The Seventh Avenger by ElrondsScribe

this fic is strictly book-verse Tolkien (no movie canon) and strictly movie-verse Avengers (no comic canon).

I own nothing, of course, except the plot and the few OCs that crop up. All else is the property Marvel Studios and J.R.R. Tolkien.

12/12/16: I'm going to be editing and revamping this story constantly, apparently. I'm sorry, to all who have been patiently following my story from the beginning.

Be that as it may, here's Chapter 1. No significant edits here.

July 10, 1969

Taking a shortcut home after dark was a bad idea.

It was a bad idea especially if you weren't supposed to even be out at all, and gone to see a girl your mother said was too young anyway.

Seventeen-year-old Nick Fury was quickly finding that out. The alley he'd thought would let him out onto the next street turned out not to be an alley at all - it was much darker than it had looked, and did not seem to lead to the street at all. Nick couldn't shake a growing uneasiness as he went, for the alley seemed to get darker and longer as he walked.

Then he began to notice a stench - one that smelled sickeningly like something dead. As soon as he was sure of it, he stopped short, peering anxiously ahead. The air seemed to grow heavy and thick, and he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him - or worse, following him. And the smell, which had been growing almost unbearable, was beginning to turn his stomach.

He glanced over his shoulder, but to his alarm he could no longer see anything in that direction either.

None of that now, young Night-fearer. I have you right where I want you.

Nick jumped back with a scream. It was not a physical voice, not one he could hear, but something had spoken to him. Something he couldn't see.

"What the hell?" he shouted, not caring who heard his language. "Who or what are you?"

The invisible Thing laughed at him, and he froze involuntarily, his heart pounding. Who am I? I'm the new you - or I will be, once I take your body from you.

Nick tried to shout again, but his lips and tongue seemed frozen. His own breath seemed unspeakably loud.

At least I hope I get to keep your body, the Thing went on. Such warm, vibrant blood you have! It's worth the mortality, really. And I've never had a brown one before. What broad shoulders!

Nick was aware of something like an icy finger tracing his features, and something cold and foul fluttered in his face like breath. And what a fierce spirit! Such fire, such rage! Shame, really, that I'm to pluck it out. But Master was most particular about you . . .

Nick choked, for the air seemed to have gone from his lungs. His sight grew dim, and strange vague phantom-like shapes danced before his eyes. All the sounds and rhythms of Life receded to nothing, and his ears were filled with whispers he couldn't quite distinguish. He thought he saw an almost-person bending over him, nearly complete but wavering around the edges, an expression of glee on its not-real face.

Then, without warning, a brilliant blast of golden sunlight burst through the mist, so sharply that it hurt his eyes and even his brain, and a voice ringing with music and power and realness cried aloud in some language he did not know.

There came a terrible split second when Nick was aware of a searing pain in his head and around his heart, and a dizzying sensation of being balanced on the edge of a precipice from which he must fall to destruction. But then the sunlight enveloped him once again, though oddly enough it began to fade away at once, leaving an ordinary night sky sprinkled with stars.

He blinked, and gasped for breath, and found that he actually could breathe. He felt strangely clumsy, as if he was trying to wear a costume for school that did not fit him.

"Easy, lad," crooned a rich, deep, musical voice nearby. "Your spirit will re-adjust to your body if you give them a moment."

"Wh-wh-wha - hap -" Nick tried to speak, but his mouth seemed to have trouble forming words.

"What nearly happened has been averted - for the moment," said the Voice tersely. "I think for the moment it would be best to get you home, and quickly."

Nick groaned and shut his eyes. "My pop's gonna have my ass for this," he said weakly, but in truth he wanted nothing more than to get home to the familiarity even of his father's switchings.

The Voice chuckled. "He may indeed, once he sees that you are all right. There was a shooting near your friend's home."

Nick couldn't seem to find the brainpower to reply. He now felt normal enough to sit up, and in doing so got a look at his companion.

The stranger standing over him was tall (certainly taller than Nick, who was taller than most of his classmates) and slim without being bony. His plain blue jeans and cotton shirt were a little too short and a little too wide. His hair was bright yellow, and so long and thick that it tumbled down his back in braids (and what white man braided his hair?).

But his face was what was most worth looking at, for it was unlike any face Nick had ever seen. It was perhaps one of the nicest faces he'd ever seen, certainly the most attractive by far, and its expression, under its immediate concern, was both stern and joyful. The eyes were especially fascinating: they were bright blue, and seemed to shine with some internal light like stars; and yet something about them was also old, older than anything Nick could imagine, and full of memory.

There was also a soft, faint glow that seemed to come from the man in general, aside from the specific radiance of his eyes.

Nick blinked up at the man, and the first words out of his mouth were, "You're white."

The man with the star-radiant eyes and yellow braids blinked back down at him. "Er, yes," he said hesitantly.

"This isn't the white part of town," said Nick's mouth while his brain began to catch up with what was going on.

"No, I suppose it's not," said the star-eyed man.

"What're you doing down here?" asked Nick suspiciously.

The man blinked. "Well, if you must know, I was tracking a Houseless that I thought was in service to the Enemy and was up to some mischief. I followed it to this alley and found it trying to kill you and take your body, so I drove it off." He rattled this off like it was supposed to make some kind of sense.

"Huh?" was all Nick could manage.

Star-Eyes shook his head. "Never mind. Just go on home - I'm sure you know the way."

Nick eyed the tall stranger suspiciously as he turned to go, but the man merely stood and watched him. He'd made it as far as the end of the alley when the musical voice spoke again. "One more thing," it said, and Nick automatically turned to look back. "In the future, you'll want to avoid . . . dark and dangerous places, especially when you're alone. Remember that."

Nick was so unsettled by this that he didn't even ask what the hell that even meant. He just walked away as fast as he could.

The golden-headed immortal followed the boy at a discreet distance, but also closely enough to be of aid if anything else went amiss. But the youth turned eventually and went up the steps of a solid brick house without further incident, though he did turn and look around as he knocked on the door. He must have had sharper eyes than the immortal had thought, for he squinted straight at him even as the door flew open and a woman's voice called, "Nicholas Joseph Fury, you get in this house right now!"

Instantly the boy's head flew around and his shoulders hunched, and he trudged into the house as the door shut behind him. The immortal stifled a smile - the poor child was almost certainly in for a proper grown-boy-whoopin' that night.

Better that, than what had nearly happened to him. The fair-haired immortal frowned as he thought back over it. It was unusual for a Houseless, whether in service to the Enemy or not, to take an interest in a mortal beyond merely seducing him to evil deeds. It was especially unusual for a Houseless to choose one far from its usual habitat and follow him to get him alone.

And then the spirit had not initially fled when he had revealed himself - he had felt its terror, but it had stood its ground and made a last desperate attempt to kill the boy. The immortal had had to ward it off with a Word of Command. He had the impression that the spirit had been acting under orders - orders to kill or destroy. Someone had singled the boy out.

Clearly, then, this boy, this Nicholas Joseph Fury, was to have an important part in something that the Enemy or some lieutenant of his wanted to circumvent. But what was it? And why did he have the distinct impression that he had only seen the beginning of something momentous?

April 21, 2012

"Secure office," said Director Fury.

All his office windows went dark, all visual and audio feeds into the room shut down, and all devices went into stealth mode.

"Open file classed as Goldenhead," said Fury.

"File opened," said an automated voice as a large screen on the wall lit up with various aliases, images of various documents, and photographs of an apparently young and very beautiful man with long bright golden hair.

"Update information with latest data obtained from STRIKE Team: Delta's Egypt assignment," ordered Fury.

After a few seconds, the automated voice said, "File updated."

"Close file and re-encrypt," said Fury, but at that moment Agent Phil Coulson keyed himself into the office.

"Didn't I say I was in the middle of something, Coulson?" Fury asked irritably.

"You said this was to take precedence, sir," said Coulson, and he placed a tablet down on the table. "Here's the intel you wanted."

Fury looked up sharply. "Did you find him?"

"Yes, sir," said Coulson. "We've found him."

Nothing here's mine, of course. Tolkien and Marvel Studios own it all.

12/12/16: Some fairly substantial edits here.

April 21, 2012

Glorfindel let himself into his apartment and hung up his keys on the rack next to the door. He set his phone down on the counter by the sink, opened the dishwasher to retrieve a clean glass, and retrieved an open jug of distilled water from the refrigerator. He drank deeply, the cool water soothing his dry throat.

He had been running, partly because it was a beautiful day but mostly because he'd needed the exercise to loosen himself up for the day's exercise routines. Now that his profession was so demandingly physical, he had to take better and more intentional care of his body than he'd had to in a few centuries. He quite relished the challenge.

He was just about to go for a much-needed shower when his senses belatedly went on the alert. He stiffened, and looked around.

Someone uninvited was in the house - was in fact in the next room, which was the living room. A tall, completely bald black man with a patch over his left eye was sitting comfortably on the couch holding a book. "You know, I used to love fantasy novels when I was in high school," he said conversationally. "Maybe that's why I still believe in heroes."

Glorfindel could honestly say that he had not had a genuine surprise like this for a solid decade. "Should I know you?" he asked suspiciously.

"You don't?" The man with the patch finally looked up and turned his head so that he was facing Glorfindel directly. "I'm surprised. Didn't you save my ungrateful ass from, to quote you directly, 'a Houseless in service to the Enemy' near forty-three years ago?"

And then Glorfindel remembered the lean, long-limbed boy who had come within an inch of death and worse that hot summer night. "You are Nicholas Fury," he said, and cocked his head. "I didn't recognize you at first; you've changed much since then."

The Man Nicholas Fury looked gave him a searching look. "You haven't."

Glorfindel's mouth tightened. "Is there a reason you are here, Mr. Fury?" he asked sharply.

But the Man smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere," he said, and he shut the book and turned the cover toward Glorfindel. "I'm now the director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, or SHIELD."

Glorfindel tensed, and wondered briefly if now after all these years he would be exposed. "What is SHIELD?" he asked warily.

Fury tucked the (rather large) book he'd been reading under his arm and got up. As he came into the kitchen Glorfindel saw that he was also holding a folder. "SHIELD is an international extra-governmental counter-terrorism intelligence agency," he said. "Our focus is on protection - specifically, protecting the world from alter-natural threats, and from alter-natural secrets they're not ready to hear yet."

And with these words he swept the book from under his arm and laid it on the kitchen table, and its title, The Lord of the Rings: One Volume, gleamed in large gold letters.

Glorfindel stared at the book and pursed his lips, trying to hide his unease. "Secrets people aren't ready to hear?" he asked. "This work -" he pointed to the book. "- is known the world over - been translated into heaven only knows how many languages."

"It's even been made into a motion picture," said Fury. "You probably already know there's another one scheduled to come out in November."

"That's the point," said Glorfindel. "Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves are popular everywhere -"

"Isn't that convenient," rumbled Fury.

Glorfindel became silent. He couldn't afford vehement denial.

"Then, on the other hand, maybe not," Fury went on. "See, a little while back, I remembered what you said to me that night. I started doing a little research - Fellowship, Silmarilllion, Unfinished Tales, Book of Lost Tales, Peoples of Middle-Earth. Hell, I even went through online forums and fan articles. I had a theory, see, based on what you said."

Glorfindel gritted his teeth.

"Like I said, I did some digging," said Fury. "And I found this story about an Elf called Glorfindel. He came back from the dead and was sent back to Middle-Earth as an emissary of the Valar, like Gandalf was later on. Glorfindel, I hear, was an extraordinary warrior, but he was even more than that. He could send Sauron's most terrifying minions running like a bunch of dormice just by showing up."

In spite of his worries, Glorfindel found his lips curling. "I wouldn't quite say that," he hedged.

"Too humble?" asked Fury with a smirk. "Not surprised."

Caught. Red-handed.

"Is there something in particular you need?" snapped Glorfindel.

"Well, I'm here for two things," said Fury. "The first one you already took care of - admitting to, you know, that." He gestured to the large volume. "You haven't been nearly as careful as you should about trying to protect your secret."

Glorfindel gulped. "What do you mean?"

Fury opened his folder, and began drawing papers and photos from it one by one. "Taylor Alexander, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet for three years, been with the company for ten. Laurence Matthews, flute teacher in Maryland for twenty-eight years until a fatal car accident in 1971. Adam Bartlett, promising intelligence agent during the Second World War, killed in action in 1943. Jonathan Davis, professional photographer that went down with the Titanic after nearly thirty years in business. Rare photo of Samuel McCarson, famed abolitionist and post-war Reconstruction activist, killed in a riot in 1875 - you have no idea how many strings I had to pull to get that one -"

Glorfindel felt his heart come into his mouth as all his last aliases were displayed one by one.

"- and those are just the identities we have photos for," Fury went on. "We've got painted portraits of a Bernard Mandeville, a Herman John Walker, a Raymond Vandeleur, and a Charles Williamson. I won't bore you with the entire list, but you get the idea, right?"

Glorfindel's jaw was tight. "What do you want from me?"

"What do I want from you?" Fury shook his head. "No, that's not the question here. The question here is, what do you want from me? See, there aren't too many people even in the intelligence community who know about all this -" he pointed to all the photos and documents on the table. "But when it comes to secrets, two's plenty and three's a crowd. You dig what I'm getting at?"

And just like that, when he'd thought things couldn't get worse, they'd worsened. "You're not the only one who's guessed about me, have you?" asked Glorfindel.

"I'm willing to bet I'm not," said Fury. "So here's the deal: I can make you disappear from every record about you that exists - SHIELD's good like that. Nobody'll ever find you - or any others of your kind, I might add -" Glorfindel let out a small groan. "- the way I did."

"Should have known I wouldn't be the only one," sighed the Elf, rubbing his neck again. "What's the catch? And don't play coy with me, I know there's a catch."

"Not a catch, per se," said Fury, his single visible eye gleaming in amusement. "Just a favor I'd like to ask, which you're actually free to turn down if you really want to. I do owe you that."

"What's the favor?" asked Glorfindel.

Without a word, the Man laid down the folder and turned it toward Glorfindel, who raised his eyebrows at the title, printed in large black letters under a logo designed like an eagle. "The Avengers Initiative?"

"Call me an idealist," Fury's expression was enigmatic. "Earth's mightiest heroes, coming together to fight the battles we couldn't."

Glorfindel opened the folder, and his jaw fell. "These are your other candidates?"

Fury's smile was shark-like. "You got an idea, now, what I'm asking you for?"

A slow grin spread across the Elf's face. He looked back up at Fury. "If I agree to this, may I ask a small favor of you?"

April 21, 2012

A bright yellow sun with eight rays set inside a larger circle of deep forest green glowed on Fury's office wall.

"So he actually wants to use the original Golden Flower device?" asked Agent Maria Hill, gazing at the icon.

"He said he was ready to 'step out of the shadows'," said Fury. "Thought it was 'time for the age of marvels to begin.'" His tone turned mocking at the last words.

Hill was not fooled. "You're enjoying everything about this, aren't you?" she asked, arching her eyebrows at her superior.

Fury's single eye glinted. "Maybe. Get the thing put on a suit of armor."

Hill took a look at the numbers underneath the image. "A suit of armor for a seven-foot-two creature out of an adventure novel. Should I put in an order a sword?"

"What else would he use?" snorted her superior.

She shook her head. "You know the Council wouldn't be happy to hear you're still working on Phase One."

Fury fixed his eye on Hill. "Sure they wouldn't, if they knew jack about it."

[From the classified personal file of Director Nicholas J. Fury]

May 1: Destruction of Project PEGASUS; arrival of hostile Asgardian force identified as Loki; brainwashing of unknown number of PEGASUS participants including Agent Barton and Dr. Erik Selvig.

May 2: Reactivation of Phase One: Avengers Initiative - call in and brief the following candidates: Captain Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Dr. Bruce Banner, and Laurëfindel/Glorfindel (alias Taylor Alexander).

"This is out of line, Director," said Councilman Malick sternly. "You're dealing with forces you can't hope to control."

"You ever been in a war, Councilman?" snapped Director Fury, gazing up at the group of screens in front of him in a virtual conference room. Each of the screens displayed a real-time image of a member of the World Security Council. "In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?"

"You saying that this Asgard declared war on our planet?" demanded the American Councilman.

"Not Asgard, Loki," corrected Fury.

"He can't be working alone," interjected Councilwoman Hawley, a representative from the United Kingdom. She was writing busily on a notepad. "What about the other one, his brother?"

"Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile," said Fury. "But he's worlds away. We can't depend on him for help. It's up to us."

"Which is why you should be focusing on Phase Two," said Councilman Malick. "It was designed for exactly -"

"Phase Two isn't ready," Fury cut him off. "Our enemy is. We need a response team."

"The Avengers Initiative was shut down," Councilman Malick's voice held a hint of warning.

"This isn't about the Avengers," said Fury dismissively.

"We've seen the list," said Councilman Singh, arms folded.

"We're running the world's greatest security network," Councilman Malick leaned forward. "And you're going to leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks."

Fury's frown deepened. "I'm not leaving anything to anyone," he said emphatically. "We need a response team. These people may be isolated - unbalanced, even - but I believe with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

"You believe?" asked Councilwoman Hawley, with a smile that held no warmth.

"War isn't won by sentiment, Director," added Councilman Malick.

"No," said Fury, and his voice rang with conviction. "It's won by soldiers."

Yeah, this chapter was slow. And brief. Sorry. The next ones will make up for it, though I can't guarantee they'll come very quickly.

Couple things straight off the bat - in case you couldn't tell in the first chapter, I've made Glorfindel the focus of my story, not Legolas. He's a lot older, more powerful, and in my opinion more the Avenger type than Legolas (at least canon Legolas). He will also be by far the oldest Avenger.

Also, I referenced the real 2012 schedule for the NYCB to see what a real dancer in Glorfindel's position would have been doing at this point - which on this particular day is nothing, since the winter season ended February 26 and the spring season didn't begin until May 1. [Which means that Glorfindel will get the call to come in at a really bad time . . .]

Chapter End Notes

Movie Thor, incidentally, seems to be about 1,050-1,060 years old during the events of the MCU. The way Loki says "give or take five thousand years" leads me to believe that five thousand years is about the average life expectancy for an Asgardian who is not killed in battle. This is backed up Loki apparently having been an infant when Odin "adopted" him in AD 965, and close enough to Thor in age that they grow up and play together. This puts the two of them at somewhere between 1050 and 1060 years old during the events of the MCU and apparently both old enough to be portrayed by adult actors and young enough for Thor to be snubbed on occasion as a "boy." Point being, ten thousand-year-old-or-so Glorfindel would consider just-over-thousand-year-old Thor a mere pup by immortal standards.

All rights belong to Marvel Studios and the Tolkien Estate.

Unforgivably early morning, May 3, 2012

Glorfindel always enjoyed his first week back at work after a two month "break," but at the end of each night, he was glad for the day to be over.

It was the first week back in the routine - warming up, stretching, and exercising in the morning, making the long, hectic drive to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and spending the entire day training and rehearsing and dancing. And after the equally long drive back to his apartment, he was perfectly happy to fall into bed and sleep through the night (which he rarely bothered to do). He had not slept much last night, and had been a little sluggish the subsequent day.

Which was why the buzzing of his phone at about half past three in the morning was was an even more unwelcome sound than usual. "Thought I put you on silent," he grumbled, sitting up blearily and grabbing at the offending device to see what was up.

It was an incoming call. There was no number or name on the screen - "Blocked number" was all that was displayed.

He was suddenly wide awake. He didn't get many calls from blocked numbers, and considering he'd recently had a surprise visit from the director of a quasi-intelligence agency . . .

He swiped his thumb over the "Answer" icon and put the phone to his ear. "Who is this?" he asked, not caring how rude it was.

"I trust I don't have to re-introduce myself," came the inimitable voice of Nick Fury.

"Thought as much," said Glorfindel dryly. "I assume there's only one reason you're calling me in the middle of the night. You need me to come in, don't you?"

"I'll put it this way," rumbled Fury. "There's a car waiting for you outside your complex, with one of our best agents inside. He's going to bring you to a facility where I'll be waiting in a chopper, and you and I are gonna take a ride."

Glorfindel arched his eyebrows. "On the off-chance that you are not who I believe you are or you try to take me anywhere funny, understand that I will kill you and whoever's with you with my bare hands and leave the bodies where they won't be found for the next decade." He hung up with another swipe, and stared resentfully at his phone.

Then trudged into the bathroom where he splashed his face and head with water, pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt, and wrestled his hair into two braids. He shoved his feet into his sneakers and pocketed his phone, wallet, and keys.

He slipped quietly out of his apartment, locked it behind him, and walked quietly down the hall, taking the stairs rather than the elevator. The security guards looked at him sideways when he checked himself out at the front desk, but let him out without too many questions.

He stepped outside and paused, looking up and down the curb for an unfamiliar car. Half a block away was a plain black sedan, with a man in a business suit leaning easily against it. As soon as he saw Glorfindel, he waved.

Glorfindel took a breath, quelled his misgivings, and walked up to the car. The man - presumably Fury's agent - was of average height with such a mild expression and unassuming manner that Glorfindel immediately felt uneasy.

"Please get in," said the agent, opening the passenger door of the sedan. Glorfindel swung himself inside, and was pleasantly surprised to find the seat situated well back from the dashboard to accommodate his longer legs.

The agent shut the door, passed around the front of the car, and climbed into the driver's seat. He smiled at Glorfindel and produced a laminated name tag from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. "Agent Coulson, Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division," he said.

Glorfindel dipped his head. "You must be Fury's agent," he said.

Agent Coulson's smile did not alter. "Buckle up," he said, and pushed a large button by the steering wheel. The engine turned over and all the car windows lit up with blue and white icons. A bright point of light shone briefly and rather painfully into Glorfindel's eyes, and a rather grating alarm began to blare. "Unidentified being present," said an automated voice.

"Add retinal scan under the name Glorfindel," said Agent Coulson, and to Glorfindel he added, "Sorry about that."

"Not a problem," Glorfindel lied, fastening his safety belt. Now any SHIELD fool can trace me anywhere, and I'm not that good at hacking. Damn you, Fury, this was not part of the deal. "Are you at liberty to tell me what's going on?"

Agent Coulson pointed at the glove compartment. "There's a folder in there with everything we have so far," he said, beginning to pull away from the curb. "Oh, there is one thing, though. Do you know anything about Norse mythology?"

