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A lifetime and a promise ago, Loki finds that the cosmic gateway sapping him of his lifeforce and magic somehow—unpleasantly—reminds him of home, before remembering with a cynic’s airs that he has no such thing. The portal is not of the Bifrost or the old, dark energy of Asgard; it is a bridge of greater and older power between one infinite force and another. The scepter, in his hand, and the world within reach. The world of the space stone. For all its great power, the Tesseract, like Thanos, needs vessels and servants to channel its aims—right now Loki is the conduit, and try as he might, he cannot shake the feeling it has forged an invisible noose around his neck. Should he fail, it might pull taught.
Or he might slip from it. After all, doors open from both sides.
Like his allegiance, Loki dares remain at one threshold only fleetingly. The great and glorious Purpose pulls and constricts, the portal’s sputtering maw beckons him on, and its conduit steps through—
—there is no way of telling whether it happened for sure, for the ground is frozen, and Asgard is in memory the land of eternal summer. Perhaps the ground freezes over where he walks; who can say. It is sometime before his exile. The wild seeds of discontent are already sown in his heart. As yet, no blood has been reaped save his own, but even now dark deeds have ceased to be mere entertainment and have begun to pool behind his lips, half-parted in that boyish smile that some will grow to fear.
Loki, young sorcerer, wanders the caves at the borderlands, the fractures in time and space where an unruly heart can seek escape, and he finds one of them that draws him onward with some uncertain spell, and he steps through—
Into sunlight.
He wanders into the long passed day of a young god, a fickle spell indeed; he meets a young Thor that is blessed by no ills except childlike arrogance, naive love of life and quarreling.
Somehow, the boy recognizes him. Perhaps it is the color scheme, or Loki’s blinking eyes, ever unaccustomed to bright light (although lit by a fierce light of their own.) Yes, Thor recognizes him and laughs, you look grown old Loki! quite like a man! what spell is this you’re playing at now? can you make me old too? you ought to magick on a beard! and me as well!
Strange, Loki thinks of himself as womanly—smooth-cheeked, soft of step—and an older Thor and his friends have lately taken to reminding him of such. For a young Thor to think him a man is a laughable irony. Loki expects to feel some of that youthful resentment flare, then, the jealousy that will fester in quiet, but he finds only humor and sunshine. They run together. He is more than a match for Thor’s short gate; he outpaces the boy, leaves him with a red face and flying hair. Thor finds this, too, very amusing. Loki does not even pretend to lose.
But night is coming, he is drawn back, ere his senses return, and Loki is again grown, faced with a frozen wasteland of a man at war. With himself and then everyone else.
He never finds that particular Way again.
“So this is it.” The lights of alarm and attack are rolling over the walls and the glinting metal patch on Thor’s eye. “This is Thanos.”
“I knew he would come for me,” Loki says, and Thor seizes his shoulder in a typical kind of reassurance.
“He can come for a stiff drink for all I care. He will get nothing.”
But Loki, as he is oft to, knows something which Thor doesn’t, something which glows within reach yet just beyond the edges of his sight. He is already starting to move, to stir the threads of seidr, if he can but shake his brother’s hold. “I have lingered here too long. Let go of me—I do no favors to these people if I stay.”
Heimdall and the Valkyrie are back from the bridge; perhaps the latter heard the talk of stiff drinks. Now the four of them stand at the intersection of corridors and endings, with the legacy of Asgard running past them, the lovers and the young children and the wizened, all in a kind of chaos that Loki, for the first time, finds unlovely.
How long since sunlight? How long til they might see it hence?
Ah, this is the end, Loki thinks lucidly, his eyes meeting Heimdall’s.
“Your brother will need you, ere the end.”
Somehow he does not yet despair.
It is not in his nature.
The Sanctuary II begins to fire on the vessel, great bolts of energy shaking their own sanctuary to its core.
“We are sending a distress signal,” Heimdall says, fingers loosely gripping the hilt of his sword. “No answer yet.”
