You guys.

I ran into speed bumps while completing this! Namely work. And moving.

I can't apologize enough for the wait. All I can say is that I hope it was worth it!

Also, thank you so so so much to everyone who's stuck by this fic, including my new reviewers and followers. So many hugs for you all.

IMPORTANT: I'm gonna veer from myth canon, comic canon, etc. a little in this chap. Just go with it. :)

Without further ado...

The beating of the dying helicopters' wings sounded like the roaring of thunder.

Or maybe that was just Thor's actual thunder.

Rain fell in thick sheets from the crackling sky, dumping droves of water through the ceiling, pounding down on the aircraft. Lightning cleaved whiplash arcs through the air. Ice jumped from Loki's hands and froze the rain surrounding an entire helicopter. The craft halted midair, trapped in a rigid, frosted cage of raindrops; Loki swiped his hand to the side and brought the vehicle sliding down into the dirt.

Machine gun fire. Jane held up her hand and watched the bullets liquify. She felt the heat of a single bullet ricochet off her armor. She screamed and jumped back. In the corner of her eye she saw both Thor and Loki's heads whip in her direction.

"I'm okay!" she shouted, feeling the hot phantom pressure of the bullet's impact.

"I am still in favor of the closet scenario!" shouted Loki as he blasted another craft to the ground.

"But I'm magical!" countered Jane, realizing how idiotic it sounded even as she said it.

"Gnomes are magical, but I would not choose them as a sparring partner!"

"I concur on that account, brother!" boomed Thor.

"So you're comparing me to a gnome?" cried Jane.

"A strikingly beautiful, intelligent gnome!" yelled Loki.

"You're insane!"

"Is that not the second time you've pointed that out in the past two hours?"

Two hours?

"We've been doing this for two hours?" cried Jane.

"What's the Midgardian adage..." Loki mused. "Ah- 'Time flies when you are having fun!'"

He turned his attention from the fray to wink at Jane and instantly was clipped on the side of the head by another bullet.

"I thought melting these was your specialty!" he shrieked at Jane.

"Sorry, sorry!" Jane cried. "Don't smile at me like that if you don't want a head wound!"

Thunder cracked across the New Mexican sky.

"Fair enough," Loki sighed.

Sigyn was combing Narfi's hair and singing in old Norse, low and clear and wandering:

"I saw for Balder, the bleeding god, / The son of Odin, his destiny set: / Famous and fair, in the lofty fields, / Full grown in strength, the mistletoe stood..."

The mistletoe.

Loki's heart plummeted with dread.

Black eyes looked up from sheaths of white to meet his gaze.

"My husband," the customary greeting was droled out, Sigyn's crimson lips smiling sneaky and serene.

"My lady," greeted Loki, voice tight. He strode over to Narfi and planted a kiss on the boy's newly combed head. "Run along, son. Go find your brother."

"He resembles you more with each passing day, it seems," said Sigyn, watching Narfi scamper off. "They both do."

"There is a reason you called me here."

Sigyn smoothed her gown in her lap, eyes flashing.

"The telepathy was successful, then."

"To be honest it was a bit shaky. You forget time and time again that magically, I hear signals better than you send them."

"Perhaps your telepathy is stronger," said Sigyn, standing, locking her eyes with her husband's, "but you forget time and time again that it is just one more gift I may take from you at my will."

"Modesty becomes you."

"Far more than does the garb of a wife and mother, I'll admit."

"I think we're both agreed on that..."

"Although," said Sigyn, "if I were not pressed by the Chitauri to abandon you I may have enjoyed several more centuries of marriage."

"Hark how the silvertongue's beloved sweetens her own words when she is about to request a favor!"

"'Request' was not the word I had in mind. In any event, you are in no position to refuse."

"And if I call your bluff?"

"Sorry, husband," Sigyn replied, her voice suddenly devoid of playfulness, "I've run out of bluffs for you to call."

A strange silence fell around the couple. Loki's head quickly filled it with the collective buzzing of all the decades of their marriage, the memories that were about to be swiftly and thoroughly ruined. Immortality, he'd realized early on, meant sacrificing great portions of personal history to the ceaselessly grinding mill of future centuries. The only solace was the potential for Ragnarok, The End, the great reset button. There was no way of knowing how many times it had happened in the past, how many times it would happen in the future. Sometimes after long nights of dreamless sleep, Loki felt as weak as a human being, with only a fresh new dawn to rely on and only his reacquaintance with sleep to aspire to.

He had thought Sigyn might have changed that. Apparently, he had thought wrong.

"Do you not look at our sons," Loki asked Sigyn, "and forget about every personal aspiration you've ever used to threaten me?"

Tears jumped to Sigyn's eyes without warning. She pushed her lips together.

She said quietly, "I truly wish I could."

"Gimme the situation on the ground, Jarvis."

"The 'situation' is actually partially in the air, sir."

"'Kay. Smartass time is over."

"My apologies, sir. There appears to be a sharp peak in electromagnetic activity directly above the coordinates you suggested, accompanied by severe precipitation and a significant dip below normal climate temperatures in this season and location."

"Rain and lightning. Thor. Check. What else you got?"

"At least five aircraft have gone down, one remains. I'm reading... three targets, all on foot."

"Nothing we can't handle."

A magnificent streak of lightning forked across the clouds direclty in front of the suit. He swerved, just barely avoided electrocution, saw the heart rate monitor on the inside of his helmet pick up speed.