Glorfindel, who was in the act of opening the glove compartment to retrieve the folder, looked around in some confusion. "Norse mythology? You mean the exaggerated stories the Scandinavians liked to tell about the strange race of warriors who fought off alien invaders about a thousand years ago?"

"You saying you were there?" asked Coulson with obvious interest.

"Well, not personally," said Glorfindel candidly. "I was in the Middle East at the time . . . but I did hear about it."

"Huh," said Coulson, seeming to store this little fact away for further inquiry later. "Well, is there anything you can tell us about a Loki?"

"Loki?" Glorfindel frowned. "I don't think I've heard the name from anybody I'd consider a credible source. The tales I've heard over the years say he's good at sorcery and rather mischievous, but fairly harmless as demigods go. Why?"

"He might have honored us with a visit last night," said Coulson placidly. It took a moment or two for the impact of his words to sink in.

"Loki is real?" he asked sharply.

"Real, and here," said Fury grimly. He was seated across from Glorfindel in a SHIELD helicopter, and together with Agent Coulson and an agent in the pilot's chair they were flying from a secured base just outside of New York City. Coulson had driven the sedan into a concealed garage and escorted Glorfindel into the base to meet Fury, who seemed distinctly ruffled and had refused to say anything about the situation until everybody was inside the chopper. "Introduced himself and everything; said he was 'burdened with glorious purpose' or some bullshit. Stole an important artifact and made off with it, in the process destroying one of our facilities, brainwashing a couple dozen of our best men, and killing a couple dozen others."

"Eru, it's too early for this," muttered Glorfindel, rubbing his forehead. But aloud he said, "What did Loki steal?"

"Can you tell me anything about the guy or not?" asked Fury rather irritably.

Glorfindel sighed. "No, I can't. Now you said we had about a ninety-minute ride - tell me more about what Loki stole from you. This," he lifted the folder. "doesn't mention anything about an artifact."

"That's classified," said Fury.

"Sure it is, which is why you're flying me who knows where in the wee hours of the morning instead of just arranging to meet me." The Elf leaned forward. "Do you understand that I just went back to work for the season?"

"Look, I'm sorry about the inconvenience," said Fury, sincerely enough that Glorfindel believed him. "But this is need-to-know for now, you got it?"

Glorfindel's jaw tightened. "Fury, there was a reason I left the intelligence field. I didn't join your precious Avengers Initiative to get back in the game."

"And I'm telling you now what I told you then," said Fury. "I'm not asking you to get back in the game. I'm asking if you're prepared to give us a hand while we track down Loki and the agents he swooped off with."

"Including the one who shoots a bow and arrow," Glorfindel couldn't help saying.

"His choice," said Fury with a shrug.

May 3, 2012

"You've been briefed on the situation already?" asked the redheaded, attractive, and smartly dressed Agent Romanoff as she began escorting Glorfindel across the deck. Director Fury had been whisked away on urgent matters at once, and she had taken the Elf in hand once they stepped off the helicopter onto the paved deck of some enormous vessel in the middle of the Atlantic. Glorfindel had dropped all pretenses and now walked fully clothed in his natural radiance.

He held up the folder Fury had given him on the helicopter. "I know what's in here and the little Fury would tell me," he said. "Is that Dr. Banner?" he pointed ahead.

A man with gently waving dark hair sprinkled with grey and a nervous manner seemed to be trying to stay out of everybody's way - actually to vanish into the air, in Glorfindel's opinion. He turned at the sound of his name, and caught sight of Romanoff and the tall Elf. His eyes behind the specs widened ever so slightly, and he came over to fall into step on Glorfindel's other side. "Mr., uh, Alexander?" he asked uncertainly.

"Glorfindel, please," said that individual with a smile. "My pleasure, Dr. Banner, and thanks for saving Harlem."

The Man blinked, obviously taken aback. "Uh, if that's what you wanna call it," he muttered uncomfortably, adjusting his glasses. "Natasha," he nodded at Romanoff.

"Doctor," Natasha Romanoff nodded back. "Just Glorfindel, or is there a title?"

"Oh, I haven't had a title for nearly five hundred years," said Glorfindel casually, relishing the way Banner seemed suddenly to pull up short as he realized the strangeness of having an immortal next to him.

But Romanoff was of course not so easily readable. "Course not, you've been in America, if I'm not mistaken," she said.

"You aren't," said Glorfindel. "Is this our base, by the way?"

"Until we can track down the Cube," said Romanoff. "You know, ever since Fury reported having found you and basically proved a bunch of really popular literature to be true, people have been geeking out like crazy. Be prepared for celebrity status and nerdgasms. There's our next candidate," she added, pointing.

Glorfindel stopped and took a second look at the tall broad-shouldered fair-haired man just stepping off the ramp of a small jet. "That's not who it looks like, is it?"

Agent Coulson, who seemed to be a person of some importance, was accompanying the fresh-faced celebrity from the past. "Agent Romanoff, Dr. Banner, Glorfindel," he introduced them proudly. "Captain Rogers."

(Glorfindel solidly resisted the urge to break out in song - Who's strong and brave, here to save the American way? - and from cracking age or ice-related jokes.)

"Ma'am," said the Captain politely, shaking hands with each of the three in turn. "Doctor, sir." His gaze lingered disapprovingly on the Elf's nearly waist-length hair.

"Captain," returned Glorfindel with a brilliant smile. "How nice to meet you again."

Captain Rogers blinked, obviously not remembering him and not wanting to say so.

"Good to see you again, Agent Coulson," said Glorfindel, smiling more normally as he shook the man's hand

Romanoff had shot Glorfindel a look that threatened amusement, but next moment was all business. "They need you on the bridge, they're starting the face trace," she told Coulson.

"See you there," said Rogers to Coulson, who promptly vanished.

"Quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice," said Romanoff to Rogers as they drifted toward the deck railing. "I thought Coulson in particular was gonna swoon." She smirked. "Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

Glorfindel stifled a chuckle. Coulson had hidden it well, but there had been a slightly star-struck air about him while in the Captain's presence.

"Trading cards?" Rogers was smiling.

"They're vintage," said Romanoff helpfully. "He's very proud."

Rogers turned away from the subject, and his eye fell on Dr. Banner again, who was silently trailing Glorfindel like a nervous child trails his father.

"You know, I hear you can find the Cube, Dr. Banner," he said.

"That all you've heard about me?" asked Banner skeptically.

"All I've heard that matters," said Rogers firmly.

Banner nodded, seeming to appreciate this.

Glorfindel, looking at the two men, thought suddenly that in Steve Rogers Banner must be seeing the finished project, the result he had so catastrophically failed to duplicate (not that it was his own fault, as Glorfindel well knew from the stories leaked by an anonymous disgruntled underling of one General Thaddeus 'The Thunderbolt' Ross). He felt a pang of sympathy for the physicist.

"Vita rays," he heard himself say aloud.

"Scuse me?" Steve blinked up at him.

"Sorry, I was talking to myself," said Glorfindel.

But at that moment Agent Romanoff, who had just thrown a look over her shoulder, spoke again. "Gentlemen, you may want to step inside in a moment. It's going to get a little hard to breathe."

Almost as she said it, there came a series of clankings and whirrings as people around them began hurrying in various directions and barking orders.

"Oh, this is a submarine?" asked Glorfindel in surprise. The thing didn't seem the right shape and the deck was still littered with jets and copters. He went to the edge with Steve and Banner to look.

"Really?" said Banner wryly. "They want me in a submerged pressurized metal container?"

And then the water beyond the edges of the deck began frothing and foaming, and from beneath the surface rose two great fans with blades each the size of a small cottage. At the same time Glorfindel could feel the concrete quivering under his feet now begin, not to sink, but to ascend. Cataracts of water streamed from various openings as the vessel climbed into the air.

Steve's eyes widened. "An airship?!"

"A Helicarrier," corrected Agent Romanoff. "We'll be airborne for a while."

Banner smiled. "Well, this is much worse!"

For all you Agents of SHIELD fans: sorry, no Lola this chapter! She'd have drawn way too many eyes.

Disclaimer: All rights belong to the Tolkien Estate and to Marvel Studios.

Edits as of 1/3/17.

The central command center of the Helicarrier was bustling with activity. The floor was lined with rows of computer stations, with an agent seated before each screen and a supervisor hovering here and there. More agents were hurrying in and out, and each of the two entrances was guarded by two heavily armed men in black.

On a raised round dais in the middle of the room stood Director Fury, surrounded by an array of screens and controls of his own.

"All engines operating," barked a surprisingly young woman (she couldn't have been more than thirty) on the tall side of average height with securely drawn up chestnut hair and an earpiece attached to the right side of her head. "SHIELD emergency protocol nine-one-three-point-six in effect. We're level, sir." The last words were addressed to Fury.

"Good," said the Director. "Let's vanish!"

Vanish? Glorfindel wondered.

But when the woman turned and shouted "Engage retro reflection panels!" he understood. This must be new technology for keeping out of sight.

Then Fury stepped off the dais and approached the large round table where Glorfindel was sitting with Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner (the latter still hanging around Glorfindel and obviously uncomfortable). "Gentlemen," he greeted them.

Steve got up and silently slipped Fury a ten dollar bill on his way past him. The smug smirk on Fury's face as he took it told Glorfindel that he'd won some kind of bet with the Captain.

"You good?" he then asked Glorfindel.

"I could use some coffee, but otherwise I'm fine," said the Elf. "Still waiting to try on this amazing uniform you were telling me about."

Fury turned his head. "Hill?" he called.

The woman with the earpiece who had been giving orders earlier came up to the table, and Glorfindel saw that her name tag read 'Deputy Director Maria Hill'. "Right this way," she said, and he got up followed her out of the central room. As they left he heard Fury say, "Doctor. Thank you for coming," and Bruce reply, "Thanks for asking nicely. So, uh, how long am I staying here?"

"He seems nervous," he commented.

"If he can find the Cube soon, he has nothing to worry about," said the Deputy Director.

"If all you're after is the Cube, what exactly am I doing here?" asked Glorfindel.

Hill threw him a look. "You are here because we believe you're best suited to cross Loki off if need be."

"Indeed." Glorfindel nodded. "Then why do I get the distinct impression that you're the only person I've met on this Helicarrier so far who wishes I wasn't here?"

Hill pulled up mid-stride, obviously startled. Then she resumed walking at a speed which Glorfindel knew (but she possibly did not) was just slightly faster than before. "That's not so," she said defensively.

"No?" asked Glorfindel. "My mistake. You're merely uneasy."

She threw him another look. "All of you together - the Avengers - are an unknown variable," she said. "And unknown variables are rarely advantageous." She had by this point led Glorfindel up to a glass compartment built into the wall of the level below the central room. "Here's what we've got," she added. "Try it on and see what you think."

Glorfindel gazed critically at his reflection. The chain mail he was wearing was relatively light and flexible, and the green surcoat over it bore a nearly exact replica of his old device, the eight-rayed sun.

In his hands was a longsword such as he had wielded long ago, such as he had wielded in the Battles of Beleriand, the fall of Gondolin, and the wars against Sauron. He inspected the sword, and some pattern on the blade caught his eye. He looked more closely, and saw that there were lines of Quenya and Sindarin words etched in Tengwar into the steel.

Laurefindel, Lord of the House of the Golden Flower of Ondolinde

Glorfindel, Master of Arms in the House of Imladris

There was only one maker who could have etched such perfect Tengwar in such fine lines.

"These all came from Aiglos Creations, didn't it, or is that classified?" he asked of the Deputy Director.

To her credit, Hill refused to take the bait. "Technically, yes, it's classified," she said. "But I might have accidentally broken protocol when I made the commission, and AC sends their regards."

There was just the barest hint of a smirk in her voice, and Glorfindel arched a brow. "Oh, did they say that?"

"Well, the boss's actual words were 'tell that straw-headed mutt he can tell me if he wants any adjustments made to the mail or the blade.'" Hill's tone and inflection did not change. "Same difference."

"Son of a gun! That's about what I thought," Glorfindel chuckled, thinking of how Egalmoth had so strategically capitalized on the new Lord of the Rings craze. "Well, the device looks perfect, and I can move about pretty well in the mail. And as for this -" he slung the sword into its sheath at his hip. "I'll need a bit of practice with it, but it should be all right."

"Good," said Hill. "I've got to get back to the central command room." And she turned and left.

Glorfindel unbuckled his belt and struggled out of the hauberk. He set both against the far wall, walked into the middle of the room, and went through his routine morning stretches, twice. Then he retrieved the sword, and took about an hour to re-familiarize himself with it.

"Looks like you could use someone to spar with," said a voice.

I'm getting soft in my old age, was Glorfindel's first thought, for he had entirely missed the Man's approach. Steve Rogers was leaning against the wide entrance of the exercise room, looking much more appropriately respectful.

"Looks like you could use something to do," panted the Elf, prying his loose plait from his neck (he still hadn't put in his warrior braids). "Or an excuse to escape all the prying eyes. Or both."

Steve raised his eyebrows. "They weren't kidding about how observant you are," he said, coming in. "Unless you just read my mind or something."

"I've been around you humans for about sixteen thousand years," said Glorfindel, still catching his breath. "I don't have to read your mind to make a good guess as to what's probably going through it."

Annoyance with himself (probably at having ignored something so obvious) flickered in Rogers' eyes. "Makes sense. So this is your uniform?" He gestured generally to Glorfindel's outfit as he began unbuttoning his plaid shirt.

Glorfindel nodded as he put his sword back into its sheath and leaned it against the wall again. "For now, at any rate." He came back to the middle of the room to meet Steve. "Now come, I want to see for myself how strong you are."

Steve proved much stronger and faster than Glorfindel had expected - in fact was actually stronger than Glorfindel himself, though not quite as fast. The Elf's great height also proved to be something of a disadvantage at such close quarters, for he was always having to stoop somewhat to reach Steve. The Man figured this out very quickly, and got into the habit of throwing his weight to try (often successfully) to pin Glorfindel to the floor or his arms to his sides or his legs under him.

"Ai!" cried an exasperated Glorfindel at length, going limp in Steve's grasp. "All right, I've had enough."

"Already?" Steve mocked, but the effect was rather spoiled by the his sweat-soaked hair and undershirt, not to mention his puffing like a steam engine.

"Let me up, you smug bastard," groaned the Elf, his pride smarting from having been essentially tackled repeatedly by a mortal Man. "Eru, this is embarrassing."

Steve looked like he was on the verge of a smart retort, but as he moved to get up he grimaced in pain. "Ow, damn it!" he hissed. "Knew I shoulda stretched." He pulled himself to his feet, grabbed Glorfindel by the hand, and hauled him up. "Good deal?" he asked, heartily clapping Glorfindel's shoulder.

"Sure, sure," huffed Glorfindel, resisting the urge to reach back and rub his shoulder. I can't believe a Mortal just beat the living daylights out of me.

Well at least I beat the daylights out of him too.

And of course Steve would choose that moment to ask, "So when exactly did I meet you before?"

"At a screening of Captain America and the Siege of Anhalt-Cothen, back in 1943 when you were touring," he admitted. "I'd be surprised if you remembered me, you met about three hundred other people at that screening."

"I don't," Steve looked apologetic, then suddenly squinted. "Wait a minute! Yes I do. Weren't you holding a colored kid with a comic book he wanted me to sign?"

"Yes, that was me," said Glorfindel. "And sixty-nine years have passed since then. You can't say 'colored' anymore."

"Oh, right. Sorry," said Steve reaching for his shirt and pulling it on. "Still, you know, you're kinda hard to miss, what with all that hair and glowin' like a lamp and whatnot."

"The glow is optional," said Glorfindel, choosing to ignore the jibe about his hair for the moment. "Without it I can blend in pretty well when I want to." He didn't add that the ability to tamper with people's perception also helped.

"Must be nice," Steve raised his eyebrows. "So why'd Fury bring you in?"

Really not much for small talk, this one. "Because I once had a run-in with him a number of years ago, and this is his way of thanking me, I suppose."

"In that case, what made you come out of hiding?"

Glorfindel did not bother to say he hadn't really been 'hiding' because he had, after a fashion. "He had intel on me - and a few friends of mine - that I didn't want getting out."

Steve blinked. "How many of you people are there?!" he asked in amazement.

I suspect I'm going to get very tired of that question. "Hundreds of thousands, probably a few million," he said. "Barely a thousandth of the human population of course - which, considering your lifespan and frailty is quite impressive - but there are quite a few of us."

"I'm not even gonna try and figure out if that's a compliment," said Steve. "So I basically could've passed any one of you - uh, what do you call yourselves?"

Glorfindel shrugged. "The most accurate politically correct term is probably 'elf,' but most people think of elves as -" his voice leapt into the soprano register. "- tiny, delicate pixies with donkey ears -" he resumed his normal voice again. "- and I don't appreciate it, so why don't you say 'Quendi' instead?"

"Kwen-dee?" Steve tried out the word. "Is that - nah, that's not English. Anyway, I'm assuming you Kwen-dee could really be anywhere and nobody'd know, is what I'm saying."

Glorfindel folded his arms. "Why, are you looking for them?"

Steve spread his hands. "C'mon, give me some credit! I just found out today that elves actually exist, and that they can kick ass too." He subconsciously rubbed his back. "Maybe I wanna meet more of you, is that not a compliment or something?"

Glorfindel frowned. "Well, maybe it is, and maybe we just want to be left alone! Obviously this hasn't occurred to you, but when you're immortal and everyone around you is mortal, they usually start to get suspicious and resentful when you don't fall ill or age like them!" His voice was rising. "You know we used to be sacrificed to fertility gods, or cut into pieces and sold for good luck, or hanged and burned for witchcraft, or, or -"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, sorry!" Steve raised his hands, looking startled, and the Elf became silent, drawing breath sharply.

"Okay," said Steve. "I really wasn't trying to trigger anything, and I'm really sorry for what you and anyone like you has had to go through -"

Glorfindel resisted the urge to leap on the Captain and strangle him. "I don't want your self-righteous pity!" he all but snarled.

"I understand that," said Steve. "and I'm really not trying to come off that way -"

"Then why don't you keep your nose in your own business where it belongs, you orc-lover?" Glorfindel shot back, and he turned away and picked up the staff.

". . . Okay, I have no idea what you just said!" protested Steve.

Did I speak Sindarin? I must have spoken Sindarin. "Then I won't hurt your feelings by repeating it," he threw over his shoulder as he stalked off in the direction of his locker.

"Okay then!" he heard Steve mutter as he left.

When he reached the locker he changed back into his clothes and put the uniform and armor back where they had been previously kept. He stared at it for a moment, lost in old memories of days he had lately tried very hard to bury.

None of that was Steve Rogers' fault, nor Fury's, nor SHIELD's either.

But I still don't trust any of them yet. Not really.

He thought of Banner, hunted like a beast to the far corners of the earth, for a condition practically inflicted on him that he could barely control. He must be even more uncomfortable than I am.

Reluctantly he made his way back up to the central command chamber (which was now much quieter) and sat down at the table. He laid the folder he'd been given on the table and opened it, reading once morr over all the other official Avengers' files.

The only Avenger he had not yet met was Anthony "Tony" Stark, or Iron Man, whose cocky smile (among other parts of his body) was all over national and international television, not to mention social media.

This time he heard the quiet footsteps approaching, though he did not look up till the woman Romanoff was across the table from him and about to sit down. Her face was impassive - even her eyes revealed nothing - but he knew perfectly well she meant business. She looked directly at him and asked, "Is it true Elves can read minds?"

No small talk for you either, I see. "In some cases," he answered carefully, shutting the folder.

This was no answer, of course, and Romanoff was having none of it. "Loki brainwashed two of our best, one of which was my partner, Agent Barton. If we find him, can you get his mind back?"

Glorfindel did not hesitate. "I am nearly certain that I can. But I don't yet know what Loki's magic is like, or how powerful it is." He looked closely at Romanoff. "This looks like more than an agent's concern for a fellow agent, if I'm not mistaken."

She stiffened slightly, and her guard slipped just a little. Where's my daddy? came the echoes of the voices of two children, and a dark-haired woman stared anxiously through Romanoff's eyes.

Glorfindel opened his mouth, but just at that moment an agent sitting in front of one of the many screens (Sitwell, by his name tag) called out, "We got a hit! Sixty-nine percent match. Wait - cross-match seventy-seven percent."

"Location?" asked Agent Coulson from where he stood next to Steve.

"Stuttgart, Germany, 28 Koningstrasse," said Sitwell. "He's not exactly hiding," he added dryly.

"Cap, Glorfindel," said Fury. "You're up."

"You've found the Cube?" asked Glorfindel standing up.

"We've found Loki," said Agent Coulson. "That's a start."

"Guess we better suit up," said Steve, and disappeared in the direction of the lockers where the uniforms were kept.

Romanoff's hand clamped down on Glorfindel's arm. He looked down in surprise to find her glaring fiercely up into his face. "Not a word," she hissed.

"Understood," he said, and she let go and walked away.

He was halfway down to the lockers before he realized neither of them had spoken aloud. She had implicitly allowed him to read her mind.

Chapter End Notes

Obviously I know about nothing about real swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat. And I can't quite make out from the descriptions I've read exactly what was the color scheme of Glorfindel's Gondolin armor. The fight with the Balrog as recorded in BoLT seems to indicate that Glorfindel did not have a shield, so I've made the sword a two-handed longsword.

All rights belong to the Tolkien Estate and to Marvel Studios.

The Quinjet (because apparently SHIELD can't possibly name their aircrafts simply) was quite compact for a jet, seating no more than perhaps two dozen passengers aside from the pilots. From the outside it had looked almost triangular in shape.

Glorfindel sat across from Captain Rogers, both now in uniform. Glorfindel's sword lay in its sheath across his lap, and the Captain's famed shield was resting on his knees (how Glorfindel would have loved to test its weight and see if Vibranium was really all it was made out to be!). In the cockpit was Agent Romanoff, and another agent in the co-pilot's chair.

Glorfindel was primly finishing his warrior braids, while Steve looked on with raised eyebrows.

"Those mean something?" he asked.

"They certainly do," said Glorfindel emphatically.

"Can I ask what it is?" Steve pressed.

Glorfindel put the last of the fastenings he'd requested on the end of the last plait before answering. "That shield lying against your knees," he said, pointing. "Is it not more than a means of defence, more even than a deadly weapon? Is it not a symbol, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of its bearer? Was it not bought with deeds of valor? Is it not Captain America's shield?"

