The tesseract was gone.

Gasping, choking flame-and-blood flavoured gulps of air roaring in and out of abused lungs. Each breath was cold fire. Burning.

Purifying. World-changing.

In that moment, the sum total of what he could do, of all that he was, was simply to breathe. In, and out. It was enough.

Conscious thought returned soon after that, though he wasn't sure if he welcomed it. The chains on his arms and legs - a portable prison serving as a constant reminder of his punishment, of the coercions he laboured under - were like so much heavy, ugly jewelry; inert and inconvenient, though now neither controlling nor limiting. Not even worth fighting against, so far beneath his attention were those bonds. The vicious geas Odin had bound into the dwarven smithery had either run its course or given up its purpose. Possibly the crude seidrwork had dashed itself into shattered fragments against the ferocious cliffs of genius and insanity that made up Loki's own will, Odin's clumsy compulsions perhaps made brittle and stretched beyond bearing by the force of Loki's seidr, of the sheer power the chains had tried to hold. The latter, Loki acknowledged, seemed the more likely.

A breath. The tesseract was gone. A breath. His breath remained. Life remained. The cube completely absent.

Yet somehow that wasn't surprising. Another breath.

Of course it was gone. Because it wasn't, because he was whole, and the icy-warmth seeping into the crazed cracks and tormented crevices of his being, spreading behind the bands of his ribs, completing his very sense of self ... was as familiar as his own heartbeat. As welcome now as it had in its absence been a source of uncharacterised, unknowing mourning for the entirety of his long life.

Well, this lifetime at least.

The tesseract was gone. The innocuous-looking cube completely absorbed and absolved. Loki was whole again.

Coughing, Loki forced himself to his knees. Vaguely, peripherally, he was aware of the Asgardian contingent readying their weapons at his movement and he bit back a smile. Some things never changed, and the Asgardian 'optimism' (or at least their pig-headed stubborn insistence) that they could do something 'about' him - effect some plan or action to actually stop him - should he truly set his will to an objective (wether destruction or preservation) was one of those immutables, comfortingly familiar. He liked their determination, the Asgardian's willingness to try, to fight for their lives and selves. It was why he'd saved them the last time, though their ruthlessly flexible ethics and notoriously situational morality meant he'd never trusted them to do more than cater to their own narrow interests.

His thoughts flitted and stuttered at that point. 'Last time'? what possible 'last time' could he be thinking of? But his confusion was sluggish in the face of his certainty, though he couldn't - quite - recall the why the how that lead to such utter surety. The Asgardians had a gift for focussed self-interest even at the cost of all other parties, and an almost equal gift for dressing that self-interest as noble altruism to an extent that they fooled even themselves. He did not - could not - trust them to do otherwise.

It appeared he'd been right not to. Odin's actions had validated that decision a million times over, stark proof a millennium in the making, true bonds of blood and blood-oaths irrelevant and shattered; false ties of filiality and liege-obligation in their place. Odin All-Father. Odin One-Eye.

Odin Oathbreaker.

Yet it was all strangely remote, unreal. The rasp of armor and clink of blades seemed muted, somehow. Distant. Even the dull glow of the royal spear Gungnir as it roused in the tightening first of Odin, King of Asgard was somehow faraway. Unimportant.

The shadow thrown over him, its tenebrism a gentle blanket of shade burnishing away the harshest of the light emitting from the elegantly curved spear clenched in Odin's hand, now that? that was new. Someone sheltered him, that was very new.

Someone was shielding him. Someone was there, quiet but resolute. Someone ... Standing, guarding, a stalwart protection between him and the grizzled old Asgardian king. That? That was unheard of. Looking up was hard, his head a heavy weight on his neck that felt almost - but only almost - insurmountable. . . Loki's gaze met the broad, subtly gleaming back of a suit of red and gold armor.

His breath, so desperately fought for, so hard won, caught in his throat.

A human stood between him and the Asgardians. Stood with intent to shield, to protect. To protect him. Whether or not he needed it, whether or not he wanted it.

Humans. Always and forever a source of surprise. And that unpredictability, that novelty? That was well worth rewarding.

After all, he'd saved worlds for less, repeatedly.

Less than a day ago, the number of planets he'd rescued over the years had increased to include this one, and it seemed a pity to waste the effort - his and Mjolnir's both. Especially if it served to annoy one Asgardian king and thwart one . . . Other being. Teeth gritted, Loki focused on his knees, his hands. On forcing himself to his feet. The subtle rattle of Asgardian arms flexing into battle-ready positions told him he was succeeding, though the roils of nausea tearing through him seemed to give lie to the sentiment.

"Hello, Odin." His voice was harsh, eking out from a throat torn and abused by relentless screams, the tone sounding like the whisper-edge of a lunellum blading across taut skin. Ancient and terrible, compelling and commanding despite its quietude. The quiet hiss of lightning and the fury of insanity sparking across his teeth, flash-lighting a wicked grin as agony-cut lips shaped lurid, biting words, "My, but you look tired."

