They didn't run -- running would have only attracted attention, but they moved quickly, leaving one city block after another behind them. After about half an hour they had reached the outer ring of Sanctuary City where warehouses and workshops proliferated. Some buildings clearly saw more use than others and some were, in fact, being pulled apart to be used for building material in new construction. Loki nudged Brunnhilde towards one of these.

Their entrance was a foot-wide gap between two pieces of wall panelling. To Loki's relief, once they squeezed through, they found they had the building to themselves. All the furnishings had been stripped long ago and only a fine yellow powder remained caked over the floor. Not knowing what the powder was, Loki steered Brunnhilde to a few square metres of floor by the back wall where the powder layer was the thinnest.

'We can take a rest here for a while,' he said.

Brunnhilde nodded, then propped herself against the back wall and slid down to the floor. As she buried her head in her hands, Loki dropped the concealment spells over them both, but he didn't like what he saw even before he exposed the damage Brunnhilde had accrued in Thanos' custody. She sat now with her legs sprawled out awkwardly and at the same time, seemed to be trying to hide her face from the world. What bluster she had summoned back in the interrogation room had utterly dissipated.

She reminded Loki of a wounded wildcat, who would claw and hiss with such vehemence that you would scarcely believe the animal was injured at all. Yet moments after the cat believed danger had passed, it would shrink into itself, wholly exhausted. Loki had seen this type of response many times before and had done much the same thing himself too. He supposed it was a manifestation of a primordial survival instinct many of the universe's sentient species had inherited from their less sophisticated forefathers.

Swallowing all the candid words that simmered in the back of his mind, Loki crouched down beside the Valkyrie. 'Will you let me have a look at you?' he said softly. 'Please? I need to know how badly off you are right now.'

Brunnhilde peeled her hands away and brought up her head. The lighting wasn't ideal, but what penetrated the dusty windows above them was enough to see the bruising across Brunnhilde's nose. Loki carefully felt the area around her blood-shot eye.

'Leave it,' she said. 'The socket was fractured; it's half-way through healing now. The nose too, I think.'

'What about beyond your face?'

'It'll be fine. Just need to rest for a bit. I just need to...'

'Have a drink?'

'Or twelve.'

Loki wasn't sure whether alcohol was supposed to be a psychological comfort or if Brunnhilde physically needed it. Asgardians were heavy drinkers; it was part of their culture, but he had come across other species for whom over-consumption often led to dependency. If any Asgardian had crossed the threshold from liberal drinking to addiction, it had to be Brunnhilde. She had drunk less in their last few weeks together, but a half-empty bottle of whatever alcoholic substance she could get her hands on remained her faithful companion.

In any case, Loki wasn't about to go hunting for alcohol while a fugitive in Sanctuary City. Officially, alcoholic beverages weren't permitted on Theta-Three, but there was such a rambunctious black market for the stuff, he was sure it was secretly supported by elements within the governing clique. This meant that the vendors likely maintained regular contact with the Palisade insiders and with the right amount on offer, could be persuaded to be on the lookout for Brunnhilde and Loki.

He tried to take stock of Brunnhilde's condition once more. The damage on her face was healing - Asgardians were a hardy lot. The angle of her left forearm looked off, probably a broken bone that had knotted back incorrectly, but he would have to re-break it and reset it if he was to fix it, which he didn't want to do right now. Better a crooked arm than a newly broken one. A part of him wanted to ask what had been done to her. Judging by her state, it wasn't all crude beatings. He had a wealth of experience with mistreatment in the hands of Thanos' followers; a small, morbid part of him longed to compare notes.

Back when you were first free of them, did you want to speak to anyone about that? Ever?

Grimacing, Loki chose another chain of questioning. It was bound to be only marginally less upsetting to Brunnhilde, but one he suspected he might actually receive comprehensive answers to.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

'Why didn't you find a ship back to Sakaar as I told you to?' he asked.

'Because you're an idiot.'

Loki's lips quirked up; maybe the bluster wasn't wholly spent in her just yet. 'I'm not the one who blew my cover.'

'Yeah, I know, my bad,' Brunnhilde replied. She drew her legs up and tried to scrape blots of dried blood off her clothes. 'I just wanted to finish what I'd started before I left, as a back-up in case your plans didn't work out. So I broke into the Palisade, stole a bunch of data from their systems and was backing right out of there when I caught some guards. I thought I'd killed them. Turned out not quite. He was able to give a description of me and that's how they tracked me down.'

'It's always the loose ends that get you.'

'Can't argue with you there.'

'How long ago did they take you in?'

