redecorating, I see." He gestures towards a coffee spill from several hours earlier, and Hela looks down at her shirt, heat rising to her face. She bites at her tongue and looks up at him.

"What do you want?"

"This is where you've been for the last month? Hiding away in a Starbucks and pretending you're doing something with your life? Our parents have been restlessly worried—" Thor, starts, tone heated. Hela's hand shifts towards her pants where Natasha's pocket knife is located and laughs out loud.

"Our parents are worried about me?" Hela scoffs. "Our father's solution to every problem was to cover it up. I doubt he gave two words edgewise on me."

Thor's eyes flash. "You wouldn't know, would you, because you're never home."

"That is not my home." Hela hisses, "It's a shabby building you all profess to love. Asgard is just around the corner now with my plane ticket. Wait a few days, I'll have dealt with the problem and gotten us all home." Hela wishes she could swallow the words as soon as they come out. Well. She was so worried about the others spitting out her secrets, it had never occurred to her that she would be the one to do so.

Dang it.

Thor stares at her. "How? You will it here? Don't get me wrong—I would love to return to Asgard, but the way that's happening...it just can't be you. You're just...the worst."

A ripple of hurt washes through her, strong enough to make tears form on the edges of her eyes. She sets her teeth and forces herself to focus. Sharp tongue. Sharp words. Sharp. "Alright, get out. You're in my Starbucks."

"Your Starbucks?" Thor repeats. "You don't own anything. All you've done is make our parents worry and driven our mother to tears, why should I listen to anything you have to say?"

"Ooh, do be careful, dear brother. I've murdered twenty-seven people, remember?" Hela bares her teeth.

Thor stares her in the face. Rather than backing off or even pausing, he instead says flatly: "You did, didn't you? Father should have left you in prison, you caused a lot less problems there."

Hela doesn't even realize that she's done it until the blade strikes his face. She has no memories of coming to the decision to hit, or really any of moving, only the aftermath. The rage that swallows the despair reacts and thinks for her and the pocket knife Natasha gave her is out and slamming against Thor's skin a moment later. She meant to swipe towards his face, she thinks, but the knife was heavier than she expected and instead smacks against Thor's right eye. It hit his face.

She just knived her younger brother in the face.

Thor inhales deeply, hands lifting to the wound and Hela's stomach plummets to her feet. What was she thinking? How could she have been so careless? It's bleeding. Oh, gosh, it must be bleeding, and what if there was permanent damage and—all that escapes her is a little grimace with a noise she can't interpret. Everyone is quiet with shock.

She—

It—

"Now you remind me of Dad."

Why did she say that!?

Thor's face contorts with rage, and he delves forward only to be halted as Tony and Natasha grab his arms.

"Thor, stop," Natasha commands, and mutters something in Russian that Hela doesn't understand anything of. "This is not—"

"Whoa, Point Break, let's just—" Tony starts.

Hela draws in a ragged breath, looking down at the knife in her hand. It's wet with blood. She did that. She knived her brother in the eye and she doesn't even know if...she moves forward, and Clint steps in front of her brother.

"No—back off."

"Clint, I—" she starts, but she doesn't even know what her excuse is.

Or the explanation.

His eye.

What did she do to his eye!?

"Thor, let me see—" she tries again, moving forward, but Clint slams a hand against her shoulder and she just reacts. She swings the blade up again, and barely stops it less than a centimeter from Clint's left ear. She might've even nicked the skin anyway if it wasn't for the hearing aid.

A ragged breath escapes her.

Violence is all she knows now, isn't it?

Thor's hands are staining red from the wound that she made and the knife slips from her grip. It clatters against the ground and all of them look towards the noise. Silence has settled over them, and there's a heavy weight in the air. A panicked hiss escapes her and Hela dives towards the countertops, vaulting over them before anyone can stop her and scrambles for the back exit.

She ignores the cries of her name. She has to get out. Hela tumbles outside of the small store before anyone can stop her, manages to gather her balance somewhat, and runs.

She knived her brother in the face.

And the worst part is she doesn't even know if she's sorry.

000o000

As much as she would love to pretend otherwise, she can't stay away forever. She needs means to get the plane tickets, and her parents gave her a phone a few weeks ago that she rarely uses. She can use it to print them from a public library or another.

Laufey's death is still a priority.

Perhaps the only one now.

Her family will hate her, and she doesn't blame them. She knived Thor in the eye. Her co-workers won't want to even look at her again. She saw their disgust, their mistrust. Everything she had shattered when the blade met Thor's skin.

Her parents aren't at the house when she arrives, but Thor already is. He's sitting at the table and Loki is fretting over him, washing at the cut with a wet rag. Both of them freeze as the door closes, and look up in sync when she takes steps into the house.

Thor draws back, clearly wary, and something in her gut churns at that. They shouldn't be afraid of her. That's wrong. She's their older sister, their protector, their—eye surgeon? You attacked him, you moron.

Loki straightens, and his eyes narrow.

Hela takes another step forward, trying to get a better angle on the gash. It will scar, that much she's certain of, but she's uncertain if she did permanent damage to the eyeball. The cut traces from above his eye in a slanted angle to a little below it. The deepest part is above his eye, as is expected. That's where the most force was.

She swallows along her dry throat, suddenly realizing that avoiding the two for the last month in her fear of failing them was the worst idea possible. "I'm...can...can I see—"

"No." Loki's voice is brisk. Hard. "You can't."

"I—"

"You nearly took our brother's eye." Loki doesn't bother to be gentle, or beat around the bush. Hela winces at his tone and looks towards Thor.

"I'm sorry." The words taste false, as if they can't decide if they're sincere or not. Hela can't decide if they are. (Why, why is it always her that has to extend the olive branch? Why can't someone else apologize for once? Thor started—oh, yes, the blame game is the perfect solution to this. Brilliant.)

Loki scoffs. "I'm certain. When Mum and Odin get back, I'm taking him to the ER. If you care to know."

"That's—that's not what I—" Hela starts, and Loki looks at her, hand tight around the bloody rag.

