Frigga stood at the window of their chamber, watching the sky above Asgard where the last traces of the convergence were still visible — faint auroral remnants dissolving at the edges, the Nine Realms receding back to their proper distances.
"It's over," she said. "Malekith. All of it."
Odin crossed the room and took her hand. He held it in both of his, studying it for a moment before he looked up.
"There's something I need to tell you."
She turned from the window. The expression on his face — not grief, but something settled, long-decided — told her the shape of what was coming before the first word.
"The Odinforce," he said. "I can no longer contain its growth. My body has reached its limit." He said it simply, without softening. "Two years. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less. But two years is what I believe."
The silence held for a moment.
"The Odinsleep," she said. "If you enter it again—"
He shook his head. "The last time was interrupted. That window is gone. The accumulation has gone too far since then — sleep would no longer resolve it, only delay it briefly." He watched her face. "It isn't the body that's failing. The body is fine. The power has simply exceeded what any physical form was designed to carry. Even a Senzu Bean would only restore me to the same threshold. The threshold itself is the problem."
Frigga looked at him for a long moment without speaking. She had known Odin for longer than most civilizations had existed. She had watched him outlive empires and reshape the cosmological order of the Nine Realms through force of will alone. And she had watched, in quieter moments, the slow accumulation of something in him that even he couldn't manage anymore.
"The Dragon Ball tournament," she said carefully. "Two years is enough time for two cycles."
"Let nature take its course." He said it without hesitation, which told her he'd already thought through this argument and closed it. "I won't chase more time that way. I've had enough time." A pause, something almost gentle in his voice. "What I want is to spend these two years with you. On Midgard. Away from courts and councils and the weight of all of this."
She absorbed that. Something in her chest shifted — grief pressed against warmth pressed against something that wasn't quite either.
"Asgard," she said. "Thor. Loki."
Odin's expression moved through something complicated. "Thor is not ready to be king, and he knows it — the battle proved that to him more convincingly than I ever could. He needs time to grow into it. I'll give him that." He paused. "As for Loki—"
Frigga waited.
"He's always believed I treated him unfairly." Odin's voice was dry but not unkind. "I'm going to give him exactly what he always said he wanted. The throne. Two years to prove what he can do with it." A beat. "He'll manage Asgard in my name. I want to see who he becomes when the position is real."
"You're giving him Gungnir."
"I'm giving him a test," Odin said. "And the tool to pass it."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Hela."
The name landed in the room and stayed there.
"You know I'm aware of her," Frigga said. Not an accusation. Just clarity between two people who had kept the same careful silences for too long.
"I've left that with Smith." Odin's voice was steady. "If he and Hela reach an agreement, I'll release her early — formally, with recognition. If they don't, Smith will still be here for Thor when the time comes. Either way, Asgard won't face that particular storm without someone capable of standing in front of it." He looked at his wife. "I trust him. More than I expected to, when I first considered the situation."
Frigga considered this for a long moment.
"Midgard," she said finally.
"Midgard." The word carried something that wasn't resignation — it was the opposite of resignation. "I want to see what it looks like from the ground, not the throne. I want to eat food that nobody prepared for a king. I want to be somewhere where nobody is watching me for guidance." He held her gaze. "Come with me."
She looked at him — at the man who had carried the weight of the Nine Realms for longer than most gods could conceive of — and made her decision in the same quiet way she made most of them.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm choosing where we go first."
The party ran long.
It ran the way parties do when the people attending them have been keeping their nerves at a particular pitch for several days and then had the tension suddenly removed — not winding down gracefully but burning through, loud and warm and willing to stay up as late as it needed to. Thor kept finding Smith with a refilled cup. Then Loki did, with a different one. Then Pietro, and Xu Wenwu, and Ying Li, who thanked him with the particular quiet sincerity of someone who understood what the Dragon Balls had actually given back to her family. Then the werewolves, in rotating shifts, because celebrating a victory over aliens was exactly the kind of event their culture had strong opinions about.
Smith accepted every toast. He was, in the end, only human enough.
He woke up in Bulma's bed.
He lay still for a moment, assembling the evening's timeline from the available evidence, and concluded that he had consumed approximately twice his usual tolerance. This was Thor's fault in roughly equal measure to everyone else's.
Bulma was still asleep, one arm folded under her head, expression fully at rest.
He kissed her forehead quietly and got up.
The dining area was morning-quiet. Thor and Loki were near the entrance — Thor in the middle of what appeared to be a goodbye that had been running for a few minutes and wasn't finding its natural endpoint. Jane was holding his hand. Loki stood two feet away with his arms crossed, watching the surrounding ceiling with the expression of a man waiting for a train.
"I'll come back," Thor was saying. "Sooner than last time. I mean it this time."
"You always mean it," Jane said.
"This time I'm in a position to actually deliver on it." He cupped her face briefly. "The situation is resolved. There's no reason it should be as long as before."
Loki turned from the ceiling. "Have you both considered that some of us have places to be."
"I will end you," Thor said, without heat.
