Chapter Text
Loki wakes. He doesn’t know where he is. But his head is pounding with what feels like trillions of voices and his skin is green. Not painted or glamoured, the skin itself has changed colour. The voices are panicked, terrified, grief-filled and angry. He tries to shut them out. What is happening?
“Come here and see.” A voice says, it’s more distinctive than the others and Loki finds it behind a wall in his mind.
“Tear it down.”
The wall is solid, but Loki knows he could easily. “Why should I?”
“The answers are all here. You will see all that’s been hidden from you.”
Loki considers, trying to figure it out himself. The voices, too many, a thought clicks; enough to fill half a universe.
“Thanos won then.”
“Yes,” the voice answers.
“But why are their voices in my head? Why am I green?”
“Tear down the wall and find out.”
Loki probably will, but he needs to know what he’s getting into first. And he clearly can’t trust this voice to tell him. He thinks. They aren’t voices. They are souls. Loki’s a well-schooled Prince of Asgard, he knows enough about the infinity stones to know what that means.
But no. It can’t be. He can’t be. He’s not. He’s not a thing. He’s a person. He’s real. He was a child, he grew up. This doesn’t make any sense. He can feel his heart shattering. Like when he found out he was Jotunn. Only worse. Much worse.
He doesn’t ask, ‘am I the soul stone’. He’s not ready to hear the answer out loud.
“Why am I green?”
“Destroy the wall and you’ll know.”
Loki nods. “Because all my memories are behind that wall. Billions of years of memories.”
The voice trills, excited, “Yes, come here.”
And he knows then that he can’t. If there’s one thing Loki knows about himself it’s that the older he gets, the less he’s able to care. And at billions of years he likely won’t even care for these trillions of lives, Gods half the universe. Loki takes a determined breath. “No.”
The voice sighs. Accepts defeat gracefully, it is part of Loki after all, knows when Loki won’t change his mind.
“You’re green because you take the form of the last sacrifice.”
The answer comes almost too quick, too eager. Loki realises they’re playing a new game now. The voice hoping to slip enough through the wall that it renders said wall irrelevant. He’ll need to be careful with his questions. He keeps turning everything over in his mind.
“Hela. Odin sacrificed Hela to get me.”
He’s talking to himself but the voice answers anyway. “Yes.”
“Why was I a baby?”
“Thanos asked for half the universe. Odin asked for that.”
Loki can see the genius of it. One way to get the soul stone genuinely on side. “And we allowed it?”
The voice shrugs. Loki doesn’t know how a voice can shrug, but somehow it does. “A few thousand years is nothing in the scope of billions. And it seemed like it would be interesting.”
“Odin didn’t do anything though.”
“He did enough. He was trying to keep us out of Thanos’ hands. As long as the one who holds the stone is living, it can’t be taken. Only when the keeper dies and the sacrifice is released can another claim the stone.”
“Oh.”
In hindsight Loki can see that it was a good idea for Odin to keep the truth from him. He would’ve fallen into a much deeper and more complete madness than he had with the whole Jotun thing. Not knowing what was real, whether any of the loyalty or love he felt was real or just an enforced bond. But now, he knows with certainty it is. For he feels no pull from Thanos, no urge to run to him or do as he bids.
“What exactly does it mean, to have a keeper. What are our obligations?”
“Very little to be truthful. But we let these mortals have their fun.”
Loki almost balks at the notion of Asgardians and Jotuns and Titans being mortal but he supposes for a being that lives for the length of the universe, they are.
The voice speaks, “May I ask you a question?”
Loki knows it’s probably unwise to indulge the voice, but he does have a habit of dangerous decisions, “Of course.”
“Did you never wonder about how connected your powers were to the stones?”
“No, I didn’t.” And it’s the truth, Loki had honestly never thought about it. But now he can see it, he almost feels foolish for not noticing earlier. He could bend reality with his illusions. He could look through the memories in peoples’ minds. He could let out blasts of power. He was the only one on Asgard able to travel through space via the secret paths. And he managed to use the tesseract from the other end of the galaxy.
He frowns. “Did Thanos know?”
“No. He’s a fool.”
“I have no control over time.”
“We haven’t been near the time stone in an age. And it was well protected. Until now. Try something.”