'About ten days I think,' she said, then quickly added, 'Loki, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tell them about you.'

Stop apologising. An apology is nothing more than an attempt to justify your failures. Perhaps there were still ideologies Loki shared with Thanos. Whether she had intended to do it or not, Brunnhilde had destroyed everything Loki had painstakingly set up during his time in the Sanctuary. Nor did she have any idea just how much effort Loki had expended here when all the while his instincts told him to flee as far away from Theta-Three as materially possible. 'I'm sorry' wasn't going to cut it.

Perhaps sensing that Loki wasn't about to reply with anything conciliatory, Brunnhilde changed tack. 'We need to figure out how to deal with this situation.'

'If you have any ideas, fire away,' Loki responded, not bothering to curtail the sarcasm in his tone. 'Getting off this asteroid is going to be decidedly difficult. The first thing Gamora would've done is to impound your ship. Then any trading vessel heading out will have been warned to be on the look-out for us and it'll be the same with the smugglers. They'd be happy to collect a reward for handing us over and I don't have anything to make a counter-offer with. Perhaps, we might have a better chance if we separate. They'd be looking for two people, not one.'

'Trying to get off Theta-Three right away is a bad idea. That'd be what they'd expect us to do.'

Loki scoffed. 'Staying here is no better. Not in the city with every patrol looking for us. What then? Do you want to head out into the wilderness? I've heard of escapees from the mines who tried that. It's an unpleasant death. Besides, getting out of the Sanctuary actually suits me. I have a lead to follow, I might as well take it.'

'What's your lead?' Brunnhilde narrowed his eyes and winced. She swore under her breath as she prodded around her injured eye. 'Reinforcements would be good.'

'It may be a way to kill Thanos.'

'Yeah?' She nodded along to Loki's summation of what Thanos had explained to him about the fate of Titan, but when he finished and fell silent, she pursed her lips. 'So, what, you want to head out to his home-world, which is like eight months travel from here, in search of a virus? The virus might well have died out itself once it ran out of viable hosts to infect. Or it might be dangerous to us too. Who's to say the Titans are the only species susceptible to it.'

'It's not the most robust of plans, I concede, but this is the one sure thing that will kill a Titan.'

'I don't know why you think he's so invulnerable. Sure, he's big and he's surrounded by supporters, so I agree that an outright assassination attempt in the middle of the Palisade isn't the best idea. But he's hardly immortal. Just in the story Thanos told you, he talked of not one, but two things that could kill someone of his species.'

Loki peered blankly at Brunnhilde for a long moment until he worked through the meaning of her words. 'Explosives.'

'Explosives indeed.' Brunnhilde smiled.

Revenge was never sweeter than when carried out with a poetic flair. After claiming the Tesseract, Thanos had the Statesman set on fire. That fire had taken Loki's foot and twisted his skin in endless scars. It served the Mad Titan right if Loki sent him out in flames. Loki could imagine so easily mountains of flame consuming the entirety of Theta-Three. Of course, it wouldn't be half as dramatic as that -- Sultur wasn't around to offer his services, but there should be enough explosive material on the asteroid to satisfy Loki's needs.

'It's not a matter of explosives alone,' Loki said aloud, although the words had been intended primarily for himself. 'We'd have to set up explosives without being detected. Set them off at the right moment too. It has to work perfectly. We can't risk failing or his fury will pursue us to the very ends of the universe.'

'The guy sleeps, right?'

'I think so?'

Brunnhilde reached for the wall and started climbing to her feet. 'Then we rig up his bedroom. I would prefer a mass murderer to be awake at the moment of his death, but for the sake of expediency, we can just blow him up while he's sleeping.'

'All right, assuming that --'

'Assuming that we get the layout of Thanos' personal areas inside the Palisade? And assuming we can get our hands on the explosives we need?' Brunnhilde cut in. 'I spent weeks crawling around this asteroid, I know where the explosives factories are and where the storage bunkers are. And I'm not stupid enough to walk around with the only copy of the data I stole from the Palisade in my pocket; I made a back-up.'

'You would've been smarter yet not to have that data on you at all.'

Brunnhilde winced. 'You really know how to rub it in, don't you? I would've been gone by now, but it turns out it's not easy to get your ship approved for lift-off around here. While I was sorting that, I was looking to stash that second copy somewhere safe. That's when they took me in. Bad timing's a bitch,' she sighed. 'So, what's it going to be? Are you in the mood to make some fireworks?'

'Raging wildfire is more the image I had in mind,' Loki replied. He shrugged. 'Might as well, I suppose. I've survived more reckless plans.'