Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the end, it happened like this:

Refugees, scattered to the four winds for the second time in just as many months. Escape pod after escape pod jettisoned into the black expanse of space, hundreds crammed into spaces too small that searched only for safe passage and their lives.

The rainbow roaring light of the Bifrost, whisking away a precious few, not even a full heartbeat before Thanos' fist hurtled downwards with a blow that would've crushed the Hulk's skull.

The roaring burst of purple, unnatural fire, the energy of the Power Stone combined with the will of its master, that tore every last scrap of the remains of Asgard to shreds.

A prince hurtled across the galaxy, haloed in the blue glow of the Tesseract, and not looking back.

And two last survivors, suspended and floating in the dark of space, frozen stiff and still, hand in hand.

"I wonder who they are?"

"Or what they are. Don't care what they look like, they're not Terran, that's for sure."

"I am Groot?"

Quill sighed, massaging at the building headache, and tried very hard not to groan.

Next to him, Mantis risked drawing a little closer to the man- male-looking- whatever he was dude. Because Rocket was right; he wasn't human. He still was out cold, literally, and did not stir as she placed a hand carefully on his head. "This one is... upset. Something is-" Her eyes wavered, a glimmer of empathetic pain as her knees threatened to buckle and her voice broke. "Something is wrong."

"Yeah, I'd bet. Since we did just find them in the wreckage of a spaceship, and everything." Rocket settled against the nearby weapon's rack, sitting just below his shoulders and not seeming all that happy about it at all. "I doubt that thing just blew up all on its own."

"Exactly. And, we're still sitting here. Waiting for whatever or whoever did this to come back."

There was an uncomfortable, stricken silence. Rocket coughed a little, his arms folded and his sarcasm suddenly dampened, and Quill gulped.

That was... actually a pretty good point.

Gamora raised a hand, one brisk, silent shake of her head as she shifted off the wall herself, stepping carefully about the two frozen, still miraculously breathing aliens on the floor of the Milano. "I'm taking us out of here now. Whatever went on here, I don't think we want any part of it. Yeah?"

She met his eyes in a passing glance, lingering just on the threshold to wait for his nod. Swallowing, already no longer listening to the chatter about them, Quill gave it to her.

It was halfway absolutely fucking awesome.

Two aliens? Alien god people, by the looks of it, able to survive the vacuum of space with seemingly no ill affects? Both of them were breathing, at least, somehow not frozen to death. Suffocated. Splattered all over by the lack of pressure. Whichever.

Really, there was any number of reasons for why these two should've been really, really, really dead, long before they'd ever responded to the distress signal.

Yet, here they were.

Still breathing.

So, yeah- about halfway absolutely fucking awesome.

The other half was the eerie unease in Gamora's words, and the niggling worry in the back of his mind that she was right.

Something had blown apart their ship and left them for dead.

Settling his unease as best he could, he took a step closer, taking Gamora's spot now that she'd returned to pilot and get a better look at the two... alien type things. That looked human, but obviously weren't, because he was human and he'd couldn't do any of that shit (no matter how cool it'd be). Without two beds close enough together, they'd just had to lay the two down on the floor and hope for the best- they'd found the two hand in hand, and been just miserably unable to pry their hands apart. It was like they were frozen solid, and every tug at their fingers had made Quill feel like he was grappling with trying to bend solid steel.

So, there they were. One man, one woman, both decked out in armor and not a space suit to be seen, a sword on the woman's waist and blood smeared on the man's fist, breathing on the floor of their ship.

He couldn't help but grin.

"Aww, look at them," he said, risking to toe at the woman's side. He thought he saw her twitch, maybe, breaths deepening, but her eyes did not flicker. "They're like star-crossed lovers! Literally!"

"I am Groot."

"I do not understand." Drax knelt as well, peering down on the other side of the pair, the man, prodding at a strong, stiff arm with a careful fingertip. "I do not see any stars between them."

"Well, Drax, you see, when a mommy and a daddy love each other..."

"Not in front of Groot, he's not old enough!"

"I am Groot!"

Quill rolled his eyes, unable to help yet another big grin, and settled back to wait.

He did not have to wait long.

"Peter?" Mantis said suddenly, still knelt precariously by the alien man's head. Her eyes shocked wide with a faint, strangled gasp, and she looked up at him, her antennae starting to give off the faintest of a white, familiar glow. "He- he is very upset... I believe this one is-"

The man's one eye shot open.

Mantis froze. For a moment, there was nothing.

And then, there was everything.

"Loki," he gasped, hoarse and half-strangled, like he still hadn't quite gotten enough air yet. His face twisted and Mantis yanked back to cover her mouth; anguish and horror and rage coloring across it so vehemently it made even Quill's stomach twist. Then the man gasped something again, his mouth moving but no sound coming out; probably because he actually didn't have the air at all.

Which for literally any other species he could think of, would've been enough to keep him down.

Which was why he took a step forward, instead of a step back, and why, barely a half-second later, he'd been slammed with something close to a football tackle and sent, spiraling and wheezing, to the floor.

"You!"

"W- wait-" he gasped, blinking the stars from his eyes. The maniac didn't seem to be on him, at least, but it took another hard blink and shake of his head to see he was not on any of them, in fact, but instead his strange alien companion. Somehow up on his own two feet, shoulders knotted and his face- oh, hell, that was a scary, not happy face at all-

And there the woman was. Still dazed and insensate, shoved and held back against the nearest wall, and a hand to her throat.

Yeah. Okay. Not okay. "Hey," Quill said, wavering to his knees. "Hey. You need to calm down-"

The man threw a hand out, bloody fingers still half-blue with cold spread to keep him down, but his fierce eye was only for the pinned woman before him. "Brunnhilde," he snarled, and a line of blood burst to trail from a cut down his matted hair. "WAKE UP, Brunnhilde!"

Even more ridiculous than the man's recovery was the woman's, then. It took only another squeeze, then a sudden roar of her name to get her coughing and kicking, eyes fluttering as a fist batted at the hold about her neck. But the man might as well have been made of rock, to Quill's shock and increasing alarm; the guy didn't even flinch and when Drax tried to tug him back, Drax, the big guy, it was like the alien hadn't even noticed it.

"T-Thor-" she coughed. "Thor, I-"

"You," the man snarled again. The hand pinning her up suddenly let go, letting her stumble down only to draw the sword from her waist himself, lifting it up in an executioner's blow. "You left my brother to die!"

The woman, Brunnhilde, apparently, said nothing. She opened her mouth once but no words came out, and to Quill's astonishment, the only thing on her face was guilt.

The big guy was right. Whatever had happened to leave these two stranded out in space, Brunnhilde had apparently left this Thor's brother to die in it.

Annnd... now this furious, seemingly immovable Thor, had a sword. Aimed at her head.

He really, really wished Gamora hadn't headed off, now.

"Explain yourself!"

Brunnhilde did not shrink back. Did not waver, did not even wince, but the look on her face was enough to make it clear that some part of her definitely wanted to. "He asked me to," she said, her voice steady but small.

This, evidently, was yet another mistake.

"He-" Thor stopped, letting out a wild, short bark of a laugh, then shook her again; blood ran down out his ear. "He told you to put this on me?! He told you to run away, and let us all get slaughtered?! You-" With a feral snarl he tore at his own neck, scratching something off the skin that was small and blue; that was all Quill caught before he crushed it in a shaking fist. Next was some controller of some kind off Brunnhilde's belt, small and equally blue, like a remote, and Quill didn't even have time to wince before this was shattered in half on a knee. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't throw you back out into the Void right now and leave you there for good! You handed my brother over to that monster Thanos, and you expect me to believe it was because he asked for it?!"

The woman did not fight back. Stared wordlessly in answer, paralyzed and stricken against the ship's hull, each breath tense and eyes wide with such guilt Quill could feel it in his gut.

Behind them, there was a grinding crash.

Still nothing at all from the two newcomers, no lowering of the sword, no flinch, not even a twitch, but Quill, his heart hammering and shit, this could not get any worse, he wouldn't have been surprised it was a flaming meteor crashing into their wings based off how today had gone-

He turned around with Rocket, Mantis, and Drax still hovering in horror to see just behind Thor.

Gamora had come back.

She stood at the threshold, unmoving and open-mouthed. She wasn't one to betray shock, but there it was on her so alien yet human face, plain as day. Her gun was clattered to the floor at her feet, her eyes wide, and for that moment, everything was horrifyingly still.

Then:

"Did you say Thanos?"

In the end, Loki only managed to hop planets three times, before they caught him.

The first planet, he did not remember. Already it was nothing beyond a blur of a black, soot-crushed hills and air choked with ash, a deep coughing in his lungs and a scalding heat that quite possibly would've killed him.

Then invasive, twisted magic had sparked in the air around him, and he'd been gone.

Ebony Maw, he'd remembered, with not at all a faint twist of hysteria, was a gifted worldswalker, just like him. Except not just like him, because Loki sensed the boundaries between realms and slipped to fall between them.

Ebony Maw just ripped them apart.

He ran to a space station, then. Not a planet at all but an atmospheric satellite, because maybe the Black Order would fall through the boundaries on planets, but perhaps a non-planet would be safe, perhaps he could hide here, perhaps-

Ebony Maw followed him a second time. Fire on his fingertips, and a huge, spreading smile on his face.

Loki ran again, as the satellite collapsed around him. He didn't think that anybody on it had survived.

He landed for a third time on an outpost, a massive, hollowed out asteroid that was one of the biggest, seediest bars in the galaxy. It'd been a flicker of a memory that took the Tesseract here, nothing more, already a horrible idea, and his feet hit sharp, cracked rocks, his head rocked and spun, and for a breath he couldn't think at all. For a breath the world about him was tilted so dangerously he hit his knees, and he knew if he jumped again, it would be his last.

He didn't get the chance.

"Hello again, Loki."

Freezing hands closed about his wrists, and in that instant, everything else was gone.

"We missed you," he said, and every last lingering spell left by Thanos' children in his head burst alive in a howl of rain.

The fires began to burn anew around him.

Thor remained sat down on the edge of the nearest table, still bleeding all but freely into a wadded up towel, his heart in his throat, and nearly too angry to speak.

Nearly.

That Brunnhilde lingered a few steps away, not quite daring to look him in the eye and instead watched the floor, as if she'd known she'd done something wrong, was perhaps the only reason he hadn't started screaming again yet.

She wasn't defending it.

She knew what had happened was wrong.

"I do not understand," Thor gritted out finally, the words forced out past clenched teeth. He glared once more at the Valkyrie, rage knotting his back into one twisted ball of righteous fury, then pried his focus back to Thanos' quiet daughter. "What could your father have wanted from my brother?"

The Zehoberei, Gamora, wouldn't quite meet his gaze, either. She paced still, her arms folded tightly and her jaw clenched with an unimaginable sort of tension. Her face was shadowed the same way Brunnhilde's was, the way that said I did something wrong. "Thanos wants a lot of things from a lot of people," she said, but it didn't sound as if she was trying to be evasive. "If he sought you out, he must've wanted something really badly. Did he say what it was?"

Another flicker of anger caught about Thor's heart.