"Are you going to kill us, too, Lady Death?" his voice is a bare whisper. "Leave our bodies out to rot in the night as you bathe in another animal's blood, weeping?"

Hela draws aback, gasping. "I-It—"

Wasn't murder.

She keeps insisting so, but maybe she...maybe she's been remembering wrong this whole time. Maybe it really wasn't assassins sent by Laufey to kill her that night, but the Spanish gang that the U.S. insisted it was. And she had killed them in cold blood. She can't...she doesn't know.

Maybe she had killed Fenris in a fit of rage rather than Laufey's assassins slitting her throat in front of Hela in that alley way as her guard lay dead behind her. Maybe the captain, Brunnhilde, wasn't standing at her side to be struck down by the sixteen bullets and the gun Hela had in her hand when the police found her really did shoot the woman.

Twenty-seven people.

Ten Asgardians.

Seventeen...seventeen what, Jotuns? No one found proof of her claims—she heard them, she heard them speaking of Laufey. She heard them whisper "you've run to the wrong country, Princess" and their taunting as they slayed her people and Fenris—so why should she believe them herself?

Her family doesn't think she's innocent.

That she slaughtered everyone because she had a "fit".

Laufey has to die, and she has nothing now. Nothing. She needs to kill him and be done with this.

"I—" the compression in her chest is suffocating. Hela spins on her heal and storms up the stairs, slamming the door to her barely lived-in room shut. She grabs a bag out of the last drawer in the dresser and stuffs clothing, basic necessities, the money that she'd gathered from the ATM on her way back—anything she can think of that fits she puts inside.

She scribbles out a note to her family, but she can barely read it through her tears.

She grabs her phone and pockets it, looking towards the door for a moment longer, hesitating. She dreamed for ten years of returning home. Of being welcomed by a family that missed her, that wanted her, and that had remained a fantasy.

They hate her.

Because she's a murderer.

Lady Death.

Hela chokes back a sob and shoves the window open, blowing a breath out into the cold air. She climbs down the wall with ease and runs. She'll sleep on the streets tonight, and in Norway tomorrow. Then she'll sneak back into Asgard, grab a weapon from the armory and track down Laufey's sorry butt and lop off his head.

Without their leader, the Jotuns will crumple.

The end.

It's not the most well thought out plan, but she hasn't come up with one any better. It's simple, and that's what matters, isn't it? Hela leaves the house behind, and no one tries to stop her. She doesn't look back.

000o000

She sleeps on the streets that night after finding a nice, empty park bench in a secluded area. It's freezing, likely below forty degrees Fahrenheit and Hela would say that "sleeping" is a bit of a stretch. She's cold. A deep ache that settles in her muscles.

But that's fine.

When the sun has started to peak over the horizon, Hela swings her pack over her shoulder, hobbles up to her feet and begins to walk towards the airport. She could take a taxi, but she needs to conserve money for as long as she can. The expense of getting to Asgard from Norway might be more than she's calculating (her data is ten years off) and she wants to be prepared for that.

So Hela walks.

And walks.

And walks.

She finds a library to print her ticket from, and then covers a few more blocks before arrives at the airport, battles with security, and is still more than two hours early for the flight. The departure time is a little after eighteen hundred hours, so Hela has a bit of a wait. She finds a less-busy area and sinks against the wall, letting her small bag drop onto the ground beside her as dead weight.

She hadn't wanted to let it be shoved in the cargo bay, and had insisted it was small enough to be a carry on.

She still thinks so.

Hela brushes hair from her face and tucks her knees up close to her chest, blowing out a deep sigh and buries the exhaustion as deep as she can. This is what she wanted, isn't it? (No. She never wanted this. It's just what she has to do because her purpose is to stop this bloody war). To go running off like a vigilante and kill Laufey and be done with it all.

Then maybe she'll be worthy of a family.

Of her father's pride.

Of anything.

It has to be the one thing she can't mess up. She's good at making messes, and she doesn't want that trend to continue here because...it's important. It will make people happy. Hela will be doing the un-selfish thing for once. Her father would be proud. (So many times, too many, she's heard him start his rants with "you've forgotten everything I've taught you!", as if he bothered to do more than yell.)

Hela wants to go home. (Does she have one?)

She's cold, alone, and this obsession with security makes her strangely nauseous because it reminds her far to much of prison. She doesn't even know what she's been doing since she got out. She should have put more effort into repairing relationships, she thinks, but it was just…

Frightening.

All fear the might and bravery of Princess Hela, High Commander of the legions of Asgard.

Is that bitter? She thinks so.

Hela doesn't even know how long she's been sitting on the hard ground before someone slowly sinks down beside her. Her muscles tense and her hands go for her bag to fist around so she can throw it at their heads, but a hand gently rests on her shoulder. "Be at ease."

Hela's jaw nearly drops.

She looks the figure over again, recognizing him instantly now that she's focused. "Father?" she chokes. "What are you doing here?" the unspoken how did you find me hangs in the air, too. Her stomach lurches. What if he makes her stop? What if he—?

Odin sighs heavily, but doesn't remove his hand. "You took your phone."

"And?"

"There's tracking on it." Odin points out. Hela stills, and then lets her head fall into one hand, breathing out softly.

Idiot.

She'd left them the note, explaining her purposes in a brisk manner, so her parents probably put two and two together and Hela took her phone. She'd needed it, but—could she have been more stupid? Are they going to disown her now for Thor's eye? (Is he okay?) A question about him is on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows it.

She'd rather avoid the disownment for as long as possible.

"I'm not going to stop." Hela says firmly. "I'm going to finish this."

"Hela," her father sounds old. Looks the part, too. When she was younger, she'd privately thought him immortal. "The risk is too great. Honestly, daughter, do you believe that the death of Laufey will stop the war?"

"If it won't, what will?" Hela demands desperately, "I'll do that instead. I'll fix this, I promise, it's my purpose in life to defend us from them and I can't—I messed it up the first time, but if you give me the second chance, I swear on my life I'll—"

"Hela." Odin's voice is brisk and she snaps her mouth shut. She flinches back from him, but his hands remain still. He's changed since she was in prison. Everyone has, and she's...gah. She doesn't know anymore. "Hela, look at me."

