June 16th, 2010
Asgard
Arthur stepped through the golden sparks of a portal and onto the polished stone of the Asgardian palace.
It was early morning here. The light of a distant sun streamed through towering archways, bathing the corridors in a warm, eternal glow that made even the dust motes look majestic.
He walked toward the Royal Archives with purpose. No wandering. No admiring the architecture. No time to waste.
He had missed too many days of research already.
When Odin granted him full access to the Archives after the battle for Asgard, Arthur had been ecstatic. But he'd managed only two visits, two glorious, knowledge-drunk visits where he'd barely scratched the surface, before Earth had pulled him back.
Harlem. The Abominations. Hulk. Mephisto. The aftermath. Kaecilius. SHIELD's Hydra purge. Captain America's wake-up call. And if you counted the Thor events a couple of days before all that, it had been one hell of a fortnight. Like five full movies crammed into two weeks.
But now, things were handled. No loose ends. No imminent danger in sight.
The library was calling.
Arthur quickened his pace. He was on a tight schedule. In a few hours, back in New York, Elena and Tristan would wake up. He had promised to be home before that.
He was a dimension-hopping mage, yes, but he was a stay-at-home dad first. That job didn't pause just because Asgard had a ten-thousand-year-old library waiting for him.
It was a busy life, but it was the one he'd chosen. And honestly? He wouldn't have it any other way.
—
There was another reason for the frantic schedule.
Arthur was no longer using clones.
He hadn't recreated them after the merge before the Mephisto battle, and he didn't plan to. For years, he'd lived fragmented. His main body with the family while clones handled research, business, training, and combat. It had been necessary back then. There had been a desperate urgency to grow stronger, to learn everything at once, to prepare for threats he could barely comprehend.
He'd split himself into pieces because one Arthur Hayes hadn't been enough to hold back the tide.
But the equation had changed.
He wasn't the frightened young wizard anymore, scrambling to accumulate power before the next catastrophe arrived. He had grown up. The desperation was gone, and without it, the cost of a fractured mind wasn't worth paying.
Being whole again after the merge felt different. Clearer.
It was like a room full of overlapping conversations had suddenly fallen silent, leaving behind a single, clean voice. He hadn't realized how noisy his own mind had been until the noise stopped. He'd been a committee masquerading as a person for so long that he'd forgotten what singular focus felt like.
He liked it. He liked it a lot.
Besides, everything the clones used to handle either no longer needed his attention or could be managed by him alone.
Phoenix Group ran itself even without Arthur or Daniel's direct supervision. Ariadne handled the underworld with frightening efficiency. Iron Man and SHIELD handled terrestrial threats. Kamar-Taj handled the extra-dimensional ones. The monitoring and intelligence work was Eve's domain now. And if something truly dangerous emerged, Eve could always reach him.
Even his own growth had found its direction. Arcane Magic. The Arcane Mage State. It had proven itself against a Hell Lord. That was his path now. He no longer needed to study everything under the sun just to stack advantages.
The frantic multitasking that had defined Arthur's life for over a decade could finally stop.
Only two things truly needed Arthur Hayes: his family and the Asgard Archives. Everything else was maintenance. And maintenance didn't require multiple bodies.
So one body it was. One mind. A tight schedule of portaling between New York and Asgard, being a father when the kids were awake, being a scholar when they slept. Busier than having clones, certainly. But there was something honest about it. Something grounding.
As he walked, his mind ran through the state of everything he'd left behind.
—
Dr. Banner had settled at AIM. He hadn't been keen on building his own lab from scratch, and one look at what AIM had produced, and where they were headed, was enough for him to sign on.
Yesterday was his first day. Arthur smiled at the memory. He'd accompanied Banner to the facility, looking forward to watching the scientist geek out over the equipment. But Eileen had arranged something better.
Banner had walked into the genetics lab, all nervous energy and barely contained excitement, and found his assigned co-lead already there.
Betty Ross. Standing at a workstation, looking up with a smile.
Banner had frozen in the doorway like someone hit pause on a recording.
The whole thing was Eileen's doing. Banner had wanted to find Betty for days but couldn't muster the courage. Too much guilt. So Eileen had gone around him entirely. Tracked Betty down, pitched her on co-leading AIM's new project. Betty had accepted before Eileen finished the sentence. Just knowing who her partner would be was enough.