Steve's eyes had gone very wide. He was staring from the shield to Glorfindel's face in disbelief. "It's like that?"

"It is that and more," said Glorfindel, looking the Captain straight in the face.

Steve sat back and shook his head. "Looks like I got a lot to learn," he said.

"It was a fair question," Glorfindel acknowledged. "And I know it's hard for you to approve of hair this long unless it's on a woman."

Steve grimaced. "Has it been that obvious?"

Glorfindel smiled.

And then Agent Romanoff turned her head and pulled off her headphones. "Guys," she said. "Game time. You might wanna take a look at this."

Glorfindel and Steve both left their seats and stepped up behind the pilots' chairs to look out of the windows. On the ground below, a large crowd of formally dressed people were running out of a concert hall as fast as they could. Behind them stalked a lone figure who could only be Loki. Glorfindel could see that the figure was in in gold-plated armor and a high gold-plated helmet with two large curved horns. A dark green cloak billowed from his shoulders, and in his hand was a queerly shaped golden polearm that most resembled a spear. A blue gem gleamed in a fixture near the point of the spear.

"That's an odd sort of spear," Glorfindel said aloud. "Does it double as some kind of magical staff?"

Romanoff twisted her head round to look up at him with honest surprise. "They really weren't kidding about Elf eyesight," she said.

Just then Loki thumped his staff on the ground, and suddenly four Lokis were blocking the civilians' way, hemming them into a tight square. Then, slowly, they all sank to their knees.

Glorfindel gave an involuntary gasp of alarm. People in the modern age did not kneel before anyone but obvious royalty. Whoever Loki was in reality, he did not seem to playing at any harmless mischief.

"C'mon!" said Steve, who could at least make out that a crowd of civilians was on their knees before Loki. "We gotta go!"

They both turned and rushed into the hold of the Quinjet, Glorfindel reaching aside to press the large button that opened the hangar door. Steve strapped on his blue helmet and picked up the shield, while Glorfindel strapped on his sword-belt and grabbed a parachute, and joined him in front of the open ramp.

"Have we got a play?" shouted Glorfindel over the wind.

"Capture, not kill, that's about it," Steve shouted back. "You wouldn't happen to have a pair of wings handy?"

"I'm an Elf, not a fairy!" huffed Glorfindel, and he marched down the raft and launched himself into the night.

"Geez Louise, do all Elves get offended this easily?" muttered Steve as he jumped after Glorfindel.

"Heard that!" came the distant cry.

They were nearly too late to stop an elderly man who had dared defy Loki from getting murdered in cold blood. Steve landed on his feet, shield at the ready, just as Loki (for of course it was he) lowered the point of his spear. The blue burst of energy meant for the old man bounced harmlessly off the Vibranium.

Showoff.

Glorfindel, who had released the parachute very late and landed just after Steve behind the green-cloaked Asgardian, leaped to his feet and tossed the pack aside. He sent forth a surge of power that dissolved all the false Loki images and sent the true Loki crashing to the ground in a blast of white light. The civilians began scrambling away as fast as they could as Glorfindel advanced on the demigod, sword at the ready, and looked to Steve for direction.

Steve smirked at him. "Neat trick," he said.

Loki climbed slowly to his feet, gazing at the towering, glorious figure of the Elf. "What are you?!" he asked in amazement. "You are no mortal!"

"No Mortal am I," said Glorfindel scornfully, the music of his voice still thrumming with power. "but one who has waited long to gaze upon one of your kind. And now that I behold you, I am disappointed. I had thought you greater than this."

Steve's smirk widened into a smile as he looked up at the sky. "Think we got company," he drawled.

The Quinjet had just sailed into view, and a large machine gun unfolded from the front corner and pointed itself at the Asgardian. "Loki," came the smooth-yet-icy voice of Agent Romanoff from the jet's loudspeaker. "Drop the weapon and stand down."

Loki glanced up, and in an instant raised the spear and pointed it toward the Quinjet. It just dodged the blue blast as the pilots steered it in a circle.

Steve and Glorfindel both plunged toward Loki, who turned to the Captain first. He sent the shield flying with a blow of his spear, but in the next instant Glorfindel was on him, sword in hand. Fifteen years of dancing had left his body supple as a willow, strong as an ox, and swifter than thought. He dealt Loki a blow knocked him sideways on one knee; Steve leapt into the air to deliver a powerful kick.

Loki was stronger than both Steve and Glorfindel, but the Elf was faster and the Man never gave up. Even so it might have gone badly for the two heroes, for Loki tried to distract them with false copies of himself, and Glorfindel had to form a bubble of energy around Loki to contain his magic. That dizzied him for a moment and Loki might have had him, but Steve tackled the Asgardian for all he was worth and tossed him onto the steps of the concert hall.

And then a noise like another distant aircraft caught Glorfindel's ear, and he looked up. The source of the noise was drawing steadily nearer, and as Glorfindel got a better idea of what exactly it was he shot Steve a look of quizzical amusement.

The Man shrugged. "Whaddya know, it's a party!" he said.

And then Glorfindel got to witness in reality what he had heretofore seen only on television or on the screen of his phone. The red-and-gold form of the one and only Iron Man came shooting down through the air toward them and sent a blast of energy at Loki, who was just leaping up again. Then Iron Man landed on one foot and the other knee on the pavement, his hand open to fire another blast and numerous little guns standing from his shoulder and arm.

"Make your move, Reindeer Games," came the famous voice from behind the dour gold mask.

Reindeer Games?

Loki glanced between his three adversaries, raised his hands, and with a shimmer of magic dissolved his armor and helmet.

"Good move," said Iron Man approvingly, and he lowered his hand and folded down the projectiles. Glorfindel released Loki from the confines of the energy sphere.

"Mr. Stark," said Steve deferentially.

"Cap'n, Alexander," said Iron Man just as deferentially.

Glorfindel gave a sharp nod as the Quinjet descended again.

"So you can do magic?"

Glorfindel did not attempt to hide his amusement. Tony Stark, once he'd helped them load their prisoner onto the Quinjet (per Fury's orders) and pulled off his grim-looking helmet, had been eagerly peppering the Elf with questions of the "are all Elves this insanely hot" kind. Glorfindel, for his part, found it interesting to see another side to the famous billionaire other than the partying playboy of YouTube infamy or the irreverent windbag of public television. At the moment he reminded Glorfindel of a child presented with a new toy.

(He had to admit a reluctant respect for the man. Any man could harden himself enough to be an effective warrior or spy, but owning up to the terrible sides of one's own power and turning it to unselfish ends? Glorfindel could think of a few Elven-kings who stood to learn from that, even now.)

"Depends on how you define 'magic'," he said. "If you mean can I talk to the dead, then no."

"Telekinesis, then? Bolts of lightning coming out of your fingertips?"

Steve made a huff of irritation, causing Stark to turn to him. "What's up, Gramps?"

"Maybe he doesn't wanna be quizzed," said Steve, who had also removed his helmet.

"I don't mind being quizzed on the trivial things," said Glorfindel, his tone mild but his look to the Captain laden with meaning.

Steve looked away, and his eye fell upon Loki, who sat bolted securely into a seat near the middle of the jet with the air of a visiting dignitary rather than a prisoner. His face darkened considerably.

"Don't you like it either?" asked Glorfindel, divining the source of his discomfort. Fury had ordered them to bring Loki to the Helicarrier as soon as possible. Loki had come aboard the Quinjet without a word, and had submitted to being fastened into a seat without the least fuss. It had made Glorfindel uneasy, and it would seem that nearly everyone else on the Quinjet felt the same way.

Steve snorted. "I'm pretty sure anybody could tell something's up."

"What, the Rock of Ages rolling over and playing dead like a puppy?" Stark jerked his head in the Asgardian's direction.

"I don't recall it ever being that easy," said Steve. "This guy packs a wallop."

Stark shrugged. "Still, you know, you are pretty spry, for an older fella, without the whole immortality thing going for you." He turned all his attention on Steve now. "What's your thing, Pilates?"

Steve turned a look of annoyance on the famous man.

"It's a form of exercise, it's like calisthenics," Glorfindel clarified.

"Yeah, forgot you might've missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle," said Stark casually.

Glorfindel began to be glad he had refrained from both the age and ice jokes. Steve Rogers had an ego, much as he might deny it, and it remained to be seen if it was anywhere near as enormous as Tony Stark's. This will be very interesting.

"Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in," said Steve, looking Tony up and down.

"Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you," said Tony.

Glorfindel arched an eyebrow. "The man heads a spy outfit. We're lucky we know one another's names."

A bolt of lightning streaked through the sky, and a roll of thunder followed at once, both so close they shook the Quinjet. Glorfindel frowned; he had not sensed an oncoming storm before, and something felt off about this one.

Loki began looking up and around rather anxiously, and Steve noticed. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Scared of a little lightning?"

"I'm not overly fond of what follows," said Loki dryly.

The pieces flew together in Glorfindel's head the instant before something that was neither lightning nor thunder struck the Quinjet with a resounding thud. Glorfindel felt a surge of electricity and foreign power course through his body; more lightning and thunder split the sky.

Tony clamped the helmet of the Iron Man Suit back on, hit the button to open the hangar door, and stepped forward.

"What are you doing?!" shouted Steve in protest. Glorfindel leapt up, drawing his sword and pointing it toward the open door.

A tall figure (taller than Loki, but considerably shorter than Glorfindel), this time in dark armor with a red cape streaming from its shoulders and a heavy-looking hammer in its hand, landed on the ramp in a crouch and straightened itself.

Mighty Tulkas, we're smoked!

All rights belong to Marvel Studios and the Tolkien Estate.

The mighty Thor, for of course it was he, strode up into the Quinjet and sent Iron Man flying backward with a single blow of his great hammer. Glorfindel plunged in front of Loki, but this proved to be a mistake, for Thor easily knocked the sword out of the Elf's hand and tossed him against the side wall. Then, before anyone could react, he had seized Loki by the throat and with a twirl of his hammer gone rocketing out of the open door.

"And now there's that guy," grumbled Tony, climbing to his feet.

"Another Asgardian?" asked Romanoff.

"Thor, actually," grunted Glorfindel, sitting up rather painfully (he had recognized him from the SHIELD file).

"Think he's a friendly?" asked Steve.

Tony was stalking toward the still-open door. "Doesn't matter," he said. "If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost."

"Wait, Stark!" shouted Glorfindel. "We need a plan of attack!"

Already on the ramp, Iron Man turned his head halfway. "I have a plan - attack," he said grimly, and with a roar of repulsor rays he was gone.

Steve began strapping on a parachute at once.

"Captain, I think you'll want to sit this one out," said Glorfindel, who had just pulled himself up and picked up the sword.

"Don't see how I can do that," said the Captain, tightening the buckles on his parachute pack.

"He's got a point," called Romanoff. "These guys come from legend - they're basically gods."

"There's only one God, ma'am," said Steve stoutly, picking up his shield. "And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." And he dived out of the opening.

Glorfindel gave a huff of frustration - ridiculous Men, you'll both get yourselves killed - and strapped on his own parachute, losing no time in jumping after the Captain.

He nearly crashed into the treetops of a rather dense forest off the side of a mountain, and had to release the parachute and tangle himself up in the boughs of a particularly convenient ash. It took him some time to get out of the pack and climb down the tree (that is, climb part of the way down and jump the last few feet). As soon as he was on the ground he heard the sound of crashing trees, irregular claps of thunder, and the loud blasts of Iron Man's repulsor rays.

Apparently the newcomer Thor was not exactly a friendly.

Heavy boots came thumping over the ground toward Glorfindel, and in a few moments Captain America jogged into view. "Not waiting for me, are you?" he asked as he ran up.

"Hardly," said Glorfindel dryly, wincing as a streak of lightning seemed to strike straight downward and was followed by an especially loud thunderclap. "What exactly do you propose we do?" Somehow it seemed only natural to look to Rogers for orders.

"Try and see if we can stop the fight, and what that guy with the hammer wants," said Steve. "C'mon!" And he set off in the direction of all the ruckus, Glorfindel following close behind.

What they found when they arrived in a clearing that looked as if it had recently been very much smaller made Glorfindel sigh and Steve snort. Iron Man and the red-cloaked Thor were attempting to pound the daylights out of each other (and failing) near the foot of the mountain. High up on a shelf in the mountainside sat Loki, watching the entire fiasco with an amused smirk.

Idiots! thought Glorfindel. You'd think he was waiting for them to duke it out and then re-capture him.

Or perhaps that's exactly what he's doing.

But Steve had already leapt atop a standing fragment of a (recently, to all appearances) fallen tree. "Hey!" he barked, sending his shield at the pair like a discus thrower. "That's enough!"

Both Stark and Thor stopped and glared balefully at the Captain (though in fairness the mask of the Iron Man helmet always seemed to scowl forbiddingly).

Steve jumped down off the tree-trunk. "Now," he began, addressing Thor. "I don't know what you plan on doing here -"

"I've come to put an end to Loki's schemes!" barked Thor. His voice was deep and gruff and powerful, and somehow like him.

"Then prove it," said the Captain sternly. "Put that hammer down."

"Uh, yeah, no!" said Tony in alarm. "Bad call! He loves his -"

Thwack! The great hammer sent Iron Man flying backward like a ball thrown by a child. "You want me to put the hammer down?!" roared Thor, and he leapt toward Steve with the weapon in question raised high above his head.

Glorfindel, who had for the last few moments been sharply eyeing Loki, turned in alarm and was about to leap toward Steve, but the Captain settled into a half crouch and held up his shield. The hammer of Thor struck the Vibranium with an impact that flattened everything around it, a metallic clang ringing through the heads of any within hearing distance. Glorfindel's ears were momentarily deafened, and he swayed.

When he recovered a little, he looked up to see that all the trees in about a ten-yard radius of the Captain had been flattened. Thor appeared to have been knocked back a few yards; he was only just climbing to his feet, followed in short order by by Tony and Steve.

"I hope we're done here?" asked Glorfindel, panting a little.

Thor looked from one to the other of them, assessing them in silence. Up on the mountainside, Loki sat and watched.

Very early morning May 4, 2012

"In case it's unclear," the voice of Nick Fury echoed over the speakers while on a screen in front of Glorfindel played an image of the Man standing before the solid glass-and-titanium chamber into which Loki had just stepped. "You try to escape - you so much as scratch that glass -" he stepped up onto a platform and pushed a button on a screen, and Loki stepped to the edge of his cell to look out and down.

"- thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap," said Fury. "You get how that works?" He pointed at the Asgardian. "Ant." He pointed at the control panel. "Boot."

Loki laughed, possibly in appreciation of some earlier joke, and stepped back into the middle of the cell. "It's an impressive cage," he said quite truly, spreading his hands. "Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you," said Fury.

Glorfindel, seated with Dr. Banner (and Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff with Thor standing nearby) around the table in the central command chamber of the Helicarrier, did not look at the Man in question.

"Oh, I've heard," Loki's smile was now directed at a security camera, making it seem as if he was looking directly at the viewers. "The mindless beast makes play he's still a man." He looked back at Fury, openly taunting him now. "How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?"

Fury stepped down off the platform and stalked toward the cage. "How desperate am I?" he asked, his voice low and deadly as Glorfindel had never yet heard it. "You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can't hope to control, you talk about peace, and you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

"Ooh!" Loki mocked. "It burns you to have come so close! To have the Tesseract, to have power - unlimited power! And for what?" He smirked up at the camera again. "A warm light for all mankind to share?" He looked at Fury again, eyes glinting. "And then to be reminded what real power is."

Fury's lips curled into a smile that did not touch his eyes. "Well," he said, turning to walk away. "Let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something."

The feeds to the detention level of the Helicarrier cut, and Banner stirred. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

"Loki's gonna drag this out," said the Captain briskly. "So, Thor, what's his play?"

Thor, who Glorfindel thought was in silent mourning, roused himself and spoke. "He has an army called the Chitauri," he said flatly. "They are not of Asgard nor any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth - in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

"An army," said Steve. "From outer space." It was not a question.

"So he's building another portal," Bruce took off his glasses. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

"Selvig?" asked Thor sharply.

"He's an astrophysicist," said Bruce.

"He's a friend," Thor corrected, and he looked worried.

How does a prince from another planet know a random Earth astrophysicist?

"Loki has him under some spell," said Romanoff tonelessly. "Along with one of ours."

(Maria Hill stepped up onto the level where the table was, watching in silence.)

"I wonder why he let us take him," said Glorfindel, speaking for the first time and causing Thor to look at him with some interest. "He seems perfectly at ease in that death trap of a cell."

But Bruce shook his head. "I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats - you could smell crazy on him."

Thor turned on him. "Have a care how you speak," he said sternly. "Loki may be beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," said Romanoff in the same toneless voice.

Thor seemed to back down. "He's adopted," he muttered.

"Oh, poor thing, I was too," said Glorfindel unsympathetically. Thor eyed him again, and Bruce arched his eyebrows.

"You mentioned Dr. Selvig?" Glorfindel steered the conversation back on track.

"Right, I'm thinking it's about the mechanics," said Bruce. "Iridium - what do they need the iridium for?"

"Stabilizing agent," said a voice, and Tony Stark strode into the room accompanied by Agent Coulson, to whom he said, "I'm just saying - just pick a weekend, I'll fly you to Portland. Keep the love alive." Coulson nodded and vanished in another direction, and Tony addressed Bruce again as he came up to the table. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD. No hard feelings, Point Break," to Thor as he passed the Asgardian and smacked his arm. "You've got a mean swing."

Point Break? Clearly I'm not as up on my popular culture references as I thought.

Tony continued past the table up onto Fury's platform, ignoring Thor's slightly gobsmacked look. "Also," he went on. "It means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants." He was now in the middle of the platform. "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails," he said, presumably addressing the crew, who stared at him in annoyance.

"That man is playing Galaga!" Tony suddenly pointed at the screen of a hapless young agent. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did."

You mean you noticed. The boy's probably bored out of his mind.

Tony put a hand over one eye and seemed to be trying to look at all the four wide screens at once. "How does Fury even see these?" he asked, pointing.

"He turns," said Maria, who had been silent up to that point.

For hours on end, without a chair?!

"Sounds exhausting," said Tony, turning back to the screens and scrolling and tapping. "The rest of the materials Agent Barton can get his hands on fairly easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source - high energy density." It was at this point that Glorfindel saw Tony's hand slide briefly over the surface under one of the screens. "Something to kick-start the Cube," he finished, turning back to face the table.

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" demanded Maria.

"Last night," Tony shot back, and Maria's mouth tightened.

"The packet," said Tony. "Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers." He spread his hands in exasperation as he stepped off the platform. "Am I the only one who did the reading?"

"It may have escaped your attention that we're not all MIT graduates," grumbled Glorfindel. Summa cum laude, no less.

"Don't be sore," said Tony. "It really doesn't go with your eyes."

Steve had clearly had enough. "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" he asked.

"He'd have to heat the Cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," said Bruce reflectively.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunnelling effect," said Tony, approaching the table again.

"Well!" huffed Bruce. "If he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."

"Finally!" Tony exulted, holding out his hand toward Bruce. "Someone who speaks English!"

"Is that what just happened?" asked Steve in dazed annoyance as Tony walked up to Bruce and shook his hand.

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner," said Tony sincerely. "Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

Steve clapped his hand over his resisted the urge to do the same. "Tactless much?" he muttered.

The unfortunate Bruce blinked and looked away. "Thanks."

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the Cube," said Fury as he entered the chamber, presumably addressing Tony. "I was hoping you might join him."

"Let's start with that stick of his," suggested Steve. "It may be magical, but it works a lot like a HYDRA weapon."

"I don't know about that," said Fury, and Glorfindel had a notion that Steve's choice of words affected him a bit oddly. "But it is powered by the Cube. And I want to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Thor's brow furrowed in confusion. "I do not understand -"

"I do!" Steve grinned, looking quite proud of himself. "I understood that reference."

Tony rolled his eyes. Glorfindel gave the Captain a smile that he hoped said "please don't embarrass yourself" as plainly as possible. He immediately regretted this as Steve's face fell.

"Shall we play, Doc?" asked Tony, turning back to Bruce.

"Let's play some," agreed Bruce, and the two vanished in the direction of the lab.

All rights belong to the Tolkien Estate and to Marvel Studios.

Thor's gaze followed the two science men as they left, after which he turned back to look at Glorfindel with interest. "What are you, exactly?" he asked. "You are no Asgardian, and you are not human, yet you resemble both more than any other species I know."

Glorfindel smiled blithely up at the Asgardian. "I am an Elf, or a Quende, technically."

Thor's eyebrows went up. "So the tales brought back from Earth of the immortal peoples with fair faces and voices are true after all," he said curiously.

Fury, who had gone back to his post at the central platform, looked from Glorfindel to Thor. "So you've heard of each other but you haven't met?" he asked.

"So it would appear," said Glorfindel. "Unless perhaps you happen to be Maiar in disguise -?" He looked quizzically back at Thor. Though Maiar usually sneak up on me disguised as Mortals. . .

"Maiar?" Thor blinked in honest confusion.

"I suppose not," Glorfindel shrugged. I really didn't think so. "Never mind."

"And you're no relation to the Dark-Elves of Svartalfheim?" inquired Thor mildly enough, though Glorfindel had the idea that some critical impression was riding on his answer. I also somehow don't think he's talking about the - well, the Moriquendi.

"I don't think so," he said. "I don't know any Svartalfheim, anyway."

"Alfeneel, then?" Thor pressed. "Harudheeniksel? Lovers of the Darkness-Before-the-Universe, enemies of Asgard -? No?"

Is he asking me if he needs to slay me speedily? "Ah, no." Glorfindel shook his head emphatically.

"Maybe the name 'Eldar' might also help," interjected Natasha Romanoff. She had been watching the interplay with somewhat more interest than she had earlier displayed. "Means People of the Stars. 'Quendi' just means 'speaking people.' What?" she added at Glorfindel's curious look. "I did some research myself. The name was originally used by Orome to describe all Elves. It only started to be specific to the Elves who followed him after the initial split."

That's a . . . concise way of putting a very long and complicated linguistic explanation of what we call ourselves.

Thor seemed to be satisfied that whatever Glorfindel was, he was not a "Dark-Elf" (and I've got to stop calling the Sindar, Nandor, Green-Elves, Silvans, and Avari tribes 'Dark-Elves', especially if I'm going to go public) and therefore not an immediate enemy. "I see."