There is no death on Valkyrie's face, she who has ridden with death at her back and dealt it to the deeps. "We need a plan,” she declares, “and a better plan than the Revengers. Or Get Help.”
“I have a plan. But only as a last resort. How many can we fit in one of the deploy ships?”
“Not all of them,” Loki says. “But some. Do you propose a distraction, brother?”
“I propose we face him.”
“Thor—"
“My mad brother, metal men, dark elves, an evil sister,” Thor grins. “Easy. I can take a purple guy or two. Though I cannot ask the same of you; this could mean our end.”
“We go down with our swords ringing, chopping up some demons,” Valkyrie says through a swig of unidentified but pungent liquid. “Sounds good.”
Thor runs his hands through his beard and shorn hair, the seconds slowing as they all feel it: the 'lasts.' The last meeting, the last conversation. When he speaks next, they hear a king. “I need someone to stay with the people. To keep them safe.”
“My duty is to the throne...and the people...of Asgard,” Heimdall says. “I will go or stay as you will it.”
“I’m staying,” Valkyrie sets the bottle down.
“And I.”
His gratitude is silent and infinite, but at that particular breathed promise, Thor turns and looks at his brother as if, in spite of all the terror around them, everything has just been made right.
Loki's lips twitch. “I suppose I can hardly pass up a front row seat to seeing Thanos get his ass kicked."
“Val, you know the ways about the galaxy. Get as many as you can on that ship, and get them away. To Midgard, if you can. Now, where is Banner?”
“Due respect and all Your Highness but—”
There is a groan in the depths of the ship, another splintering that steals their breath. It is like an echo of a Bifrost long lost, but they know it to be something which bodes far worse. The four stand in a hush that flows in all directions. Listening, just for a moment, before the moment passes.
“I’m going to stay with you,” Valkyrie says.
“No,” Thor says, to a grudging Valkyrie, with his boundless capacity to smile. “You’re going to save Asgard.”
Plans are made, pale plans and quips sure to crumble but things which sustain them, keep their hopes from plummeting, keep the people from panicking. Loki’s knives are never far from reach, and Thor’s brother is never far from his. Heimdall’s all-seeing eyes flare gold one last time—“They are coming through a breach.”—and they stand at the airlock as their ships are boarded, they stand at the end of their days together, swords drawn and teeth bared. They step through—
And it all goes to Hel.
They fight to no avail. They fight, as they have never fought and may never again; Heimdall's sword gleams, Loki is a blur of desperate wrath, Thor collides with the children of Thanos. Some of the Asgardians outlast the storm of fire, solely because Thanos wills it. Most lie in droves of torn silk and hair, a second Ragnarok, and now Loki is the only one upright, looking small, and greater than ever before, his last stand in a halo of awful blue light. How he longs for sunlight. He gazes not at Thanos but at his brother, his choice made. His brother he cannot condemn to death anymore than he can shed his fear and guilt and fly from this final end, as the child of green and growing things longs for sunlight.
His world in the balance, and he bargains for the life of one man.
“I assure you, brother, the sun will shine on us again.”
Death is not glorious for Heimdall, but in his strength, he makes it so. His life flows outward into the universe, his force into the stars undying. And Thor’s screams, they damn near break Loki. Oh, how he did not expect that.
It is for their sake that he weighs his options, makes his last bid for life, or perhaps the freedom of a chosen death. Loki Odinson just once more. The god of wild, persistent life in the dark cradle of metal; a plea to the universe, or a sneer in its face. Loki is always both.
The knife never even makes it to Thanos’ throat.
But as he is lifted, kicking, from the ground, Loki knows he did not expect it to either. He feels the world close in, and all his seidr, all his long years, are spent in a gasp.
“You—"
Not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not
“—will never be—"
brother not yet spare him the sight let his ears close to the sound
“—a god.”
Frigga
He breaks. His life ebbs. Thor weeps.
But there is a door, a door in his mind, it draws him onward with some uncertain spell, and he steps through—
Into sunlight.