She doesn't want to.

Oh, gosh, she doesn't want to.

Hela slowly raises her head and lifts her eyes to meet his single one. She swallows thickly, but doesn't break the silence first. It's on half her mind to yell, but she's so weary, and she doesn't want to deal with the scene that would make.

Yelling has solved exactly nothing since her release, has it?

"I've failed you as a father," Odin starts slowly, carefully, as if he says the wrong thing she'll fall apart before him. Hela only gawks at him. Odin exhales deeply. "I can see that now. I'm a different man today than I was when you were imprisoned, and I am filled with regrets."

"Proud have it, ashamed of how you got it." Hela mutters under her breath, resisting the urge to hug her knees closer.

Odin flinches, but nods all the same. "One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't...I raised you as a weapon instead of a daughter, Hela. We were in the middle of a war, but that didn't give me the excuse to...the U.S. government wanted capital punishment or twenty-five years in prison for what happened."

Hela twitches at the change in topics, but holds his gaze.

"Your mother and I did fight for you," Odin insists in earnest, "but the only thing we could do was reduce your sentence to ten years. We wanted you to come home. We still do."

Oh.

Oh.

Hela's lips part some, but she can't get her lips to form any words. It all feels stale and repetitive. Her stomach churns and she exhales stiffly. She hadn't...no one told her that. The charges had all blurred together, the trials blending into one mesh of discomfort. She'd assumed that Odin and Frigga had just dumped her here without any effort on their part to get her back.

They could have taken her side, and helped her prove her innocence.

They didn't.

But at least they didn't do nothing.

"But, it was easier to ignore the problem than face it head on, and I did leave you in the U.S. I'm sorry, Hela." Odin says. After an initial hesitation, he draws her into an awkward embrace. Hela fights it at first before slumping against his shoulder. He's steady beneath her. She is so exhausted. She squeezes her eyes shut.

"Please, my daughter, will you come home?" Odin murmurs, "We are solving the problem. Laufey agreed to meet on American soil to go over the possibility of withdrawing. There is no need for you to go running off. Please, come home."

Hela thinks of the seemingly endless hours she's spent behind that stupid counter in Starbucks. She thinks of avoiding her family in an effort to save them, of counting days in her cell as she stared up at the ceiling in boredom, seeing her siblings for the first time in ten years, Thor and Loki working over the math as Hela reads from across the room, Heimdall handing her the plate of food on that first night, Frigga showing her the bedroom, Odin handing her the phone, Natasha and Clint laughing as Bruce attempts to mimic Russian and fails only to have Tony and Steve repeat it without any problems—

The edges of her eyes feel wet.

"Okay." Hela agrees in a shaky voice. Odin's hands tighten around her shoulders. "Let's go home."

000o000

Frigga is standing in the parking lot when Hela and Odin arrive there. Her blonde hair is tucked up into a messy bun and her eyes are bloodshot. Heimdall stands beside her, stiffly, and as they approach, Frigga immediately wraps Hela in a tight embrace.

"I was so worried." Frigga whispers. "I thought that we wouldn't make it in time and you'd run off and—" she shoves back and grips Hela's shoulders tightly. "What the heck were you thinking, you stupid child!?"

"How is Thor?" Hela asks instead of answering. She doesn't see either Thor or Loki here, and despite Loki's ice and Thor's fear, she...wants the reassurance that she, at least, didn't kill her younger brother.

Frigga's face tightens and her lips press together.

"It has yet to be determined." Heimdall answers before either of her parents can. "He will bare a new scar, that much the doctor's are certain of. What they aren't aware of is if he'll see from his right eye again."

Blunt, to the point. As Heimdall always does. Hela flinches anyway. Blindness? She almost blinded her brother? Did she?

"He's at home right now. Loki's looking after him." Frigga says, still tight—angry—and her expression portrays her exhaustion. "When we get home, we are having a family discussion—for real this time."

Hela pauses, and then, in an effort to determine her standing and lighten the mood asks: "Am I grounded?"

Odin huffs, walking past her towards the car door. "You'll be lucky if we let you out of the house before you're fifty."

Fair enough.

000o000

Frigga gives her fifteen minutes to refresh herself, change her clothing, and dump the bag onto her bed before Hela's dragged into the living room. A package of granola bars and an apple are thrust towards her and she fumbles to take hold of them before she sits down on the floor opposite of the couch given the coffee table.

Her parents have pulled in chairs from the dining room, but Hela doesn't really want to be trapped in one. Thor is occupying the couch, but it isn't long enough for his tall frame, so it leaves him a mix between squished and stretched out in what must be painful. He's holding an ice pack to the right side of his face, concealing any bandaging.

Her stomach does something funny when she looks like him.

Something more than guilt.

She thinks apprehension might be the right word. How is she ever going to repair this? She can't knife her brother in the face and then expect him to laugh it off and they move on with their lives. That's not how it works. She's made a royal mess of everything. Good work.

Loki is sitting on the armrest of the couch, leaning against the wall as Thor rests his head on the younger's feet. It can't be comfortable, but neither of them seem to care. They were positioned like that when Hela returned with their parents and haven't moved since.

Heimdall is seated on her father's left, and Hela's privately thankful for it. He'll step in if things get nasty and act as a mediator.

Frigga clears her throat, and Hela stops her desperate splurge on the granola bars to look up. "I think it's time we talked about the new arrangement of our family. I know that this has been hard on everyone, but clearly what we've been doing hasn't been working."

Loki huffs. "Communication has never been our family's forte."

Hela chokes, offended at how true it is, and in complete agreement.

"Well, it should be." Frigga argues, "I'm tired of this. I don't want to go to my grave knowing that we drifted apart and I could have stopped it. I think it's best if we start being more open with each other—"

"Mum, please don't tell me that this is going to be group therapy." Thor groans, "Because why?"

Hela snickers, and Frigga shoots her a scowl to shut her up.