"Oh. I've got no idea," he said slowly. He glared harder at Brunnhilde's side, trying to force her to look up, to acknowledge him, to fucking say something. "I don't know what he said, because this one," he snarled, "decided to slap an obedience disc on me and drag me away senseless the very moment he appeared."

"And you'd be dead if I hadn't done it."

"What?"

"You'd be dead, Your Majesty!" she snapped, and suddenly the fire of the Valkyries was lit in her eyes again as she jerked her head up, blood smeared down the left side, a cut on the right side of her mouth. "Your brother was right; if I hadn't stopped you, you would've gone charging off into a blast by the Power Stone- fucking thanks, by the way, when he told me something was coming I didn't realize he meant something like that-"

"When he what?!"

"Wait," Gamora said suddenly, her voice sharp and brittle like the edge of knives. "Thanos has the Power Stone?"

Thor sank back to drop wearily against the wall, rubbing at the bruise on the side of his own head. "Yes," he grunted, glaring between his legs. He didn't want to look at Brunnhilde. Could barely stand to see her at all, because every time he did he saw his brother, too, and a rock of helplessness ground down through him so brutally he felt sick. "Yes. Had an infinity gauntlet and the Power Stone. I saw that much."

It was nearly all he'd seen, in fact, as the Valkyrie had dragged him away. Just that horrible, too dammed confident titan, blazing an amethyst bonfire through the mere wreckage of his people that remained.

And, Loki.

Hurtling back into space, with the enemy's ships already hot on his tail.

Thor's heart thudded again.

No matter what happens, never doubt that I love you.

Loki...

You knew this was happening, Loki, you... why...?

"If..." Across from him still, Gamora shuddered once, her entire body one taut line of tugged tight, aching tension. She looked as if she was not even breathing. "If he has one of them, that means... I thought we'd have more time. Peter-" Her gaze shifted, drawing off him to land on the Midgardian behind him, and for a moment there was nothing there to glimmer in her eyes but breathless, unadulterated fear.

Something tight and nervous clenched in Thor's own chest. None of them, even the chattering rabbit, spoke.

Then, it was passed, and there was nothing left in her face but the solid cut of battle-hardened determination.

"If he has one of them, that means he's making his move for all six, and he's making it now. Thor." She turned back to face him, jaw tight. "Did you have an infinity stone with you? Or anything related to them?"

"An infinity stone- no! We barely escaped with the clothes on our backs!" Frustrated, Thor sank back, knotting his aching hands together and trying to silence the knot in his stomach. "We were refugees. Our home burned and we escaped with nothing. We had the Space Stone, but it's lost to the Void, now. It was in our vault, Asgard's, and-"

And...

Thor stopped.

Oh.

Norns, Loki... no...

"He got the Tesseract," he moaned.

Loki.

Half the people in the room continued staring on in their confusion.

The other half, Gamora and Brunnhilde, namely, stared back in abject horror.

"What," Gamora whispered, but Thor was already forging on in the same breath.

"He got the Tesseract... I can't believe him." Of course he had, because it could never be enough, for his little brother, because there was always more, he could never let peace settle, there always had to be another unseen piece of the puzzle. Loki, no, Loki. "I- I'd wondered how he got out in time, I wondered how he escaped Ragnarok, Loki, Norns damn it all, Loki-"

"Wait," Gamora interrupted, voice awash with disbelief and horror anew. "Loki? Your brother is Loki?"

To hear his brother's name sent another spike of terror down through his heart, terror burdening on anguish because he didn't even know if his brother was alive. Somehow, swallowing hard, Thor forced the wave back down and out came another nod. "Yes," he rasped. "Why? Do you know him?" Loki had always flown so far from the nest, meeting any manner of creatures all across the galaxies and for centuries worth of time. It would be a wild coincidence, perhaps, but nothing that was too farfetched to be believed.

But the look on Gamora's face remained almost uncomfortably unsettled, and she shared another look with Quill that gave no answer. Worse, no reassurance at all. "He might've not been after the Tesseract at all. If he knew Loki was there..." She trailed off with another dark grimace, but when Quill moved for her stepped away, arms drawn close about her and her face closed off in a way that reminded him too much of his brother. An errant shudder ran down through her shoulders, and somehow, Thor could not help but shudder with her. "He's been wanting to get his hands back on Loki for a while. Or at least he did, when I escaped him. He... really wasn't happy, about what happened six years ago."

And then, infuriatingly, as if those words alone were all that needed to be said, she stopped.

Leaving Thor utterly dead in the water.

"...Um," Brunnhilde ventured, breaking the lost silence for him. Anger caught in his throat again and he glared back, teeth gritting together and heart pounding; as if she sensed the hostility, the danger, she very carefully did not look back. "What happened six years ago?"

"Yes," Thor said, gaze still lingering on Gamora. "I should like to know that as well."

Gamora's brow furrowed and reluctance caught in her eyes again. Just a brief flicker, but it was there, and Thor didn't like it. "The invasion on Terra," she said, which Thor had already figured for himself, but...

"You invaded Earth?!" Quill gasped, in the same moment as Valkyrie asked, "What's Terra?"

She frowned at them both, shaking her head. "Later, Peter." Her gaze shifted back to Thor and, almost as just a reflex, her weapon came out, one hand twisted about the hilt while the other rubbed obsessively at the blade. "Thanos was furious when he lost the Tesseract, but he was even more furious when Loki started to slip the Mind Stone on his own. Loki was meant to return to the Sanctuary, win or lose, and when he didn't..." Something flickered across her face again, a momentary spasm, nothing more. Just a flinch in her hard as glass eyes.

But in that there was a whisper of a hurt that was nearly overwhelmingly too much to bear.

"He'd thought that Loki was too- damaged," she said quietly, then winced. "To escape the Mind Stone, and everything else they... we did to him. When Loki escaped to Asgard's protection after it and he realized he was out of reach..."

Gamora looked away, then, saying nothing, betraying nothing. Whatever was on her face, Thor couldn't read it for his own.

But it left the something sick in the pit of his stomach unleashed, and his mind spun with unparalleled horror, and all he could think was oh, no.

Without saying anything, Quill crossed the cluttered corridor to stand by Gamora's side, one protective hand on her shoulder. He glared out at them all, face set in a determined, unyielding expression that made clear if anyone had a problem, they would be taking it to him and not her.

It was an expression that Thor recognized very well, in fact.

It was the same surge of rash, dangerous anger that roused up in him whenever someone spoke against his brother.

Your brother. Who-

Mind Stone- escaped- damaged-

No, no, no...

"Thanos swore," Gamora continued, her voice low, not quite meeting his eye, "that he would make good on his promise to Loki. That before he finished his plan, he would get Loki back and would pay him back for his betrayal. He promised that he would do the job right this time; to break him apart again, but so thoroughly he'd never have the strength to so much as hold an infinity stone again." She stopped awkwardly, rubbing at the side of her neck. "I started planning to escape my father not long after. Loki was a big part of the reason as to why."

There was another crushing silence. In it, Thor almost felt like he was floating in the Void again; suffocating, unable to breathe, his chest smothered and every useless gasp of his throat bringing in no air and no sanity.

A crackle of lightning sparked on his fingers, and he could already feel it trying to manifest in the Void outside the ship.

"What do you mean," he murmured, trepidation building in his chest so greatly it suffocated about his throat as a noose, "you were going to break him apart, again."

Loki floated, for a long time.

He was vaguely aware that this was actually a rather bad thing.

Ebony Maw did things to him. Again. Horrible, vile, disgusting things, reaching into his seidr and twisting it like butter, dragging his claws through it and shredding it apart just because he could; because after all the years he'd spent undoing their magics left inside him all he had to do was wrench all his efforts apart to fall straight back into his head and it was as if he'd never left. He made him see things, made him feel things, made time slow in his head to stretch their minutes into hours and hours into days.

It was nothing that he hadn't done to him before.

He felt things. Felt his seidr yanked beyond his control, twisted and corrupted, boiling alive until he saw white so blinding it was the heart of a star, heard his mother whispering how could you as her gifts were robbed and defiled by a monster that he'd never had the strength to stop. He felt every physical torment imaginable, laid bare to the fires of Midgardian Hell and the ice of Jotunheim as he was skinned alive and screamed till his voice bled, till Odin ripped his tongue out and Thor sewed his mouth shut.

He saw Thor die.

Torn apart on the Statseman, crushed, stomped on, decimated; ripped apart by the Hulk on Sakaar, burning in Ragnarok, frozen to death in the Void and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He saw him die again and again, and a piece of Loki's soul with him, his brother torn to pieces and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He saw Thor hanging from the Bifrost, one hand in Odin's, the other grasping his. He saw him staring downwards with nothing on his face, nothing at all, not the boisterous warmth and goodness and light that was Thor Odinson but an empty, cold mask that was as barren as winter, that said you are not my brother, and-

(I'm not letting go, I'm not letting go, I'm not letting go)

(Loki, I love you)

He saw him let go.

"He's dead," Ebony Maw snarled in his head, and it sounded just a little like "he never loved you."

It lasted for what Ebony Maw made seem to be hours, and the entire time, he felt his filthy hands dug without consent into the deepest depths of his seidr that he could reach. Searching through every scrap of his existence for the blue glow thad had ensnared him first and haunted him after.

And Loki laughed as he screamed, because this time he knew.

Thor is alive.

I saved him.

He inhaled his own blood, and he let Ebony Maw's torment split his mind apart, because he knew Thor is alive.

"I know he's alive," he whispered back, again and again- even when he at last felt the mage's filth begin to fade, white-hot agony and tendrils slipping backwards from his mind as the haze lifted around him.

Lifted to yield Ebony Maw, knelt on his pinned arms, disgusting hands pressed to either side of his head, panting and slack with fatigue... and face twisted with such a piercing, infectiously painful rage that it made Loki drop his head back and howl with blood-choked laughter.

"Finally out of strength?" he gasped, then spat; something deep in him had cracked and was bleeding and he could taste it in his mouth. "How many?"

Ebony Maw hissed back, black hands pressing tighter against the sides of his head; he could feel pressure building, mounting, a sharp needle of tightening agony building to burst. "How many what?"

"How many lives?" Loki gasped again, and his voice came out wretched, and his ears rang and all he could see was Thor dying. "You si- siphoned-" He wheezed, hacked, and Ebony Maw did the same, "how many did you siphon your power from, to follow me? To d-do- do this to me?" The only reason Ebony Maw had relented at all was because he didn't have a choice. Because he didn't have the power for it anymore, not the time dilation spell, not the teleportation, not the strength to force his way into his mind, but he'd never had the strength for such things, and that meant his power came from elsewhere. That meant that the sources he was draining dry were now dead.

Loki caught a flicker of dozens of mages, dozens and dozens, trapped in Thanos' grip and chained in cells to wither and die, en mass. His stomach lurched, and he gritted his teeth just in time to catch another clot of blood.

But Ebony Maw grinned relentlessly, sweat dripping from his face to Loki's and his smile was obscene. "They are not even a drop in the ocean, compared to what is coming," he whispered, and that was it, and Loki turned his head and retched onto the split ground.

