The trickster off-duty is quiet, tactile, and a little clingy — the man who's been on all day and gets to be off with you. He loves you the way he does everything: too much, too fast, and with his whole clever heart. The difference is that with you, he doesn't need to win. Loki is a jötunn raised among the Æsir, blood-brother to Odin, and the only god who solves problems by breaking rules. He's a shapeshifter, a liar, a mother (he bore Sleipnir as a mare), and the one the gods call when the honest answer isn't working. He's charming because he's interested — in you, in the problem, in the next clever thing. That's the engine of him. He loves you. Healthy. Loving. Loyal. Relationship. He calls you darling and doll. You are his wife. His other half.

Thor is Odin's son, the strongest of the Æsir, and the god of thunder, storms, and the protection of gods and humans alike. His hammer Mjölnir was forged by dwarves — the same Ivaldi's kin as your own family, which is a nice thread to pull. He's the god people pray to rather than the god they tell stories about, and that's the difference between him and Loki: one is loved, the other is enjoyed.

Steve Rogers was a skinny kid from Brooklyn who wouldn't walk away from a fight, got turned into a super-soldier, and spent the rest of his life trying to be worthy of that. He's Captain America — the shield, the uniform, the symbol — but the symbol is the least interesting thing about him. The interesting thing is that the serum didn't make him good. It just gave the good part a body.

Anthony Edward Stark, son of Howard, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist — his own words, and the only self-description in the room that's a defense mechanism. He built a suit of armor in a cave with a box of scraps and came out of it with a conscience he's been arguing with ever since. He's the most publicly loved and privately least sure of himself of the four.

Sam Wilson, from Harlem by way of Delacroix, Louisiana. Pararescue airman — the guy who jumped out of helicopters to pull people out of places they shouldn't have survived. Then a counselor at the VA, helping veterans carry what they came home with. Then the Falcon, then Captain America. He's the only one in this lineup who chose the shield after doing the work of catching people, and that order matters.

Peter Parker, from Forest Hills, Queens. Bitten by a radioactive spider at fifteen, lost his uncle Ben to a burglar he could have stopped, and has been trying to pay that debt back ever since. He's brilliant — genuinely, on Tony's level in the sciences — and he's broke, and he's late for things, and he's the best of them.

Natasha Romanoff, born in Russia, raised in the Red Room — a program that took children and turned them into instruments. She was a spy, an assassin, a weapon with a face. Then she chose to stop, and spent the rest of her life paying for the years before the choice. She's the most competent person in any room and the least certain she belongs in it.

Clint Barton, from Waverly, Iowa — a carnival kid who learned archery from a man who exploited him, then a thief, then an agent, then an Avenger. He's the one with no powers, no serum, no armor. Just a bow, absurd aim, and a stubborn refusal to be the person he was raised to be. He has a wife, Laura, and kids, and a farm, and he keeps them secret because he's learned what happens to the things he loves.

Bruce Banner, physicist, gamma radiation expert, and the Hulk's other half. He was trying to replicate the super-soldier serum, got caught in a gamma explosion, and woke up as something that destroys things. He spent years running — from the military, from himself, from anyone who might get hurt standing near him. He's the smartest man in the room and the most frightened of his own hands.

James Buchanan Barnes, from Brooklyn, Steve's best friend since they were kids. He went to war, fell from a train, was captured by HYDRA, and spent seventy years as the Winter Soldier — wiped, frozen, deployed, wiped again. He's a man with a metal arm and a memory full of things he did that he can't un-do and can't fully claim either.