"—and what I'm proposing, Thor, is that we spend more time together. Family dinners fell apart a week after Hela returned, and I think we should try for that again. Or just something small. There's no need to make a grand gesture that will be meaningless in a month or two. Any objections?"

No one has any.

Frigga nods with her approval. "Good. Then I think we need to address the bigger problem: Hela nearly fled the country today, and your father and I had no idea what was going on until last night. Where is the trust between us? You're always all off for long hours of the day and I have no idea where any of you are half the time—"

"School." Loki says, face lifting as if that should be obvious.

"College." Thor proposes.

"Work." Hela mutters, taking an aggressive bite of a granola bar.

"And not just about the little things like that." Frigga shakes her head. "I just wanted…"

Hela shifts forward, head tilted. "Why don't you start with showing us some trust? Mother, what is going on in Asgard? The war relief effort? How much closer are we to going home? Honestly."

Frigga and Odin share a look, and Frigga chews on her lower lip visibly. Odin sighs, and shakes his head. "Nothing you need to be aware of."

She's not surprised. She'd not and that's what makes this worse. They are never willing to divulge information. This is why the problems started in the first place. Unless they deem it necessary to keep someone from dying, her parents will take their secrets to their grave. Hela sits back, resisting the urge to roll her eyes only just. "Well. There you are as to the source of your problems, you see there's this thing called—" Hela starts, but is interrupted.

"Jane and I are engaged." Thor blurts out.

Everyone stills. Hela slowly turns her head to look at her younger brother. Her face is openly showing her surprise, she knows this, but she can't seem to put a clamp on it. She has no idea how this has anything to do with the subject at hand.

Odin rises to his feet. "What?"

Thor winces, "I thought that I...it was...she...it…" he starts to fumble out.

"Thor," their mother groans, burying her head in her hands. "You are a prince of a foreign country. What about Asgard? What were you thinking? You can't marry that girl. Not now. With Laufey headed here and attempts at a peace treaty being made the last thing we need is—"

"Laufey's coming to the States?" Loki's voice is small. Thor looks just as surprised. If Odin hadn't let it slip while Hela was at the airport, she probably would have been just as shocked. As it is...

"You insolent child. We are not supposed to make permanent connections to this country!" Odin fumes, "You know that!"

"Of course I do," Thor agrees, "but I—"

"What about Sif?" Odin counters. Hela squints, trying to remember why the name is familiar. Isn't...she's the youngest sister of one of the women that used to be Hela's lady-in-waiting if she's remembering right. Maybe.

"What about Sif?"

"Is Miss Foster even aware of the political standpoint that we teeter in?" Odin counters. "How will your beloved feel knowing that you've been lying to her—"

No. He's not going to do this to her brother. Her marriage—if she'd had a man—was delayed because Odin refused to let her. She's not letting him do that again. Not to Thor and Jane, the couple that are so sweetly in love it's disgusting. Hela gets to her feet, and puts herself between the couch and her parents, wielding the almighty granola bar. "Hey, no, shut up. Back off." Hela commands, snapping her fingers. "If he loves her, why shouldn't he? Miss Foster is fully aware of the political standpoint and—" she rolls her eyes "—oh, do shut up. Family dinners, yes, good idea—now go take a few deep breaths and when you're willing to talk to us, come back."

Odin releases a deep breath of frustration and Frigga exhales stiffly.

The two wisely exits the room.

Hela huffs and turns around, suddenly self conscious as she sees how wide her siblings eyes are. Loki looks like he might drop the book he's holding with shock. Apparently arguing back with their parents isn't something the two are well practiced in. Hela is. It makes her strangely upset to think of how much they've agreed to that they didn't want to because they didn't fight for their opinion and win.

Well, fine.

Hela will happily fight future battles for them if that's what it comes to.

000o000

The following conversation isn't quite a disaster, mostly just uncomfortable. Frigga and Odin keep a better hold on their tempers and Hela doesn't need to intervene again. They eat dinner as a family that night, and Hela winces inwardly when she sees the amount of bandages wrapped around the right side of Thor's face.

When he notices her staring, he laughs and waves it off, insisting that it's not that big of a deal.

Hela disagrees. It's as close to I forgive you as she suspects she'll get, so she wisely keeps her mouth shut.

She returns back to her room and stares at the lifeless walls and the bag still sitting fully packed on the mattress. Her lips twist and she sighs before grabbing the bag and tossing it onto the floor. She collapses on the mattress and curls in on herself, breathing out slowly.

This is not the end. It is a beginning. Heimdall had told her all those weeks ago. Hela remembers scoffing and ignoring it, but she can see the wisdom in his words.

A beginning.

Not the end.

000o000

It was all fine until it suddenly wasn't, and she wasn't given a heads up by the universe that everything was going to come crashing down.

Things were looking up. Hela isn't brave enough to face the Starbucks yet, and doesn't, staying at home and trying to find something to do with the endless hours of time. She ends up taking apart safety pins and paper clips in order to make a necklace chain, and then several with many trials and errors.

She bakes, reads, attempts to draw with Thor but mostly ends up scribbling along the pages and tries not to weep at how awful she is, Loki introduces her to the mechanics behind car engines, and Hela has never been more tempted to take something apart—they have family dinners, they don't really talk, but they have them.

Her parents are fidgety, nervous, and their anxiety rubs off on her.

It must be because of Laufey's coming, but no one will give her further details.

And then it arrives. It's been eight days since she attempted to run, and her mother bursts into her room asking if she'll go to Loki's school because it's snowing and she wants someone to pick him up, but everyone's busy.

Twenty minutes later she finds herself climbing out of a taxi, asking him to stay for a few minutes, and then walking towards Loki's school to try and find him in the remaining bustle of students. The snow makes it hard to see through, but she'd recognize Loki on the spot anyway...she thinks.

She's been standing for a little over seven minutes...and still nothing. The courtyard has cleared of students save at the edges where they've pooled together as they wait for their parents. Hela's about to walk around the school to see if her younger brother came out a different entrance, but as she shifts her feet to move, the front doors open and her brother comes barreling out backwards as if pushed and stumbles onto his back, scrambling away.