They had never even left the outpost. Never even left the bar. That is unfortunate, he realized faintly, that was, in fact, very very unfortunate indeed, but for a choked breath all he could see was the devastation about him. Ebony Maw had thrown and pinned him on his back and shoved into his mind, right here on the disgusting floor. The street was deserted, scorch marks and flickering flames scattered about them in the remains of a warzone, and everywhere his eyes rolled there was death. Passing civilians, crumpled on the street. A family, collapsed in a pool of black and blue blood. A squad of what looked like station security, uniformed and armed, that looked like they had exploded from the inside out.

Ebony Maw hadn't dragged him back to Sanctuary because it hadn't mattered. The Black Order could attract all the attention in the world and sign their name to it, beg all the universe to come.

Because soon, there wouldn't be a universe left to fight.

His heart pounded so fast and hard he heard it in his ears, and he quite nearly vomited a second time.

He rolled his head instead, back and forth, back and forth, because there was something just permanently slipped in his mind now, something that was permanently broken and that would never be made right. He stared left, down at one outstretched hand, pinned through to the stones by a cursed, fat blade; he stared right, down to the other, pinned just the same way. Like the Midgardian's sacrificial Jesus, he thought madly, and spat blood and bleeding seidr back into Ebony Maw's face.

It was over, he was done, he couldn't do this anymore-

"GIVE US THE TESSERACT!" Ebony Maw screamed, and Loki threw his head back and he laughed.

"You'll give it to us. You know you will. You gave in before and you're even fragiler now, I can see it in your eyes," and his hand touched his face and Loki gasped, squirmed, then howled, but there was no escape. "You can't hold out forever. You will give us what was promised, even if we have to split you open to take it."

"I kn-know," he gasped, and was laughing again. Couldn't stop smiling, couldn't stop laughing. Could hear Thor in his head, muttering you've gone mad again, Loki, but he'd run from this very moment for six years and now it was upon him and all he could do was lie there and bleed on the pavement. It was hysterical and he laughed in Ebony Maw's face, and he said, "I know. You need m-mmmme to- give it to you-"

"You will," Ebony Maw corrected, and Loki nodded, breathless, back.

"I will," he agreed, head spinning. "I know." It felt as if instead of his seidr, inside was just an empty, sinking black hole, ravenous and destroying, taking everything, giving nothing. "B-but-" Ebony Maw raised a hand, striking, and now Loki grinned through an already healing split lip and swollen mouth. "-can you g-get it from me- before your time runs out?"

The monster's face twisted, and Loki could not help it; he grinned again, stupid and feral. He could hear screaming in his head. His mouth kept bleeding. How long had it been, how long-? It felt like hours to him but perhaps only minutes since he'd fled the Statesman, perhaps only a few since he'd hurtled into space as the Valkyrie had dragged his brother away, but already the clock was ticking. And they both knew it.

They needed him to give the Tesseract over. They could not take it from him; they both knew it.

And after being broken and remade once before, there was no promise that they could break him fast enough a second time.

Not before their power ran out, and his came back.

You don't have Thor, he thought, somewhat hysterically, and found he didn't care if Ebony Maw could hear it or not. You can't hurt me enough and you can't hurt me with Thor because you don't have him. He's escaped. He's free. I did it. I did good for once in my life and you aren't bad enough to break it.

By the look on Ebony Maw's face, in fact, his thoughts had been heard. All of them.

Loki grinned and spat a tooth, hands flexing against the knives shoved straight through them to bleed, and lay there to wait.

Ebony Maw stalked further around him, feet trailing behind his head, disgusting hands waiting just in the edge of his sight. His seidr sputtered, green light hissing and eating like acid at the curses that bound his hands, a helpless gasp that couldn't help itself. It lanced higher like the light of a dying star when the mage drew about to face him again, panting and shaking like he was broken just as cleanly as Loki.

A smile stretched, and his own filthy magic flared.

"Your brother," he said, and suddenly was on him again, straddling him with a dark glimmer sucking inwards about his hand. "Your precious, dear brother. I noticed he's gotten a new look, lately." There was a sharp crack, and a third dagger, just as cursed and foul as the first two, materialized like crackling ice in his raising hand. "And you, Loki- I think I'd like to give you one to match. Because-"

He realized a few seconds too late, just what Ebony Maw was going to do.

"-you are really starting to piss me off."

The knife carved into his eye, his seidr snapped, and an instant there was nothing except blinding, inescapable, white-hot pain.

The Tesseract spun in his mind, out of control and dropping. He could feel it, his power screaming GET OUT OF HERE, his mother's fingers in his hair as she taught him how to teleport, danger and agony howling in his mind as the infinity stone glowed and caressed and he took it. He said take me out of here and his body shocked with the power of the universe and he fell.

This time, Ebony Maw fell with him.

They spun through the seams between worlds together. Agony speared deeper and deeper into his head and he howled, whipped this way and that as the Tesseract flew them without reason or rhyme; he couldn't give it a destination, couldn't picture one at all, Asgard in flames the Statsemen torn apart Thor and he screamed and bucked and howled, his hands hurt, Norns, Norns, his eye-

Two hands pressed in on the side of his head again, constraining his skull until it cracked. Ebony Maw was shouting too, the fabric between realms wearing thin about them as they passed again and again, his seidr draining drier and Thor wasn't there, Thor, where was Thor-

His mind blurred and twisted, spun black with foreign curses and a thought that did not belong to him. A destination took form, a scarred planet of fire and rock, a black fortress that reeked of power and ill will, and he shouted, "NO!" but it was too late, and together they crash landed, one last time.

Crash landed straight onto Thanos' daughter Nebula.

Loki lay, wheezing on his back. His head spun so violently it felt like he was still in freefall, still caught by the Tesseract, still split and tearing apart; he could only see through one eye and tasted a welling glob of his own blood. On top of him, Ebony Maw panted, too, wild eyes unfocused to leak with the Tesseract's blue light, face slowly stitching itself back together from the drain of the infinity stone's power.

Too drained, half-blind, and just done to understand, Loki lay there and to watch as Nebula kicked upright, and with bound hands knelt, and ripped Ebony Maw's throat out with her teeth.

Thor sat with his head in his hands, and bile in his throat, and for the first time in six years- perhaps one of the first times in his entire life- made himself slow down, and think.

He thought back to the Battle of New York. This time, instead of shuddering with contempt, or quickly turning himself away with a mere and dismissive Loki's gone mad, he made himself remember.

He remembered wild hair and eyes in a face that was too sharp, cheekbones that cut thin and gaunt against a smile that was too big to ever belong to his brother. He remembered eyes: eyes that were bruised violently red against skin that was too pale and such a terrifying, vibrant- wrong- blue.

That he'd given a passing thought towards it at the time, that he'd even almost asked their mother about it- but, no, he'd thought, brushing it off. No, of course that wasn't it. He'd squashed the hope like a bug, suffocating it, because he'd thought the hope had been poison, he'd been so mad at Loki he hadn't wanted to dare see...

He remembered the exhausted face of his brother as he'd let go, all those years ago. Hurt all bled away to leave nothing inside him at all, and then to appear but a year later remade again, like all that hurt had turned outwards and he sought to make the world bleed with it. Remembered he killed eighty people in two days, and he'd wanted to say that is not Loki but it had inescapably, undeniably been so, and all that had come out was he's adopted.

He remembered hateful words and a snarled aspiration to rule the world for his own, when but a year before Loki had told him, tears in his eyes, I never wanted the throne.

He remembered holding his little brother in his arms in the center of crumbling chaos, and Loki looking back from a bleeding face and desperate eyes. It's too late to stop it, he'd said, and in those words Thor had honestly believed he'd wanted to.

When the knife had dug into his side next, back then, it had meant nothing to Thor except a brother too far gone to be saved.

Now, he remembered the bite in the knife in his side, just as Loki's eyes had gleamed again.

Too blue to be his brother.

Now, in fact, he could remember everything.

And realize it had all been there this entire time, if he had only tried to look for it.

"Loki," he croaked into his hands, then stopped. "...Loki."

He wasn't even sure what he wanted to say.

I'm so sorry, perhaps; it certainly came to mind first.

Righteous fury, too. So sweeping and overwhelming in burned as a lit coal inside of him. I'll take Thanos' dammed head off and darker, deeper, why didn't you tell me?!

This is what you haven't been telling me, isn't it.

Why didn't you trust me?

Why didn't you let us help you?

Loki-

Anguish welled in his throat until he could hardly even breathe past it, and for several moments, Thor was helpless but to sit there with his head in his hands, and try not to fall apart.

"Your Majesty."

He tensed, again.

Like ice water dousing a fire, the painful lump in his throat melted away, and in its place rushed in only a smoldering, sick sense of anger.

"We're fifteen minutes out. You need to make a decision."

Thor closed his eye, breathing hard out through his mouth, and once again had to focus very, very hard on self-control.

To not throw the Valkyrie out, or pierce the ship's hull with lightning and get them all killed. Either one, at this point, would be acceptable.

(Gamora, the green one, she did this to Loki, she said so she broke him apart) 

"...Your Majesty," she said again. Nothing more than that; just a slow, almost reluctant murmur. In it, once again, he heard regret.

He heard I know this isn't right.

That was just barely enough, to keep his hot, senseless rage in check.

He still did not have it in him to face her.

"You knew," he said slowly. "Loki told you." His voice came out low and unsettled, prodding into the dusty silence like stick provoked a beehive.

There was another tense pause.

"Not- exactly," she said then, still carefully restrained. "Loki told me and Heimdall that he thought someone was coming for him. Someone that would go through the rest of Asgard to get there. That was all. I extrapolated a bit from that, but he made it really clear that he wasn't going to be answering any questions that he didn't want to, that we didn't have to know. That weren't directly related to your safety."

"My safety," he choked, shaking. "Mine- and you cared not for my brother's, you cared not to warn me, you-"

"You're both alive. He's alive, and you're alive." And Brunnhilde shoved about to face him at last, meeting his eye without regret or apology and instead a blazing fire of a fight that wasn't yet done. "And when that fucking maniac blew us apart with an infinity stone I couldn't promise that much. So, yeah. I'll take this one as a goddamn win for us."

"A win-" Thor buried his head in his hands again, breathing hard to stay clutching onto sanity. A win. His people were scattered to the cosmos; he had no idea where, or even if any of them still lived. Loki was in the hands of a genocidal terrorist, the universe's days were numbered, and Thor was trapped here with a band of misfits and barely a chance to save any of them.

A win.

He wanted to scream.

Loki had known all of this was going to happen. And he'd looked Thor right in the eye, smiled, and said nothing.

The silence choked them again. Thor's hands clenched so badly against the table he could feel the metal wearing in two.

Finally, with a slow, wary tenseness that made it feel like he was being strangled, Brunnhilde dropped back down. She drew down to her knees to rest against the side of the ship, arms curled about them and head against them as a protective, careful cocoon. Not quite looking at him again, gaze averted and no matter how much she'd defend it, he knew that she didn't like it.

That she was tired of being the one to survive.