"What exactly does Loki want?" asked Glorfindel, frowning. "You say he wants to use the Tesseract to open a portal for this army of his, the Chitauri. And once the Chitauri conquer Earth for him, he gets to keep the Tesseract. What does he ultimately want with it? Power?"

Thor sighed, and stared glumly into space. "I don't think it's just for the Tesseract that Loki wants to conquer and rule the Earth. It's not mere power he craves. He wants to flaunt his victory before me, and make me feel the betrayal he imagines he has suffered. He wants vengeance - upon me."

Steve blinked incredulously. "Whatdja do to offend him?"

Thor didn't answer.

Fury tilted his head and looked closely at the Asgardian. "You think he can tell us where the Cube is?"

"I don't know," said Thor bleakly. "And even if he could, I don't know if I could wring it from him. His mind is far afield." He frowned again. He was quite obviously burdened with sorrow for his (adopted) brother. And he was worried - for Erik Selvig, his friend, and for someone else too, if Glorfindel wasn't mistaken. And - perhaps most obviously - Thor seemed to imagine that the whole sorry affair was in part his own fault.

"I don't know what's between you and your brother," said Glorfindel firmly. "But blaming yourself for his current misdeeds solves nothing. He must be answerable for his own crimes."

Thor started, and threw the Elf a look of unease and suspicion.

"I'm sure you don't want him to suffer," Glorfindel pressed. "But a little encouragement regarding the finding of the Tesseract may be in order."

Thor's face darkened further. "Even if I were willing to help you torture Loki, it would avail you nothing. There's no pain that would prize his need from him."

"A lot of guys think that," interjected Fury. "Until the pain actually starts."

Thor looked between the stone-faced Director, the uncomfortably penetrating gaze of the Elf, the unreadable Agent Romanoff, and the questioning eyes of the Captain. He seemed to falter. "What are you asking me to do?"

Fury's single eye gleamed. "I'm asking what are you prepared to do?"

"Loki is a prisoner," said Thor.

"Prisoner!" snorted Glorfindel. "Don't make me laugh!"

Thor turned and glared balefully at the Elf.

"Thor, c'mon," said Steve spreading his hands. "Rolling over and playing dead in Germany, sitting up on the side of a cliff watching you and Stark were beat each other up - please! Loki's the only one on this boat, or Helicarrier or whatever, who wants to be here." He got up and walked off, passing Agent Coulson who was just coming in as he went.

Thor caught sight of Coulson, and looked half hopeful and half afraid. Coulson smiled. "Don't worry," he said reassuringly. "She's fine."

I knew there was a 'she' in it somewhere.

Thor sagged with relief as Coulson went to a nearby monitor, set down a folder he was carrying, and with a few touches brought up a picture of a young, petite, attractive brunette woman. The caption next to the picture listed the various and (to Glorfindel's admittedly ignorant eye) impressive accomplishments of astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster.

"As soon as Loki took Dr. Selvig we moved Jane Foster," Coulson went on as Thor gazed at the image. "We've got an excellent observatory in Traunsee. She was asked to consult there very suddenly yesterday - handsome fee, private plane, very remote. She'll be safe."

"Thank you," said Thor sincerely. "It's no accident, Loki taking Erik Selvig. I dread what he plans for him once he's done. Erik is a good man."

"He talked about you a lot," Coulson smiled. "You changed his life. Changed everything around here."

Glorfindel raised his eyebrows. "This wouldn't have anything to do with what happened in New Mexico last year?"

There had been pictures and stories all over the internet of the weird, seemingly indestructible metal creature that had been fought by four (now undoubtedly Asgardian) warriors and defeated by none other than Thor himself. Both Selvig and Foster had allegedly been involved (along with their much more social media savvy assistant, a pretty brunette by the name of Darcy Lewis who was all over Instagram).

"Sure does," said Coulson. He picked up the folder, came up to the table, slid the folder across to Glorfindel. "Figured you'd want some extra details," he added.

"Thanks," said Glorfindel, opening the folder. The pictures inside were almost more interesting than the reports, including aerial photographs of the atmospheric disturbances and the strange not-thunderstorm, the remarkable hammer (Mjolnir by name, according to Thor) the fire-spitting half-sentient machine (apparently called the 'Destroyer'), and the four strangely armed warriors whose faces Glorfindel had already seen.

Looks like Loki involved in this too.

"You know, we like to pretend on Asgard that we're more advanced," Thor was saying. "but we come to Earth battling like bilgesnipe."

"Like what?" inquired Coulson curiously, and Glorfindel looked up.

"Bilgesnipe," said Thor. "You know - huge, scaly, big antlers -" he curled his hands on his forehead in an imitation of the latter. "You don't have those?"

Glorfindel and Coulson looked at each other, then back at Thor. "I don't think so," said Glorfindel.

"Then you are the more fortunate," said Thor. "For they are repulsive, and they trample everything in their path." He went to the railing at the edge of the upper level of the central chamber and leaned against it, staring pensively into the distance. "When I first came to Earth, Loki's rage followed me here, and your people paid the price - and now again." He sighed. "In my youth I courted war."

"You are still very young," said Glorfindel not unkindly. "And the war may never begin, if Banner and Stark find the Tesseract in time. May I keep this?" he added, raising the folder.

"Sure," said Coulson, and Glorfindel got up and left the room.

He had intended to head down to his locker but on the way down decided to check in on Tony and Bruce. He poked his head into the lab, and Bruce, who was standing nearest the door about to scan the Chitauri spear, looked up. "Oh, hey," he said. "Can we help you with anything?"

"Not really," said Glorfindel. "If you're terribly busy, that is."

"Sure we're busy," said Tony, who seemed to be working on three different equations at once. "Step in for a minute."

Glorfindel entered the laboratory, which seemed to be full of top-notch equipment and the very latest technology. He watched as Bruce scanned the spear, probably for gamma radiation. "Hey, Tony?" he said. "The gamma readings are consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's going to take weeks to process."

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster," Tony proposed. "We can clock this around six hundred teraflops."

Bruce chuckled ruefully. "All I packed was a toothbrush."

Tony crossed the floor, passing Glorfindel to get on Bruce's other side. "By the way, I forgot to ask you earlier," he said to Glorfindel over his shoulder. "The glow's all natural, right? I mean, obviously it's supernatural, but it is actually, you know, natural?"

Glorfindel arched his eyebrows. "Why, do you want to scan me for radiation?"

Tony eyed Glorfindel with undisguised eagerness. "Maybe - would you mind?"

Bruce snorted quietly, but watched just as curiously out of the corner of his eye.

Glorfindel rolled his eyes. "Go ahead, I won't bite."

Tony grinned, picked up the scanner Bruce had just put down, and brought it over to the Elf. He re-calibrated it and waved it in front of Glorfindel's shoulders. The device began beeping madly, and Tony pulled it back while Bruce swiped an icon on his screen. "Whoa!" he said. "We're definitely looking at something unique here - the pattern's totally unlike anything I've ever encountered."

Tony went over to look at the screen Bruce was studying. "Would ya look at that?" he said. "After we find the Cube I'm going to have to take a closer look at this. The equipment here's nice, but we could really do this faster if it was better."

"Looks pretty state-of-the-art to me," said Bruce in amusement.

"That's because you're deprived," said Tony. "You know, you should really come by Stark Tower sometime," he said. "Top ten floors, all R and D. You'd love it, it's candyland."

"Thanks," Bruce grimaced. "But the last time I was in New York I kind of . . . broke Harlem."

"I think the Abomination actually broke Harlem, and you broke him," suggested Glorfindel.

"That's one way of looking at it," Bruce conceded, scrunching his nose under his glasses.

"So how about this," Tony proposed as he stepped around behind his new colleague. "A stress free environment - no tensions or surprises."

And then he jabbed Bruce in the ribs with a very small prod.

"Ow!" cried the startled Bruce.

"Oi!" protested Glorfindel. "What's he ever done to you?!"

"Hey! Are you nuts?!" Steve Rogers came storming imposingly into the laboratory, glaring at the billionaire. Glorfindel blinked down at the costumed Man.

"Nothing?" asked Tony curiously, ignoring both Steve and Glorfindel. He'd been peering closely into the unfortunate Bruce's eyes. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret - mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

"Tony," said Glorfindel. "Did it occur to you that you might have just threatened the safety of everyone on this Helicarrier, to say nothing of offending the man?"

"No offense, Dr. Banner," added Steve.

"Nah, it's okay," said the equitable physicist. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

"See, he's working," Steve pointed at Bruce. "He's focused on the problem at hand, like you should be, Mr. Stark."

"Oh, you think I'm not?" Tony swung round to look at Steve, looking disconcertingly serious. "So riddle me this, Captain - why did Fury call us, and why now? What's he not telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?" asked Steve, as if this were some shocking idea.

Glorfindel raised his eyebrows to cover his rising misgivings. "He's the Director of SHIELD. Keeping things from people who keep things from other people is his business."

"See?" Tony held out his hand. "You've had this run-around before, and it's bugging you too. Probably Banner as well, isn't it, doc?"

The aforementioned scientist hemmed and hawed. "Uh, I just wanna finish my work here . . ."

Steve turned on Bruce. "Doctor?" he asked sharply.

Bruce pursed his lips. "'A warm light for all mankind to share' - Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube," he began.

"Yes, I heard it," said Steve.

"We all did," said Glorfindel. "Go on, Doctor."

"Well," said Bruce. "I think that was meant for you." And he pointed at the famous man.

"What do you mean?" inquired Steve.

But Glorfindel snapped his fingers. "Isn't Stark Tower supposed to have just started its Arc Reactor test run?"

"Stark Tower?" asked Steve. "That big ugly -"

Tony turned a justifiably miffed look on him.

"- building in New York?" finished Steve with only a trace more respect.

You Americans, honestly. I'm not sure why I expected better manners from you, Captain.

Bruce decided to ignore the obvious brewing ego conflict. "That building will run itself for, what, a year?"

"And that's just the prototype," said Tony. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now."

"So why didn't SHIELD bring him -" Bruce pointed to Tony again. "- in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they even doing in the energy business in the first place?"

"I should probably look into that," said Tony casually. "once my decryption program has finished breaking into SHIELD's secure files."

Glorfindel's jaw swung, and Steve whirled on Tony. "I'm sorry," he snapped. "Did you say -"

"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge," said Tony rather smugly, pulling a few granola bars from his pocket and tearing into one. "In a few hours I'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide." He held out the other bars to Glorfindel and Steve. "Blueberry?"

Glorfindel automatically took a bar of granola. Steve ignored the snack. "Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around," he said, folding his arms.

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence?" Tony munched on his granola. "Historically not awesome."

"Intelligence organizations generally don't like being hacked," said Glorfindel. "And who's to say they won't catch you?"

"I'm the best at this stuff," said Tony. "I don't get caught."

"Look, I think Loki's trying to wind us up," said Steve sternly. "This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them."

"Because following orders always works out so well for you, Steve," snapped Glorfindel, who was getting tired of Steve's moral posturing - for all Tony's cocky recklessness, at least he wasn't self-righteous. "And speaking of wars, I'd say something's certainly got you wound up like a clock. Is it all that nervous energy from sitting still instead of bashing people's heads in? Or do you treat everyone you encounter these days like your damned subordinate?"

And then Steve turned on Glorfindel a smile for which the Elf could have wrung his neck. "And you wouldn't know a thing about soldiers breaking trust, would you, Lord of Gondolin?"

Glorfindel drew himself up, nostrils flaring. "I think, Captain," he said icily. "that Loki hardly needs to start a war here as long as you're around." And he strode from the lab.

As he left he heard Steve say "Look, just find the Cube," and come running after him. "Glorfindel?" he called. "Hey! Glorfindel!"

Glorfindel huffed in annoyance and walked faster.

"Could you stop for just one minute?" asked Steve in exasperation.

Glorfindel neither broke his stride or looked around. "You know, for someone who's supposed to be the model soldier you seem a lot better at giving orders than actually taking them."

That seemed to have hit a nerve, for Steve's heavy boots stopped thumping after him and he was left to storm off in peace.

Yeesh, calm your tits, Glorfi!

Important reminder: The Light-Elves of Vanaheim exist only in Marvel Comics. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Vanaheim is populated by the Vanir, who are very similar to the Asgardians (Hogun the Grim is a Vanir). Remember that this story is strictly movie-verse Marvel.

All rights belong to the Tolkien Estate and to Marvel Studios.

The timing of the events at about this point in the movie is slightly sketchy, so I may be playing rather loosely with it. Also, weird ideas about Elf telepathy on display here.

By the time Glorfindel got to his locker, his temper had cooled down a bit and he was beginning to be rather alarmed about the whole business. It was all very well for Tony Stark to hack censored information on leaked photos during an internationally broadcasted Senate hearing, but to hack a counter-intelligence agency with their own equipment on their own airship? And what about poking poor Bruce with a stick, for no reason other than to see if he could provoke the Hulk? Had the man no restraint, not to mention common sense?

As for Bruce himself, he had obviously been on edge since his arrival, which did not bode well for the continued absence of his larger, greener alter ego. Glorfindel had meant what he said about Harlem, and refused to refer to the mild-mannered scientist as a monster, but he had no desire to become personally acquainted with the Hulk just yet. Not with Loki still on board.

And Steve? Glorfindel winced. What was wrong with himself and the Captain? Tony was possibly more tactless and superficially arrogant than Steve; and yet Steve's meddlesome, almost bullying manner was nothing short of infuriating (Like Elrond when you first met him, whispered an annoying memory in his ear. And look how you and he get on now.). And yet the man had been relatively easygoing before Loki had come aboard.

As for whatever Fury was withholding . . . Glorfindel had been in both the Avengers' position and Fury's. He knew perfectly well that Fury could be masking some really repulsive mission of his own for which he wanted the Tesseract; he also knew that Fury, as the head of something like an intelligence organization, probably had a hundred (possibly quite legitimate) reasons for revealing only what he deemed necessary; not to mention having superiors of his own to placate and orders of his own to follow.

But the mention of Gondolin troubled him because, loath as he was to admit it, Steve was right. Treachery had brought Morgoth to Turgon's hidden gates, and fire and death to the Gondolindrim.

But what could he do?

Well, for starters, he could get some answers from the one person who was undoubtedly up to something.

Glorfindel turned and marched down to the detention level. It took him some time to find it, for the Helicarrier seemed to be designed so that the detention level was not easy to get to. But at length he reached the room with the great glass-walled cell, and Loki looked around when he entered. He smiled. "Well, if it isn't the yellow sprite," he said. "What may I do for you?"

Well, two can play this game. Glorfindel flashed his own most radiant smile. "You could abort your evil plan to take over the earth with your Chitauri army, to begin with," he said.

"Oh, I'm afraid that's not possible," said Loki, still smiling. "You see, I have a score to settle."

"So I hear," returned Glorfindel pleasantly. He began feeling out, cautiously, for the Asgardian's mind.

Loki's smile twisted into a sneer. "Did you hear it from Thor?" he mocked. "Was he sad and mournful?"

"Very," returned Glorfindel, who had just found what seemed to be Loki's mind, a vast and twisted maze full of traps, entire chambers held hostage by some unknown force of great power. "Anybody'd think his adopted brother had destroyed part of another planet, and then come back to destroy all of it."

"And that, my shining golden friend, is where you are mistaken," Loki's face assumed a noble expression. "I'm not here to destroy anything, merely to rule and instruct."

"Really?" said Glorfindel. "I thought you had a score to settle." He was tiptoeing around the edges of Loki's mind, peering in where he could, trying to see the Asgardian's (Jotun's?) more immediate plans without being detected.

Loki tilted his head. "You don't agree that the mortals of this planet want for a ruler? Why should I not be the one to make them free from freedom?"

"Do you think I'm going to let you do that?"

"I don't see that the matter rests with you," returned Loki.

"And that's where you are wrong," Glorfindel stopped smiling, folded his arms, and narrowed his eyes. "I and my people, the Eldar, have walked this earth for thousands upon thousands of years, and we have both suffered and conquered evils the like of which you have never known. Do you think we will suffer your foolishness? Do you think we would let a mere child of some thousand years old to reign over us, because he decides he wants to?"

Loki blinked, and for once seemed to be at a loss for words.

It was at this moment that Glorfindel began to sense that Loki's mind was far too dangerous a place to wander at will. There was strange, perilous magic about him that Glorfindel had not felt from Thor, and not a little insanity. So he withdrew as delicately as he could; but Loki's eyes suddenly narrowed with suspicion.

"What are you?" he hissed, striding forward toward the Elf (though he never touched the glass).

"Oh," said Glorfindel with an air of blinking innocence. "Just a yellow sprite, I guess."

Loki's eyes flashed, and the sudden assault on Glorfindel's mind made him start back. Hastily he went on the defense, barring every door and window into his consciousness and flinging Loki back with all his force. Loki reeled, and Glorfindel pressed his advantage with a strike that tore through Loki's barriers in a moment.

A glowing blue orb in the midst of the golden scepter thrummed with power, and from it curling tendrils of blue magic reached outward as if to draw Glorfindel toward the orb. He drew back from the power of the scepter in suspicion and alarm, only to fall straight into the octopus-like tentacles of Loki's will. Glorfindel struggled to break free, but Loki held him fast, twisting his way into Glorfindel's memory.

He seemed to falter then, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of days that were the Elf's long life, and Glorfindel took the chance to slip unnoticed into Loki's designs.

He seemed to step straight into the ruins of the Helicarrier's half-destroyed command room. The enraged Hulk whirled on Glorfindel and gave a roar of rage, SHIELD scattering before him like ants, and the Avengers swarming all over him in vain like so many gnats.

And then, with a resounding GET OUT! Loki had hurled him from his mind, and Glorfindel returned to his body to find himself lying on the floor with an aching head and back, as if he had fallen over backward, which he apparently had. He turned his head with some difficulty and saw that Loki was on his knees in the middle of the cell, panting and and in disarray.

For a moment both were too dazed to move; and then Glorfindel remembered what he had seen of Loki's plot. The Hulk. He scrambled to his feet and went racing up to find the command room. By the time he burst into it, he was so out of breath that he could only gasp out "Director - urgent -"

Both Fury and Hill were standing over an agent's screen, though they (and many others) looked up almost involuntarily at Glorfindel's rather violent entrance. Hill then looked up at Fury, who gave her a nod and then turned to Glorfindel. "What is it?" he asked as he crossed the room.

"In private," panted Glorfindel, turning to go out into the hall which would eventually bring him to the flight of steps that led to the lab. Fury followed him, and as soon as they were out of the room Glorfindel hissed, "Loki means to unleash the Hulk."

Fury's face, which had already looked fairly grim, became even grimmer. He touched his ear. "Romanoff, you copy?" he barked. "Find Thor and get both your asses up to the lab. Loki wants to unleash the Hulk." He touched his ear again. "Shoulda known he was here for Banner," he growled. "Like we didn't already have enough to worry about."

Glorfindel knew better than to ask what he meant. He just followed the Director anxiously until they reached the lab. Both Bruce and Tony were quietly leaning against one of the work stations in front of a screen.

But Fury's first words were addressed, not to Bruce, but to Tony. "What are you doing, Mr. Stark?" he asked in frosty tones.

Glorfindel suddenly remembered what exactly Tony Stark had been doing for the past hour or so, and remembered also that Fury had been standing in front of a screen in the command room. He knows he's being hacked. Should I have told him? Naw.

"Uh, kinda been wondering the same thing about you, actually," said Tony breezily. "Not you, Goldilocks," he added to Glorfindel. "Just Mad-Eye Moody here."

"Goldilocks?" scoffed Glorfindel. "That's the best you can come up with?"

"Shut up," said Fury to Glorfindel, and then to Tony, "You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract."

"We are," said Bruce, who looked just as smug as did Tony. "The model's locked and we're sweeping for a signature now." He pointed over Fury's shoulder at a distant screen. "When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."

"And you'll get your Cube back," added Tony. "No muss, no fuss - what is Phase 2?" He had at that moment just glanced over one of his screens.

And then something large and heavy landed on one of the countertops with a clack, and the voice of an angry Steve Rogers said, "Phase 2 is SHIELD using the Cube to build weapons. Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow for me." The last words were addressed to Bruce and Tony.

"Ooh, not following orders now, are we, Captain?" mocked Glorfindel, ignoring for the moment the large, rather nasty-looking weapon Steve had just laid on the table.

"Oh, you think this has nothing to do with you," Steve shot back. "You think you didn't get ripped off too?"

Fury moved to dispel the implied accusation. "Rogers," he said, laying a hand on the thing that had so angered Steve. "We gathered everything related to the Tesseract, this does not mean that we're -"

"I'm sorry, Nick," Tony swung round the screen he and Bruce had been reading so that it now faced Fury, Steve, and Glorfindel. "What were you lying?"

There on the screen, clear as daylight, were unmistakable schematics for large, powerful-looking, possibly nuclear weapons. More damningly, Glorfindel had seen them before, during his years as an English spy during the Second World War. In HYDRA hands.

"How did I let myself get into this again?!" he groaned under his breath.

Steve was glaring at Fury. "Looks like I was wrong, Director," he growled. "The world hasn't changed a bit."

And then the armored Thor strode into the room, and behind him Agent Romanoff. Her green eyes were fixed on Bruce Banner, and the moment Bruce looked back at her Glorfindel could almost feel the tension.

"Did you know about this?" he asked her, pointing with his glasses at the weapons schematics.

"Of course she bloody knew about it!" Glorfindel threw up his hands. "Everybody on this ship probably knew, except for us." I wonder if that was what Hill was so twitchy about earlier.

Romanoff did not spare the Elf so much as a glance. "You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" she asked warily.

Bruce gave a bark of mirthless laughter. "I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed," he said. Glorfindel suddenly noticed the gleam in the man's eyes with some alarm.

"Dr. Banner, Loki is manipulating you," he said. With success, apparently.

Bruce indicated Natasha and Fury with the glasses. "And they've been doing what exactly?" he demanded.

Romanoff took a step toward him. "You didn't come here because I batted my eyelashes."

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy," snapped Bruce, and he indicated the screen again. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."

And Fury said, "Because of him," and pointed at Thor of all people, surprising Glorfindel very much. He wasn't the only one, for Thor arched his eyebrows and asked, "Me?"

"Last year," said Fury. "Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that, not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned."

