The portal opened onto gold.

The Hayes family stepped through into the great observatory, and the cold, clean air of Asgard closed around them for the first time in two months. Heimdall stood at his post, golden eyes fixed on something a great deal further away than the people in front of him.

"You have been gone a long while," he said. It was not a question, and from Heimdall it was as close to a welcome as anyone received.

"Life got busy," Arthur said simply.

"So I see." Heimdall’s golden eyes moved over the family, unhurried, and came to rest on Pietro, who was vibrating in place like a plucked string. Something flickered across the Gatekeeper’s face. "They are waiting for you outside. The prince has been impossible since dawn."

He was not exaggerating.

They had barely cleared the observatory doors when a shape dropped out of the sky and landed hard enough to rattle the rebuilt Bifrost. A red cape. A wide grin. Thor crossed the distance in three strides and pulled Arthur into an embrace that reorganized his spine.

"Far too long, my friend!" Thor rumbled, thumping Arthur’s back enthusiastically. "We thought you had forgotten us."

"Forget you? You are the loudest thing in nine realms." Arthur extracted himself before his ribs gave. "I was just busy with post-war cleanup work. And family matters that needed my undivided attention."

"There is always something with you. You must learn to rest." Thor released him and seized Eileen’s hand instead, bowing over it with theatrical gallantry. "Lady Eileen. Any woman married to this man has my eternal sympathy."

"You have no idea," Eileen said warmly, offering a regal nod of her own.

The noise drew the others. Volstagg arrived first, which surprised nobody, because Winky was carrying a large woven basket and Volstagg could smell pastry through a closed dimension. His booming laugh filled the courtyard as he dropped to one knee and accepted the offering with the solemnity of a man being knighted.

Sif offered Arthur a respectful nod, then looked down, and the fierce warrior’s face softened.

"Elena. Have you kept up your stances?"

"Every day," Elena said, lighting up. "Dad says my footwork is unpredictable now."

"High praise," Sif said, the corner of her mouth twitching in a smile. "Unpredictable wins real fights."

Thor turned back to Arthur, and the boisterous joy dimmed into something heavier. The crown prince surfacing through the friend.

"I must thank you again. For what you did." A pause. "And for what you did not do." His eyes went to the distant spires that housed the royal dungeons. "Father held the trial a month ago. Loki has been stripped of his titles and sentenced to confinement for his crimes against Midgard and Asgard."

"How is he taking it?" Arthur asked mildly.

"He is angry. Bitter." Thor’s sigh carried centuries. "But he is alive. Father examined your binding and praised the craft. Said even he would need time to unravel it. He has chosen to leave it in place."

"Good." Arthur’s voice stayed mild. "He will learn, Thor. Just give him some time in a cell."

Thor held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded, and the shadow passed off his face the way weather passes off a mountain. "Enough of that. Come! There is a grand feast prepared."

"In a moment," Arthur said.

Because Pietro had stopped vibrating.

He had gone very still, in the particular way of a young man who has just spotted exactly what he came for. He was looking at Fandral.

"You," Pietro said, pointing a finger at the dashing swordsman. "Me. Rematch."

Fandral blinked. Then he threw his head back and laughed. It was a rich, melodic laugh that brought smiles to the other Asgardians.

"Young Pietro. Still sore about our races?" The swordsman’s smile was kind, and just slightly indulgent, which was worse. "I admire the spirit. Truly. But some gaps are not closed by wanting them closed."

"Times change," Pietro said. "I will win today."

The Warriors traded glances. Volstagg chuckled into his beard. Even Sif looked faintly puzzled. The boy had lost every race before, and badly, and here he stood asking for another with his chin up. To an Asgardian it made no sense. He was a mortal. A brave one, a likeable one. But mortals did not outrun the swiftest blade in the realm.

Fandral glanced at Arthur, clearly expecting the wizard to step in and rescue the boy’s pride. Arthur stood with his hands in his pockets, looking mildly entertained. Eileen was smiling. Wanda shook her head at her twin brother and did absolutely nothing to stop him.

That alone should have told Fandral something.

"Very well." He clapped Pietro on the shoulder. "A short race, so your pride survives it. To the end of the Bifrost."

They walked to the improvised starting line. Fandral rolled his shoulders, loose and easy, the warmup of a man who had never once needed one. Pietro dropped into a crouch beside him.

Elena appointed herself starter, because of course she did.

"On your marks." Enormous ceremony. "Get set."

A beat.

"Go."

The morning broke in half.

A concussive crack shattered the air, and a shockwave of displaced wind exploded from the starting line. It hit Fandral like a thrown door, snapping his cape backward and blowing his perfectly styled blond hair completely out of place.

Fandral blinked, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden cloud of dust.

He took one single, confused step forward.

"I WIN!"

The triumphant, echoing shout came clearly from the far end of the Bifrost.

Before the Asgardian could even process this impossibility, a second crack split the air, and a silver blur shot back down the bridge, stopping dead one inch from Fandral’s nose.

Pietro stood there. Not even breathing hard. He crossed his arms and offered the swordsman a blinding, arrogant smile.

"You are a little slow off the mark today, Fandral," Pietro teased. "Did you forget to stretch?"

Fandral did not move. The charming smile was simply gone, and nothing had been chosen yet to replace it. He looked at the boy. He looked down the length of the Bifrost. He looked back at the boy.