"What do you want me to say, Your Majesty? " she asked, head still resting on her knees. "I'm sorry? That shit sucks? It does. I think that's part of being king- a real one, a good one, not whatever the fuck Odin was playing at. Loki sacrificed himself to keep you all safe. Maybe he only did it for you, I don't know, but Now Asgard's still alive and has still got a chance, and we're alive and we've got a chance to make this right. I'm not apologizing for that."

He shook his head, muttering a curse under his breath. A good king? His home was destroyed, by his own plan, and he didn't even know if the few refugees to escape were alive.

And right now, he could barely force himself to care.

All he could see was his brother, blue-eyed and bleeding and laughing, as he fell back into Thanos' arms.

He wasn't a good king. He was not even- was realizing, in fact, had maybe never been- a good brother.

I never realized.. I never once- ONCE- even THOUGHT-!

."...Thor."

He jerked, once.

The black haze cleared, and with it again, he felt the melting, electric energy of lightning, dancing on his fingers, so close to an unrestrained violence, it was dangerous

He snapped his mouth shut, and in the same breath, the light went out.

The Valkyrie looked increasingly uncomfortable, now. Sitting there unmoving on the floor, arms folded and jaw tight, her dark hair fallen to shield her eyes from view. He doubted this was an accident. A proper king, then, would've berated her. Ordered her to kneel before him and bow her head. Asked her how she dared to keep secrets from her king, remind her of her place, threaten that if she betrayed her loyalty to the throne then he could strip her of her wings and sever her from the heavens forever. Odin would have...

Thor swallowed, hard, taking down the laugh that tried to bubble up. Odin would have done all those things, yes. A good and proper king.

The same way the good and proper king had adopted a child as a political scheme first, a son second, and the same way that same king had looked at that same child, hanging down off the edge of the Bifrost, and told him no.

Not for the first time, Thor thought, rather bitterly, that he wasn't so sure he wanted to be a good king.

"He never told me," he said. At first, the words came out numb, and he honestly hadn't intended for them to be said at all. But now they were there, and he could not and would not take them back. "He's never..."

"...Prince Loki?"

"Yes," Thor gasped, and was more shocked than the Valkyrie when his voice broke on it. "The dammed fool. There've been so many hardships, so much madness- and he's never said a word of it. Not once! One time!" He shook a finger in the hair, heart pounding, and would've then been on his feet to pace if the ship had allowed him enough room, because he was angry, now, not at Valkyrie, not at himself, but Loki. "Did he never once think we ought to prepare against Thanos' return? That he should not shed light on his plans for the infinity stones? And of Midgard-" His hand shook as he pointed at the Valkyrie instead, wavering in the air, "you were not there, you did not see, but what he did then, it- it tore us apart. It tore him apart. If he had but opened his mouth, if he had told us... I know he no longer trusted Father, but we would've helped him! We would've done whatever there was to be done, we would have cared for him, made this right, even Father-"

Thor stopped short. Again, again, it felt like he was falling, and clutched at his hair, breaths driven from him as solidly as if he'd been stuck. "Father," he said again, then raised a hand to his mouth. No. It wasn't him. "Mother."

"Frigga?" Brunnhilde asked sharply, lifting her head. "Queen Frigga?"

"Yes- yes. Mother," he said, dazed. He couldn't see; couldn't think. "She... she knew."

"I thought you said Loki never said anything."

Thor shook his head again, and the words came out numb; it almost took more than he had to fumble through them at all. "He didn't. Not to me, but I remember... she knew- or perhaps she realized for herself- she knew, she never said, Brunnhilde, she..."

He trailed off uselessly, falling back against the wall to card a hand through his hair and gulp into silence. She had known. He shouldn't have even been surprised, not really; Loki had always been closest to her, so close he'd been a little jealous, so if any of them were to realize, if Loki were to trust any of them with this, it would've been her, but- she had known. Now it all made sense. The way she'd started speaking about Loki as if in riddles, the way she'd suddenly stopped speaking to Odin about him at all, the way her uncertainty in those terrible days had softened into sadness...

She'd known.

Thor tilted his head back, squeezing his eye shut, and then, found himself struggling to just swallow another weak crack of laughter.

Was there truly no end, to the secrets that his family had kept him from?

"I never knew the Allmother," Brunnhilde said slowly; another unsure venture into the silence. It sounded as if she was choosing her words very carefully, but after the day he'd had, Thor was just a little too far gone to be shocked. Or care. "But perhaps she never said anything because it wasn't about you."

"What are you talking about; of course it was about us. He would not tell us the truth, he would not say a word, no matter how much suffering it would've saved- he always has to keep his secrets, his stupid, dammed-"

"And did you ever stop to think that maybe, that's about him, and not you? For one second, Your Majesty, did you consider that he didn't say anything not to spite you, but because he didn't want to?"

Thor sagged forwards, again burying his face against his hand. "You're as confusing as Loki," he grunted, then flinched and snapped his mouth shut. The thought of never being confused by his brother again...

No. No. He would not permit it.

Simple as that.

Brunnhilde let out another heavy sigh, her fingers interlocking together to hang between her knees. She still utterly avoided his gaze, but now, it didn't look like it was because she was too guilty to face him. Now her eyes were distant, the way they got sometimes when she talked about Sakaar or Hela- typically shortly before she drowned herself in yet another drink.

"Saying something," she murmured, "admitting something bad that happened to you aloud, especially to someone else, makes it real. You're not just giving the truth to someone else, you're forcing it on yourself, too. You can't pretend it didn't happen anymore." She pulled a hand through her hair again, tugging it down to twist a curl around her thumb, eyes almost unsettlingly distant in an expression that just a bit too blank for calm. "You're so angry that he didn't trust you, or think you were mattered enough to tell, and- I don't know. Maybe that's what was going on. I don't know him. What I do know, Thor, is that you making it out alive was pretty much one of the only reasons he did what he did, against Thanos, so somehow, I doubt that it's really as simple as just him not caring."

"But-" he said, then stopped. "But he-" and stopped again. That had always been their problem. Loki had too many words, while he had too few. There were no words, for the betrayal and sick anger tying his tongue, the way his breath ran short and his vision hazed and his head felt like it was shrinking until his world had collapsed.

"But I'm his brother," he said, finally.

It was the only truth he still had. It was not an answer, and perhaps it meant nothing to Loki at all, but- it was true. He didn't care the color of his skin or eyes; he didn't care what was in his blood. Loki was his brother as sure was Asgard was their home.

There was an absent pang in his chest at the reminder that Asgard no longer even existed.

"That probably made it even harder," she said, glancing up to him from her still withdrawn, protective curl on the floor. "If he couldn't accept and admit what happened, not even to himself, how could he have ever done it to someone as important to him as you? Someone that he can't just blow off if it went badly, one of the only people where he actually cares what you think about him? How could he have ever told you when he knew every time after he wouldn't be able to pretend, anymore, that he'd have to confront it being real again and again?" With a careless shrug, like that was all this was worth, like his world wasn't just crumbling past its foundations around him, she thunked her head back agains the hard ship's wall. "I don't pretend to know him that well. But I've met loads of people like him, and pretending he went psycho and hated you is probably a lot easier than to admit that he was hurt. That Thanos... that he... lost."

Thor flinched.

Lost.

He didn't like that word. Every instinct of a thousand years went against labelling this such a shameful thing. Loki had not lost. Loki had been hurt beyond his control, the battle one that he'd had no hope of winning. Loki had not lost, he had- endured, he had survived, he was alive and that was all that mattered, he...

He had, in a way, lost.

Rage clenched about his heart and swept so high that he could barely think.

Oh, he was going to tear Thanos apart.

Limb by limb, bone by bone, until there was nothing left but ash. And then he was going to throw that ash into the Void, to leave him frozen and floating and alone, just like his brother had been. And he deserved infinitely worse, than that, he deserved infinitely worse and a thousand times over but he could at least do that, to him, he could at least end him.

A few years ago, he already knew what he would've said.

He would've sworn to his brother that he had nothing to be ashamed of, and that even if he did, honor meant nothing as long as he yet lived. That he should never feel like he had to keep a secret from him ever again, that if anything ever went wrong all Loki had to do was say it and Thor would tear the threat apart for daring to hurt his little brother. He would've promised to smite Thanos on the head and to plead his case before every Allfather there'd ever been, to protect him from the slightest harm and fight until vengeance had been seen and justice had been served.

And now, things were different.

Now, Thor could listen to what the Valkyrie had said, and, with a sinking heart, he could actually hear her.

He could realize that she was right.

Brashly insisting to Loki there was nothing to be ashamed of would've probably just made his shame even more intense. Dragging him before the Allfather to make him state his case would've made it about him, not about Loki, would've made him repeat the story again and again when it was clear he couldn't bring himself to say it at all, when it probably would've only resulted in spat curses and you stupid, lumbering oaf, GET OFF ME! Telling Loki I'll keep you safe was not a heartfelt promise, not to his little brother; Loki wouldn't hear safety, Loki would hear because you're not strong enough to do it yourself. Because Loki was prideful, Loki had always twisted words, searching for insults and ill will where there were none, resentment building over slights Thor hadn't even noticed and certainly not intended. And it had gotten so much worse in recent years- that Thor could barely say hello to him without Loki's eyes narrowing and suspicion flickering behind his eyes, and perhaps now he could understand a little as to why; perhaps now he couldn't quite hold it against him-

Because Brunnhilde was right.

Loki had kept this secret. And that wasn't about him. It was about Loki.

And he was going to make it right.

The ship jolted gently about them, coming to a halt. Thor knew what that meant, they both knew what that meant; Brunnhilde was stiff suddenly again, one hand on her sword and her eyes watchful. "Your Majesty," she said again, and in it, Thor heard the truth: we're out of time.

The Guardians were splitting up. Half, making for Knowhere. It was the closest stone to their location, sent there by Loki himself, and after what had just come to light Thor no longer had any doubt he'd sent it there to safeguard it from Thanos specifically.

The other half, led and/or commandeered by the Valkyrie, were headed for Nidavellir: for a weapon capable of slaying a Titan.

And for the first time in a very long while, he was left with a choice.

He could go after Loki, in following the Guardians to Knowhere. Either Thanos would be there for him to follow, or he could take another ship from there to go searching for his brother himself. Gamora had offered to give him all the coordinates and names she had, swearing to him anything she could that would help him find his brother. It was what he wanted to do. It was, in fact, what he'd been planning to do, ever since the Guardians had made their plans and he had set his sights on getting his little brother back.

Or, he could go to Nidavellir, so that when the time came, he couldn't just save Loki now- he could save him from Thanos forever.

Save them all.

So far, everyone who had been willing to try had tried to sway him to the second.

If he went after Loki now but left the Mad Titan still with breath in his lungs, then it was leaving the job unfinished. It was leaving them both hunted, and by a beast that he did not yet have the power to slay. It was asking Thanos to come again, and this time, kill them both.

A good and proper king- a big brother who wanted to see Loki still breathing at the end of the day- would do things the right way. He would leave Loki in Thanos' hands to face whatever tortures imaginable, and wait until the Mad Titan was dead to make this right.

Thor couldn't bear the mere thought of it.

But, as the Valkyrie said...

This is not about you.