And then it struck Glorfindel like a bolt of lightning - this was the purpose of the Avengers Initiative! He peered closely at the Director. Unless he was mistaken, "Phase 2" had not been Nick Fury's idea. Did he even support it? If not, why was he defending it?

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor was protesting.

"I suppose your precious brother isn't one of 'your people,' then, nor this army of Chitauri he intends to lead," snapped Glorfindel. "To say nothing of your 'Dark-Elves' or whatever you call them. Why on earth would we think other planets want nothing but peace with us?"

Thor faltered, and Fury folded his arms. "Even our own planet is filling up with people that can't be matched, that can't be controlled."

"What, like you controlled the Cube?" demanded Steve, and Thor interjected, "Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is a signal to all the realms that Earth is ready for a higher form of war."

"Higher form?" demanded Steve, eyes darting to Thor.

"You forced our hand," said Fury. "We had to come up with something."

"Nuclear deterrent," Tony chimed in, "'cause that always calms everything right down."

Glorfindel stared at the man in disbelief. "Oh, that's a good one, Merchant of Death, by all means call the kettle black!"

And Steve said, "I'm sure if he still made weapons, he'd be in this neck deep!"

Tony bristled. "Wait, wait, wait," he said, taking a step toward the Elf. "How is this now about me?"

"Isn't everything?" snarked Steve.

"I thought humans were more evolved than this," scoffed Thor.

"Ex-cuse me," said Fury irritably to Thor. "Did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?"

"Do you always give your champions such mistrust?" asked Thor.

"Yes, actually, and the more you've sacrificed, the less they trust you," snapped Glorfindel.

Natasha Romanoff stared from Elf to Asgardian. "Are you boys really that naive?" she said in exasperation. "SHIELD monitors potential threats!"

Bruce's arms were folded. "Captain America is on SHIELD's watch list?"

"You're on that list?" asked Tony of Steve. "Above or below angry bees?"

"I swear to God, Stark, one more crack -"

But Glorfindel was suddenly distracted by the sight of something just behind Bruce. The golden scepter sat on a white tabletop, and the large blue gem set in it gleamed like a blue star. The high, musical thrumming that came from it grew steadily louder until Glorfindel could hardly believe that he was the only one hearing it; now that he was looking, he saw that, the longer they argued, the brighter it glowed and the more it thrummed.

And then suddenly, he remembered just what he'd just been saying. Hell no, you will not have me too!

He was distracted when somewhere beside him Bruce spoke: ". . . what are we, a team? No, no, no - we're a chemical mixture that creates chaos. We're - we're a time bomb."

Fury took a step toward the physicist. "You need to step away," he warned.

Tony flung out an arm. "Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" he asked with a bravado that only a man who had never been near the real Hulk could muster, and he laid a hand on Steve's shoulder.

"You know damn well why!" cried Steve, flinging off Tony's hand. "Back off!"

There's going to be a civil war in here!

"Stop!" cried Glorfindel. "Stop!"

Nobody seemed to be listening to him. Tony had actually just swung round so that he was directly facing the Captain. "Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me."

"Big man in a suit of armor," Steve scoffed. "Take that off, and what are you?"

"Ah, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," Tony rattled off, but his face held no humor at all.

Glorfindel gathered all his breath. "DARO!" he thundered, and everyone around him started and stared at him, their quarrels dying on their lips.

"You fools!" cried Glorfindel furiously. "Do none of you understand? This is why Loki wanted to come aboard! I'm sorry, Captain," to that individual. "You were right. Loki does mean to start a war here. And look at us now! Do you think he hasn't done it?"

The look Bruce turned on him could have blistered concrete. "And just where are you in all this anyway?" he demanded. "Sounds like you've been pretty comfortable sitting on the sidelines for the last seventy years - what made you decide to get involved now?"

Glorfindel was thrown by the question. "I - SHIELD knows about Elves," he said. "Generally the fewer who know of our existence, the better."

"Really?" asked Tony. "What are you trying to hide?"

Glorfindel clenched his jaw. "Maybe we don't like being hunted like Dr. Banner," he said. "People do that, you know."

And then, shockingly, mercifully, the machine in the corner beeped.

"Got it," said Tony into the sudden silence.

Banner headed toward the monitor, saying, "Sorry kids, I guess you don't get to see my little party trick after all."

"You've located the Tesseract?" asked Thor.

"I can get there faster," Tony volunteered

"Get where faster?" asked Glorfindel sharply. He'd just been looking at the screen over Bruce's shoulder.

"Uh, the Cube?" suggested Tony.

But Bruce's eyes widened. "Oh, my God!" he said.

"What?" asked Thor.

"It's here!" cried Bruce.

And at that moment, the explosion came.

Anyway, all rights belong to Marvel Studios and to the Tolkien Estate.

Also . . . warning for some violence. Not too graphic, but it's still violence. And Glorfindel says a strong word or two.

BANG! The explosion seemed to come from nowhere, engulfing the middle of the lab in flames and blasting the quarreling occupants in every direction. Glorfindel went hurtling through one of the glass panels and down to the floor below. He landed flat on his back, his head banging the steel floor and glass shards poking into his exposed flesh (thank the Valar I didn't take my uniform off!).

Stars wheeled before his eyes for a moment, and when his head cleared he was aware of both Bruce and Natasha Romanoff near him. The woman's leg was trapped under a fallen beam that looked too heavy to move, and she was struggling tug herself free.

Bruce lay writhing as if in pain, gripping the floor, his breathing loud and heavy. Glorfindel saw with alarm that his jaw was clenched and his eyes glowed green in the dim light.

He's going to turn! He is turning!

Glorfindel scrambled up on hands and knees and crawled (through more shards) around Bruce to get in front of him, dangerously close even in his own estimation (look at me, I want to die, apparently). "Banner," he said in a low voice that was as commanding as he could make it. "Banner, look at me - look at me!"

Bruce raised himself on hands and knees stared wildly at him, still huffing and puffing.

"Are you nuts?!" hissed Natasha from under the beam. The sound of her voice seemed to set Bruce even more on edge. He gave a deep growl, and his face and neck began to look decidedly green.

"Shut up and get out of here!" said Glorfindel frantically to her, and then turning back to Bruce, he caught him by the arms. "Look at me, focus," he said. But the touch seemed to aggravate the man further - he twisted away from Glorfindel with a snarl. The sudden strength in him was like that of a wild boar, and Glorfindel could barely keep his hold.

"Banner," he said again, and he bent his will upon the enraged Man. Reluctantly Bruce stopped struggling and slowly turned his head back to Glorfindel. The distinct green undertones rising in his eyes and flesh began to recede.

"That's it," said Glorfindel soothingly, even as his eyes found Bruce's. "Keep looking at me. Nothing else matters - there's only you and I. Look at me, Bruce Banner."

Bruce's eyes, held fast by Glorfindel's power, began to turn brown again. His breathing slowed.

It's working!

"There," breathed Glorfindel. "You're safe, you're all right. Hush-sh-sh."

Bruce blinked slowly, his eyelids fluttering. He began to slump forward into Glorfindel's arms. Glorfindel continued to soothe him, humming low in his ear. In a quarter of a minute he was nearly asleep - it was actually going to work -

Clack! Natasha had finally tugged her leg free of the fallen beam. It was a small noise, but it was enough to break the spell. Glorfindel felt Bruce go rigid.

Damn it, I almost had him!

The Man gave a roar, and tossed the Elf through the air like a doll. The last Glorfindel saw as he went hurtling (again) was the great green behemoth seeming to burst from Bruce Banner's body. Then Glorfindel crashed into some large crate and fell down to the floor.

Ow. I hope I don't have to keep doing this.

He struggled to his feet as soon as he could, ignoring his bruised limbs, and looked around. It was mostly dark around him, and apart from being generally two floors or so below the lab he did not know where he was. Drat this maze of an airship, he thought sourly. Where am I? And where's my sword?

Somewhere nearby there came a great clattering and clanging, and then another roar from the Hulk - for the Hulk he obviously was by now. Glorfindel muttered an oath under his breath, groped his way out of the storage compartment he seemed to have fallen into, and immediately saw a flight of steel steps to his right. After a moment's deliberation he decided to try and find his way up to the command room - there was probably nothing he could do to help Bruce or Natasha Romanoff now - and he began to climb the steps.

The whole ship seemed to be in chaos - Glorfindel saw agents of various clearance levels racing in every direction, the distant clanging and clattering never seemed to cease, and every now and again the Hulk's bellowing reached his ears. And now that he was on the move, he felt his sense of balance shifting as if the floor was not level. It was disconcerting, and made his stomach drop.

And then the voice of Agent Jasper Sitwell came over the loudspeakers: "We have a perimeter breach! Hostiles are in SHIELD gear! Hold on to every junction!"

So I have to assume anyone I meet with a weapon may be an enemy. Wonderful.

He drew his sword, for it was still in its scabbard, and went with more caution. He had just reached the level where he thought the command room might be when suddenly three men in tactical gear set upon him. Glorfindel ran the first one through, the blade slicing through the man like a knife through soft butter (thank you, Egalmoth!). The second tried to shoot at him, but Glorfindel spun aside and knocked the man to the ground, the gun bouncing out of his hand. Glorfindel stomped down on the man's neck hard enough to hear the bones crunch, and turned to deal with the last attacker. The man made a run at him, and Glorfindel raised his sword and cut off the man's head.

He then spied an open doorway nearby, and raced through it into what turned out to be the command room, which was in chaos. Glorfindel had just time to catch a glimpse of Fury and Hill with their guns pointed toward the other entrance, shooting at more armed men. Then he had to jump over a railing and down behind an abandoned row of computer stations to avoid a small explosion. It seemed to have been caused by a trick arrow (of course modern arrows would do things like that!), and Glorfindel instantly remembered the archer Barton.

He looked up and saw the man for the first time - his eyes seemed entirely frosted over with a blue haze, a very clumsy and obvious mind control apparently at work. He was just fitting another arrow to the string, and it flew across the room and landed next to a computer station. Instantly, all the computers in that row went black, followed by every computer in the command center. The Helicarrier began to tilt at an alarming rate, and Glorfindel was sure he could feel the ship actually falling. He clutched at the desk behind him to keep from sliding across the room.

A senior agent - it was Sitwell, actually - rushed as best he could to one of the dead computers. "Sir!" he shouted to Fury. "We've lost all power in Engine 1!"

"It's Barton," Glorfindel heard Fury say grimly. "He took out our systems. He's headed for the detention level, does anybody copy?"

Nobody seemed to have noticed the arrow that had caused the damage. For a moment Glorfindel hesitated, torn between the immediate danger of the failed engine and the threat of Barton freeing Loki. He decided to deal with the greater danger, and pulled himself up into Fury's line of vision. "I copy," he said.

He saw Fury blink at him in mild astonishment as if to say where did you come from? But all he said was, "Well, get on it!"

Glorfindel was already scrambling up the tilting floor to get out of the room. He scrambled out into the main passageway and flung himself down the stairs, taking them four or five at a time. He vaguely remembered the way, but knew for certain he was nearing the right place when he started running into clusters of armed men that tried to resist him. He managed to get rid of them without much difficulty, as his armor rendered most of their bullets useless. He did not see Barton, however, and he began to fear that the man had already reached Loki, and he would be too late.

He was too late.

When he struck down the last resisting soldier and bounded into the room where sat the great glass cell, a terrible sight met his eyes. Thor was trapped inside it, a look of anguish and horror on his face. Glorfindel looked wildly around, only to see a freed Loki withdrawing his scepter from the body of a gasping Agent Phil Coulson, who had just been impaled through the heart.

Glorfindel made a dead run at Loki, his sword raised to strike off his head. Loki smiled, and oddly enough made mo move to run or get out of the way. "Glorfindel, don't!" came the voice of Thor behind him, but the Elf had already fallen for the trick. The illusion of Loki's body shimmered away as Glorfindel went crashing through it and knocked his head against the floor.

When he returned to his senses he could hear voices speaking nearby - one was Agent Coulson's, very faint, and the other was Fury's. Glorfindel looked around, and saw Agent Coulson slumped against the wall with Fury kneeling in front of him. There was no sign of Loki, or of the cell that Thor had been trapped in.

Loki had escaped. The Avengers Initiative had failed.

". . . I'm clockin' out here," Coulson was saying.

"Not an option," said Fury sternly.

"It's okay, boss," every word seemed to be an effort. "This was never going to work, if they didn't have something to - to -" Coulson's voice trailed off and his eyes drifted away from Fury's. He did not move again.

Glorfindel had just pulled himself to his feet with some vague idea of helping, and when Fury looked around and caught sight of the Elf a strange look passed over his face. "What happened?" he asked sharply.

"I was too late," said Glorfindel dully. I live, and he is dead.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," said Nick Fury, and he tossed a number of bloodstained Captain America trading cards onto the table. Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and Glorfindel were all seated at the same table around which they had first discussed what to do after having brought Loki aboard. The weight of their failure sat heavy on their shoulders as the ruins of the command room surrounded them. The engine problem seemed to have been resolved, but all the power in the command center had been cut.

Thor had been tossed out of the Helicarrier, the Hulk had tossed himself out, and Romanoff was reportedly keeping an eye on Barton, whom she'd apparently knocked out earlier.

"Guess he never did get you to sign them," Fury went on, while Steve slowly picked up the cards and stared numbly at them. "We're dead in the air up here - our communications, location of the Cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you." He shook his head. "Lost my one good eye," he added grimly. "Maybe I had that coming."

There was a moment's silence; none of the Avenger candidates at the table could speak.

"Yes," said Fury heavily. "We were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark and Glorfindel both know, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, and fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes."

Tony's face tightened, and he stood from his chair and marched out of the room. Glorfindel stared darkly at Fury, wondering if the Man knew that he could have saved Coulson if only he had been just a few seconds sooner.

"Well," said Fury, his eye lingering on Glorfindel. "It's an old-fashioned notion."

Steve did not put down the cards.

Glorfindel laid his sword and sword-belt on the table, and went back down to the detention level, standing in the same spot where he had been when Phil Coulson had died. He did not see or hear Tony Stark enter the room later; he only became aware that he was not alone when Steve's voice spoke. "Was he married?"

"No," said Tony, turning. Then as an afterthought, "There was a . . . cellist, I think."

"I'm sorry," said Steve sincerely. "He seemed like a good man."

"He was an idiot," said Tony roughly.

"Why? For believing?" asked Steve quietly..

"For taking on Loki alone." I should have been there, went unsaid.

"He was doing his job," said Steve, and a hint of Captain America had seeped into his tone.

"No," said Glorfindel suddenly and bitterly, speaking for the first time. "No, Captain, he wasn't doing his job. He was doing our job, which we weren't there to do because we were so busy measuring dicks earlier! This is on us, Cap, every one of us. We let him distract us so that he could wreak havoc on us. We let him make the matter personal." And he turned and stalked out of the room, eventually going back to the command room to retrieve and clean his sword.

He was surprised to run into Steve again on the way down to his locker, now accompanied by Natasha Romanoff and a much more human-looking Barton. All three looked purposeful and determined.

"How soon can you be ready to go?" asked Steve without preamble.

"Go? Go where?" asked Glorfindel, startled.

"We're taking a Quinjet," said Natasha. "You're still armored up, so you can go now, right?"

Glorfindel opened his mouth to ask what why where when who, and thought better of it. "Good thing I just cleaned my sword," was all he said, and he fell into step with the other three. "You must be Clint Barton," he said to the man with the bow.

"Sure, that's me," said that gentleman. "Nice to meet you. I'm guessing you're Glorfindel, which means I didn't manage to kill you."

"That would be me," said Glorfindel, feeling his mood lift in spite of himself. "And you'll have to try harder than that if you want to kill me."

The four of them strode up into the garage which held all the Quinjets and strode up into the nearest one, where a young agent was sitting in the cockpit. His eyes widened as he took in the four heroes. "You're not authorized to be here -" he began nervously.

"Son," said the Captain sternly. "Just don't."

The young man shut his mouth, and walked out of the Quinjet. Barton immediately went up to cockpit, and Natasha shut the door and joined him.

"Wanna tell me where I'm taking us, Captain?" inquired Barton.

"Stark Tower," returned Steve shortly as he fastened himself into one of the seats.

"Stark Tower?" Glorfindel arched his eyebrows.

"The Cube," said Steve simply. "Barton, how soon can we get to New York City?"

"We're pretty far out over the Pacific, Cap," said Barton dryly. "It'll take us a couple of hours."

"Do the best you can," said Steve.

"Stark's not coming?" inquired Glorfindel as Barton took off.

Steve rolled his eyes as he put on his helmet. "Said he could get there faster in the Suit."

I don't know the internal plan of the Helicarrier. I don't know anything about real hypnosis, whether used in therapy or otherwise. I'm not sure exactly how much time all the action actually covers. I'm pretty sure chainmail wouldn't stop a bullet or arrow in real life. So, I hope you're willing to extend your disbelief pretty far :)

Phew! Now that I've got some momentum back, the next chapter shouldn't take nearly as long. I got stuck trying to work out the action sequences, and I couldn't work past the block for months. I'm not sure about the next chapters, but I don't think they'll take this long (at least I sincerely hope not!) As always, please tell me how you like it!

The BoLT calls Glorfindel's helmet a "cap" so I envisioned one of those round helmets that are fitted to the head, a little like Captain America's helmet.

All rights belong to the Tolkien Estate and Marvel Studios.

It was indeed about two and a half hours before Glorfindel first saw their destination in the distance. Stark Tower rose high above most of the other buildings surrounding it, and above it a beam of blue light streamed straight up some hundred feet before ending abruptly in a gap that seemed to have been torn open in the sky. Twisted, vaguely humanoid creatures in hovercrafts were streaming through the gap, seemingly from nowhere. They weren't quite as ugly as Orcs, but they were the closest Glorfindel had seen in many thousands of years, and they seemed bent on just as much wanton destruction. They seemed to have explosives and things like machine guns, and were terrorizing civilians in the streets, exploding and overturning cars, and spraying up blocks of asphalt.

The distant figure of Iron Man was hovering above the Tower and not far under the gap, trying to pick off the invaders as they came with only partial success. On the top of the Tower itself, Loki (distinguishable at that distance mostly by his green cloak and gold helmet) was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Thor (red cloak and flashes of lightning), who did not seem to be any the worse for wear.

"That'll be Loki's Chitauri, I expect," said Glorfindel at he stared out of the window. Steve had given him a pair of internal earpieces which would allow him to hear anything that Fury or Hill wanted the Avengers to hear, or that Tony said from inside the Suit. He now switched them on and put them into his ears.

"Stark, we're heading northeast," Natasha reported.

Tony's voice sounded a bit strained. "What, did ya stop for drive-thru? Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you." And in the distance he swooped down around the side of the Tower, a stream of Chitauri pursuing him in their hovercrafts (one of them crashed into a nearby office building). This brought the herd across the street up which Barton was currently steering.

Natasha immediately activated a large machine gun on the bottom of the Quinjet, and began firing it at the Chitauri. At least, this was what Glorfindel guessed she was doing, as all he could actually see was her hands pressing buttons and switches, and shots being fired at the Chitauri from somewhere underneath them. It was really rather maddening, having to sit inactive while Natasha and Barton did all the work. He hoped that there would soon be occasion to leave the Quinjet, preferably on the ground where he and Steve could be useful.

"Sir," said a voice with a British accent that made Glorfindel start. "We have more incoming."

"Fine," said the voice of Tony. "Let's keep them occupied." And Iron Man went flying back up to the hole through which the Chitauri were streaming like a herd of mice.

Glorfindel turned off his earpieces by lightly tapping the sides of his head. "Who on

was that?" he demanded.

"That's JARVIS, Stark's AI," Natasha informed him. "He runs the Suit. You'd better get used to him. You got a shot, Clint."

"Oh yeah," said Barton grimly. He had turned sharply to avoid crashing into a large building that looked like a library, which had brought them within full view of Stark Tower again. There on top of it were Loki and Thor, still battling. Loki seemed to be trying to push Thor over the edge.

Barton hit one of the buttons Natasha had pressed earlier, and seemed to have turned the Quinjet's gun on Loki. Having just shoved Thor aside (but not over the edge of the Tower), Loki whirled round and pointed the Chitauri scepter up at the Quinjet. A burst of blue energy struck the left wing, and Glorfindel didn't have to see the damage to know they were in trouble.

"Hold on to something!" bellowed Barton as the Quinjet jerked and rocked. Steve and Glorfindel both clutched at exposed bars and pipes on the ceiling of the hold, their bodies careening through the air. The Quinjet spun wildly as it fell, and only through Barton's clever handling did they escape crashing into buildings. They crashed into an empty paved lot, chunks of asphalt flying as they bumped to a stop. Miraculously, they'd landed the right way up.

Glorfindel took a moment to catch his breath, and then let go of the pipe he was holding onto. "Is anyone injured?" he asked.

"Nope," was the reply from the three Mortals as Natasha and Barton scrambled out of the cockpit, and Steve added, "Looks like we got our work cut out for us."

Glorfindel located his helmet, and put it on. "Let's do our job, then," he said, drawing his sword and activating his earpieces again.

The button that opened the door of the Quinjet was still in working order, and the foursome trotted down the ramp and out through the lot into the ruins of a big four-way stoplight. The streets were clogged with abandoned cars, some of which were flipped over; the people who had been driving them had already run away.

The two SHIELD agents and two costumed icons set off in the direction of Stark Tower, but it was mere moments before a great, metallic roar made them all stop and look up. The noise had of course come from the great gap in the sky, and now through the gap something huge was coming. Glorfindel thought it was like one of the great wyrms that had plagued Middle-Earth during its First Age, especially during the Fall of Gondolin: a dragon without wings, and yet this one could fly. It was a thing of metal, of both machinery and sorcery. It breathed no fire, but the steel of its body was utterly impenetrable; its many teeth were like great swords.

Well of all things . . . "I thought I was done slaying dragons!" Glorfindel protested aloud.

"Think again, buddy," said Steve as the beast (thing?) swooped down toward the street and passed close over their heads. On its back rode scores and scores of Chitauri, some of whom now peeled off to crash into tall buildings through the windows, no doubt to further terrorize the civilians inside. Others merely attached themselves to the outsides of the buildings, and went sliding down to the streets to wreak havoc on the ground.

"Stark," croaked Natasha. "Are you seeing this?"