In front of him, the armored, armed ruler of one of the mightiest worlds in Ygdrasil leaned back, spear pulling into a defensive guard as around him his followers - not understanding their king's caution but compelled on some deep, atavistic level to share it nonetheless - tightened their stance in the face of this tattered, barely-standing, still shackled foe.

"Not too tired to deal with you, Silvertongue." Odin's voice was a carrying basso, determined and powerful. "Not too tired to save Asgard from any aim or plan of yours for its downfall!" Drawn and grey, the aged king seemed suddenly strong again, heartened by his own words. Once more made majestic and even imperious, Fury noted almost clinically. Dangerous. But he's always been that. And I can't help but notice he's promised to save Asgard alone, though he's picking this fight on human turf. Any fallout from this little dust up will be earth's to bear. Gaze sliding off the tableau in front of him, the one eyed tactician couldn't help but notice the reaction of the other Asgardian of note. Standing to one side, Thor looked anguished, fingers clenching around Mjolnir, though with a spasming uncertainty that filled Fury with dismay. There'll be no intervention from that quarter, he noted grimly. It was an unwelcome observation, but not an unexpected one. And what the hell happened to that tesseract?!

It was surreal, untouchable, and curiously remote. Light-limned and almost dreamlike, this discussion between his father and who - what - had been his brother. The stench of ozone pungent in the room, threading through the air and infusing it with a weighty portent. Thor focussed on his own hand where it clutched Mjolnir, knuckles white, the hammer's heavy weight a comforting pull against his wrist. Real. Solid. Realer by far than the figures in front of him, one dressed in rags, standing on shaky legs as wobbly as a newborn colt, the other gloriously armored and seated easily astride the most magnificent construct Asgard had seen since the inception of the Bifrost. Two figures conversing not as father to son, not as king to disgraced subject, but as equal to equal.

"Aiming for Asgard's downfall?!" A startled, surprised laugh escaped Loki's lips. Thor felt his own features tighten; this was not Loki pretending, this was not Loki feigning surprise. He knew the signs of that. Intimately. "Asgard!?" The trickster continued, clearly incredulous, "After all the time and effort I put into propping it up, you think I would deliberately engineer Asgard's downfall?! Oh no, Odin, I've no need to engineer anything for Asgard to fail, fall and crumble; you, your stagnant inflexibility, and your misplaced confidence in your son ... you will manage that all by yourself."

Loki laughed again, a thickly amused chuckle, though there was no joy in it and Thor felt as much as saw his father shudder at the sound. "All I need do, Odin All-Father, to devastate your home, to end your rule, to shatter your house to its very foundations is . . . absolutely nothing."

"But you will not." Half order, half declaration, the Asgardian king's statement nonetheless held a faint undercurrent of entreaty. "You cannot. It is antithecal to your very nature."

"My nature?" the trickster drawled, shoulders slouching even as one fine eyebrow arched in disbelief. "To what possible trait of 'nature' could you refer?"

"Your talent for creativity. Your drive to innovate. You will not - cannot - leave Asgard to founder. You saved its unchanging perfection before, you will do so again. You are too clever not to."

"Oh, I'm a genius, I grant you that. A creative, destructive genius with a flair for chaos - just ask Thor. Of course, absolutely nothing about this implies I am sane or safe; believe me to be so at your peril. Depend upon my 'sanity' at the cost of your own."

"And yet even now you would warn me of the threat you say you pose. Even now, your words counsel me to caution, your speech calls for actions that would serve to preserve me and by extension perfect, unchanging Asgard."

"A warning? Well, yes . . . like telling you that Thor was not yet ready for the throne was a warning, I suppose this is, too. If this time you'll heed it." Blue-green eyes in a pale face stared unblinkingly across the few meters that separated the two, all confusion lost, subsumed into certainty. "The warning is this. Get out of my way.

"Even after all you've done, even now, I'm still willing to give you what you want. I'm still willing to cheerfully let your 'perfect' Asgard stagnate and wither under your hand, Odin, to atropy into the nothing from which I once rescued it. However, while I saved your world for you, Oathbreaker, take care not to give me an incentive to save it from you."

Brows furrowing in rage (and perhaps - just perhaps - more than a hint of fear), Odin drew himself up, sitting even straighter on the towering mass of Sleipnir, a snarling reply ready to fall from his lips. Fury felt his teeth draw back into a frustrated grimace at the sight; still standing between them, Stark had made no move to stop, well, either of them. Though I don't know who I'd move against first, either. But this will end in bloodshed. Of that, the S.H.I.E.L.D. director was certain. The only question was whose. And how much.

Odin's response was lost, though, in the shattering roar that shuddered through the helecarrier, thrumming below people's feet and juddering through metal walls.

"What on earth - or off it - was that?!"