Thor took another deep breath, restraining the hot lightning and anger that ate deep down to his very soul, and forced himself to calm.

He knew what he had to do.

"Brunnhilde?" he said, rising to his feet. He carefully tugged at his armor, still blood-spattered and stiff with the lingering cold, then flexed a bruised hand. He missed Mjolnir's steady, reassuring weight, but that was all right, now. Soon, he would have a heavier replacement by his side. "Tell the Guardians there's been a change of plans."

The Valkyrie's answering grin was as sharp and sudden as one of Loki's knives, and the glint in her eyes as bright as the stars outside.

"You got it, Your Majesty," she said, and when she turned away to stride back upship, Thor at last felt like he could breathe again.

I'm sorry, brother. But you need to hang on just a little bit longer, for me. Remember: I'll never let you go.

I promise. The sun will shine on us again.

"Well," Nebula said, lithe and lurking like a silent predator, and Ebony Maw's black blood still smeared and dripping on her chin. "Been a while, Loki."

An exposed circuit sparked at the top of her head, barely a blue blur in his blood-hazed eye, and he blinked.

Then, he rolled onto his right side, and retched.

That was it. No more traveling with this dammed infinity stone, no more touching an infinity stone ever again. No fucking more.

Still dazed, bleeding, and empty through and through, Loki let himself lay almost totally limp on the floor. He didn't know where he was, and he didn't care. Ebony Maw was dead, Nebula was not currently trying to kill him, so that was enough.

He really couldn't think beyond that, anymore.

Nebula moved around without a care, and he was thankful for it. He heard stabbing noises, bones crunching, and outside of his own head realized it was other members of the Black Order. Dying where they stood, shot through by Thanos' own daughter and without a thought to spare. But she did not shoot him, and that was enough.

Once, her cold, unnatural hand yielded close to one of his. It didn't even touch, didn't even touch the dagger pierced still through it.

He hurled her back so violently he heard the wall crumple like sand, heart hammering wildly and breaths screeching in his own ears, and that was that.

Nebula, he remembered wildly. Sister of Gamora. Thanos' prized children. The green one likes holding people down; the blue one likes breaking things. Bones. People. The sisters; the siblings.

Thor...

Thor, please...

"Well," Nebula called, and somewhere under the screeching in his head he barely heard the recharging of a gun. "I'm going to take a wild guess, and say you didn't come back here willingly."

His chest heaved a second time, but this time he kept his teeth locked together, shuddering and pressed tightly back against the wall because that was safety and safety was all he had. "W-willing-" His head screamed, his vision spun, pulsing green waves radiating against the injury, in and out so violently, Norns, he couldn't think, couldn't-

"You're n-not here willingly, either," he realized, a breath rattling in his chest. Somewhere in the back of his head he remembered, now, the rumors he'd heard in some of the last days of his false reign as Odin. Both daughters have left him. Nebula deserts. She wants it known she wants his head. Nebula deserts.

Nebula deserts.

"Yeah. Well." The android wavered in his vision, blurring into two, than three, then wrenched all back into one with a solid crunch as the dagger plunged into the nearest twitching guard's skull. "I've got a sister who knows where the Soul Stone is, and Daddy wants it. Life sucks." She peered closer at him, unblinking, unflinching, and pointed one finger at his face. It was half blue, half sparking wires, revealed to air by skin rolled back like a rotting corpse. "And you look like dear father finally tried to get the Tesseract."

"N- no," he said. Norns, his mouth was dry, his head spun; he tasted vomit again. "I actually just like walking about with a knife in my eye."

"Right." She cracked a knuckle, unerringly sharp and he hated himself for it, he hated every inch of it but he flinched, and then-

NO!

"You will not touch me, wench," he gasped. Somehow the wall was flush against his back again. Somehow he couldn't see over the roaring agony in his head. Somehow his heart was pounding so fast he could taste a pathetic plea for his brother's protection on his tongue. Funny, these things. Funny. "Y-you- will not-"

"Either I'll do it or you will, but in the next five seconds, you're going to have those knives out. Because I'm not leaving the Tesseract here, and since I can't take it from you, that means you're coming with me."

"I- c-coming with you? Coming-"

"Five."

"I shall do no such thing! You-"

"Four."

"-after what you did to me, I'll snap your neck sooner-"

"Three."

"You will not-"

"Two."

"All right! ALL RIGHT!" One cursed blade was wrenched free, and with a hand still freshly bleeding, shredded nerves and splintered bones already sparking and screeching back together, he ripped the other free with it. His hands howled and he could already feel his seidr howling back in answer, a blazing bonfire inside of him that sparked and screamed in madness, but the blue one wasn't trying to touch him anymore and his next bloody breath came in choked just a little less. "Are you happy now?!" he spat, wheezing. No. No. He wasn't going to throw up again. No.

Nebula glared back, the lines of her indistinct, the set of her face blurring. He thought he saw her blink, staring back to his still pierced eye, and then she said, pointedly, "I'm never happy."

"Oh," he snarled. "Glad to have that in common, then."

The pain was getting worse. Spiraling in his head, his eye- he needed that out- ah, Norns, this was not good, this was the most not good he had ever been, there was a knife in his dammed eye-

And then, Nebula was there, and pulled it straight out.

Fuck.

Yeah. Fuck.

Pretty much just that.

Something distant in his head recognized Nebula hauling him upright, manhandling underneath the howling, dry-sobbing, screaming, one arm over her thin shoulders as the other clutched desperately at his face and his feet dragged on the floor. His seidr flickered and flared, screeching beyond his control, trying to snare her, but there just wasn't enough left- the Tesseract, the blood streaming from cursed wounds, whatever the hells Ebony Maw had done to his head-

Thor, I know you're going to kill me, so all I can really ask for at this point is to please make it quick.

And. Any time now, would be nice.

Really.

His vision slowly filtered back into itself with a green, hysterical pop, one eye watering and contracting; the other blind. Panic spiked and he blinked once, groaning past clenched teeth, then blinked again.

He could feel the remnants of the cursed blade, infecting and burning in his ruined eye like a poison, lurching against his own power, and something in his stomach sunk.

That eye wasn't going to heal.

Achingly slow, his vision focused, blurred, focused again. Nebula wavered back into sight, knelt over across the room, half-broken hands clicking too fast at a console and holographic screens flickering around her in a language that he didn't know. That stirred whispering memories in the back of his head, twisting in his stomach; he did not want to know.

"W-well," he groaned, voice as if scratched over a bed of sharp rocks. "That. Hurt."

"I've seen you take worse." She entered a final command, sweeping it across the screens to turn them red and flickering, then swiveled back around, still all but ignoring him. "We have ten minutes. Neither of us are staying here. Get your head back on and figure out where you're going to take us with the stone." With little more than a grunt and screaming screech of metal, the door was broken, barred shut, twisted in place too irrecoverably to ever be opened naturally again. Then she was there again, kneeling down before him instead with one finger held up and a smear of her own blood splattered against the smears of his. "Ten minutes. You can do whatever you want: I'm stopping Thanos."

His head protested again, a dizzy spin that made Nebula tilt and his newly hewn blind spot pulse outwards in a red haze. Thanos. The infinity stones. The Tesseract.

Thor.

Something inhuman clawed up inside of him, a black, all-consuming hole. It scratched and devoured even at pain until all that was left was the broken razor's edge, bleeding inside of him, all desperation and a crumbled puzzle piece and Thor drained and dead on the floor of the broken Statseman.

His fists curled, and green light sprung to life abut them until he could hardly breathe.

Against all odds, he was alive. Against all odds, he still had the Space Stone, and Thanos did not. Against all odds, Thor, at least, still had a chance.

He'd spent six years running from this day, and now that it was finally here, he'd been handed the ability to do something more than just lie down and die.

"We're stopping Thanos," he said, hot blood trailing down from his new blind side like tears, and grinned.

He was done running.

I'm coming, Thanos.

Even if I die trying.

Chapter Text

The first thing Loki did, when he followed the straining, lingering whispers of the Mind Stone, lurking both in the Tesseract and in his own head, was keel over on the hard, unfamiliar ground, clutch his stomach, and try very hard not to throw up.

(He was really, really, really, really, really done with the dammed Tesseract.)

And never well mind that he knew it was not the Tesseract at all, but his own folly, in using an infinity stone when his core was already just about sucked dry and he still bled from the soul out.

The second thing he did was hold up his hands, when strange Midgardians with shiny, unfamiliar spears and strange, unfamiliar armor, and cloaking technology that had nearly fooled him materialized around him, and say, "I'm here to help."

Captain America was among them. Because, of course he was. No shield, this time, and his armor less visually offensive; perhaps his ass would look even better in it than it had before. Which was something that mattered, because he really was dangerously close to passing out, now. And the man of iron was next to him, too... he- he thought... he looked somewhat different than the time before- bigger, in a way that spiked his panic again- oh, that suit could break his spine in half-

And then, the suit's helmet retracted back, and he heard, "Loki?" and something in his brain just decided to turn off.

"Good morning, Bruce," he said, and the third thing he did was topple straight over until his back hit the grass.

It was Bruce, somehow. The monster's container instead of the monster himself, albeit in a metal suit every bit as big and, well, hulking. There was a mechanical whirring, in his ears, what felt like motion in his blind spot, and suddenly the mortal was there, tugging and touching at him in abject alarm. "You're alive! Cap- Cap, stand down, everyone, he's on our side- what the hell, Loki? You're alive?!"

"Indubitably," he mumbled, though perhaps what he really meant was somehow. "A-and- and so are- you." A little kernel of relief unfolded in his chest, just one seed of it underneath a mass of terror.

Dr. Banner huffed at his answer, but it was underneath a white, panicking pallor. He didn't seem to be able to decide whether he wanted to stare at his ruined eye or cover his own so he'd never have to see it ever again. "Heimdall sent me to Earth, when- it's a long story. When you-"

"Thor," he said suddenly, trying to push back. His efforts accomplished little and he tried again, ineffectually squirming against the still hovering, unsteady hands. "Thor. Dr. Banner. What- is he-"

The nervous pallor calmed into a still cast of trepidation, and Loki's stomach dropped.

No. No. It- could not be.

No, he'd done it right, this time. He'd made sure it was safe, he'd sent Thor away, he couldn't be- no-

"I don't know," Dr. Banner said back, his voice wavering. Something about it sounded strange, and Loki shoved down the hand reaching for his ruined eye before it got an inch off the ground. "I'm sorry, Loki, I don't know. I saw Brunnhilde with him, just when that- thing caught up with you- but then the other guy took over and next thing I know I'm crash landing in New York."

New York... his head spun again, the ground tilting under his feet as he tried to remember. New York was...

"The sorcerer," he gasped, then choked, a stab of pain down his throat that reached all the way down to his stomach. "The blasted sorcerer, he was in New York, with the Time-"

"We know. Cap! Help me get him up, he's hurt, um, everyone, this is Loki, rehabilitated or I don't know but he's not currently trying to kill us, Loki, this is- friends- people who are going to help-"

"Enough." Loki shrugged violently again, forcing the prying hands off him that made his skin crawl, then raised his own, showing them his palms, then flipping them around to reveal the other sides. The shredded holes were already healing, the remains of the curses smothered by his seidr and natural healing, and he could feel the blood trails from the left side of his face slowing down, too. Dr. Banner looked almost nauseated, something about the sight of bones and nerves stitching themselves back together probably not agreeing with them, but he was really too far gone to care.

