Moving On

A readied spell ground the charred pieces of Abaddon into dust, and the wind carried the dust far and wide and separate, so that no single particle of the Ultimus would come in contact with another. Loki watched for a long moment, then closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. It was over, the first and last of the Ultimi destroyed.

And it was time to move on.

He waited until a clamor of voices drew close and then a crowd of faces came into view. The Avengers stopped in the doorway, one colorful, dust-covered mass, with a limping Steve newly in tow.

Just before he disappeared, Loki make eye-contact with Thor and smiled.

"Loki, wait!" Thor called, but when he reached for his brother's shoulder, his hand closed around air. Loki was gone, and Thor swallowed past the bitter lump in his throat. He had expected things to end no differently, but he had hoped that, maybe, after everything...

It had been a foolish hope, really. Thor knew that.

"The Hell's he going?" Tony grumbled.

Thor looked at the human but did not see him. "It's over," he explained. He had seen it in Loki's eyes, something he never thought he'd see: relief.

Tony gave him a once over but did not question. He was learning. "Yeah, okay," he sighed. "So he leaves us to clean up the mess?"

Thor's lips twisted into a grimacing echo of a smile. "Did you expect otherwise?" he asked, and he was speaking only partly to Tony.

Tony sighed wearily but did not argue. "Okay, so," he said, pitching his voice to indicate that he was speaking to everyone, "Jarvis relayed a video-message to me this morning, just before the attacks. Apparently the US government saw our destroying the Ultimi as an act of war. Hence, you know, the whole attack thing. I didn't really put two and two together at first, but there you have it. Not sure where Abaddon came from, though."

Steve bristled next to him. "I wish I could say I'm surprised that they turned on us so quickly after everything, but, well." He sighed and grimaced as he shifted his weight further off his injured leg. "We should probably smooth things over before they come knocking on our door again."

"With what this time, a nuclear missile?"

"I don't think we even have a door, anymore," Pepper added.

"Oh, wait," Clint interrupted. He pulled out his smart-phone and began typing in commands, thumbs fluttering over keys. "Coulson says that's been taken care of. Not the door, the other thing. Well, the door too, actually."

"Spit it out, man."

"Did the Son of Coul grant us aid?"

"Hang on," Clint grumbled distractedly. "It actually had nothing to do with him. Apparently SHIELD got this video message earlier this morning." He pressed a few more buttons before holding out the screen. The others pressed their heads close to see.

"Hello, puny mortals!" came an all too familiar voice from an all too familiar face. The phone's screen replicated Loki's smirking visage in miniature. "It's about time for the villain's exposition, isn't it?" Loki let out an evil-sounding cackle and steepled his fingers. He was laying on the cliches pretty thick, but the Avengers suspected that was on purpose.

"Yes," he continued in his most saccharine voice. Thor recognized it from when Loki was at his most bitingly sarcastic. "By all means, send your little toys after the Avengers! Saves me the trouble of dealing with them, really, and of finishing off those abominations you call the Ultimi."

"What is he doing?" Steve whispered, but Tony shushed him.

"Really, I want to offer you my most sincerest thanks, since I'm the one who destroyed the Ultimi in the first place and the Avengers were merely doing you a favor by trying to stop me. Because, you know, I'm an evil villain who lives to destroy things. And now you're off attacking the good guys. Oops!"

Loki's eyes went comically wide, and he let out a theatrical gasp. "Now how are you going to get out of that mess?" He tsked and then smiled wickedly. "Oh well. Not my problem. Oh, by the way, all the information you collected on the Ultimi has been erased and replaced with Tony Stark's baby pictures."

"Hey!"

Pepper snickered into her hand.

"Have a nice day!"

The screen went blank, and Clint closed his phone with a click. The Avengers looked at each other in amazement.

"Coulson says that the President sends his apologies," Clint continued as he pocketed the phone, "and that any and all damage caused by the Ultimi will be repaired without cost to us. But they want our help in tracking down Loki, since he's... apparently chosen to take all the blame."

Thor smiled a soft, bittersweet smile. Loki had gone out of his way to help the Avengers, even if it had been in his own, backhanded sort of way. He would not have done even that a few months ago, and a part of Thor hoped that maybe – just maybe – this was a sign that, one day, things could be as they once were. Loki would have outright laughed if heard Thor say as much, he knew, but still Thor hoped.

The Avengers exchanged glances of varying degrees of discomfort, until each pair of eyes landed on Thor. He looked back at each face, silently pleading.

Tony broke first, rolling his eyes and blowing out a long-suffering sigh. "I think we can stand to give Loki a head-start this time. What do you guys think?"

There were a few murmurs and grunts of agreement, and Thor nodded to them in thanks.

"Well," Tony said after a long, vaguely uncomfortable pause. "Don't know about you guys, but I would love to get drunk off my face right about now."

Again came the half-hearted grumbles of agreement, and Thor grinned to himself, wondering where his brother was and what mischief he was getting into now.

It was a beautiful day in Florence, Italy. The Piazza della Signoria opened up into a clear blue sky, and the cobblestones and fountain reflected gem-like shimmers of sunlight. It was the sort of afternoon that usually had the piazza swarming with tourists, filled with their excited chatter and the click and whir of hundreds of cameras as they waited in line for the Uffizi or simply admired the Renaissance sculpture and architecture that ran along the perimeter of two sides of the plaza.

This afternoon, the plaza was conspicuously empty of tourists, since, moments before, the sculptures, after centuries of bearing all the gawking in silence, came to life, jumped from their daises and herded tourists and citizens both into the streets. Most of the sculptures were fully nude and all were fully angry, and in the distance, humans still screamed like banshees, underpinned by the steady clop of stone feet on cobbled stone.

Under the canopy of one of the piazza's restaurants and after the first of many nightmare-free nights in months, Loki sipped from a glass of blood-red wine and smiled.

The End

A/N: Thank you all for sticking with me through this bit of randomness! It has been a pleasure to read your reviews and hear your feedback, and I hope you'll keep an eye out for anything else I may write.

There is a vague, small possibility that I might, at some point in the future, continue the Abaddon universe, but the story of Abaddon and the Ultimi is over and done (unless anyone wants to borrow them for whatever reason?). Anyway. It all depends on my muse and what you guys would like to see. In the interim, I'll be working on Like Poison and you should expect another long fic from me soon! ;)