What—?

A group of older teens pours out of the doors behind Loki, laughing. Judging by how impeccably they're dressed, they take obvious delight in a clean appearance. Rich kids. Sports playing, too, if one of the jackets a male is wearing is any indication.

And her brother is trying to get away from them as fast as humanly possible. Loki's not even wearing a coat and it's snowing. Idiot.

"Come now," one of the male teens taunts, his nose looks flat and his hair is plastered against his forehead. "tell me honestly what you're thinking you lying freak."

Loki stumbles, landing on one of his elbows hard, but looks up at him. "I don't think you'd like my answer if I did."

The teens expression flashes and he leans forward, grabbing Loki by the front of his plain sweater and dragging him off the ground so his back is facing her. Okay, yeah—no. She didn't want to just watch this play out, but she's not going to let these harm her sibling. Hela beings to move forward as the teen holding Loki growls, "You know what I think—?"

"No, and I don't really care to." Loki interjects.

"I think that Principle Gauntlet is biased. Just because I didn't do division right on one stupid problem doesn't mean I need a tutor. And not you." The teen spits out the word like it might burn him.

Loki is quiet for a second, and then: "Well, that's good, then, Ebony, because I'd rather solve P versus NP than do anything for your father, but I get the impression you're a little too dense to know what that is."

"You little—" the teen, Ebony apparently, starts before releasing her brother and punching him across the face. Loki staggers and would have gone tumbling down the stairs backwards had Hela not finally reached them. She grabs Loki's shoulders to keep him steady and then looks at the gathering. Loki goes rigid beneath her touch, hands raising to his nose.

Hela's free hand fists by her side, a swirl of emotion hitting her face-first.

This isn't anger.

It's fury, black and twisted.

"What the heck do you think you're doing to my brother?" Hela hisses, releasing her sibling to take a step in front of him. When none of the teenagers answer immediately, she jabs Ebony on the shoulder hard. "Well?"

Ebony tilts his head at her, smiling slightly. "In all the time I've spent with the snake, I've never heard him mention he has a sister. Who would you be? You're a little too beautiful to be associated with something as nasty as him, I think."

Hela bristles.

She's not surprised that Loki said nothing of her. Or offended. Given the mess they've been stuck in because of politics, she'd have been surprised if he had. When she was working, she never mentioned her siblings.

"You want to tell us what you're really doing here, sweetheart?" one of the others asks.

"You want to tell me what your problem is?" Hela demands in retaliation.

"H-Helena," Loki scrambles out behind her, "stop. Please. Let's go—" he rests a hand on her shoulder as if to pull her back, but Ebony sneers and snips, "You better beg, princess. This is your salvation."

Hela's eyes narrow before she storms forward and grabs the teen by the collar of his shirt and drags him up off the ground with both hands. His weight is heavy, but it only proves her point further. The teen squawks with surprise, hands coming up to grip her forearm.

"Do you want to know why he never mentioned he had a sister?" she questions. It sounds more like a threat.

"You're ugly?" the only woman in the group quips.

Hela smiles, but it feels more like baring her teeth. Her voice is dark: "Cute, really. I was in prison for murder. Well, perhaps slaughter is a better term. All because they annoyed me just a little bit. Now imagine what a predicament this causes...you, here, harming my brother…"

The teen pales visibly, and Hela quietly relishes it. "You will go back to prison."

Hela barks out a laugh. "You think I care? What's once more? Darling, I'm a mistress of death and unless you want to join those poor souls, leave my brother alone." Hela releases the teen and shoves him back towards his gathering of gits. They unfortunately keep Ebony upright, and Hela spins on her heel wrapping an arm around Loki's shoulders.

"Come on," she instructs, and Loki stumbles before regaining his footing. Hela pauses, and glances back at the group and asks, probably a little too cheerfully: "Unless you want me to beat them bloody."

Loki looks a little sick at the suggestion. "No. No thank you."

Hela's simper drops some, but she faces forward. "Shame."

Hela releases a steadying breath and then turns to Loki. They quickly exit the courtyard and Hela stuffs him into the taxi before giving the driver directions and turning to her sibling. She reaches across the space and pulls his hands away as gently as she can so she can see how bad the bruising is. It didn't hit his nose like she first thought, but his left cheekbone. His nose is still bleeding, oddly enough.

She sucks on her gums and privately wishes she had hit Ebony in the face.

"Does it hurt?" Hela questions, "You'll need to ice it when we get home."

At her voice, Loki seems to snap out of whatever trace he'd been in. His wet green eyes lift towards her, and, in their native tongue he croaks. "It wasn't murder." Hela stills, staring at him with wide eyes. "It wasn't. I researched it. At the time you were in New York, the Spanish gang the police claimed you killed had completely different territory. Someone must have rigged the investigation, but it wasn't murder. It was self defense. Against Laufey's assassins, as you said."

Her breath has frozen in her chest. It feels impossible to exhale properly. "You…you believe me?"

Loki nods sluggishly. "Thor does to, but he won't admit it." He mumbles, in English. "After you left, we...discussed it."

Hela swallows, something twisting in her stomach that she doesn't understand. She shakes it off, determining to think about it later. Loki's well being needs to take priority. "Where does it hurt the most?" she asks, and helps him into a sitting position. Loki winces, left hand going towards his stomach.

"Here." Loki whispers.

Hela's teeth set. "The punch wasn't the first physical damage inflicted, was it?"

Loki shakes his head slowly. "No. Don't tell Thor, please. The principle of my school hates me and Thor promised me his head if he learns about another assault that got ignored. I've tried telling our parents, but Mother is so busy and...well, I didn't...mention anything to Father."

Hela laughs, but it's without mirth. "No worries. I won't mention this to our brother, I'll take his head myself." She has to close her eyes and breathe for a long few seconds as she reminds herself that murdering a bunch of teenagers wouldn't be a good thing.

Loki sighs deeply, resigned. He doesn't seem nearly as upset about this as he should be, and Hela comes to a conclusion she should have reached a long time ago: This isn't the first time it's happened.