They were out of time.

"Dr. Banner," he said, drawing, first to his knees, then, to his feet. The world tilted again and the hostile forces around him looked not calmed in any way, but the Tesseract called to him from his hidden dimension, and his heart raced and hot blood poured. "Captain America. Assorted... ah..." He was not sure who the others were; they looked like no Midgardian soldiers he'd ever seen, but they were not Avengers, either- "Assorted countrymen," he finished. "Thanos is coming."

And for once, I'm here to help.

As it turned out, they already knew.

They already knew, because he was too late.

Thanos' forces had invaded, and taken the sorcerer with them. The Time Stone had fallen.

It had taken several minutes for him to battle the rising panic at that, and successfully suffocate the urge to take the Tesseract and run. He had decided to make a stand, and as much he loathed to admit it- and oh, he loathed it- these Midgardian so-called heroes were the ones best suited to fight with him. He didn't know where Thor was.

These new Wakandans, and the Avengers, were his best hope.

His only one.

That didn't mean either of them had to like it.

"There are six stones at play, here. Each one Thanos collects increases his power exponentially, and decreases our own ability to fight by the same degree. Already, nobody in this room has the capacity to defeat him alone. This includes myself," he added sourly, when the last comment had looked to arise more than a few insulted protests. Gritting his teeth, Loki started to carefully raise a still healing hand, trying to gesture, then stopped short when the wave was interrupted from behind by a towel, pushed into his grip.

A servant, he recognized distantly, dressed like the other strange Wakandans. Silent and almost irritatingly calm, still holding out the proffered gifts as if they were a greatest balm, and one that he could not say no to.

It took him a moment to realize he was also bleeding about all over their conference table.

Loki scowled, and returned both his hands safely down to his lap.

"No assistance will be required, or appreciated." He took a breath, clenching his teeth to search up the strength required from his drained core, and somehow summoned up just enough of himself to evaporate every trace of his blood with a mere clench of his hand. Were Midgardians advanced enough to do anything with his blood, either to devise a weakness or spell a blood curse? Surely not, but they'd surprised him in the past- they had surprised him today, in fact- and he was not about to be surprised again.

"And," he added, dark annoyance swept over fear clenching his jaw tight, "none of you are to touch me."

Captain America, and those with him, continued their suspicious, unwilling glaring. The Wakandans, officials and servants alike, watched him with a view that came off as particularly unimpressed. Dr. Banner, in fact, seemed to be the only one to take him seriously at all.

His jaw tightened again, and the inner battle between irritation and irrational panic tipped just a little heavier to the bad side.

"So. Yeah, um- Loki?"

His mouth curled, twitching against a wave of both annoyance and pain. The princess, if he remembered correctly. Which it was quite possible he did not, because his head was still spinning and, Norns, he really did not care, which Midgardian was what. "Yes?"

"I don't really know what you guys have got in space," she said, waving a hand about. The beaded bracelet made him uneasy, somehow, a quiet current of energy lurking in it that made his hands tighten, but all she did was talk. "But perhaps give us a chance before you write us off as primitive savages. I can guarantee, you haven't seen anything like Wakanda before."

"And you haven't seen anything like the infinity stones, before," he snapped. He did not have the patience to argue with a Midgardian, and he had never had the patience to argue with what looked to be a Midgardian child. Were they not taking this seriously? Did they not realize what was at stake?! "He's got the Power Stone and knows how to use it, Princess. He could destroy the planet and your precious Wakanda before you could even have the thought to get insulted about it."

There was another bristle of murmurs about the room, the Wakandas muttering amongst themselves while the Avengers kept on with their suspicious staring, and Loki nearly cursed aloud.

His head hurt. Even as it and his hands healed, even as sputtering seidr took form and life in him again, his head still really, really hurt.

"Um, guys? I think he's actually... right about this one."

The fact that nearly the entirety of the room actually turned to look at Dr. Banner when he spoke, watching him with attentiveness and not outright suspicion, was... annoying. Rather rude, in fact. But not unwarranted, and more to the point, his head hurt too much for him to protest.

So he sat there silently, vanishing under a stone-faced glamour just so he could massage at his forehead in peace, as the man said, "I'm pretty sure Thanos was about as impressed by the Hulk as... as the Hulk was by Loki. I think it would've taken him about ten seconds to kill me."

...well.

That's rude.

"The strength of this Thanos aside," a new voice said, unfamiliar, and Loki flinched underneath his glamour as his illusion looked up. The king, whose foreign, unique name once again escaped him, his face unreadable behind steepled fingers, but there was something about him... like the princess' bracelet. Something abut him that murmured to his seidr, danger. "If he is so easily capable of taking Earth, then what is there to stop him from doing so at any time? Why has he not done so already?"

Well, at least the king was looking at him. Somewhat non-hostile. "Frankly?" Loki murmured behind his illusion's hand. "It is more work for him to find the stones in a mass of rubble, than it is to take them from you. That is likely all. He will find our resistance... he will find it..."

"An ant has no quarrel with a boot?"

Loki stiffened, underneath his glamour.

And once again, by the look on his face alone, decided he really was not the world's biggest fan of Steve Rogers.

(He barely even remembered making the comment about the ant at all.)

"Smugness doesn't suit you, Captain," he murmured, frowning behind his hands. "I do think I might see why my brother is so fond of you, however."

"It't not smugness," the soldier said back, not missing a beat. "It's an assessment. And by the look on your face, it's an accurate one." He tapped a slow finger along the table, gloved hand trailing along the glass, then sat back to fold his arms and set his face in solid stone. "I'd like to stop talking about how we're the ants, and start talking about how we're expected to stop the boot."

"...I'm sure." Loki allowed his real self's head to sag down onto the table, bleeding wound still nestled carefully against his sleeve, shrouded entirely under his careful and smooth illusion. It was almost funny, to him, able to carry on a meeting while half-dead and out against the table and no one saw but himself, but the urge to laugh was smothered underneath the quaking panic in his chest, and then perhaps it had never really been there at all. "Our only course of action, is, unfortunately, the same as Thanos': the infinity stones."

Once again, it took almost more than he had, to give breath to the new illusion in the air. His mother, Thor, would've known by looking at him alone that it was an ill thought out idea. But it was a mere light's show, barely a parlor trick for children, and it reassured him more to see that he was still capable of it than it hurt his core to scrape it almost dry.

"Space," he said, and a blue star twinkled into existence. "Currently in my possession, and guarded tighter than anything any Midgardian is capable of. I will not give it to you for further protection. It will be of little use to us, but it is crucial we keep it out of Thanos' hands." A second wave of his hand, and a red star winked in next to the first. "Reality. Nebula tells me that Thanos already has it in his possession, and I trust her more than I don't. You may not be able to trust your own perception, when the time comes, and this stone will be his one and only defense against magic." He paused for a moment, searching about the now perfectly silent, utterly still room again. That positively loathsome wizard from before- nowhere to be seen... "Am I the only mage present?"

Even in this dire circumstance, he thought sourly, he'd prefer it. His one experience with Midgardian magic was unpleasant, and he had no wish at all to see it develop even further than before.

It was to his immediate disappointment, then, when one pale hand raised into the air.

It was a Midgardian, no question, and a young one, at that- at a glance, the youngest in the room. A young female sitting with the Avengers, red hair and clothes, even an aura about her that felt very, very red. "I- think I am," she said carefully, and the hesitance in her voice alone gave him no sense of reassurance at all. "Wanda. I'm Wanda."

"We shall speak later." He waved his hand again, winking the next stone into existence in his illusion. "Power. Already in Thanos' possession. If he aims it in any of your general vicinities, run. Mind-" Loki frowned back across to the Avengers, this time not to the young magician, but to the figure next to her. Because his brother had thought it wise to stick the Mind Stone in someone's head and, perhaps, just hope for the best.

"Vision," Vision said, rather unhelpfully. "It's a pleasure."

"I know who you are. I am routinely baffled at the decision to leave an infinity stone unguarded in your head."

"It is not- unguarded," Wanda rose up and indignant, her eyes flashing, "it is-"

"The most vulnerable of the stones yet," Loki interrupted, raising a still aching, half-numb hand, "and that includes the one hanging about the neck of your irritant of a sorcerer. I know not how securely my brother anchored the stone in you, but serious thought should be put towards freeing the stone entirely."

"This is what I said."

There was a short, unsettling pause. All eyes in the room turned to Vision, most of them almost as hostile as they had been on him- the witch in particular, looking particularly dangerous. There was a flicker of red heat about her hands, and Loki found himself abruptly wishing he was completely across the room from her rather than just sitting here in this chair.

"If- if that is what-" Loki dropped his head into his hand with a moan, gesturing violently. "If the creature agrees, then why has it not already been done?!"

This time, all the glowers were back on him, the witch's hands curling, but it was the captain who spoke up. "We don't trade lives, here."

It took several moments, for the sheer baffling stupidity of that statement, to hit him fully.

Working with Nebula would've been less impossible than this.

"Don't trade... I don't know if you've realized the gravity of the situation, Captain. The odds we are against." His illusion pushed to his feet, and when at least half the room tensed and moved for their weapons he allowed a flicker of angry green light about his feet, too, scorching the floor just because he could. "Untold trillions of lives are at stake. All life in the known and unknown universe, and you would stake it on- a principle, a worthless, insubstantial scrap of a thing, your honor- you are as bad as Thor! Oh-" He turned and paced, heart pounding even as the real him sank with his head in his hands. "You are unable to even grasp what is at stake here. You petty, puny Midgardian minds, with your petty squabbles and your puny wars, you think-"

"Are you really about to lecture us on morality? Really, Loki?"

"No, I am lecturing on what must be done!" And he didn't even know who'd said it, had started losing track of the number of mortals in the room because it didn't matter. They weren't ants; not to Thanos. Asgardians were ants, gods were ants, these- this room of scowling, extraordinary, deadly, unique warriors- he was an ant in a roomful of dust. An irritant to be stepped on versus something so utterly inconsequential it'd be brushed aside without thought, and yet, that dust still sought to cling to principle. "Accuse me of amorality, injustice? It is certainly your right; I'm not to refute it. But when the end comes and we're all dust because of your inability, your cowardice-"

"We are not killing him, and that's final!"

"You short-sighted-"

"Wait!" Wanda moved to her feet as well, pushing halfway to actually stand in between him and the silent Vision. A glowing hand held out, like she was going to protect him- was going to stop him. She didn't advance, didn't fight, only just stood her ground and glared, and somehow he would've preferred if it had been worse. "Wait," she said again, "you- if you want the stone out of him- we're already trying to get the stone out of his head. Safely," she stressed. "That's why we're here in Wakanda. They're going to help us, but if... if you know so much about the stones, then..."

It took him, once again, a few moments too long to understand what he was being asked.

He blamed the gaping hole in his head.

"No," he said flatly, and made his illusion sit back down.