"Seeing, still working on believing," said the billionaire. "Where's Banner? He shown up yet?"

"Banner?" Steve's brow furrowed.

"Just keep me posted," said Tony, and Glorfindel looked around and caught sight of Iron Man quietly flying parallel with the dragon.

"C'mon," said Steve to the others, and they followed him as he continued up the street, which eventually became a bridge over another highway. Just as they gathered in the cover of a group of abandoned taxi cabs, they saw another group of Chitauri in hovercrafts coming up the street in their direction. Loki himself was at their head. Cars were being overturned and bursting into flames by the dozens; those who didn't manage to get out of their cars and run away quickly enough were crushed or stifled to death.

"Those people need assistance down there," said Steve.

Glorfindel had every intention of saying Ya think?! But just at that moment, a dozen Chitauri that seemed to have leapt out of their hovercrafts landed on the ground near the foursome, and began shooting at them. They were, of course, far out of the reach of Glorfindel's sword, but not Natasha's handguns. She had them loaded before you could say superspy par excellence and stood up to fire right back at the oncoming Chitauri.

"We've got this," she said over her shoulder. "We're good here, go!"

"Can you hold 'em off?" Steve asked of the archer, who had just moved to get a better vantage point for shooting.

Clint Barton smiled. "Captain," he said. "It would be my genuine pleasure." And he turned, drew his bow more quickly than you could say archer extraordinaire, and shot one of the Chitauri square in the forehead.

Glorfindel reminded himself to properly acknowledge his premature mockery of Clint's primary choice of weapon later, and turned to Steve, but Steve said, "You stay here too, I'm coming back."

"Right," said Glorfindel, and as Steve leapt over the side of the bridge he turned back and cast a quick look around him.

"Barton, Romanoff," he shouted to the two SHIELD agents. "There are civilians trapped inside that bus!"

"Go, we'll cover you," Clint shouted back, and Glorfindel bolted for the bus, a shot from a Chitauri gun glancing off his helmet as he went. All the bus windows were broken, and the passengers inside were clamoring for help. "The doors won't open, we can't get out!" they cried.

Glorfindel went straight for the doors of the bus, and with a loud grunt wrenched them open. "Everybody out!" he barked, and the frightened passengers began making their way forward toward the doors, all of them staring wide-eyed at the impossibly tall figure in chainmail with a sword.

"Get off the street and stay there," ordered Glorfindel as the civilians began to stream out of the bus. Most of them wasted no time in running toward the nearest standing buildings, but a small boy stopped to hug Glorfindel's legs before his mother snatched him up, and a girl in her early teens nearly tripped over her own feet for staring at him. But before long they were all out of their prison and fleeing for cover, and Glorfindel drew his sword and went to join Natasha and Clint, who were shooting manfully as the Chitauri kept coming.

"It's like Budapest all over again!" Natasha was saying to Clint.

"You and I remember Budapest very differently," said Clint. "You want in, Tinkerbell?"

Glorfindel snorted (Tinkerbell? Really?), but said only, "Don't shoot me."

Down came Natasha's guns. "My clips are out anyway," she announced, and without hesitation picked up some kind of polearm from one of the fallen Chitauri.

Glorfindel ducked to avoid a gunshot and ran straight at the first of the Chitauri, feeling the blade seeming to rejoice as it slew the foe. It had not so rejoiced to slay the mind-enslaved Men aboard the Helicarrier, enemies though they were. Natasha and Clint soon joined Glorfindel in fighting hand-to-hand, Natasha using the Chitauri polearm and Clint using his bow at very short range or else using his arrows for darts. Soon the Captain had reappeared, and he leaped into the fray without a moment's hesitation, using his shield both to defend and to attack, for it seemed to have a very sharp edge.

But more and more Chitauri were descending on them, and Glorfindel began to think that they might be overwhelmed. But just as he was giving up hope, a great bolt of lightning suddenly consumed all the remaining Chitauri around, and they fell dead. Down from the heavens dropped Thor, Mjolnir in hand.

"What's going on up there?" panted Glorfindel, leaning on one of the taxis as he caught his breath.

"The power surrounding the Cube is impenetrable," said Thor grimly.

"Thor's right," came Tony's voice through the earpieces. "We gotta deal with these guys."

"How do we do this?" asked Natasha.

"As a team," said Steve firmly.

"I have unfinished business with Loki," said Thor.

"Yeah?" Clint was fingering an arrow. "Get in line."

"Save it!" said Steve sternly. "Loki's going to keep this fight focused on us, and that's what we need. We got Stark up top . . ."

"Is that who I think it is?" asked Glorfindel sharply, who had been peering off into the distance at a lone approaching motorcycle with a rider that wore no helmet.

"It cannot be!" said Thor, in glad astonishment.

"Who -?" began Steve, and then he suddenly smirked. "About damn time."

Bruce Banner, dressed as quietly as ever, stopped the motorcycle and stepped off to approach his waiting comrades. He surveyed the damage as he walked up.

"So!" he said. "This all seems horrible."

"I've seen worse," said Natasha.

This seemed to have some meaning for Bruce, who grimaced. "Sorry."

"We could use a little worse," Steve put in.

"Stark?" Glorfindel reported. "He's here."

"Banner?" inquired Tony, seeming to know at once who was meant.

"Just as you said," returned the Elf.

"Then tell him to suit up," said Tony. "I'm bringing the party to you."

And a moment later, the red-and-gold Suit swung into view down the street, and began flying toward them. Behind it, great in girth and dreadful in rage, came the wingless dragon, flying so low that its underside crushed all the standing cars in its path.

Did the idiot provoke the thing?!

"I don't see how that's a party," grumbled Natasha.

Glorfindel took a breath, and gripped his sword tighter. He stepped forward, with every intention of going to face the creature, but Bruce raised a hand to stop him. Glorfindel looked down questioningly at the Man, who gave him a nod. Glorfindel, perceiving his intent, moved aside. Bruce began to go toward the great beast.

"Dr. Banner," said Steve, who had correctly interpreted the interplay. "Now might be a really good time for you to get angry."

And Bruce Banner looked over his shoulder and said, "That's my secret, Cap'n. I'm always angry." And as he turned, his skin flushed green and he swelled and grew, the shirt he wore ripping and tearing. And then the Hulk slammed his great green fist into the great nose of the dragon, and the dragon's body began to flip upward as the Hulk drove the enormous head to a halt.

"Hold on!" came Tony's voice, and above them he halted midair and raised his arm to fire a small missile straight into a gap in the dragon's scales (that looks like a soft spot!).

Thor, Steve, Natasha, and Glorfindel all ducked down behind the taxis to avoid the bursts of fire as the dragon began to fall apart. When the Hulk pulled his fist out of the dragon's nose, its great head plunged down over the side of the bridge, where it lay dead.

The Chitauri who were in the air or clinging to the sides of high buildings screeched in rage and dismay. The Hulk roared back at them, and to his left Hawkeye drew his bow, seeking a mark. On Hawkeye's other side Thor adjusted his grip on a willing Mjolnir, growling; the Black Widow pushed a new clip into her pistol; Glorfindel towered above his comrades, his sword in his right hand; Captain America held his shield at the ready; and Iron Man descended to the ground.

Fury's vision had come true. At long last, the Avengers were assembled.

All rights belong to Marvel Studios and to the Tolkien Estate.

But of course, the moment of triumph did not last. Almost immediately Black Widow called their attention upward, and the Avengers watched in dismay as easily half a dozen more of the great wingless metal dragons, accompanied by hundreds and hundreds of Chitauri, came charging through the gap in the sky.

"Call it, Cap," said Iron Man.

Captain America took only a moment to form his strategy. "All right, listen up," he said. "Until we can close that portal up there, we're gonna use containment. Barton, I want you on that roof." He pointed at the nearest skyscraper. "Eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter - anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash."

"Wanna give me a lift?" asked Hawkeye of Iron Man.

"Right," said Iron Man, crossing over to the archer and gripping his shoulder. "Better clench up, Legolas." And he hauled the man up to the assigned rooftop.

"Very funny, Stark," said Glorfindel, rolling his eyes.

"Thor," continued the Captain. "You've gotta try and bottleneck that portal, slow 'em down. You've got the lightning, light the bastards up."

Thor gave a brief nod, and with a twirl of Mjolnir launched himself skyward, eventually landing atop the Empire State building.

"Romanoff, Glorfindel, you're on the ground with me," said the Captain. "We keep the fight here. And Hulk!"

The Hulk turned at the sound of his name, and looked down at his blue-clad leader.

"Smash!" said the Captain, holding up his gloved fist to demonstrate.

Hulk's face broke into a large grin, and he gave a powerful leap that carried him high into the air. He landed on the side of one of the buildings to which Chitauri were clinging, and began to crush them easily in his huge hands. They fired at him as well as they could, but their shots seemed only to make him angrier. He leapt from building to building, and even snagged a hovercraft mid-flight.

Meanwhile, the trio on the ground got to work. Chitauri warriors were dropping to the ground in droves, and it was all the three Avengers could do to keep them reasonably contained. Glorfindel had to admit himself impressed with both the Captain and the Widow - like many Elves, he had a bad habit of underestimating what Mortals were capable of.

Through his earpieces he could hear Hawkeye advising Iron Man, and the cocky man actually thanking him for it. In the distance the Hulk gave the occasional bellow as he smashed his way through Chitauri (and tall buildings). Random flashes of lightning indicated Thor's activity.

When at last the earthbound trio had finished off all the Chitauri immediately around them, all three of them had to pause to catch their breath.

"All of this means nothing, so long as that portal remains open," said Glorfindel glumly.

"Our biggest guns couldn't touch it," said the Captain.

The Black Widow eyed the blue beam shooting up from Stark Tower (most of the lettering was gone by now). "Maybe it's not about guns," she suggested.

The other two followed her gaze, and then looked back at her. "You wanna get up there, you're going to need a ride," said the Captain.

"I got a ride," said the Widow, gesturing toward the Chitauri hovercrafts flying over head. "I could use a lift, though." And she backed up all the way to the railing at the edge of the bridge.

Glorfindel eyed the woman dubiously. "You sure you want to try that?"

"Yeah," said the Widow, and she cracked a smile at him. "It's gonna be fun."

The Captain looked just as skeptical as Glorfindel, but all he said was, "Good luck," and accordingly he adjusted the position of his shield.

The Widow made a running leap at the Captain, vaulting off the front of a car along the way, and bounced off the front of the shield. The Captain gave her a boost at just the right instant, and she sailed high into the air and caught hold of the end of a Chitauri hovercraft as it whizzed by. Glorfindel saw her swing herself up as the hovercraft sped out of sight.

Another knot of Chitauri dropped to the ground and began to approach Glorfindel and Captain America. As the two Avengers fought them off, Iron Man dropped to the ground and pointed his hand rays at the Captain's shield. Glorfindel spun out of the way as the beams reflected off the shield and burned down several Chitauri all at once. Two of the remaining Chitauri tried to grab Iron Man's metal-plated legs as he began to rise into the air; Glorfindel swept off their heads in one swift motion. Iron Man sailed up into the sky again, and as before Glorfindel and the Captain were left to manage the Chitauri on the bridge.

"Captain," came the voice of Hawkeye. "The bank on 42nd, past Madison, they caught a lot of civilians in there."

The Captain, who had just escaped being pinned to the ground by a Chitauri warrior that had made clever use of its gun, picked up his shield and looked at Glorfindel. "You got this?" he asked.

"I'm good," said Glorfindel shortly. "Go."

"I'm on it, Barton," said the Captain, and took off down the street.

There were only about twenty Chitauri left. Glorfindel did not tire easily, but he was out of conditioning for a sustained battle, and he was beginning to feel it. He gritted his teeth and fought on, hoping that there were no more Chitauri on the way. Thankfully, there seemed to be none, and Glorfindel finished off the last of his immediate foes and trotted off to see about the Captain.

He arrived in front of the bank in time to see policemen and firefighters ushering civilians out and down the street. The Captain was leaning against a car, staring numbly at the destruction of the city. His helmet was gone, and Glorfindel suddenly realized just how young the Man really was. He said nothing, but slowly and deliberately wiped his sword and sheathed it, waiting for Steve to gather himself.

"Director Fury is no longer in command," announced World Security Councilwoman Hawley to a SHIELD pilot sitting in a jet. "Override order 7 Alpha 11."

"7 Alpha 11, confirmed," said the pilot. "Prepare for takeoff."

"Stark, are you hearing me?" came the voice of Nick Fury. "We have a missile headed straight for the city!"

"How long?" asked Iron Man, battling alone in the street.

"Three minutes at best," said the Director of SHIELD. "Stay low and wipe out the missile."

"JARVIS," commanded the inventor. "Put everything we got into the thrusters."

"I just did," replied the AI, and after shaking a Chitauri warrior off his legs Iron Man flew skyward.

It had not taken long for Glorfindel and Captain America to find themselves in battle again. Thor had joined them, and the mighty Mjolnir made great headway against the seemingly endless Chitauri. Glorfindel was nearly worn out, and the Captain seemed just a touch slower too - a shot in the side from a Chitauri gun brought him down hard, where he groaned and lay struggling to get up. Thor swung Mjolnir into a fallen car so that it flipped over, felling a few Chitauri as it crashed to the broken asphalt. He then went to haul the Captain to his feet while Glorfindel cut down the last three Chitauri.

"You ready for another bout?" asked Thor.

The Captain's hand was pressed to his side and he was obviously trying not to grimace. "What, you gettin' sleepy?" he asked.

And then through their earpieces they heard the voice of the Black Widow, and what she said changed everything. "I can close it!" she said. "I can shut the portal down, can anybody hear me?"

"Do it!" cried the Captain.

"No, wait," said Iron Man.

"Stark, these things are still coming!" protested the Captain.

"I got a nuke coming in," reported Iron Man. "It's gonna blow in less than a minute, and I know right where to put it."

Glorfindel looked up at the sky in dismay, craning his neck and catching sight of the armored hero with his arms around some large object. "Stark, you know if you do that, you won't come back," he said. There was no reply, and Iron Man sped the missile straight toward the portal without the slightest turn or a moment's hesitation.

He wouldn't - would he?

It was perhaps a good thing that there were no living Chitauri close by. Glorfindel did not know where Hulk and Hawkeye were, but he knew that Thor and the Captain were staring just as intently at the sky as he was. Iron Man took the missile up the side of his own Tower, and flew up beside the blue beam. He soared straight into the portal, and vanished from their sight.

There's no way out this time, Cap.

Glorfindel tore his eyes from the portal, and saw that a few living Chitauri had made their way over. He had just cried a warning to the Captain and Thor when suddenly all the Chitauri staggered and collapsed, and where they fell they lay unmoving. There was one wingless dragon that had still been alive and flying, and it fell abruptly on top of two skyscrapers where it also lay unmoving. The Avengers turned their eyes hopefully back up to the portal, but there was no sign of Iron Man, only a vague blur of color.

"Supernova," Glorfindel noted dully, squinting up at what little he could see of what was on the other end of the portal. "The nuke went off."

And the Captain said, "Close it."

Whatever the Widow had meant when she said she could shut the portal, she made good on it now. In a few seconds, the beam of blue light had vanished, and the hole in the blue of the sky shrank swiftly until it disappeared. And then, impossibly, a dark dot caught Glorfindel's eye, and he shouted aloud.

"What?!" roared the Captain, startled.

Glorfindel pointed up at the rapidly growing dot without a word.

"That can't be -" cried Thor in astonishment.

"Is that -" the Captain squinted, and a smile broke over his face. "Son of a gun!" he said.

But even as the dot became more distinct (and more definitely Iron Man), the Avengers saw that something was wrong.

"He's not slowing down!" said Thor worriedly, and he began spinning Mjolnir again, obviously intending to fly to his comrade's rescue. But the Hulk leapt into the air from a nearby rooftop, caught Iron Man mid-leap, and with his free hand snagged a building to slow his fall. He landed easily on his back just a few feet away from where the trio were standing, and with a grunt he gently set the armored man down on the ground.

Glorfindel, Thor, and the Captain all came running, and they carefully turned Iron Man over on his back and anxiously pulled off his visor. Tony Stark's bruised face inside the helmet was still, and the armor surrounding the Arc Reactor was so thick that there was no chance of hearing a heartbeat.

"Well?" asked Thor and the Captain in unison.

Glorfindel laid a hand on the billionaire's brow, then ripped off his helmet and bent close to his mouth. "He's breathing," he reported.

"But he's not moving," said Thor.

"Wait," said Glorfindel, and there was an anxious silence.

And then the Hulk decided he'd had enough. He gave a loud roar, and Tony started awake with a cry of surprise. "What the hell?!" he squawked. "What happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me!"

Glorfindel passed his hands over his face and drew a deep breath that was partly a groan; Thor and the Captain smiled in genuine relief. "We won," said the Captain.

This seemed to cheer the hero considerably. "Alright, yay!" he said. "Alright, good job guys! Let's just not come in tomorrow, let's take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I want to try it."

Weary as he was, Glorfindel couldn't help but chuckle as the man rambled. But Thor looked grimly up at Stark Tower (all the lettering but the first "A" was gone) and said, "We're not finished yet."

Loki's up there, isn't he?

Tony Stark frowned. ". . . and then shawarma after?" he suggested.

When Loki dragged himself up out of the crater in the floor that the Hulk had earlier beaten him into, he looked around to see seven very angry Avengers glowering down at him. Hawkeye had an arrow on the string, and it was pointed at him.

Loki took them all in, and seemed to know without asking that he had lost. "If it's all the same to you," he said wryly. "I'll have that drink now."

The Hulk snorted.

Well, here's the last chapter containing events from Marvel's The Avengers! Hope you liked the ride.

All rights belong to Marvel Studios and to the Tolkien Estate.

May 5, 2012

Rested and refreshed, the Avengers plus one Dr. Erik Selvig stood gathered in a blocked-off space guarded by uniformed SHIELD agents. Nearly everyone was dressed down, as this was an informal occasion.

But Thor was still armored and cloaked, and so was the bound and muzzled Loki whom Thor was leading by a chain. Thor had apparently brought a specially enchanted muzzle and set of handcuffs from Asgard that he had not had the chance to put on Loki earlier; now, Loki was as satisfyingly secure as anyone could wish.

Thor bade a fond farewell to all his new friends, and promised them solemnly that tales of their mighty deeds would live on in Asgardian memory. He was especially reassuring to Dr. Selvig, and begged him to send his regards to one Jane Foster.

Erik Selvig then brought to Thor a special glass case that would hold and activate the Tesseract, which Thor grasped by one end with his free hand. Tony Stark opened a silver briefcase which held the shining blue Cube, and with a pair of tongs Bruce Banner removed the Cube from the briefcase and placed it in the glass case, which slid shut of itself. Thor then held out the other end of the case to Loki, who took it reluctantly. Thor twisted his end of the case, activating the Tesseract. A beam of blue light enveloped the two, and seemed to swallow them up; when it disappeared, they were gone.

After that, the remaining Avengers began to say their own farewells. Steve Rogers shook Tony Stark's hand before departing on his brand new Harley Davidson. Natasha Romanoff handed Bruce Banner a packed bag, which he took to Tony's sports car. Clint, Natasha, and Selvig then climbed into a black car with a SHIELD logo, and drove away. Bruce tossed his bag into the back of Tony's sports car, and then climbed in himself beside Tony, who whisked him away, probably to Stark Tower. Glorfindel got into his own car, and drove himself back to his apartment.

They'd had to take some quick action after the great battle yesterday. Fury had summoned all the Avengers to SHIELD headquarters for an urgent meeting, in which he revealed that the World Security Council, which oversaw SHIELD, had actually sent the missile that had nearly blown up the city. Furthermore, as the Council had very strongly advocated for Phase 2, Fury suspected that they would try to get their hands on the Tesseract again.

Thor had immediately reiterated that the Tesseract belonged on Asgard, far from Earth's reach, and Fury had shocked Steve by agreeing wholeheartedly. (Glorfindel had taken it upon himself to remind Steve that Fury had supported the Avengers over the super-arsenal.) Thor had suggested taking both Loki and the Tesseract to Asgard, and everybody had agreed with that.

Thor had retrieved the enchanted muzzle and handcuffs, and then gone with all the other Avengers to secure Loki. Natasha and Clint had taken them to an underground SHIELD bunker, and after Thor had assured everybody that the muzzle and handcuffs would keep Loki entirely contained, they'd shut him up in a holding cell with only basic security and left him.

Then they'd had their shawarma. Glorfindel would have liked it, if he hadn't been too tired to enjoy it properly. An obliging agent had then handed him his belongings which had been retrieved from the Helicarrier, and driven him back to his apartment. He'd promptly collapsed on his bed, clothes and all, and slept soundly for the rest of that day and all through the night.

Now, safely tucked back into his apartment for the day and lounging on the sofa, Glorfindel breathed a sigh of trepidation and turned on his mobile phone.

It was just as he had expected - his voice mailbox was completely full, and there were more missed calls and texts than he'd ever had at one time before. The first few voicemails from Thursday (the day Fury had called him in) were from Nielsen Gregory, his understudy for The Firebird, and from Jules Bruno, the company manager. The voicemails became understandably more worried as the day went on, and it wasn't long before some of Glorfindel's other friends, like Aaron and Trevor and Felicia, were also calling him. Even Peter Martins had left a voicemail.

And then came yesterday's messages, which were the bulk of the voicemails. Many were once again from his colleagues and superiors at the company, growing more and more worried as the day wore on. Most of them weren't too suspicious - they merely thought Glorfindel might have been hurt or even killed during the attack on the city. But Nielsen's voice was quivering with fear: "You son of a bitch, you better not be where I think you are. I don't care what time it is when you get this, call me." And Jules was dryly ironic: "Still absent, Taylor? Somehow I don't think you've thrown your back out again. Call us back when you get a chance, we're pretty worried."

And then Glorfindel began to hear voices he hadn't heard in years and decades: Egalmoth, wryly unsurprised that Glorfindel had managed to find a use for his new toys so quickly; Turgon and Finarfin, ranting and fuming in multiple languages in much the same style as poor Nielsen; Finrod, annoyed that he'd missed the fun, of all things; Ecthelion, trying not to show his resentment at being left uncontacted for so long under his concern; and many others.

But Elrond's voicemail said only: "I hope you realize that you've just blown your cover, and any chance you had at keeping a low profile. Take a look at the internet."