Hela remembers how sick Loki's seemed, and noticing bruising before, but not drawing two and two together. If this had been Asgard, Hela could have demanded proper punishment for the bumbling idiots. If they hadn't been trying to hide their identities, Hela still could have demanded the heads of the jerks.

As it is, all she can do is breathe deeply, curse them, and watch Loki drop his head into his hands. "I'm sorry."

"For?"

"This…" Loki gestures, "just...everything. I'm sorry. You're much different than I thought you would be."

Hela's head tips and she holds back an open scoff, "Thank you?" Loki sighs and Hela gently nudges him with her elbow. "Everything okay?"

"No," Loki admits, but looks up at her with a small smile. "But what can be done?"

A lot, but Hela doesn't say that. Instead, she inquires about school and Loki's other activities. It's the longest conversation she's ever held with him, and the distraction seems to help calm him somewhat. She learns something here: Loki uses humor like a weapon. She hasn't laughed much since before her arrest, and it feels wonderful.

And then everything dies at the sight of flashing red and blue lights.

The cars are parked in front of the house they've been staying in and deep dread settles into her stomach. She leans forward in the taxi when they've reached the middle of the street. "Stop here." She commands and pats down her pockets until she finds a wad of bills and shove sit towards his face. Hela shoves open the door and drags Loki out of the car with her.

Loki's eyes are wide and he turns to her. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Hela admits breathlessly. "Stay here."

"I can't just—"

"Stay here." Hela demands and runs for the corner. The house is perched there, standing perfectly still and normal. Mrs. Debar is talking to police officers—there's so many, oh, gosh, calm down, this isn't prison—and FBI agents are swarming the place.

Where are her parents? Thor?

Snow is still falling. It makes the light fainter than it should be. There's an ambulance. Thor's perched on the edge, wrapped in an orange shock blanket. He's talking to a police officer and crying.

Dread sinks to her toes.

No. No. No.

She comes to a stop next to the ambulance, squirming past the officer to grab Thor's shoulder. "What happened, are you okay?"

Thor looks up at her, shaking his head, mouth parted wordlessly. "Hela, they—" he chokes on his words, and sympathy stirs in her chest. Reacting on instinct rather than thought she gently rests her hand on the base of his neck and pulls him towards her. He collapses against her chest and releases an a gasping heave of tears.

"Shh," Hela soothes, running a hand through his hair. "It's okay."

Where are her parents?

The police officer, a stocky woman with a thin face sighs. "Miss, can I ask your relation to the Aesir family?"

"Daughter of Frigga and Odin," Hela grits between her teeth, "the firstborn."

The woman's brow furrows at the statement, but she nods anyway, scribbling something down on a piece of paper. Useless, Hela thinks, because given this weather it's going to get wet, soggy, and ergo: useless.

An FBI agent walks towards them and wields a badge for her to see Agent Phil Coulson written out in fine print. "Hi. I'm with the FBI, I was part of the team assigned to your case." He glances towards the police woman. "Would you mind giving us a few minutes?"

She huffs, but walks off accordingly.

Hela keeps Thor close, and stares at the agent. "Where are my parents?"

Agent Coulson's face tightens somewhat and he glances at Thor before wetting his lips. "Your Highness...my sympathies to loss. Your parents and bodyguard were murdered about an hour ago. Your neighbor called in the shots and your brother found them about twenty minutes ago."

Her heart stutters in her chest.

She blinks.

Exhales.

"What?" that doesn't sound like her voice. It doesn't seem real. None of this feels real. She stares at the agents, her vision beginning to blur. Her grip on Thor has tightened. A hand grabs at her shoulder and she recognizes Loki's fingers a moment later. (Of course he didn't stay away, she'd be a fool to expect anything more). The voice wasn't hers.

It was his.

Hela manages to gain her voice. "Our parents...are dead?"

"Yes." Agent Coulson confirms. "I'm sorry."

A different agent walks up to them and his eyes narrow as he sees her. "Coulson!" he barks, "What are you waiting around for, she's right there. Make the arrest and be done with this."

Hela blinks and Thor untangles himself to look up at the man—Ross, she registers dully. "What?" Thor's voice is thick. "What arrest? You don't…oh, gosh…"

Hela's hand lifts to her mouth as she puts two and two together. "No," she shakes her head. "I didn't kill them. I was picking up my brother from school. There's no way I could have—"

"Eye witness accounts from several neighbors say that you left the house after the gunshots." Agent Coulson admits with some reluctance. "If you weren't the shooter, you at least saw something. Can you explain what—"

"I wasn't here." Hela snaps. "I didn't see anything."

Agent Ross throws up his hands, snorting. "I told you that she'd lie about it. Arrest her for questioning and let's move on. It's bloody freezing out here!"

"You don't have enough evidence—" Loki starts, but Hela shakes her head. She doesn't want to fight this. Last time it got her a ten year sentence. Maybe...maybe they'll take her seriously if she complies this time. (She can't go back to prison.)

She lifts up her wrists for the handcuffs and takes a step forward.

Agent Coulson blows out a soft breath, but attaches the cold metal around her wrists. "Thank you for your cooperation."

He begins to list out her rights, and Hela ignores him in favor of staring at her brothers. Loki has moved to the ambulance and Thor has an arm around his shoulders.

Those are my siblings. She realizes. They are the two toddlers who ran around and drove her crazy. That's her family. (All that's left).

She's supposed to protect it.

Those are her brothers.

Then the car door is being slammed shut and she can't see them anymore. And Hela weeps.

000o000

Agent Coulson takes her to a cell, an interrogation cell, and handcuffs her to a chair. There's water on her left and the room smells odd. Almost tangy.

He asks her question after question. How was your relationship with your parents? (Not bad enough to murder them). Tell me about your previous arrest? How's your relationship with your brothers? What did you—on and on it drones.

Hela doesn't even realize it's been almost four days until Coulson accidentally lets her see the screen of his phone. Then, she panics. "My siblings—are they okay? Can I talk to them?"