The two were now heading AIM's most ambitious initiative: a DNA editing program that, combined with Extremis, could eventually tackle genetic conditions the regenerative treatment couldn't touch. Real work. Important work. The kind of work that gave a man like Banner a reason to get up in the morning that didn't involve property damage.
And the Hulk wasn't forgotten. A deal had been reached. Working hours and some time with Betty belonged to Banner. Everything else belonged to the Big Guy.
Most evenings, Hulk spent at the Hayes house, playing with the kids, sparring with Wanda and Pietro when the twins visited. Winky was there to repair any broken furniture or walls. And there was plenty of broken furniture.
But Hulk wasn't limited to the manor. He had full freedom. When he wanted to roam, Winky would Apparate him somewhere remote. A mountain range, a desert, an empty coastline. He was free to run until the restlessness burned off. When it was time for Banner to come back, Winky brought him home. Simple. Respectful. Hulk liked this arrangement, and that was what mattered.
Arthur had plans to teach Banner meditation eventually. The first steps toward a true integration. But that could wait. Banner was happy. Hulk was happy.
—
Moving on to the old popsicle. Steve Rogers had woken up from seventy years of ice and had his world turned completely upside down. Arthur didn't know the details of how the adjustment was going. Fury was handling the reintegration program, and Arthur was not bothered with the details.
Tony had mentioned that Rogers asked to visit Peggy Carter almost immediately. The old Peggy Carter and the young, perfectly preserved Captain America. An impossibly tender reunion that Arthur couldn't deny he was curious about.
Tony's voice was always a little off when he mentioned anything about Rogers. Too noble for Tony's taste, probably. Those two were going to have an interesting dynamic.
Speaking of Tony, the man was busy on multiple fronts. The Kree tech data Fury had finally shared was consuming his waking hours. Alongside the alien tech, the Barnes search had begun. JARVIS was scanning globally. Facial recognition, security cameras, Hydra safe house locations. But Barnes was a ghost. Very good at not being found.
Rogers hadn't been told about Barnes yet. Tony and Fury planned to reveal everything after capture. No point giving the Captain hope and a target simultaneously. That was a recipe for a one-man crusade across Eastern Europe.
Tony had visited Peggy, though. He'd had his talk about Barnes, about Howard, about the war. He hadn't shared what she told him, but something had shifted. The blinding rage had cooled into something more deliberate. More patient.
Maybe Arthur wouldn't have to watch Tony and the Captain try to kill each other after all.
—
Coming to Fury. The man was doing what he did best. Rebuilding.
SHIELD's internal Hydra purge was complete. The external cleanup was ongoing, scattered cells across a dozen countries being hunted down one by one. Fury was staffing the gaps with people he'd personally vetted, and the Tesseract research had begun under Selvig.
The fake Tesseract. Arthur's most calculated gamble.
Honestly, he wasn't sure it would work. He had no idea how Thanos had sensed SHIELD experimenting with the Tesseract in the original timeline. How was that even possible across the vastness of space? But the fake Tesseract was out there, broadcasting, and Arthur was willing to roll the dice for the Mind Stone.
The dangerous part was the Chitauri army that came with Loki.
Arthur wasn't naive about it. People might die.
But if an alien invasion was inevitable sooner or later, better to face the weakest enemy first. The Chitauri were the most beatable hostile force in Arthur's knowledge. One glaring weak point. Cut the connection and they all dropped. As first contact with a hostile alien army went, Earth could do a lot worse.
And there was a broader purpose.
From everything Arthur had studied, in this life and the last, the fastest way to settle internal conflict was to present a bigger external threat.
When an alien army descended from the sky, countries that spent their energy fighting each other would suddenly find common cause. The wizarding world, whose exposure was only a matter of time, would be seen as an asset rather than a danger.
One crisis to reshape the entire geopolitical landscape.
But the invasion was years away, if it happened at all. Maybe Thanos would never sense the signal. Maybe Loki would be too afraid to target an Earth where Arthur Hayes, the person who defeated his father, lived.
Too many variables to obsess over. Eve would monitor.
Arthur had other things to focus on. Like the ten-thousand-year-old library he was currently walking toward.