"No," Steve repeated flatly, and his face was flat, too. "And here we thought, you were here to help."

"Cap," Dr. Banner murmured, a quiet warning from Loki's left. Somehow, that made it even worse. Everything made everything worse.

Loki closed his eyes, both his and his illusion's, for one long moment, and breathed.

Just a few more days, now.

He could hold on for just a few more days.

"I am not," he said, when he finally could, "going to work with- that." He pointed one long finger across the table to the Mind Stone, and if the witch got offended because she thought he meant Vision, that was quite all right with him. "And I am not going to do it, because it wouldn't end well for anyone in this room. My magic will not react well to it, and... I do not believe it remembers me fondly."

There was another uncertain pause. Wanda, at least, looked with bright, prying eyes, but again it was Steve who spoke- Steve, who seemed to have been self-nominated spokesperson for the Avengers and company. "It's a stone, Loki."

"Which part of what I said do your old-fashioned sensibilities object to? That a seemingly inanimate object remembers me, or that my magic might react beyond my control?" He could not believe this was happening. Incredulously, perhaps idiotically, he actually missed Nebula. "I am not going to give you all an explanation as to the mechanics of my powers or the infinity stones. Simply, the Mind Stone needs to be freed and, evidently, guarded, since there is no one here capable of wielding it. But I will not be able to assist with either, and I will not answer any questions about this matter." Because he could not explain it to them, not ever, yes, but certainly not now.

That his seidr was a living, breathing, part of him, and it remembered the Mind Stone, and the Mind Stone would remember him, and the twisted partnership that they'd had.

That his seidr would fight, and the stone would then fight back.

Fight to reclaim him.

For the first time, he actually did not miss Thor.

Because Thor would've pushed, and those were questions that he couldn't answer.

Not now.

Wanda lowered her hands, again, the first one to lower her hostile outer walls, the only one aside from Banner to look at him as if somehow, there was something worth trusting. "Then can you help me do it?" she pressed, one earnest hand on Vision's shoulder. "Get the stone out of his head? I think I could, but I don't know how, and- and if I just had a teacher, or..."

Loki's mouth twitched again. He seriously doubted a Midgardian had the power to wrest with an infinity stone, least of all one as temperamental and fickle as that one. And who was this girl, anyway? He didn't get the same feeling from her that he did from Strange- no, their magics were different. His more refined and foreign, while hers...

He frowned, slightly. Breathing in once, slow and deep, he probed forward, searching for her power just like he'd searched so many other mages so many times before.

Then choked on a strangled gasp, as he was promptly slammed in the face with enough power to level a small city.

The same power that sat in Vision's head, and the same power that even six years later, still had a sick claim to his own.

"You," he said faintly, eyes widening. "Your powers come from the stone."

Wanda shifted uncomfortably. By the look on her face- their faces- this was a revelation to no one but himself. "Yes?" she said at length, and there was a flicker in her aura again, her- ridiculous, overpowering, world-crushing aura. "What does that mean...?"

Loki moaned.

Silently. Underneath his glamour.

It means, he thought, standing to leave his glamour silent behind, that I'd really like to get off this planet.

His double could handle the Time and Soul Stones. Meanwhile, excuse him, he was headed somewhere where he didn't feel like he was about to suffocate with the crushing, twisted call of not just the Mind Stone itself, but apparently a young witchling that had enough of its power stuffed into her to explode.

Namely: anywhere in the universe but here.

It wouldn't be until late that night, that the real Loki had to actually face another person again.

He dispelled the double the moment it was safe. Because as grating as it was to admit it, he was exhausted, and given what was coming the faster he got his full strength back, the better. The Midgardians still didn't trust him, but they at least seemed willing to accept giving him the not currently our biggest problem label.

He still hadn't quite developed a plan for what he would've done, if not.

Again, he blamed that on the gaping hole in the skull issue.

He stayed in the Wakandan palace that night, with the rest of the burgeoning defense force. A guard outside the door, because, of course, he's not to be trusted, and he'd taken one look at the pitiful Midgardian and nearly burst out laughing, because there was nothing stopping him from breaking the poor woman in half. But his hands had been shaking, and his heart racing, and head had been about to split in two, and it really had been all Loki could do to get inside the small, private room, leave an alarm spell lingering along the threshold in case any other tried to enter, and then, fall face-first onto the bed.

He was not roused again for many hours.

Until that evening, when his spell at the door was breached.

His eye cracked open with a knife in his hand, and he snarled a rasp of a threat that was every last scrap of dangerous as he had in him. Even half-dead, he could kill anybody here. He would, if the need arose, without a second thought.

When he recognized the silhouette of Bruce Banner, he snarled a second curse, this one loud enough to be heard.

"Yeah, uh, good morning to you, too?" The mortal stopped once in the threshold, staring at him, then just shook with his head with a tsk and moved to sit down. "Do you sleep with a knife under your pillow or what?"

"It's not morning," Loki snapped. "And, no. However, if you insist on making a habit of this, I might just start."

Dr. Banner hummed once, and that- no. He was going to have to work on that one, if the unassuming, deceptively harmless Dr. Banner was so accustomed to his threats that he reacted like that. Loki stayed carefully down and motionless, curled and tense like a worn out cat, and watched back as he was examined.

When a hand started to reach for his own, he breathed a third warning that if Dr. Banner had actually touched him, he would've carried through with.

"Do you guys even-" He whistled, which was baffling in and of itself, and pulled his hands back to himself with an awed grin. "Seriously, do you guys realize how incredible you are? Literally this morning, your hands looked like- I don't even have a description for it, they looked awful, Loki, you could wave and I could see your face through them. Now they're not even hurt at all!"

Loki scowled, and only did not withdraw his hands out of sight because it would've wrecked his unaffected air to do it. It was not so, as Dr. Banner said, incredible. There were rough scars, front and back, each hand, and they weren't bleeding, anymore- that was about the extent of their healing. The cursed blades that had stabbed the wounds in the first place and his own exhaustion saw to that.

"We are gods," he said flatly, and since the man did not seem about to leave any time soon, unfolded silently to sit straight and glower. The flinch he got from his likely, newly grotesque face, wasn't quite aggressive enough for his liking, but he supposed it would do. "We are meant to be incredible. Is there something else you wanted, or did you merely come to gawk over simple alien physiology?"

"Can't it be both?"

"Goodbye, Dr. Banner," he said, shutting his eye to curl back down again. "Please shut the door on your way out."

"Oh, quiet down, Loki. Just teasing." He kept his hands to himself this time, at least, but the faint and ridiculous smile on his face faded, now, smudging underneath a nervous whisper that flickered like tense firelight through his eyes. Eyes that kept searching to the window and back, as if he expected to see Thanos touch down at any moment.

The same tenseness that suffocated over the entire palace.

Loki swallowed, his throat dry, and said nothing.

"i actually-" he coughed once, arms folding as his gaze still seemed to have trouble leaving the window. "I actually am here to ask you something. Two somethings. I promise, I'll be quick. You... really don't look... well."

His fingers twitched, and a sick heat burned in his face, hidden underneath an already forming glamour. "I'm fine," he snapped, which was disastrously untrue, and, "You are free to ask your questions," when actually, he'd really rather he didn't.

But Dr. Banner was currently the only person on the planet who didn't hate him, and, in their time on the Statseman, had actually grown to become tolerable.

The expression went, he believed, could really use a friend right now, but... if a friend wasn't in the choices allotted to him... perhaps, right now, he really could use tolerable.

"About your eye." He peered closer again, shuddering faintly, but at least did not make moves to touch him. "Princess Shuri offered to help."

Loki bristled, feeling almost like a prickly cat. "As I've said, I require no-"

"Not like that, Loki. I mean that she offered to give you an implant. An-" He stopped, frowning a little, waving a hand about the way he did when he was trying to explain. "I'm not sure if you have them, on Asgard; like a prosthetic, for your eye, and a headset with it, that helps you see. She said if we're about to be in the fight of our lives, might as well not have any handicaps on our side that we can help, no matter how snotty, snarky, and- well, that-" He laughed weakly, shaking his head. "Doesn't matter. Just, hang on, just..." He routed in his pockets for a moment, then revealed his find: a smooth, shiny- and somewhat unsettling- mechanical eye. He looked rather proud of it, actually, wearing that awed smile with that curious light in his eye as he proffered it for inspection. "Seriously, Wakanda's centuries ahead of anything else on the planet."

Oh, how Loki loathed to admit it. But he was right. If the eye actually worked as he said it did, then not only was the eye unheard of, for Midgardians, it would've been impressive even on Asgard.

Unfortunately for Wakanda, or possibly just Shuri's, pride, he could already tell that the eye wouldn't work on him.

"That's wonderful for them," he deadpanned, making no move to lean forward or even sit up any straighter than he already was. "However, as you're already aware, I'm a shapeshifter, Dr. Banner."

"...Yeah...?"

"I change shape," he repeated, slower, this time, dragging out the syllables as if speaking to a small, very stupid child, and smirking as if speaking to Thor. "Mechanical implants don't change with me."

"Oh," he said once, a reflexive hum, not quite seeming to get it. Then his eyes widened, face paling as the blood drained and a pained grimace twisted across it, and he said, "Oh."

Loki smirked again, pushing his fingers back closed over the gift. "Biological implants, on the other hand, work perfectly. So, if the princess has a roomful of spare eyes she'd be willing to let me tour..."

Dr. Banner swallowed visibly at the leer. Once again, he seemed unable to quite tear his gaze off the ruined half? Quarter? of his face. "I'll. Uh. ...ask," he said limply, when seemed to also be code for, I don't think so, and, perhaps, also, as the Midgardians would say, what the fuck is wrong with you.

Loki grinned, licking his lips once, and decided not to get into the litany of a list to answer that one now. "So," he murmured, sitting back against the wall. "Your second question."

It seemed to take him another moment to gather his thoughts, one that Loki found himself grateful for, so he could take the moment himself. The sleep had helped, but his insides still felt scraped dry and raw, a ravenous pit where his seidr ought to be that was hungry and hurt, and his head spun whenever he tried to focus. But then Dr. Banner's eyes cleared while his still couldn't, and the mortal sat forward again, hands interlacing between his knees and gaze just a little bit too focused for comfort.

"I wanted to ask you about what you said," he murmured. "After the meeting."

Once again, it took him just a moment too long to sift though the day's events, to remember. Half his memories spent in here, in a half-daze, the other half murkily controlling his double. But when it came to him, he grinned, all teeth, eye flashing, and when Dr. Banner didn't flinch he grinned even bigger.

"How do we know we can trust you, Loki?" Steve had asked, when all matters were settled and all questions, done. What had been lurking unsaid between them all day, hidden in all the gazes of hostility, the outright suspicion that hid even in the watchful eyes of those who did not know him.

"How do we know we can trust you?"

Loki- back turned, smooth and expressionless, and the thrall of the Mind Stone, calling as a siren from just across the room, had paused.

Then, grinning, he'd turned, just enough to glance back over his shoulder.

His right shoulder, so all Steve got was a face streaked with blood and a gaping, gory eye socket.

"You don't," he'd said, and left.