Agent Coulson pauses. "I'm not certain, last I heard your siblings were staying with friends. They're fine as far as I'm aware. I'll see if I can arrange a phone call."

Her shoulders slump. "Thank you."

Agent Coulson sighs. "Don't mention it. If it's any consolation, I don't think you're guilty." Their session ends and he leaves, folder tucked under one hand.

000o000

"Comfortable?" Hela stills at the voice, Barley daring to breathe. She hasn't heard it in almost a decade, but she still recognizes it on the spot.

Laufey.

She jerks out of her doze, whipping her head around to look at the door where the tall man is standing. He's dressed in a dark suit, black hair shorn near his ears. He bares Loki's nose. Hela hadn't realized that until now, hadn't thought to look. She stares at him as he enters the room and sits on the unoccupied chair across from her. "I thought you'd be well acquainted with this type of scenery, given your history…"

"What do you want?" Hela snarls.

"To chat." Laufey answers flatly. "Express my condolences for your loss. Your parents and your gatekeeper. Mm. Pity the younger ones didn't follow."

Hela jerks, only restricted by the handcuff.

Laufey stares at it, and then her. "Tender spot?"

"Keep your grubby hands off my brother." Hela hisses, "Or I will—"

"Kill seventeen more of my men?" Laufey interrupts. Hela's breath catches. It was real. She didn't dream it. Laufey did try to assassinate her. "Dear, I'd hate to see the fallout of that. You've wasted away the golden years of your life."

"You tried to kill me!" Hela argues, "I would have been too dead to enjoy those years if I hadn't done something!" she draws in a breath. "How did you get in here? You realize that you just confessed to an attempted murder on a speaker, don't you?"

"I have friends who assure me that isn't the case. Anywhere you search there are traitors." Laufey says.

It's pointed.

The…

It...

Oh, gosh, he rigged her trial. That's where evidence of the dead Americans rose, it was from him.

She draws in deeply. "Gloating now, are we?"

"Stating the facts." Laufey corrects. "The line of succession falls to you now. Your parents made a grave mistake that killed them, I'd hate to see you do the same. This has all been fun and games, this cloak and dagger, but I am weary. I have only one request from you, dear, and it's this: Back off."

Hela blinks. "Beg pardon?"

"Asgard." Laufey seethes. "Back off. Your father refused to listen so I started a war that he now died for."

"Back off of what?" Hela demands.

"The trade routes," Laufey stares at her angrily, but there's a vague sense of surprise in his voice. "Your father cut off the Casket. We need it to survive. My people are starving and you laugh at us."

"I didn't—" Hela starts, but stops. Know. She didn't know. Odin never told her. They bathed entire cities in blood and tears, but it was quick and relatively painless. Her father was never one to drag things out.

And he had.

He took the Casket?

"You killed my parents." Hela's voice is toneless. "Why should I help you?"

"Because you don't want your brothers to follow." Laufey threatens. Her gaze flicks up to him and he gives a wide smile. "Agent Coulson said he'd call them, but he didn't return, did he?"

No. He didn't.

An expletive slips of her lips. "What have you done with them!? Where are my siblings you wretched demon?"

"Alive." Laufey promises. "Give us the Casket back and they'll be returned to you. It wasn't my intent to have the FBI blame you for the deaths, but Americans do like to be rash about things, don't they? I'll see what I can do about getting the charges dropped."

She swears again, "Laufey—!"

He rises to his feet. "Your brothers or trade routes? This is what the war has been over, Lady Death. Time to choose a side."

000o000

The next time she sees Agent Coulson Is hours later. Her anxious fidgeting has done absolutely nothing since Laufey left and she's almost to the point of either screaming her head off or weeping when she sees him. His expression is furrowed and he has a police file under one arm.

"Laufey was here." She blurts out in greeting. "He took my brothers. He confessed to trying to kill me ten years ago and assassinating my parents and—"

"I know." Agent Coulson interrupts. Hela blinks, surprised. He sits down on the chair and shakes his head at her look. "Do you think we're really that incompetent, Your Highness?"

She pauses, debating, and then says flatly: "Yes."

Agent Coulson's eyebrows flick slightly as if saying that's fair, but the rest of his body is impassive. "You were never a suspect, but we did clear your name of your previous charges. We were trying to pull you in to force Laufey's hand. My apologies for the secrecy. Your siblings were an unexpected piece of the puzzle, we hadn't thought Laufey would go after them. I'm sorry. They were staying with Tony Stark. Do you know him?"

Hela nods wordlessly.

Agent Coulson nods. "Good. We needed Laufey to approach you so we could stick a tail on him. If all goes according to plan, we'll have a location in less than two hours. Forgive me for my bluntness, but I have a hard time believing he'll let the princes go even if you give him the Casket. We already have a confession, so it will make arrest easier. We recorded the whole conversation."

She never thought she would be grateful for the American police force, but she could kiss Agent Coulson in gratitude. Hela tips her head back, slumping in the uncomfortable chair. "Thank you."

Agent Coulson moves forward, producing a pair of keys and unlocks her right wrist from the handcuff. She pulls it towards her chest, rubbing at it dully. He backs up and Hela rises to her feet, stretching her stiff muscles. "I have two requests."

"Mm?" Agent Coulson voices.

"A phone call, and—when you go to retrieve my brothers, I want to come." Before he can protest, she adds, "I was trained in covert operations, Agent. And in case it slipped your notice, I did spend a decade in your prison for seventeen deaths by my hand, and ten that were blamed on me."

The other ten were their fault.

Agent Coulson sighs, rubbing at his forehead. "Fine, but this could get ugly.

Hela smiles, but it venomous. "Oh, I'm counting on it."

000o000

Five hours, food, a nap, change of clothing, and a phone call later, Hela is anxiously standing beside the FBI, two CIA, and NYPD officers, gathered in front of a hotel room. A pistol is in her left hand. Her heart is thumping inside her chest, trying to claw its way through her ribcage and claim victory.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

She grits her teeth. She hasn't done anything like this for a decade. (This is for Loki, this is for Thor. She can do this.)

