Chapter Text
"So this time around we saved reality as we know it, the entire fabric of the space-time continuum, and every possible universe that might ever exist, right?" Tony said. He was lying curled on his side at the edge of the amphitheater. Down in the bowl of it, Hela was making her new pet climb back through the hole it had made in the fabric of time and space and reality to get here in the first place. Apparently she was planning to ride it home. Thor was still trying to get in some bonding time with her, but his attention was split: Loki was still huddled in misery and laughing softly to himself in a corner, tears sliding down his face.
"I just want to make sure I'm getting the bragging rights straight," Tony added.
"Looks like it," Bruce said. "Do you feel like standing up yet?"
"Not even remotely," Tony said. "Is Steve okay?"
"He hasn't woken up yet," Bruce said. "But as far as we can tell, everything still seems to be working fine. Clint called Fury: there's a paramedic team on the way."
Tony figured that if he'd earned some fetal position time, that had to go extra for Steve. Actually, being unconscious for a while sounded great. He fumbled into his pocket and got out his phone. He put it on the ground and poked it with one finger, laboriously texted Pepper, saved everything, survived, see you soon. He closed his own eyes.
When he opened them again, the thing was gone. Hela was standing in the middle of the amphitheater, and it was her voice that had woken him up, echoing up against the stones: it wasn't the thin reedy fragile voice of the dead girl anymore. She sounded — she sounded like his mother and his father talking at the same time, in unison; his gut clenched to hear it.
"Won't you say goodbye to me?" she said softly, and apparently she was asking Loki. He was standing, but that seemed to be mostly because Thor was holding him up by the arm. He stared at her across the amphitheater, his face blank and dull, and then it twisted abruptly.
"Have you not had enough from me?" he said. "Do you want my well-wishes, also?"
"I'm still her," Hela said.
"You were never her," Loki said. "She was but a cloak you put on."
"I wasn't her before," Hela said. "But I wasn't me before, either. I'm not sorry I was born, father. Are you, really?"
Loki stood motionless without speaking, a little while longer, and then he stumbled across the gap between them and put his arms around her. She was as tall as he was, but thinner; somehow she still seemed bigger. He held onto her only for a moment, and then he jerked himself away, his face bitter, and stalked away. Tony shook his head. He was pretty sure Loki wasn't going to get over being forced to birth the cold hard savior of the multiverse. He especially wasn't going to get over loving her. The irony was — and Tony could see it now — Loki hated being played.
Hela turned to Thor, who looked torn; he was following Loki with his eyes, and his face was unhappy. Tony was with him: Loki didn't exactly have a great track record for handling bad feelings in a mature and reasonable way.
"I do bid you fare well, daughter," Thor said softly, turning to her. "Until we meet again: will we do so?"
She said, "I meet everyone, eventually. And then you don't leave."
"That's not at all a creepy way to say bye," Tony said to Bruce, who was still hanging out near him, legs dangling over the edge of the amphitheater, apparently on Tony-watching duty. "Also, uh, hey, where is Natasha? More specifically, where is my suit?"
"She took it to go meet the paramedic team and speed them up," Bruce said. "I don't want you to worry, but I think she might want one."
Tony muttered to himself. Down in the amphitheater, Hela looked at Loki's silent rigid figure one more time, and then Tony blinked a few times; he couldn't seem to focus on her, and then abruptly she just stopped being there at all. Thor went trudging over to Loki and tentatively put a hand on his shoulder, his head bowing towards him. Loki didn't seem to be answering him.
"Yeah," Bruce said. "That's not looking like the best scenario ever."
Tony waved a hand. "No, it's all right. We've got a plan for this."
Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. "We do?"
"Sure we do," Tony said. "Like I said. We take Tall, Pointy, and Miserable back to Avengers Tower, and anytime he starts brooding too much, the big green guy gets a story." Bruce's eyebrow remained skeptical; Tony shook his head at him in stern disappointment: ye of little faith. "Never give up on a good plan, Dr. Banner."
Bruce's mouth twitched. "I'll keep that in mind."
"If that doesn't work," Steve said, limping up to sink down on Tony's other side, "I guess there's always Sour Basil Tonics, or whatever those were."
"Saucy Basil Mules," Tony said. "Yes, excellent backup plan."
"Or Thor will, you know, keep him happy," Bruce said.
They all paused for a long moment of not thinking about that at all. "Now I need a Saucy Basil Mule," Tony said. "Someone please change the subject immediately."
Bruce looked back down at the amphitheater. "Speaking of good plans, what did you actually do, down there? What was that — cord?"
Tony indulged himself in a moment of intense smugness. "Let me ask you a question: what's between the square root of negative seven and seventy-three pi?"
"Nothing," Bruce said. "Did Loki use that on you, too?"
"What?" Tony said.
"It's a trick question," Bruce said. "I spent a year trying to work it out, I had to ask Thor. After he finished laughing, he told me Loki made up that question to embarrass one of their teachers. It took the man a few centuries to prove the question made no sense; it's got a few interesting false trails but — "
"Goddammit," Tony said. "You know, I think that bastard got exactly what he deserved."