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The area Jane Foster calls their kitchen is entirely different from the kitchens Thor and Loki used to sneak into to beg or filch a snack.

( (Stealing is wrong, brother, Thor used to argue, tempted and scowling to cover it, and Loki would roll his eyes and contend that it was only training, just like the tasks their armsmasters set them, and if they'd be given the food for asking how was it wrong to sneak in without disturbing anyone with requests? )

Thor returns to the breakfast table with a lighter heart. If he must leave this place tomorrow, at least he has made amends where he caused harm.

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Jane corners Erik as soon as he's sufficiently alert to embark on an argument of great passion and duration about what exactly the storm surrounding the Bifrost site was, and what the Bifrost is, and how the cosmos is arranged, and what the other scientists of Earth will accept and under what circumstances. The word evidence comes up a lot.

( Thor drinks coffee, and (with the aid of directions and some discreet experimentation with the bright blue soap) cleans the dishes, and makes more coffee, and listens with half his attention. )

Thor turns towards the glass doors, seeing out of the corner of his eye his friends falling in behind him, following his lead -- and that's when the sky over the desert opens up.

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The sky over New Mexico is clear and blue -- except in one spot north of town, where a stormy spiral of dark grey reaches down a straight finger toward the dry ground. Thor can't feel the storm under his skin the way he's always taken for granted, can't feel the changes in the atmosphere and the potential building in ions and airflow, but this isn't a normal storm anyway. This is the Bifrost opening.

( The question is why, and for whom. )

It's good to have his friends at his back again. Even if he can't stand at their side.

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Since long before Thor was born, the Destroyer has lain hidden in Asgard's treasure vault. It can be sent out at need, and has been, but mostly it remains behind its screening wall there. It's both one of the great treasures of the realm and a last protection for the rest, under normal circumstances. A great figure of hollow metal and sorcery, shaped like a man but twice as tall as an Asgardian, it has no true brain nor personality. But the magic in it will follow simple orders.

( Protect. )

One last glance at his friends -- old and new, all brave and valiant, all dear to him, some since childhood and some only in these last days of Midgardian strangeness -- and then he goes to finish this.

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No more dodging. No more delaying.

( He pauses only once, at the sight of Volstagg's shield abandoned in the dirt. )

Just...

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He's sinking gradually, comfortably into blackness. It feels like sleep, like floating in a warm bath; all the pain and noise drifts somewhere above him. Time stretches into irrelevance.

( Something tugs at his mind, from far away. )

"We must go to the Bifrost site," he tells his friends. All his friends, but mostly his old comrades, the ones who will accompany him to Asgard, the ones who know what all this means. The ones who were betrayed too. All amusement has leached out of him now, leaving only grim anger. "I would have words with my brother."

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"We must go to the Bifrost site," Thor tells his friends. All his friends, but mostly his old comrades, the ones who will accompany him to Asgard, the ones who know what all this means. The ones who were betrayed too. All amusement has leached out of him now, leaving only grim anger. "I would have words with my brother."

( He notices the approaching hum, but it's nothing dangerous and nothing Asgardian, so it hardly demands attention at the moment. )

Thor strides into the maelstrom of wind. The Bifrost catches him up on its rushing path, and he flies, Sif and the Warriors Three half a heartbeat behind, between worlds and stars and towards home. Towards a reckoning.

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Heimdall is wounded as Thor has never seen him, a stricken gold-armored sprawl on his own gateroom floor. "Get him to the healing room," Thor commands his friends, striding past. Volstagg is injured too; he will go for Heimdall's sake, where he might not for his own. Grimly, he spins his hammer, building momentum he can feel thrumming to his bones. "Leave my brother to me." He throws Mjölnir forward, and himself with it, along the long crystal line of the Rainbow Bridge. Asgard gleams ahead -- too far. Foreboding darkens Thor's mind.

( Loki, he thinks as he flies, what have you done? )

Rainbow crystals blur by below Thor, but his eyes are fixed on his brother.

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Loki opens the Bifrost. Speeding along the bridge, Thor can see it locking into place, hear the hum of machinery, see the bright lance of its power spearing through the sky and into the void.

( I have to destroy Jötunheim, Loki said, but he can't possibly mean this. )

Loki meets him with his favorite acrobatic leap and a vicious downward stab of his spear, and Thor parries it with a smash of Mjölnir as he has hundreds of times in friendly fights, and this, this Thor understands.

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Thor has fought his brother thousands of times -- in training, in play, and in real temper. They're both warriors, and Thor has never claimed to be a temperate man.

( But it's never been like this, and not because Loki holds the king's spear Gungnir. )

But he can be satisfied with this, at least: he succeeded. The Bifrost's great control room is falling to pieces as it topples off the edge of the world. Knocked out of its precise alignment, the Bifrost flickers and dies away, and its machinery falls into the star-strewn void.

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The bridge shattered even more explosively than Thor thought. He realizes, as they pinwheel towards its splintered end, that both he and Loki are going to miss it -- going to miss, and below them is still the starry chasm, not even ocean.

( But Loki is, barely, within reach. )

It's a long time before either of them turns away from the abyss, and the nebula-strewn blackness where Loki should be, and isn't.