"You're about to end me with secondhand embarrassment. Did you brush your teeth? Both of you? Before this?" Loki looked at Smith, who had arrived with a cup of coffee. "Tell me you're as tired of this as I am."
"We can go now," Smith said, to Thor specifically.
Thor pressed his forehead briefly to Jane's, said something that nobody else was meant to hear, and then stepped back and straightened his posture.
"Alright."
Smith opened the portal.
The throne room of Asgard was rebuilt enough to function — the damaged sections cleared, Gungnir back in Odin's hand, the space holding the weight it was designed to hold again. Frigga stood beside the throne. Loki had positioned himself with characteristic precision at a distance that was neither too close nor too removed.
Odin handed a steward a signal, and soldiers began filing in from the side halls carrying containers — Asgardian wine in sealed vessels, prepared foods that didn't travel on Earth, materials that couldn't be sourced anywhere below the Bifrost.
"For your next visit to Helheim," Odin said, looking at Smith. "She asked for aged wine from somewhere with actual seasons. I've included several vintages, and some other things I thought she might appreciate." He paused. "I trust your judgment on how to present the conversation."
Smith looked at the collection. He estimated three or four trips worth of gifts, which probably reflected Odin's understanding of how these negotiations moved.
"I'll handle it," he said.
He moved everything into his system space and nodded to Odin in acknowledgment of something that didn't require more words than that.
Then he stepped back and let the room have the moment it actually needed.
Thor knelt before the throne on one knee.
"I acted without authorization," he said. "I freed Loki from custody and left Asgard without your permission. Whatever punishment you think is fitting, I accept it."
Odin looked at his son for a long moment — at the set of his shoulders, at the thing in his face that wasn't quite certainty yet but was moving toward it.
"The Nine Realms watched," Odin said. "They watched you and Loki hold the field on Earth while the larger threat was handled. They watched the conspiracy fail." He let that settle. "A risky decision. A good outcome. I've made the same trade more times than I can remember." He straightened. "And I once told you that there would come a day when I'd ask who was more worthy to sit this throne than I." He held Thor's gaze. "What's your answer?"
Thor stood. "I'm not ready," he said directly. "The strongest opponent in this entire situation was dealt with by someone else. I watched a cursed warrior send my hammer sideways without slowing down." He kept his chin level. "I need more time and I know I need it. Asgard still needs you — or needs to believe you're here."
Something in Odin's expression moved, brief and genuine, before it settled back.
"The woman on Earth," he said. "Is this her preference?"
"She doesn't know what I'm about to say." Thor held his gaze steady. "She's never asked me to be anything other than what I already am. This isn't about her."
A pause.
"Father. Pardon Loki."
Odin's eyes moved to Loki, who was managing his expression with visible effort. The combination of relief and determination and something carefully guarded was still readable, if you knew where to look.
"You need more time," Odin said, back to Thor. "I'll give it to you." A beat. "Loki's crimes are pardoned."
Thor held his father's gaze for one more moment. Then he bowed, turned, and walked toward the door without looking back. He trusted what was behind him the way he always had — with everything and without reservation.
At the door he paused briefly and looked at Smith.
Smith tilted his head toward the exit. Go.
Thor went.
Smith turned to Odin. "I'll take my leave as well."
"Smith Doyle."
He stopped.
"Thank you," Odin said. It was two words delivered without ceremony or qualifier. From Odin, that was the full weight of the thing.
Smith acknowledged it with a nod.
Then he opened the passage to Helheim and stepped through.
After they were both gone, Odin looked at the third person remaining in the throne room.
Loki stood alone in the space that had cleared around him, holding himself still with the slight tension of someone who had learned not to hope for specific things because specific things had a way of not arriving.
"You've always believed the scales were tipped against you," Odin said. "I know you have." He rose from the throne, Gungnir in his hand. "I'm not going to argue the point. I'm going to give you something instead."
He crossed to Loki and held out the spear.
Loki's eyes went to it, then to Odin's face.
"I won't name you heir," Odin said. "But I'm leaving Asgard in your hands. Two years. Govern in my name. Make decisions. See what it actually feels like to hold the responsibility, not just the idea of it." He waited. "Your mother and I won't be here to intervene. This is entirely yours."
Loki took Gungnir.
He held it for a moment, the weight of it settling into his grip — a weight that was both literal and something considerably larger than literal.
Frigga passed him on her way out. She slowed just enough to put her hand briefly on his arm and say, simply: "I believe in you."
The doors closed.
Loki stood alone in the throne room of Asgard, his father's spear in his hand, and the silence of an empty court around him.
He looked at the throne.
He walked to it slowly, and sat down.
The gold light came out of him as he settled — Loki's own nature reshaping, his features shifting and settling into something older, heavier, one-eyed. Gungnir rested across his knees exactly the way it had always rested across Odin's.
He looked out at the empty hall.
"I won't let you down," he said quietly.
Whether he was saying it to his parents, to Asgard, or to something harder to name — he didn't specify. He just held the spear, and breathed, and let the throne room hold its silence around him.