Glorfindel frowned at that one, and turned on his laptop. He opened YouTube in one tab and Google News in another, and gaped at the results.

He had completely forgotten that most people these days carried smartphones like his, and all smartphones (most mobile phones in general, actually) had cameras. Clips and photos of the battle in Manhattan, and of the fight in Germany, were being uploaded by the hour. All the major and minor news outlets were covering the attack, trying to outdo each other with fresh content.

The previous sightings of the Hulk, the exploits of Iron Man, and even the match between Thor and the great metal monster were nothing compared to the sensation that was the Battle of New York. Most of the public (and therefore most of the news media) were wildly excited, and grateful to the Avengers almost to the point of worship. Fan groups, of either the Avengers as a whole or individual heroes, were already forming. "Real superheroes!" was the common sentiment. "If only we could meet them!"

Of course there were some - mostly the politicians and financiers, of course - who felt that powered heroes like the Avengers were all very well when confined to the pages of comic books. The very real and very large-scale damage that had been done to the city would take a great deal of money and time and labor to repair, and certain People in High Places thought that the Avengers ought to be held responsible. More saddening were the reports of injury and death among the civilians, and the rage of their grief-stricken loved ones - "Where were you Avengers when my children were gunned down before my eyes?" one bereaved mother railed.

But perhaps most glaringly, at least to Glorfindel, were the New York images that focused on the inhumanly tall figure in armor, and the snapshots caught of his face in Germany. In a very daring move, a New York Times journalist by the name of Oscar Meriwether had taken especial notice of the device on Glorfindel's surcoat, and had like Fury apparently done a bit of digging.

"I may well be off admiring the Martian canals," the article began. "But devotees of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy will tell you at length about a famous champion named Glorfindel who once wore the emblem of a yellow eight-rayed sun on a green background. We already know of the existence of Thor and Loki; what if Tolkien's beloved fantasy classics aren't fantasy at all?" Meriwether then went on to detail certain of the heroics that the tallest Avenger had been caught performing, and compared them with excerpts from Chapter 12 of The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 23 of The Silmarillion, and Chapter 3 of The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2. "Is it possible," the article concluded. "That the tallest Avenger could be the storied hero Glorfindel?"

Some news outlets ignored the article, and one or two had mocked it outright; but Huffington Post had taken the article, and the idea, and run with it as if they had proof. "What if we've had immortals living among us all along?" journalist Diane St. Clare speculated.

Furthermore, fans of the "Tolkien legendarium" were in a frenzy of excitement, posting endlessly on blogs and social media sites and thumbing their noses at skeptics. The debate over "the tall Avenger" was of course only hours old, and was still dwarfed by the enormity of aliens attacking New York and being defeated by real superheroes, but it was there, and it didn't seem likely to go away.

Glorfindel closed his tabs, and thought long and hard. He had known that this would happen, and had in theory been prepared to embrace it; but now it wasn't theory anymore. He'd let himself be seen for who and what he was, and consequently he had to deal with the reality of people guessing exactly who and what he was.

It was obvious that being outed as an Elf in 2012 would be a very different thing from being outed as an Elf in any other age. Superstition was still alive and well, but was no longer as dominant as it had been. The kinds of things that he and other Elves had suffered through in previous ages were largely looked upon with horror now (if rather hypocritical horror, considering for example certain kinds of Western entertainment). The typical American obsession with celebrities and famous people had its downsides, but perhaps its advantages might be just what the Elves needed to safely come out of hiding.

And . . . Ronald Tolkien had already published some of their stories. In a rather convoluted fashion, obviously, as quite a few different people had been buzzing in his ear, but the books were there. People knew about them, and they'd been absorbed into Western popular culture. Hell, Tony Stark had had the nerve to make a Legolas crack in Glorfindel's presence.

Legolas. Glorfindel actually chuckled. Poor lad. It really was, perhaps, time to begin to set the record straight. It might even be fun.

But first things first. Glorfindel deleted his voicemails, and tried to make what he felt would be the easiest call first - the one to Jules at the company. But nobody picked up. "We're sorry," said an automated message. "The New York Company Ballet has cancelled all activities and services until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you have purchased tickets to any cancelled performances, we will assist you as soon as possible. We thank you for your patience."

Wondering how in hindsight he hadn't foreseen that (many parts of the city were blocked with rubble and many of the taller office and apartment buildings were partly or completely destroyed), Glorfindel hung up and called Nielsen's mobile phone.

"Taylor?" asked Nielsen cautiously when he picked up, as if he wasn't sure it was Glorfindel he was talking to.

"Nielsen?" said Glorfindel just as cautiously. "Hey, I'm sorry I didn't call in absent yesterday - how did The Firebird go?"

Nielsen seemed entirely thrown. "The Fireb- you've been facing down crazy demigods and monsters, and you want to know about The Firebird?"

"So you knew it was me," said Glorfindel resignedly.

"I saw your face when you and - and freakin' Captain America and Iron Man took down that psycho Loki in Germany!" said Nielsen a little wildly. "I don't know how the hell nobody else recognized you. And then an army of aliens came charging through a hole in the sky, and you were in the thick of it - I mean, I guess it was you, under that helmet . . . what are you? Is Taylor even your name?"

"Pipe down, Niels," said Glorfindel. "No, I wasn't born Taylor Alexander - but it is my legal name and I'd like to hang on to it. And as to what I was doing with myself yesterday - relax. I'm still alive, am I not? But come now, tell me about the performance yesterday!"

"There was no performance yesterday," said Nielsen. "What do you think? We were all watching the news and wondering if they'd hit us next. They almost did." He paused. "I mean, I guess I should really be saying thank you. There's a lot of people who'd kill to meet one of the Avengers in person."

"So I see," said Glorfindel. "Which is why I'm going to ask you not to tell anyone about me, for the moment."

"Of course not - but what do you mean, 'for the moment'?" asked Nielsen.

"You'll see," was all Glorfindel said before he hung up. He then dialed Turgon back, with some apprehension.

"Hello?" said the voice of Turukano, Esteemed Prince of the House of Finwë and former King of Gondolin.

"My lord Turgon?" asked Glorfindel warily, as with Nielsen earlier.

"You!" bellowed Turukano. "You orc-kissing spawn of Morgoth, one of these days I will drive a spike through your head so you can't stop my heart with fear anymore! Mad Asgardians? Magical cubes? Aliens and dragons? What were you thinking?"

"My lord, you know you're only miffed you weren't invited the party," said Glorfindel mildly.

"No, I'm 'miffed' because you of all my lords have always - always! - had the greatest talent for getting into trouble," snapped Turukáno. "If I were mortal, I'd be dead of a heart attack ten times over! Are you aware that you and your new little band of friends are all that anybody currently cares to talk about?"

"We call ourselves the Avengers, and yes, I am aware," said Glorfindel patiently. "We couldn't really help that it was public affair; Loki forced our hand in that regard."

"Really, and whose idea was the suit of armor with the device of the eight-rayed sun, complete with a sword?" demanded Turgon.

"My own, but Egalmoth made them for me," said Glorfindel. "My lord, the mortals know our stories - or enough of them do, anyway. And in the wake of Norse gods falling out of the sky, and of towering rage monsters, not to mention the revival of Captain America complete with the red-white-and blue, coming forward as Glorfindel seemed only fitting." Or at least it did when I wasn't reading news articles that guessed it might be me.

"Well, I suppose in that light . . ." grumbled Turgon, but he seemed calmer. "I suppose if they aren't crucifying these new Avengers, they won't crucify you just yet. Just don't let your inevitable screaming fans go to your already swollen head."

Glorfindel snorted. "I very much doubt that I'll have screaming fans, my lord."

Just as an aside, none of the names at the NYCB, the New York Times, or the Huffington Post are real people, certainly not at those organizations - with the exception of NYCB ballet master Peter Martins.

All rights belong to Marvel Studios.

May 7, 2012

6:00 AM.

It was the Times Square set of Good Morning America, and Glorfindel had just arrived on the designated floor (like the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, it had somehow avoided being damaged during the Battle with the Chitauri). It was already abuzz with activity, with staff members arranging furniture, setting up studio lights, fiddling with cameras, and doing the hundred other things that have to be done for a live morning broadcast. Guests were also arriving to take their places in the studio.

The moment Glorfindel stepped out of the elevator, a young man in a button-down blue shirt and khaki shorts - apparently one of the guests - spotted him. The young man's eyes widened, and he poked his girlfriend in the arm excitedly. The unfortunate girl, who was wearing a stylish black sheath dress, stared at Glorfindel in frank awe, not even bothering to smack her boyfriend's hand for pointing. "Oh my Lord," she murmured.

"Hello!" said Glorfindel with a tentative smile, waving. He had done his best to look as Not Human as he could that day. He was dressed simply but powerfully in boots, yellow leggings, and a knee-length green tunic that bore his Golden Flower emblem, with a gold-colored belt. His hair was formally braided, and decorated with the few gold ornaments he still had. As before with SHIELD and the Avengers, he was breaking his habits of cloaking the "glow" and of making people around him perceive him to be shorter than he was.

The wave caught the attention of the other guests, who looked around and caught sight of the seven-foot-and-counting Elf. And then Glorfindel learned just how matter-of-fact all the SHIELD agents and the other Avengers had been (or tried to be) when they had first met him. The civilians around him gawked, whispered, and pointed in obvious fascination, though none of them seemed to have the nerve to speak directly to him. Only one particularly bold buccaneer of about ten or twelve plucked up the courage to actually walk up to Glorfindel. "Hi!" he half whispered. "Can I please shake your hand?"

Glorfindel got down on his knees so as not to tower over the boy so much. "You may!" he said reassuringly, holding out his hand. "My name is Glorfindel," he introduced himself. "What's yours?"

The boy's eyes widened, and he took Glorfindel's hand in both of his own much smaller hands, and shook it carefully. "Ray," he whispered.

Glorfindel, equally amused and endeared, had to fight the urge to ruffle Ray's hair. "It's very nice to meet you, Ray," he said sincerely.

Ray seemed emboldened by this. "Are you a superhero?" he asked.

Glorfindel pointed at the emblem on his tunic. "Do you remember one of the Avengers wearing a big yellow sun on a green background, like this?" he asked. Ray nodded eagerly.

"Well, this is my symbol," said Glorfindel. "And if you see me fighting the bad guys again, you'll know it's me because I'll be wearing it."

"Okay!" Ray suddenly tugged on Glorfindel's hand. "Can you come and say hi to my daddy? He doesn't think you're real."

A man in his late thirties shifted in obvious embarrassment. "Ray," he protested weakly.

Glorfindel lifted his head and smiled over Ray's shoulder. "That's all right," he said. "Most people probably don't. That's why I'm here." He stood up and let Ray pull him across the floor to meet his formerly skeptical father, mother, and older brother. Watching the large Elf greet the family seemed to give the other guests courage, and they began to flock to him as if drawn by a magnet. The adults and older teenagers kept a respectful distance, but the children crowded round his legs and tugged at his arms.

In the middle of it all, a door at the opposite end of the room from the elevator opened, and a staff member poked his head out. "We're ready out here, could you all please come on set?" he called.

"And now for a truly unique interview that I trust you've all been looking forward to," said Robin Roberts, seated across from the live celebrity guest of the morning. "Here we have, for his first-ever public interview, both a hero and a living legend. Please welcome Avenger and storied champion Taylor Alexander, or as he's now become known, Glorfindel."

The interviewee - Glorfindel - was an enormously long person with a face of extraordinary beauty. Strength and kindness were written on his features in equal measure; his blue eyes blazed with their own light, deep and piercing and heavy with long years of sorrow and joy. The understated-but-definite radiance that seemed to come from his very being was magnified by the studio lights, and the sight made some viewers think of Apollo. The interviewee's shining yellow hair, which was obviously very long, was braided in strange patterns, and ornamental gold fastenings glittered in the braids.

Of particular interest was the long-sleeved tunic he was wearing over the plain leggings and boots - it was exactly the same shade of green, and had an eight-pointed sun that was exactly the same shape and shade of yellow, as the surcoat worn by the sword-wielding Avenger just a few days ago.

One thing was obvious to even the most hardened skeptics - he was no human.

"Thank you, Robin," he said in a voice of flutes and harps and trumpets, while his smile seemed to brighten the room. "It's a pleasure to be here."

"The pleasure's all mine!" smiled Robin. "Now I'm thinking this is an occasion where it's totally appropriate to ask you how old you are?"

The golden Glorfindel paused. "Ah . . ."

"You seriously don't know?" asked Robin.

"I stopped counting a long time ago," protested Glorfindel, with the most musical laugh you could wish to hear. "Let me see - I think I'm somewhere around the twenty-nine or thirty thousand year mark by now, all told. Since my rebirth I think I'm about - oh, twenty-five thousand or so."

Robin looked suitably impressed. "Wow, seriously?" she said, and the studio audience applauded.

The Elf Avenger shrugged his shoulders humorously. "Oh, you think that's cool, that I'm literally old as dirt," he said wryly.

Both Robin and the studio audience laughed, and Robin added, "Yeah, I'm guessing even for an immortal species that's a long time, am I right?"

"Yes, even for us, that's quite old," said Glorfindel wryly. "Although we typically respect our elders, so being a 'venerable' Elf is actually not so bad."

"I'm sure! Now if you don't mind," Robin crossed her ankles and leaned forward. "I'd love it if you could talk us through your look here, especially the design on your - tunic? Is that a tunic?"

"Thank you for asking about that," Glorfindel sat up a bit. "I know I look like a reject from the Middle Ages, but this is all by design - yes, really, it is. I think a lot of you probably recognize this golden sun with eight rays on a green background from the Battle a couple of days ago -" here he had to stop, because the studio audience had burst into wild applause and cheers. He looked a little surprised and embarrassed, and bowed his head briefly. "Well, thank you," he said graciously. "Ah, yes, this is the ancient symbol of the House of the Golden Flower of Gondolin -" and he was once again cut off, this time by a lone voice whooping in triumph. This time Glorfindel smiled, his eye drawn presumably to the person who'd whooped. "One person knows what that is," he said.

Robin spread her hands. "Give the rest of us a break," she said, laughing. "Most of us had to Google you last night."

"Yes, I hear that the Lord of the Rings wiki and Tolkien Gateway sites got so much traffic they've crashed," said Glorfindel. "But back to the tunic - yes, you're right, it is a tunic - what you are looking at is my standard, a way to identify myself in battle. The same goes for these braids on my head, actually," and Glorfindel tilted his head forward toward the camera. "I know they look unusual and possibly even goofy to many of you, but I promise you -" and here his head went up again. "- make fun of an Elf's warrior braids in his presence and it might just be the last thing you ever do."

"I will take your word for that," said Robin sincerely, for Glorfindel's voice had turned quite serious. "Now could you tell us about these two rings?" She pointed at his hand.

Glorfindel raised his right hand to the camera, where one plain gold ring sat on his forefinger and another more decorative ring sat on his middle finger. "I don't know how well people are going to be able to see these on camera, but here I go," he said. "This -" he pointed at his middle finger. "- is my signet ring, and if you can't see, it simply has the Golden Flower symbol. And this -" he pointed at his forefinger. "- is my wedding ring - sorry-not-sorry," he added at the disappointed "aww"s from the women among the studio audience.

Robin was laughing again. "I know, what a bummer!" she said merrily. "Now in that truly unforgettable battle on Friday, we saw seven of you in total - are you called the Avengers?"

"Yes, we are the Avengers," said Glorfindel, and smiled again as another burst of applause and cheering broke out from the studio audience.

"And I could swear that one of the other six Avengers was in the Captain America uniform, with the shield," continued Robin.

Glorfindel's smile broadened. "Your eyes did not deceive you," he said. "That was the Captain America uniform, and yes, that was Steve Rogers wearing it." (More cheering.) "I can't really say too much about it, but the reports that he was still alive in that plane they dug up last month are more or less true."

"Wow," Robin sat back in her chair. "And after being presumed dead for seventy years. Can we expect to see more of him in the near future?"

The Elf paused, and thought for a moment. "I should think so, probably," he said.

There was even more applause from the studio audience, and Robin asked, "Where is he now?"

Glorfindel smiled in a very polite but final fashion. "I'm sorry, I can't tell you that," he said.

"Ah, well," said Robin. "it was worth a try. Now am I also correct in assuming that we also saw Thor that day?"

"You are indeed correct," confirmed Glorfindel. "Again, I can't say much, but yes, that was Thor. Unfortunately he's left Earth since then and I don't think he'll be back any time soon."

"We also saw the Hulk again, for the first time since he took on the Abomination in Harlem," continued Robin. "as well as the one and only Iron Man - what a hero, by the way, can we just acknowledge that -" And the studio audience showed their assent with more applause.

Glorfindel gave a respectful nod as the applause died down. "He may not believe himself to be the 'hero type,' but he's very much exactly that." He shrugged. "I happen to know a number of 'hero types.'"

Robin pounced on that. "Yes, speaking of which," she said. "I think we can safely say that what we've been calling the Tolkien legendarium is less legend and more history than we thought - does that mean there are indeed Elves living among us?"

Glorfindel smiled, and his eyes twinkled. "Well, I'm not the only one!" he said, and the studio audience cheered wildly. "Yes, we've been keeping a pretty low profile, but we are there."

"And can we expect to meet any of them in the near future?" asked Robin expectantly.

"Definitely," promised Glorfindel, with a nod. "Very soon, I think."

"Well, I know I'll be looking forward to it!" said Robin, and the studio audience applauded again. "It's been an honor having you on the show. Everybody, this has been Glorfindel the Avenger!"

And the glowing golden Elf Glorfindel smiled into the camera one last time before the image cut away.

So according to Wikipedia, Robin Roberts went on medical leave from GMA in 2012 for the week of April 1 and after August 30, which means at the time of this supposed interview she'd still be on the show. I think. Also, it looks like Michael Strahan, Lara Spencer, Amy Robach, and Ginger Zee hadn't joined the show yet; Josh Elliott and Sam Champion were still on. I don't really watch GMA, so I don't know how the broadcast generally flows. And of course I have no idea what filming a live news broadcast is actually like either.

All rights belong to Marvel Studios.

If Glorfindel had thought for a moment that he would go back to dancing at the NYCB as if the Battle with the Chitauri had never happened, he was wrong. For one thing, the ballet company had to stay closed for another two full weeks after the week of the Battle of the Avengers and the Chitauri. But far more significantly, everyone seemed to want to see Glorfindel in the flesh for themselves - he was begged to make appearances on all kinds of shows based in New York, of which Good Morning America had only been the first, and to give scores of interviews.

People might have been much more skeptical of the existence of creatures out of adventure novels, if an army of aliens and dragons hadn't recently descended on them. The resulting craze over Glorfindel was almost instantaneous - his name and face were everywhere. People began to recognize him whenever he went out, and sometimes they swarmed him so that he couldn't move. Most of them were harmless enough, starstruck fans wanting autographs and selfies, but then paparazzi and reporters with microphones started descending on him like vultures.

And then, help arrived on the scene in a rather unexpected form. Virginia 'Pepper' Potts knocked on his front door.

Glorfindel knew who she was, of course - short of living in seclusion in the woods or the wilderness (as some Elves did), it was impossible to live in America and not know who Pepper Potts was. Currently she was the CEO of Stark Industries (and was apparently running the company very capably), and was rumored to be Tony Stark's girlfriend. Glorfindel started when the knock came on the door, and frowned when he saw her through the peephole.

He opened the door rather cautiously; the woman blinked up at him. She was dressed unassumingly (but just as expensively) in a short-sleeved blouse and khaki pants, with high heeled sandals. Her strawberry blonde hair was drawn back into a bun, and earrings sparkled by her cheeks. She was carrying an attractive tan leather handbag, and Glorfindel could smell her perfume - good stuff, as perfumes produced in modern factories went.

He felt rather wary - how on earth had she discovered where he lived? - but smiled nevertheless. "Good morning, may I do anything for you?"

"Oh my. . ." she seemed to be waffling a little at the sight of him, but she quickly recovered herself. "May I come in?"

Glorfindel stood aside to let her into the apartment. She cast her eye around the place as she entered, as if to ascertain that an ordinary four-room apartment could be inhabited by an Elf.

Glorfindel pulled out a chair at the small kitchen table, and offered the woman a glass of water. "I'm sorry I have nothing better to offer you," he apologized.

Pepper Potts smiled. "I'd be honored to take what you have," she said, taking the glass and sipping from it.

He sat down across from her. "Miss Potts, may I ask how you knew where I live?" Fury, being the head of SHIELD, was probably privy to all kinds of personal details about people he was interested in; how had a businesswoman found him out?

Her smile this time was warm and genuine. "Pepper, please," she said. "And to answer your question," a hint of wry humor crept into her voice. "I live in a tower built by Tony Stark, run by the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world."

Glorfindel remembered the disembodied voice with the prim British accent. "JARVIS runs Stark Tower too, then? I should have guessed so. We were introduced during the Battle," he added at her inquiring look.

"Yes well, JARVIS runs pretty much everything that has to do with Tony Stark," said Pepper. "Including the Tower. Which brings me to the reason I'm here, actually. Tony's extending an invitation for all the Avengers to stay at the Tower, for as long as any of you feel like staying."

Glorfindel began to smile. "That's very thoughtful of Tony," he said, with no doubt in his mind as to who was really extending the invitation.

Pepper didn't rise to the bait. "I thought the idea might appeal to you in particular," she said. "The Tower has the best security in existence, and all kinds of safeguards against all those prying cameras."

That clinched it. "Really?" Glorfindel stood up. "How soon can this happen?"

"I thought you might say that," smiled Pepper. "There's a car waiting at the front of the complex. You can move today, if you want to."

Glorfindel's more valued belongings were mostly being kept for him by Turgon (who had a skyscraper tower of his own in Chicago), so it took him less than an hour to pack up everything he wanted to take with him into two suitcases and a laptop bag. Everything else then went into the trash, except for the appliances and pieces of furniture, of which Glorfindel snapped pictures with his phone to be sold or Freecycled later.

He then went down with Pepper to the first floor and turned in his key at the front desk. The receptionist, a bored-looking woman in her fifties, let him cancel his rental without much comment (she did not seem to recognize either him or Pepper). He called the landlord to let him know he was canceling, and then followed Pepper out the door and down to the car that was indeed waiting for them. It wasn't a sports car like the one Tony had driven on Saturday, but was instead a silver Mercedes-Benz SUV. A solidly built man with dark hair and a humorously self-important manner emerged from the driver's seat.