"Right, Jarvis?"

Maria Hill tried to look Nick Fury in the eye when she spoke to him. It was a difficult task, especially during times of stress.

And oh boy, was this ever a time of stress.

Luckily for her, Fury's eye was focused intently on the monitors lining the walls of SHIELD's covert control room. They had gone dark on this mission, even darker than SHIELD's usual covert M.O. Hill wasn't totally on board with the way Fury was handling it, but far, far be it for her to raise an eyebrow...

She realized quickly that her eyebrow was raised. Dammit.

"You haven't shipped out any of the others, sir?" she asked. By 'others,' she meant 'Avengers,' - but she still felt ridiculous referring to them by their now-hyped title.

"No," said Fury, not turning to look at her, "we only have Stark on this one. Clearly Thor is down there already and I don't even wanna know why I'm having to send one of them after another one of them."

Hill felt poised to ask what positive effects Fury could've possibly foreseen coming out of leaving volatile superbeings to their own devices. She bit her tongue instead and turned to assist the agents who were taking casualty reports from the combat site. At this point, hearing about casualties was easier than figuring out how to react to Fury.

As she started walking across the room, though, she heard Fury's voice call to her, loud and unmistakeably clear:

"Maria."

She turned around, hoping her face didn't look skeptical.

It was the first time Fury had ever, ever used her first name.

She stepped closer to him. His face looked sad and tired and somehwat gray.

He dipped his head a bit before saying, "I'm going to give Stark kill on sight authorization."

Hill frowned deeply. This was... This was so unlike him...

"Sir-" she began.

"You know better than anyone else that if there was another route to take, I would be the first to take it. There's been too much damn destruction on our planet, and it all points back to one person. One... god. He could've gone back to where he came from but he didn't. It's gotta end. And Stark is going in there to end it."

Hill nodded slowly, said, "Does Stark know what he's being asked to do?"

Fury shook his head and sighed.

"He will in a few minutes."

In the moment that Sigyn pulled Loki's will and control from his body, he envisioned his children.

A scene hemorraged behind his eyelids, so vivid and so disjointed that he could not tell whether it was dream or memory:

Narfi, out of jealousy toward Váli's superior skill at archery, had snapped his older brother's bow in two overnight. Váli, older and stronger, was poised to deliver a blow to his younger brother's face. Loki felt himself standing impossibly far away from them, and the moment before Váli's fist met Narfi's eye Loki was unable to shout to his son, unable to stop him. He watched the two brothers on the verge of fighting, of tears, of enmity...

A scream from Narfi as Váli's fist found its mark.

But no...

The scream belonged to Balder.

Loki awoke from the reverie and no longer saw his children, but his brother, crumpled on the ground a small distance away.

The shaft of an arrow sprouted from Balder's bloodied chest. Baldr opened and closed his mouth, screwed his dark eyes up in incomprehensible pain. He clasped his hands gingerly around the arrow, and for an absurd moment he seemed to be praying, like a dying Midgardian in battle.

Loki barely had time to breathe before he saw the leaves sprouting from the shaft...

Mistletoe.

Loki felt something long and light in his hands. He knew what it was.

He dropped the bow and ran toward the palace; his sole option now – for himself, for his children – was to beg.

The last aircraft hit the ground with a crushing, crunching roar.

Loki dusted the last of the snowflakes from his hands. Miniscule shards of ice scraped the skin of his palms.

He looked at Thor, who, with arms crossed, somehow seemed both incredibly satisfied and incredibly disquieted.

He looked at Jane (Jane, Jane, Jane), who seemed flustered and shaky but still wore her armor quite well. Loki fought the surreal vision that was beginning to crowd out logical thinking: Jane in Asgardian finery, stealing little glances at him across the feast table, the way Thor would flirt with Sif in their youth...

Loki shook his head a bit and sent out his customary injury-detecting probes, first for Jane and then for himself. Jane had lost a tiny chunk of her hair, most likely clipped off by a whizzing bullet. Otherwise, the armor he'd magicked for her had done it's work well.

His own injuries were superficial. He felt the pinpointed ache of a couple lodged bullets, but his body's own natural healing process would propel those out nicely. If he'd ever believed in miracles, he would refer to this moment as a small one.

"What now?" said Jane. Loki noticed that Thor still could not look at her when she spoke.

"We wait to see what they shall send next," replied Loki, "and do what we can, with what we have."

"The last time I remember being in this situation, brother," said Thor sadly, "we were fighting on opposite sides."

"Thank you for pointing that out, Thor," said Loki, fighting tooth and nail to edge the sarcasm out of his voice. "Here's hoping we remain on the same side for the time being, otherwise I'm afraid the outcome will be shoddy for the both of us."

Almost unexpectedly, Thor smiled, but something caught his attention and his smile was swiftly broken by a frown. He turned his eyes toward the clouds; ironically, he looked as if he were watching for an oncoming storm.

Loki followed his brother's eyes skyward and saw... What was it...

He saw not a storm, but a small collection of white lights, a tiny pair of streaking gold jets...

And a single, luminous spot of blue.

Bahhhh.

I know this is short and I know there's a cliffhanger. Curses! But I promise, next chapter EVERYTHING is gonna come to a head.

Again, really really so much thanks to everyone sticking by this. You won't be sorry you did! :)