Agent Coulson pounds on the front door, yells "FBI—open up!" and then everything blurs after that. Bullets fire through the door and Hela ducks quietly grateful for the bullet proof vest she was given. They don't have those on Asgard. It's nice. Shields raise and the agents slam the door down and pour into the hotel room.

Hela follows into the firefight, hand clasped around the weapon.

She doesn't find her siblings first, instead, it's Laufey. Hela's eyes narrow, rage thrumming in her veins. She ignores the other Jotuns firing madly in the sitting room and dives at Laufey. She tackles him to the floor and throws his weapon to the side, smashing his fingers beneath one of her healed boots.

He groans, looking up at her. "You!"

"Surprised?" Hela smirks slightly, but her jaw is taut with rage. She lifts her gun up with both hands and presses it against his temple. Fear is etched into his features, but it's resigned. Let him tremble. Suffer. Bleed. He murdered half her family and took the rest.

Her finger stays on the trigger, unmoving. A little pressure and then he's dead. Her mission will be complete. She'll have saved Asgard, her siblings. The end. She didn't even need to take a plane to reach this.

She'll be a hero.

A proper one.

...But will she have saved herself? She is not a weapon. It isn't her identity. Not anymore. Not after Odin left her here, she changed. She is Hela. Not a queen or a monster. A sister. A friend. A little insane, but not a murderer. That has tainted her persona for far to long and she is not keen on proving it true.

Hela draws the weapon back and stares at him in disgust. "I hope you rot." She growls. "But I'm not Odin's executioner anymore."

000o000

She meets Thor and Loki in the living room once the Jotuns have been taken into custody a little over an hour later. They're being pestered by paramedics, but Hela waves them off without too much complaint. Beyond dehydration, a few bruises, a concussion on Thor's part and broken fingers on Loki's the two of them are outwardly fine. They look visibly shaken and are sitting close enough that their shoulders are touching with distant eyes.

Hela wraps them in a hug as she sees them holding them close. She releases them at long last and puts her hands on her hips. "What idiot decided it would be a good idea to leave the safety of a building and try to find Laufey themselves?"

Thor and Loki share a look before both of them raise their hands.

Hela rolls her eyes. "Fine, you both can take the blame. You're such idiots."

"I'd argue, but…" Loki trails, running a hand through his messy hair. He looks exhausted. Beside him, Thor is no better. They both need sleep. A lot of sleep. Probably food, too. Hela doesn't even know where to go for such. Maybe Tony won't mind if they crash with him. (Tony Stark. The Tony Stark. That's why he'd seemed familiar. He never told her his last name.)

Hela sighs and sits down in front of both of them on the not-quite coffee table. "Don't do that again. You scared me." She sighs and then shakes her head, wringing her hands somewhat, "There's something you should both know, I called Aunt Freya. I asked her to release the hold on the Jotun trade routes."

Thor's expression flickers. "We were holding them? I thought that Father released them years ago...with the advanced weaponry they received…"

"Smuggled." Hela shakes her head. "Aunt Freya said she'd take care of it, and she did. Laufey's heir, as acting regent while his father's in America, surrendered before we arrived here. Agent Coulson said that Laufey will be facing charges against the U.N. for murdering our parents. What happens after is anyone's guess. I suspect prison."

"Good." Thor grumbles, running a hand over his face and shifting closer to Loki. "He's not pleasant company."

Loki rolls his eyes. "Putting it lightly."

Hela snaps her fingers in between them. "Focus, please. The war is over, brothers. Over."

Thirty years, six months, two days, and the war between them is over. Concluded. Finished. The end. The weight of her statement hangs in the air for a long few seconds as one blue eye and two green ones stare at her. Loki manages to regain his voice first. He parts his lips and asks, hesitantly: "We can go home?"

Hela scoffs. "Of course not. We still have something else to finish here."

000o000

Jane looks beautiful in her wedding dress. Her brunette hair is swept up into one of the most complicated hairstyles Hela has ever seen, but it's mostly obscured by the veil. Thor, drama queen that he is, swoops Jane into a deep kiss when the marital vows have been proclaimed and Hela can't help the soft smile of fondness that slips up her lips as he does so.

Beside her, Natasha grimaces and Clint laughs.

Loki catches her eyes only to roll his own and mouth "it's disgusting, isn't it?"

Hela thinks it's cute, but she doesn't say so.

After hours of standing around a reception building making bored circles only be caught by reporters, well-meaning friends and relatives with bits of conversation, the building is finally empty save less than a dozen. Hela's exhausted and slightly grumpy, but buries it as best as she can as she comes up to where Loki, Thor and Jane are standing together.

Jane's rapidly munching down a large piece of cake and speaking. Hela only picks up on about half her sentence. "—hours, okay? I'm starving."

"Mm, I'm pretty sure I saw a half eaten sandwich outside, do you want that to, oh ravenous beast?" Loki asks. Jane swats at him, her face red. "Jerk. No."

Her youngest brother cackles, ducking out of the way and looks up as she arrives. "Ah, sister, you survived the throng I see."

"Barely." Hela mutters, rubbing a hand over her eyes. She looks up at her siblings and sister-in-law. "Darcy is packing up a few final items then she'll join us. The plane leaves in an hour, we should get going."

"Home?" Thor questions, taking one of Jane's hands in between his own. The eye-patch he's taken to sporting to hide his blind eye doesn't stop the obvious hope that washes over his face.

Hela smiles, resting a hand on his and Loki's shoulders. "Home."

000o000

Her eyes are dry, and it seems almost disrespectful, but she did her weeping—meager as it was—at the funeral. Hela kneels down in front of the shared grave stone, resting the flowers on top of the names with a soft sigh.

Queen Frigga, beloved daughter wife, mother, sister.

King Odin, beloved son husband, father, brother.

You should have lived forever.

She rests a hand on the cold stone, wiping some of the snow away with her pale fingers. She stares at the names for a long time, just breathing, thinking. Then, she pulls the letter she wrote several hours ago out and rests it next to the flowers. Her voice cracks when she speaks, but she still gets the words out. "Rest in peace, Papa, Amma...I forgive you."