The rest of the Asgardian warriors were equally paralyzed. Volstagg dropped a half-eaten pastry into the ground. Thor’s jaw hung slightly open. Sif’s eyes were wide with pure, unfiltered shock. They were gods. They had seen magic, monsters, and miracles. But they had never seen a mortal physically move faster than the speed of sound.

Fandral was quiet for a long moment. Then, to his great credit, he did not ask for another race. He did not say he had not been ready. He did not reach for any of the thousand small excuses a smaller man would have grabbed with both hands.

He lowered his practice sword and bowed. Deep. Formal. The bow of one warrior to another.

"I concede," he said, and the mockery was gone from his voice entirely. "You have the speed of summer lightning, Pietro Maximoff. I could not catch you on the fastest stallion in the Nine Realms. Well run, my friend. Well run."

Pietro’s chest could not have held any more pride. The crowd erupted into loud cheers. Thor rushed forward, lifting Pietro off the ground in a massive hug, shouting praises about the boy’s newfound divine gifts.

But Pietro, flushed with absolute victory, made the classic mistake of every young man who has just discovered he is special.

He got confident.

"That was too easy." He wriggled out of Thor’s grip and turned back to Fandral, eyes dancing. "Spar with me. Same as the race. You will not touch me."

Wanda groaned and buried her face in her hands. Arthur chuckled quietly.

Fandral raised an eyebrow and looked at Arthur one final time. Arthur offered a polite, noncommittal shrug, which from Arthur was practically a signed permission slip.

"As you like," Fandral said. "The training grounds, then. Grass is considerably kinder than a rainbow bridge."

—

The eager spectators settled quickly around the training grounds, and the duel began.

Pietro vanished instantly. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

He became a silver storm, zipping around the Asgardian warrior in a blinding circle. He darted in, hammered ten punches at Fandral’s ribs and jaw, and was gone again before the warrior could even blink.

The punches landed perfectly. They were fast, precise, and carried the momentum of a speeding car.

But Fandral did not fall.

The Asgardian simply crossed his arms over his face and turtled up, anchoring his heavy boots to the stone floor. The blows came in hard and they came in fast, an impossible barrage, and they rocked him and bruised him and drove him back a step at a time across the gold grass. But not one of them put him down.

"He’s holding," Elena said, frowning. "Why won’t he fall?"

"Because being hit a hundred times softly," Lady Sif helped her understand gently, "is entirely not the same as being hit once properly."

The duel wore on. Pietro circled and struck and circled and struck, growing the smallest bit frustrated as the Asgardian simply stood and took it, unbothered.

Then Fandral began to move.

Not with speed. He could not match the boy for speed and did not insult them both by trying. He used the other thing. The thing Pietro had no answer for. Three centuries of war had taught Fandral to read a fighter from the inside. He had spent the last minute not defending himself but studying. The rhythm of the attacks. The half-beat the boy took to set his feet before each strike. The single line he always ran in on.

The next time Pietro came, Fandral was not where the boy expected him to be.

He shifted, just slightly, just enough, and set one boot exactly where Pietro’s foot was about to land.

Pietro’s own speed did the rest. Three hundred miles an hour of momentum folded over a single outstretched leg, and the fastest man in Asgard tumbled across the grass in a long, undignified sprawl.

After that, it was not a contest. It was a lesson.

Every time Pietro rose and rushed, Fandral was already moving to meet him, reading the line before the boy committed to it, turning all that beautiful speed against its owner. A shoulder, to send him stumbling wide. A palm, to fold him over. The warrior never threw a single hard blow. He did not need to. He let Pietro’s velocity break against his timing, again and again, until the boy lay face-down in churned grass with Fandral’s boot resting, gently, between his shoulder blades.

"Yield," Fandral suggested kindly.

Pietro lay there, staring up at the impossibly blue Asgardian sky. His head spun. His knuckles throbbed from two minutes of punching what felt like a castle wall. He had the speed of a god, and he had just been dismantled by a man who had moved perhaps three feet in total.

Just like with Arthur on the beach back home. He was starting to sense a theme.

"I yield," he wheezed.

Fandral pulled him up the way Arthur had pulled him out of the sand the day before, and brushed the grass from his shoulder with something close to fondness.

"You are fast. Faster than anything I have ever crossed blades with, and I have crossed blades with things that should not exist." He tapped a fist against Pietro’s chest. "But speed is a horse, lad. It will carry you anywhere at a gallop. It will not tell you where to go. That part you learn the slow way. Like the rest of us."

Pietro looked at him. Looked at the vast, humbling distance between having a power and knowing how to use one.

"Again," Pietro said.

Fandral blinked. "You wish to lose again?"

"I want to lose until I stop losing." Pietro set his feet. Fists up. "Again."

For a moment the swordsman just studied him. Then he laughed, and this time there was nothing indulgent or mocking in it at all. It was the laugh of a teacher who had found a worthy student.

"With pleasure, young Pietro."

Arthur watched from the edge of the crowd, pride sitting quietly in his chest. A few seasons under the Warriors Three and the boy would be a real problem for anything foolish enough to stand in front of him.

He caught Eileen’s eye. She had already read the whole afternoon, the way she read everything, and tipped her head a fraction toward the golden palace. Go. We are fine here.

Arthur stepped back from the noise and slipped, entirely unnoticed, into the shadow of the grand archways.

He had a garden to find.