"This is Harold Hogan, our bodyguard," said Pepper. "Happy, this is Glorfindel."

"Happy?" inquired Glorfindel, even as he stood up one of his suitcases to shake the man's hand.

"We call him Happy," said Pepper brightly.

The man called Happy blinked up at Glorfindel. "Wow," he said. "I'm not feeling like a woodland creature at all here. You want me to get your bags?"

"Oh, that's all right," smiled Glorfindel, proceeding toward the backseat of the car with his things.

'Happy' followed him. "You sure about that?"

"Thank you, Happy, but I've got it," said Glorfindel pleasantly, opening the door and easily chucking his bags onto the seat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pepper biting her lip, vainly trying not to smile.

Happy seemed a bit wrong-footed. "Uh, great, okay," he said, watching while Glorfindel climbed up into the back seat beside his bags and buckled himself in. The Elf did not bother to shut the door behind him, leaving Happy scrambling to do so while trying to look as if he had anticipated the whole thing. Pepper climbed into the front passenger's seat, and Happy went round to the driver's seat and drove off.

About two hours later (New York traffic is famous, and never more so than when the city is under heavy construction), Happy pulled around the back of Stark Tower. A guard sitting in a booth let them through a remotely powered gate down into a garage, where Happy parked the SUV. This time he insisted on handing Glorfindel his bags.

"Thank you, Happy," said Glorfindel as he accepted them, and he followed the two Mortals to an elevator, which slid open as they approached.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Hogan, Miss Potts," said the voice Glorfindel recognized as JARVIS as they entered. "Welcome to Avengers Tower, Lord Glorfindel."

"Just Glorfindel will do," said that gentleman as the doors slid shut and the elevator began to ascend. Bodiless voices speaking to me from the walls, eh? I am sharing a roof with Tony Stark, after all, an artificial intelligence should really be the least of my worries. Unless it's so advanced it has an autonomous will. "Did you say Avengers Tower?"

"Tony's idea, he's renaming it in honor of Loki choosing the Tower to run the skybeam from," said Pepper. "JARVIS, please let Happy out at the ground floor, and then take Glorfindel and me to the uppermost guest floor."

"Already on your way, Miss Potts," said the cultured voice, and almost at once the elevator came to a stop.

"Anything you need from me?" asked Happy.

"I think that'll be all, Happy," said Pepper.

"If you're sure," said Happy Hogan, and he walked out. Glorfindel caught a glimpse of a large front desk and a maze of offices as the elevator doors closed again.

"On which floor am I staying?" asked Glorfindel of Pepper.

"Well, the top ten floors are all basically Tony's lab," said Pepper. "But there are twelve floors designed for guest residence, and one of those floors now belongs to you."

"That's where my room is, then?" asked Glorfindel.

Pepper smiled at him. "Oh, you're getting the floor," she corrected him.

"The floor?" asked Glorfindel incredulously. "You're giving me the whole floor, to myself?"

"We don't do anything by halves here," said Pepper, obviously enjoying his surprise. "Obviously you can share your floor if you want to, but that's entirely up to you."

It had just begun to dawn on him just what kind of over-the-top luxury he really should have anticipated when the elevator came to a stop again. When the doors opened this time Glorfindel's jaw fairly dropped.

The room that the elevator had opened onto appeared to be some kind of entertainment room. It was a massive space, with a twelve-foot-high ceiling and a vibrant, modern color scheme of soft blues with splashes of bright reds, yellows, and greens. The floor was dark brown hardwood, with colorful rugs in front of the enormous sofa, chairs, and ottomans. There was a large screen against the wall to the left, facing the sofas and chairs. Off to the side there was a bar, with an array of dark wood cabinets behind it and a row of bar stools in front of it.

Pepper had already left the elevator and was crossing the room, and Glorfindel hastily grabbed his suitcases and wheeled them after her.

"This is the living room, as you can see," she was saying. "We made it a little small, because we didn't think you were really into that kind of thing." She peered anxiously over her shoulder at him, waiting for his approval.

This is small?! "It's more than big enough for me," said Glorfindel truthfully.

"Good!" Pepper looked relieved. "The master bedroom is this way," and she led the way to the back of the entertainment room to the right of the elevator they'd stepped out of. The door they came to didn't seem to have a lock, but Pepper indicated the little pad by the handle. "Put your thumb on it."

So the Stark servers will have my thumbprint. Well, if SHIELD has my retinal scan, I guess I'm compromised already. Glorfindel put his right thumb to the pad, which lit up when he touched it. After about a second and a half, a little green light flashed above the pad. He removed his thumb, and the words WELCOME GLORFINDEL appeared on the pad in white letters.

"Please enjoy your stay," said the voice of JARVIS, and Pepper pulled the door open. Glorfindel wheeled his suitcases into the short hallway, which also had hardwood flooring, off which three doors opened.

"The furthest door down there leads into the actual bedroom," said Pepper helpfully. "The bathroom is on the right and there's a study on the left."

"Thank you again, Pepper," said Glorfindel. "I think I can take it from here, if you're busy."

Pepper smiled. "Well, I'm always busy," she said. "If there's anything you want or need, just ask JARVIS and someone will get it to you." And she turned and walked back out into the entertainment room toward the elevator, while Glorfindel pushed open the door to the bedroom and advanced inside.

The bedroom was also enormous and lavish, with a color scheme of gentle mint green with cream and dark brown accents. There were two big walk-in closets, and to the left and right respectively were doors that led directly into the bathroom and the "study," so that Glorfindel would not have to leave the bedroom to access either room if he didn't want to.

His immediate attention was drawn to the bed, which was much longer even than a king-size mattress and easily as wide (definitely made for two). He grinned, imagining himself lying full length - full length! - on it as he slept. No more curling up or dangling his legs off the side of the bed because it was too short!

Next he investigated the closets. They were each probably the size of the entire apartment he'd last lived in, and each one had two rows obviously placed to accommodate very tall people. He left his suitcases in one of them, and padded into the bathroom.

The spacious bathroom was all white tile and light grey was an entirely closed-off cubicle for the toilet, in addition to a big shower stall with two shower heads (placed very high up) and a full-size jaccuzzi which was very deep. There was a beautiful double vanity of light grey marble and flawless chrome, and two sets of towels on the racks.

Then Glorfindel left the bathroom and crossed the bedroom (it was quite a crossing) to the "study." It was as spacious as the bathroom, with more hardwood flooring. There were two work stations against the far wall, but these were clearly more of an afterthought. The room was filled with various instruments - a big pedal harp, a violin, a guitar, a set of drums, a recorder, a trumpet, and an upright piano.

Glorfindel shook his head, trying not to imagine how much they all must have cost, as they looked both brand new and of good quality. "JARVIS," he asked experimentally. "Did Pepper choose all these instruments?"

"Ms. Potts was of the opinion that you would enjoy having them readily available," said JARVIS.

Merilin would love them, thought Glorfindel with a sudden pang. He hadn't seen his wife since she had gone to stay in Finarfin's secluded safe haven nearly a hundred years ago when the Great War (of the First World War, as the Mortals were now calling it) had broken out. She hated strife and bloodshed and intrigue, and as truly as she loved and accepted and even understood him she had never shared in his desire for battle and action. He wondered if she was happy where she was. Everything about the master suite seemed to scream "made for two," and it made him feel unexpectedly lonely, as he had not felt since their last parting.

He went back into the bedroom, and instead of open and spacious it now felt vast and empty, even cold. The thought of all the empty space on "his" floor with no one to occupy it but himself (presumably) with only the voice of JARVIS for company was nearly unbearable. His apartment back in the complex had been filled with people, and he'd had neighbors who were up at all hours arguing and partying; and when he hadn't been at his apartment he'd mostly been at the company surrounded by dozens of dancers. He'd almost forgotten what long periods of peace and quiet were actually like.

And then, a thought came to him like a thunderclap, and he laughed aloud. Pepper planned the design of the master suite on purpose, didn't she? She knows damn well I'm married, I've certainly said so in public often enough. That meddling woman, Varda bless her! All right, Pepper, I can take a hint.

Wow, and just like that I'm filled with the feels!

Yes, Glorfindel is married in this 'verse! The name Merilin is the Sindarin for "nightingale," in case you wanted to know. And yes, Tinuviel translates to 'nightingale' too, but I wanted Merilin and not Tinuviel for the character who decided to walk into my headspace last month. (She wasn't at all loud or emphatic about it either - just knocked quietly on the door and waited patiently for me to start properly paying attention to her.)

May 5, 2012

Somewhere on the coast of the Carolinas, in a long, low house by the sea, Ingalaurë Arafinwë and his people watched on their tablet and desktop screens in amazement as smartphone clips and live news footage spilled over the internet. The sign of the House of the Golden Flower had not been seen for many thousands of years; now, as its yellow rays glittered in the light of day, some viewers thought its glory was increased.

Among the viewers was a tall, bone-thin Elf with a pale face, who watched the figure of the tallest Avenger with amazement and pride. "At last, my love," she murmured.

May 7

On the live segment of Good Morning America, Glorfindel flashed his wedding ring, and in the house-by-the-sea, the pale-faced Elf ducked her head to hide her smile from her housemates.

May 22

Arafinwë held out the secure phone. "He wishes to speak with you," he said significantly.

The pale Elf slowly took the phone, and put it to her ear. "Glorfindel?" she nearly whispered.

Something between a sob and a gasp came from the other end of the line. "Merilin?" quavered the voice of her long-absent husband, and at the sound of his voice she burst into tears.

"It feels like it's been so long," wept Merilin, for of course it was she.

Glorfindel laughed through his tears. "Barely a century, love," he snuffled, but she knew he'd felt the length as she did.

"Then why did you not come to me?" she asked.

"Why did you cut yourself off from me?" Glorfindel sniffed. "The distance would not have been so hard, if you had left us our bond."

Merilin sighed from the depths of her soul. "I became ill with sadness after our last parting," she admitted. "And I didn't want you to know."

"Ai, Merilin!" Glorfindel wept again in earnest. "I should have been there!"

Merilin had managed to recover herself a little. "My illness was not your doing, Glorfindel," she told him firmly.

"But you could have died!"

She did not tell him that she had indeed been dying. "Yet I live," she said instead. "To see you become a hero among Men once more, apparently."

Glorfindel gave another breathy laugh. "I - may have blown our collective cover, I think," he said. "But they don't seem to be hunting us all into extinction yet."

"Then you are no longer in hiding?" she asked with growing hope.

"Not anymore," said Glorfindel. "None of us need to hide anymore."

May 25

Merilin packed the last of her essential belongings into a big duffel bag and set it on her bed. She was dressed in the kind of fashionable American garb she'd never worn before: a flimsy cotton blouse, denim leggings, and designer sandals, all of which were brand new.

As she pushed a very modern tablet case into a side pocket, a knock sounded on the open door. Merilin looked up to see her hostess, silver-haired Eärwen of the Teleri. "May I do anything for you, my dear?" she asked.

Merilin smiled gratefully. "Thank you, milady, but I have everything packed already," she said.

"Are you certain?" asked Eärwen, and Merilin knew she was asking about more than the packing of her bag.

But the warmth of Glorfindel's promise, and her own, had begun to bring life back to her withered body. I will come to you, he had told her; but she had requested, Instead let me come to you.

"You and Lord Arafinwë have been very kind to me," she said. "And I've given you ample reason to worry, I know. But I'll be well, I think."

Eärwen smiled. "The both of you always have fared better together," she said. "Go to him, then, and be healed."

May 26

Whenever he had been apart from her for any length of time, Glorfindel reflected, he was always amazed anew at her beauty, and just how much he had missed her. Now the feeling was greater than usual, for this time he had not had even had the comfort of sanwe-latya (thought-speech) during his absence. The very sight of her as she stepped from one of the many trains passing through the station sent a knife of joy through his soul.

Eärwen was with her, hovering protectively as if Merilin were her own child (oddly enough, Glorfindel had never seen any of Eärwen's own children allow themselves to be thus hovered over), and it was she who saw Glorfindel first, and pointed him out to Merilin.

She looked up, and Glorfindel caught his breath as their eyes met. He was barely aware of what he did next; he knew only that he was moving toward his wife and that she was moving toward him; and then they were in one another's arms and his sight was blurred with tears and he was panting, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry -"

But she silenced him with a gentle kiss, and she opened her fëa to him for the first time in ninety-eight years. And just as Merilin was peace and rest to Glorfindel, so he was joy and vitality to her, and each was strengthened in comforting the other.

"I'll assume I'm no longer needed, then?" asked the voice of Eärwen from somewhere in the outside world.

Merilin pulled head just far enough away from Glorfindel's shoulder to look at Eärwen over it. "I think we can take it from here," she said blissfully.

Eärwen smiled and walked away in the direction of another train, and Glorfindel reluctantly let go of Merilin, leaving a kiss on her cheek as they pulled apart.

"Your bag?" he asked.

"I can carry it," she assured him. "It's not heavy."

He looped an arm around her waist and they began to walk. "How was the journey?" he asked.

"It was noisy, smelly, and crowded," she said honestly. "And there was altogether too much metal and too many tools for spying."

He laughed (how she had missed that laugh!). "I've got you your very own spying tool," he told her. "What think you of that, love?"

"That I'll shamelessly use it to spy on you," she returned playfully. "Where are you taking me?"

"To Tony Stark's Tower," said Glorfindel. "Our home for the moment. It's all automation and devices, and it's surrounded by stone and asphalt with not a living thing in sight, but it's no bad place for all that."

"I'm not choosy," she reminded him. "As long as you are there, and as long as there are instruments, I'll be more than happy."

Glorfindel looked slightly troubled. "I'm afraid I might not be there all the time," he admitted.

"Why?" Merilin tensed a little.

"I have been offered an ongoing position as a consultant as well as an Avenger," said Glorfindel, watching her carefully.

"What would that mean?" asked Merilin just as cautiously.

"That I would be 'on call,' to be called if the world was ending again," said Glorfindel. "And that, in between, I would advise SHIELD - the agency behind the Avengers - on matters of 'interspecies relations.' My new employer believes that my publicity can be an advantage both to Mortals and to our people."

Merilin relaxed. "Then you would not always be gone."

"No," agreed Glorfindel with relief. "Only sometimes."

By this time they had passed outside and were approaching a silver SUV. A man in a business suit was standing by it, looking completely unfazed by the fact that he was driving two creatures who hadn't existed a month ago, and he immediately moved to take Merilin's duffel bag. He swung the bag into the trunk while Merilin and Glorfindel climbed into the back seat. Then the man came round to the driver's seat, and began to maneuver his way out of the maze that was Grand Central Station.

"Have you eaten today, Merilin?" asked Glorfindel, and Merilin knew he was hoping she would say no.

And as it happened: "No, not beyond some fruit this morning," she said truthfully.

Glorfindel's smile was one of pure glee. "Harry," he asked of the driver. "Is there a pizzeria along our route that you'd recommend?"

"Oh, about three," said the man cheerfully.

"Then would you mind stopping at the nearest?" said Glorfindel. "We'd like some lunch."

"Well, do you like it?" asked Glorfindel eagerly.

Merilin's mouth was full, as she had just taken a bite of something called pizza. It tasted of things that might have resembled oil, flour, cheese, and (probably) tomato, with slices of some red chemical creation on top that Glorfindel had called "pep-per-o-ni." She chewed at the greasy lump inside her mouth as best she could and gulped hard. They call this food?!

"Will it choke me to death?" she asked.

Glorfindel laughed (which made the objectionable pizza almost worth it). "That's why you also have soda!"

"So-da?" she repeated, eyeing the paper cup by her plate with disfavour, as the smell of the stuff from inside it was like another product of a Mortal laboratory. Nevertheless, she picked up the cup, fastened her lips around the "straw" as she'd just seen her husband do, and sucked bravely. The stuff tasted just as artificial and sickly-sweet as it had smelled, and it bubbled and crackled and made her splutter. After it had "burned" its way down her throat, she did not feel any less thirsty. "Mmph!" she complained, breathing in deeply to clear her nose.

"By the way, it bubbles," remarked Glorfindel belatedly.

"Thank you for the warning," she said reproachfully, and she took another bite of the pizza. It wasn't so bad, actually, once she chose to ignore the obviously artificial or altered quality of the ingredients. But she really disliked the red pep-per-o-ni.

"Harry?" she cautiously asked their driver, who had just come to join them with his own order of pizza topped with pieces of sausage and mushrooms. "Might I try a slice of that pizza?"

Harry grinned at her. "That pepperoni not workin' for ya, Ma'am?" he asked. He separated a slice from his pizza and pushed it onto her plate. She took a bite of it.

"This is better," she decided.

"More pepperoni for me, then?" asked Glorfindel, who had just finished half of theirs. Harry seemed very happy to offer her more sausage and mushroom pizza, but Merilin felt she'd had enough. The two men finished eating in short order and they left the pizzeria, Merilin feeling like she'd just ingested a half-poisonous pile of factory-produced gunk (because, of course, that was exactly what she had done).

They all climbed back into the SUV and Harry drove them for another hour or so; Merilin eyed the enormously wide and busy streets with slight terror. She watched as other vehicles swerved and skidded and nearly crashed into one another (and into them). She saw crowds of Mortals going up and down the sidewalks and even occasionally marching across the streets (once this happened right in front of the SUV, and Harry swore and blared the horn). She saw piles of waste - not even the kind of dung she'd been expecting in a Mortal city, but plastic go-boxes and grocery bags and metal beer cans - lining the streets and being pecked by dirty-looking pigeons.

"Such are Mortal cities now, darling," murmured Glorfindel in her ear. "I'm sorry, I forgot how much has changed in the last hundred years."

"It seems I've missed a great deal," murmured Merilin back. "And I'm not entirely sorry for that."

It was almost a relief when the SUV entered the enormous parking garage of the ridiculous Stark Tower, or Avengers Tower, as it was evidently now called. Harry brought out Merilin's Duffel bag and Glorfindel took it, thanking the man for his trouble and dismissing him.

"This way," he said, and led her to an elevator. "Don't be startled if you hear a voice speak to you," he added.

"A voice?" asked Merilin as they stepped inside.

"Stark has created an artificial intelligence to 'run' the Tower for him," Glorfindel explained.

"An artificial intelligence?" Merilin felt uneasy.

"Good afternoon, madam," said a voice from the walls and ceiling of the elevator, making her start. "I am JARVIS. Welcome home, Glorfindel."

"Thank you, JARVIS," said Glorfindel as if he were used to speaking to the disembodied voice of a man-made series of prompts and commands (though Merilin could tell he was still only a little less unsettled by it than she was). "You know which floor we want, I hope?"

"Your own, of course, sir," said JARVIS. "I have no records of your name or face, madam, what may I call you?"

"Merilin," said that lady, looking round for obviously visible cameras, of which there were none. Apparently there were to be no secrets in this Tower!

Once the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened, Glorfindel led the way straight to the door which opened onto their bedroom. The gentle light green and cream colors relaxed Merilin, and Glorfindel was all too happy to point out the size of the two closets and of the bed. He set down the bag and pointed out the doors to the bathroom and the studio. Curious, she went into the studio and there found, to her joy, a representative of each instrument "family," apparently for her unrestricted use.

"And Tony Stark gave all this to you?" she asked rather wonderingly of Glorfindel, going back into the bedroom where he was emptying the meagre contents of her bag.

"In name, yes," said Glorfindel. "But the lady of this house chose everything for you."

"And who might that be?" asked Merilin.

Glorfindel opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the voice spoke again from nowhere and everywhere. "As it happens, Miss Potts is requesting a meeting with you, Lady Merilin."

"Miss Potts?" Merilin arched an eyebrow.

"Please call me Pepper, and it's very nice to meet you," said the redheaded woman politely, rising from behind her desk. Glorfindel had introduced the two of them and was now standing unobtrusively by the window. Virginia Potts, or Pepper, seemed to be the CEO of Stark Industries, and was apparently running it far more efficiently than Tony Stark (and his late, great, traitorous partner Obadiah Stane) ever had.

Perceiving no guile or malice about the woman, Merilin smiled genuinely. "Then call me Merilin, Pepper," she said. "How may I be of service to you?"

Pepper smiled a little shyly. "Well, I was wondering if you might consider something of both a publicity move and a business venture," she said. "All of the major garment makers, as well as the big fashion designers, are very eager to start making clothing lines made specifically for Elves, now that we've actually started to acknowledge you," wryly. "So I was wondering if you were willing to be the first public Elf model."

Merilin considered this for a moment, and then she began to smile. "I think I can give you better than that," she said.

May 31

"Thank you so much for helping me do this," said a beaming Pepper to Merilin.

"Not at all," said Merilin, her eyes on the dozens of Elves, male and female both, who were allowing themselves to be poked and prodded by Mortals with pins and tape measures. "This should be a good thing. I think."

.All the famous fashion designers themselves were there at Stark Tower, in person, and seemed to be in their own version of heaven (when they weren't being appalled by what their future models were currently wearing). Most of the Elves who were to be models were young or relatively so (under a thousand), and had for the most part grown up around Mortals or not too far removed from them. This meant, unfortunately, that they were mostly Noldor and Sindar (with some "mixed"); but there were very few Vanyar and Teleri, and there were no Nandor, Falathrim, Laiquendi/Green-Elves, Silvans, or Avari tribes there at all.

Merilin saw sketches and concepts of many different sorts of clothing - there were obviously modern styles, varied enough in their way, adapted to fit the needs of Elf body shapes. But there were also remakes and updates on more traditional garb such as robes and gowns and tunics. The designs ranged from plain everyday wear to professional pieces to elegant evening stunners to fantastic creations that would probably be worn only rarely.

Journalists were there in abundance too, being carefully monitored by Stark Tower security, and their accompanying photographers and videographers were happily recording the goings-on.

But perhaps the best part of the evening was the constant buzz. For the first time in thousands of years, Mortals were openly acknowledging Elves as such in conversation. Elves and Men were talking - sometimes amiably, sometimes excitedly, sometimes heatedly with bejeweled hands waving in the air. There were bidding wars on future models left and right, while the Elves in question laughed at them and said, "Don't you know there are more of us?"

Glorfindel returned from a SHIELD summons at about the middle of the event, and was delighted to find Merilin at the center of everything. She smiled at him and kissed his cheek. "I told you I'd be all right somehow," she said.