A/N: "That's about all the Infinity War speculation I'm willing to do" I say right before writing a post-Avengers 4 scene that speculates heavily about what happens during and after Avengers 3 and 4.

So, yeah, MORE POTENTIAL INFINITY WAR AND AVENGERS 4 SPOILERS AHEAD. Cause I just can't help myself.

The humans called it the Infinity War, the time when heroes came from near and far to fight off Thanos and his Black Order. It was an apt name, Loki supposed. It hadn't exactly been a war, but the fighting had been just as vicious. It had left places and people scarred, destroyed. Loki, Val, and Thor had all survived, but not all of their human friends had been so lucky. Years later, Thor still missed Captain Rogers, Val missed Hulk, and Loki missed Tony. The Midgardian he had once thrown out a window had quickly become his fiercest defender among the ones who remembered his invasion, and Loki had grown to like his sass and intelligence, but he'd given his life to protect teenaged Peter Parker, just as Rogers and Hulk had sacrificed themselves for the others.

The survivors remained loyal friends of Asgard. Despite Loki's involvement in saving their world, most of the human governments were still reluctant to let him stay, but the one called Black Panther gave the Asgardians a home in his Wakanda. It wasn't permanent, but while the Asgardians regained their footing and until they found a suitable planet of their own, the African kingdom was home, in exchange for shared knowledge and their ability to aid Earth's heroes when needed.

In between missions, the Guardians sometimes stayed in New Asgard. Loki and the two sisters, Gamora and Nebula, would probably never be the closest friends, but he had realized that they were taking the same steps to freedom and redemption that he was. Between that and necessity, the trio had learned to work past their shared history. Loki, usually with Val in tow and occasionally Thor, sometimes even ventured into the galaxy with them when they wanted back-up or were visiting a good commerce planet. The group was helpful in both Asgard and Earth's attempts to create interplanetary alliances.

And, in recent years, when Val and Loki weren't out and about being heroes or members of Asgardian royalty, they were at home doing something far more important.

"Incoming," Val warned. She stood in one corner of their light blue room, feeding their baby girl, Frigga, her breakfast.

Loki rolled out of bed, dropping into a crouch as he heard footsteps running down the hall towards them. He held his arms out, preparing for the morning greeting that had become a habit over the last few weeks.

The door burst open, letting in a blur of a young boy. "Hi, Father!" he greeted cheerfully, jumping into Loki's arms. Loki caught him carefully and stood, kissing his messy mop of ginger hair.

"Good morning, Bruce," he said, carrying him over to Val so she could kiss him too. Then he set him back down on his own two feet, knowing he preferred that, but he kept a protective hand resting on his head. "How's your implant?"

"I can still run," he said in wonder. "And jump."

"And it doesn't hurt?" Val checked.

"Nope!"

Val and Loki exchanged an ecstatic glance. Frigga was their biological child, born healthy and happy a few months ago, but Bruce was none of those things. He was the son of an Asgardian commoner who had died in childbirth, and his human father had been unwilling to care for a baby that was born paralyzed from the waist down and missing his left arm. Neither parent had any other family to take in the boy, so Eir had brought him to Loki.

If she had been counting on Loki empathizing with the disabled boy with a deadbeat father, she was successful. Children had never really been in Loki's life plan, but when she gently placed the sobbing boy in his arms, Loki had the irrational desire to never let go. He knew what it was like to be stared at for what you couldn't help being, what it was like to have your true identity hidden from you. Granted, being born as every child's nightmare was different than being disabled, but the similarities were there, and Loki had the chance to spare this boy from anything like what he'd gone through. When he turned to Val, she just smiled and nodded, requesting only that they name him after Hulk. Naturally, Loki agreed.

After telling Thor and Jane that they had a new nephew, they went straight to Wakanda to enlist the help of King T'Challa's tech genius sister, Shuri. In turn, she called in Tony's best friend, Rhodes, who still wore his own braces designed by Tony, and together, the duo set to work on technology that would help Bruce walk. His prosthetic arm was simple, as the technology for a lifelike, fully functional limb already existed, and simply had to be downsized to fit a child. But it had taken years for them to figure out how to take Rhodes's clunky braces and transform them into a small chip in the spine that would let him do more than lurch around awkwardly.

Finally, a few weeks ago, they did. Finally, he could run around with his cousin, playing and, one day, training like he'd always wanted.

Loki ruffled Bruce's hair. "Why don't you go find Uncle Thor? He and Sif should be awake for you to play with while your mother and I get ready."

"Ok!" Bruce chirped, racing off without saying goodbye. Loki smiled after him.

"You know," Val murmured, "as much as I despise your sister's guts, she really did do us a favor, didn't she?"

Loki wrapped his arm around her, lightly kissing her forehead and letting Frigga grab hold of his finger. "She did," he agreed.

Frigga squeaked her agreement.

A/N: I know Sif technically didn't die in Ragnarok cause they couldn't get her actress, but I wanted Thor to have a daughter and I didn't know what else to name her. I also don't know if Hulk can really die, seeing as he can spit out bullets to the head and all that, but 'twas necessary for feels purposes. (Maybe he got, like, incinerated? Hard to come back from that. Just ask Hela.)

While I'll never delete this chapter from this story, if I do write Lokyrie fic after IW and Avengers 4 come out, I will probably ignore its existence and pick up where chapter 13 ended (or something like that, since at least like half of it is probably going to be proven completely false, blatant non-canonical ship content aside, cause we all know canon's gonna push for Thorkyrie. I swear, if Loki gives Thanos the Tesseract for any reason other than protecting Thor and/or Asgard or bait so the others can swoop in and attack Thanos or something selfless like that, I'm gonna riot). Like I said there, this is in case I never write a real sequel.

Anyways, I hope you guys have enjoyed reading this as much as I loved writing it! Thanks for sticking around.