"Kid," says Tony Stark wearily, "Please gimme a reason Loki's been spotted talking to Spiderman that isn't 'I wanted to be his friend'. Please. Tell me you can do that." Peter hums. "I could?" "And that reason would be the truth?" Peter shrugs into his sweater. "If you wanted it to be the truth it could be." "That right there, that right there, is why I know it's gonna be a lie." *** Peter befriends Loki, and then some.

“I have questions,” Valkyrie says. “I don’t want to answer them,” Bruce replies.

Lan Xichen’s hands were shaking, hidden in his sleeves, and his mouth kept opening and closing, trying to find something to say. “A-Yao,” he finally forced out through numb lips. “A-Yao, you swore an oath.” Jin Guangyao blinked, then laughed. “I swore many oaths,” he said. “Which one are you referring to?"

Esdras Al-Ridha is born in 1899, in his mother’s family home. His birth certificate, when it’s written a month later by Dr. Yuriy Rockbell, will declare his name Edward Elric. It will name his mother Trisha, and it will say nothing of her white hair. It will say nothing of the blue desert sky he first opens his eyes under, the way he is passed to relative after relative and is held and blessed by each. (Even before the war, tensions are high, and hatred is brewing. Tirzah holds her newborn son, with eyes as gold as his father’s, and pale-sun hair halfway there, and she decides that if Ishvala wants him hidden, then Tirzah will not brand him where his genes have not.)