Thor looked at his father and said, "There has to be something. Asgard's healing techniques —"
"No." Odin said it without looking up from Frigga. The word carried the specific weight of a man who had already checked every door and found them closed.
"Thor."
Frigga's voice, quiet but clear.
Thor crossed to her in two strides and took her hand in both of his. Her fingers were cold. "You're going to be fine," he said, with the certainty of someone building a promise faster than they can think it through. "When I win the tournament — the Dragon Balls —"
He looked at Smith.
Smith had been running the calculation since the moment he knelt beside her. The wound was severe — the heart damaged, the divine energy inside her working at maximum capacity to compensate, buying minutes rather than hours. The Senzu Bean was a known quantity. He had one. He had been holding it for a specific kind of emergency, and this was exactly that.
"I have something," he said. He looked at Odin. "But we need to move now. Wait too long and even this won't be enough."
Odin rose to his feet and looked at Smith with the full weight of a man who had just been told there was a door he hadn't found. "Name your price. Whatever you want from me — whatever I have — it's yours."
Thor said, "Smith. Anything. Tell me what you need."
Smith didn't negotiate. He reached into his system space and produced the Senzu Bean — small, green, unremarkable to the eye — and knelt beside Frigga.
She looked at it, then at him. She was still clear-headed, which told him how much the divine energy in her was working.
He placed it between her lips. She swallowed it with difficulty.
For a moment, nothing.
Then Frigga took a breath that was different from the ones before it — fuller, deeper, the sound of a body that had just been given back everything it was losing. She sat up. Her hand moved to her own chest and pressed flat against the place the blade had entered, and found nothing there. She raised her arm, turned her hand over, looked at her palm.
"My God." Her voice was steady and completely bewildered. "That's — I'm entirely healed."
Thor's exhale was audible across the room. "Mother." He went to her immediately, hands checking her face, her arms, the place where the wound had been. "Are you —"
"Completely." She looked at him, then looked at Smith. "You saved my life. If you hadn't been here —" She stopped. She knew the shape of what would have happened. She had been conscious for most of it. "Thank you."
Frigga had privately assessed the Dragon Ball path as unlikely to help her — Lorelei and Thor hadn't won the last two tournaments, and wishing her back from death would have required winning a third. She had made a quiet peace with the math. The Senzu Bean had bypassed the math entirely.
Odin stepped to Smith and stood there for a moment without speaking, which from Odin was its own kind of statement. Then he put one hand briefly on Smith's shoulder — a gesture that carried several thousand years of context about what Asgardians did and didn't do with their hands.
He turned back to Frigga and held her, briefly and completely, with the expression of a man who had almost had to add a specific regret to a very long list.
Frigga collected herself after a moment and said, "The enemy was after the Aether. Jane is the target. We're safe here — Malekith withdrew — but the palace shield is down and we don't know how they found this room."
Odin nodded. "I'll assess the damage and the breach." He looked at Jane, briefly. "The girl stays inside." He took Gungnir from where he'd set it against the wall and left.
Smith and Thor moved into the corridor, leaving Frigga her room.
Outside the palace, the sky was clearing. The Dark Elf fleet had withdrawn, leaving scoring on the outer walls and debris across the courtyard where the smaller ships had come down. It could have been considerably worse. The margin between what had happened and what had almost happened was a small green bean that most of the universe had never heard of.
Thor looked at the damage and then looked at Smith. "I owe you more than I can count right now."
"We're friends," Smith said. "I wasn't going to stand there."
"Still." Thor exhaled. "Something bothers me. They went directly to Mother's chambers. They knew where to go."
Smith said, "They seem to have had a specific map of this place."
Thor nodded slowly. "The one who took the hammer — he looked like one of the prisoners released during the dungeon riot." He paused. "Someone in the dungeon told him which way to go."
He left toward the dungeon without finishing the sentence. Smith watched him go and considered how that conversation was going to unfold.
Loki looked up when the door opened and saw Thor's face, and read it before any words were spoken. He said, "It ended quickly. Those people weren't particularly useful."
Thor said, "Loki. Mother has fallen."
The mockery left Loki's face.
He sat very still for three seconds. Then: "That's not possible. With you and Father there. And Smith Doyle."
"The cursed warrior found her chambers." Thor's voice had gone flat. "Because someone told him to take the left passage. The Dark Elves used the dungeon riot as a diversion, hit the fleet at the same time, and while we were managing both, their agent walked directly to where Mother was."
Loki said nothing. The divine power in the cell shifted — involuntary, the emotional output of someone who had stopped managing themselves. Books slid off their stacks. The cup shattered against the wall.
"Go to Smith Doyle," Loki said. His voice had gone rough. "He has the Dragon Balls. He can bring her back." A beat. "If you can't do it that way, enter the tournament. Get Odin to enter. Do whatever it takes —"
"I was lying," Thor said.
Loki stopped.
"She's alive." Thor let that land properly. "She was critically injured. Smith used something — a healing artifact, some kind of bean, I've never seen anything like it. She recovered completely, instantly." A pause. "But the cursed warrior did break into her chambers, and Father was about to say goodbye. Smith is the reason she's still here."
Loki sat down slowly on the floor of his cell, legs folding under him. He looked at the debris he'd just created.
Thor watched him for a moment. "You still care about her."
"Don't push it, Thor."
Thor allowed himself a small smile — a real one, not performed. "We all owe him a life."
He turned and walked out.
Loki sat alone in the wreckage of his cell and stared at the wall.
Smith Doyle. He turned the name over. Thank you. I will repay this. I, Loki, swear it.
In the dark of space above Asgard, Malekith's ship held position behind its stealth field.
Algrim stood over him. The disfigurement from Thor's lightning strike was severe — half of Malekith's face reduced to something that had no name in Asgardian medicine.
"Heal," Algrim said. "When you wake, we finish this."
Malekith's one remaining eye closed.