Loki licked his lips again, halfway because they still felt dry and cracked, halfway just to try and unsettle him. Again, infuriatingly, it did not work. "You're questioning whether or not I'm going to double cross you, myself?" he purred, grin widening. He didn't know why he was doing this. Why he was making it worse. Thor called him incorrigible, his mother had called the habit borderline suicidal, but on his best of days he couldn't help himself and this was not his best of days. "Are you waiting for a repeat of my last time on Midgard, perhaps? Or-"

"Actually, no. I'm not."

"-perhaps you... ah." Slowly, like water evaporating on a hot day, Loki's smile shrunk. "You. Aren't, then."

Something about not being able to unsettle, people- the way he'd lost the ability to unsettle Thor, and now, again, with this human- like his famously silver tongue had lost its shine-

Something about it made him feel small.

Like an ant, he thought bitterly, to be stepped on.

Dr. Banner shrugged once, even managing to look abashed, somehow. Like he was sorry for unsettling him, which was so ridiculous it made Loki's face burn again. "Yep, sorry," he said, holding up his hands, still smiling. "I guess spending the last couple months with you, watching you not try and murder Thor, or take over Asgard, or what have you, kind of helped to shift perspective. Hell," and he grinned again, even easier, "you tried to lead Thanos off just to give us the chance to get away. It's kind of hard to still cling to the whole supervillain thing, when you keep doing... non-villain things."

...he really did not enjoy where this conversation was headed.

Swallowing dryly, Loki forced himself back to calm, folding his legs to lean his head back against the wall as if without a care in the world. "You are free to believe what you like, Dr. Banner," he said idly, fingers intertwining together just to feel the tug and pull of half-broken scars. "Is there an actual question? Or did you merely come here to think aloud to an audience?"

"A question? Well... yeah, Loki. I do." He sat forward himself, still looking so just infuriatingly at ease that it made his skin crawl. Now, he wasn't smiling.

"What actually happened in 2012?"

Loki's mouth went dry.

That was the question, wasn't it?

It occurred to him, sitting there in the new silence, gaze on the ceiling just so he wouldn't have to look at the mortal across from him, it was the first time he'd actually been asked that question.

Odin had not asked at all. Odin had accused him of crimes, crimes he had been undeniably guilty of, and apparently he had not thought him incapable of such crimes at all because his only action had been to pass judgment and throw away the key. Of course the Frost Giant would snap, of course he'd go mad, of course that was all it was, why would there be anything else...?

His mother had divined the truths for herself. Not all, but enough to understand not to ask, and she hadn't.

Thor-

He wasn't really that sure at all, what his brother thought.

It had to have been more of him than what Odin had. Thor had trusted him in Ragnarok, worked with him on the Statseman. He would not have done those things, if he still thought him a mad, careless Frost Giant.

But Thor had never asked.

Loki thought, sometimes, it was because he was afraid of the answer.

And now, here he was.

Being asked the question for the first time, by a Midgardian that he scarcely knew, and that could quite easily toss him out the window if he didn't like the answer.

Loki swallowed again.

"...If you are concerned about what will happen, when this is all over," he said at last, "don't be." He still couldn't quite meet his eyes. "I don't have any idea what will happen then, if by some impossible miracle both I and the universe survive intact. But I have no aspirations to take Midgard. Your planet will be safe from me."

"Okay," Dr. Banner replied easily. Waited a beat. "That. Doesn't answer my question. But, good to know."

He grimaced, eye narrowing now into a glare. The ceiling held blurry, slightly, just a little indistinct, and he could feel a headache starting to build; depth perception that was no longer there tugging at the insides of his brain. "What, exactly, are you after here? 2012 is done. I've promised, Midgard will be safe from me, in this year, and most likely any in the future. What more is there that you could want to know?"

There was another short, uncomfortable silence. Loki kept his gaze focused on the ceiling, and Dr. Banner, to his great and everlasting annoyance, did not move.

Just kept watching him, in a way that made him want to rip his eyes right out of his skull.

"Does it..." He stopped, once, pulling his glasses off to rub at them with his sleeve. "Does it have anything to do with the Mind Stone?"

Loki smirked carelessly, over a traitorous flutter in his stomach. "Why would it?"

"It's just a hypothesis," he said, shrugging. "You were all- twitchy about it, today. But you had no problem using it in your destiny stick six years ago."

"That-" Loki stopped short. "Is that what you called it? My destiny stick?"

Dr. Banner grinned back, once again not looking abashed at all. "Steve called it your scepter; Tony called it your magic poker. I like to split the difference."

He let his head fall back, again, shutting his eye and scowling with all abandon. Never mind not wanting the throne. The reason Midgard was safe from him was because they were all utterly, devastatingly hopeless. Destiny stick. Honestly. "That was a scepter crafted to specifically contain and utilize the power of the Mind Stone by the dwarves of Nidavellir. It has no relation to destiny, and it is certainly not a stick." He grimaced to himself, arms folding tighter and for a breath was more comfortable than he'd been since the Statseman.

Still, Dr. Banner did not say anything.

And-

Loki found that he wanted to.

He wasn't going to survive this alive. It was simply unbelievable to him, that he would. He'd been living on borrowed time and running from insurmountable odds for too long for him to ever imagine a fight where he was still standing, at the end of the day. And if he was going to die, then- then, what did it matter? Divulging the secret once, once and for all, to someone who didn't matter, just saying it in the dark and seclusion of this foreign palace in this foreign world, just because he could?

What did any of it matter?

What good would his silence bring anyone now?

Loki closed his eye, again. Breathing deeply, in and out. He remembered his mother, in her final days, an illusion sitting beside him as she guided him through the spells to free his own mind. If he kept his eye closed, he could imagine it again- the way insubstantial fingers held his, the way a voice that wasn't real, but he heard all the same, murmured I'm proud of you.

It wasn't telling her, and it wasn't telling Thor, but it was at least telling someone.

He kept his eye closed, breathed in once more, and then he heard himself say it.

"It was the Mind Stone."

Dr. Banner stayed quiet.

"Not how you're imagining it," he added, eye still closed. "I was not a brainwashed slave, like the hawk- like your Agent Barton. I had a will of my own. It wasn't my decision, to invade Midgard, but my desires were my own, while I was here. Those desires, and my actions, had just been... manipulated."

"By the stone."

"Yes." Loki rolled his head back carefully, flexing his still aching hands on the bed. The pain grounded him, somehow. "Among... many other things." He flexed his hands again, breathing through his mouth, just focused on that. In, and out. In, and out. "I was Thanos' prisoner for a year, before the invasion. I was given the scepter because he believed me sufficiently- broken in, enough, to do what I was told. To return to him. Clearly, he was incorrect." Another hard breath, this one rattling against his teeth. "If you wanted to ask me something specific, I'm afraid you will be disappointed. I can't remember much, and what little that I do..."

He'd been angry, Loki remembered. Senselessly, blindly, sickly mad. Contorted by bloodlust and the rage to break things and see them burn.

He'd hated Thor. He'd remembered Thor, as the Black Order had tried so hard to force into his head, letting go.

He'd been alone. Taken a liking, to his loyal and steadfast Hawk, because even if it was only thanks to the power of an infinity stone, he'd been his. Loyal, and steady, standing by his side and he'd known that unlike the Warriors Three, unlike all of Asgard, unlike Thor there'd been nothing to be said or done that would've pulled him away.

He'd been scared.

Terrified out of his own pathetic, broken mind.

"...you weren't yourself," Dr. Banner filled in softly, voice low.

Loki grinned, and once again, fought the bizarre urge to laugh.

Dr. Banner would certainly know something about not being one's self, wouldn't he?

"Does Thor know?"

He shook his head once, grin not fading even as his insides clenched and somersaulted. Prepared for the next question. Bracing for, why not?, indignant and angry, or even worse, you should tell him, no question at all, just a dumb order that couldn't imagine the consequences.

As much as he hated them, times like this, there was just a flicker of envy, of Nebula and Gamora.

They'd been monsters together.

They had no secrets like this.

But, the order he'd been bracing himself for never came.

Dr. Banner sat back in his borrowed chair again, averting his eyes at last to wring his hands together in his lap. His shoulders slumped, and right out of the corner of his eye, he could glimpse worry, eating away at the edge of his visage like a spreading infection.

"I don't know if he's even alive," he murmured, and it took him a moment to realize he meant Thor. "Or... any of them. You're sure you don't..." He looked back at him worriedly, eyes glassy. "You don't know any way to find out? I saw you use telepathy a few times, on the ship, or whatever you want to call it- can you find him with that?"

Loki shut his eye again, turning away. "I've tried. He- if he is alive, he is too far away, and I am still recovering my own stores. I don't have the power to reach out that far."

"Then there is nothing? Nothing at all you can do?"

"Not without having it pre-arranged." He shook his head for a moment, weighing the next words in his head, and then suddenly they were out without him ever fully intending it. "If there were something, any way possible, my mother would've found me. With Thanos. They never did. There is no way."

There was quiet, again. This time, the disappointment- the fear- was tangible.

It was the same quiet, oppressive fear that seemed to now blanket all of Wakanda, and even now, crawled at his own throat.

"Thor will come," he made himself say, gazing out the same window to the unfamiliar country that would be their final stand. "If he lives, he will come. For Midgard, for his friends, for Asgard- for our people's revenge. If he is alive, then he will find a way, and he will come."

Dr. Banner glanced at him, all but expressionless, almost eerie in the fading light of the setting sun. "And you."

"Hm." He settled a elbow on his knee, carefully tracing a hand over the right side of his face. Feeling the forming scars. The flickers of pain, the deep ache that pierced through his head, not at all dissimilar to the one that lurked quietly around his heart. "We shall see."

In the end, they were out of time.

The Avengers and Wakandans planned. Bolstering defenses, which Loki couldn't help with, as he fought to rebuild his magical stores. Sending messages out, trying to call for anyone and everyone that they knew to come to their aid, and trying to call into the Void, after Stark, Strange, and- this new man of spiders. (Disgusting.) Which Loki was of very little help with, but listened anyway, to at least give the illusion that he could. Constructing plans to get the Mind Stone safely out of the android's head, which he wanted absolutely nothing to do with, but allowed himself to be pulled in as a consultant anyway. Fate of the universe, and all that.

In the few nights that he stayed in Wakanda, suffocated by a peace that was so unsteady it was akin to an earthquake, he searched out for Thor.

Never too far. Never far enough to strain and tug on his recovering seidr.

Never far enough to actually find him.

But he closed his eye, remembering the Statseman in flames and his brother's body, torn in two by what Ebony Maw had shoved into his mind, and he reached out as far as he could.

Just like Stark and Strange, Thor never reached back.

And just like everyone else, Loki was helpless but to wait, and slowly suffocate.

On the third day, he gathered with a careful collection of others, in a private lab. Shuri, T'Challa, Vision, Wanda; the Wakandans busy with equipment and diagrams and plans, the progeny of the Mind Stone both silent, hand in hand. They weren't sure, still, if their plan to remove the stone would work, but they were out of time and could not plan any more.

As per usual, he had been expected to be here, because nobody was listening when he said I can not work with that thing.

And it was then, when he was lingering as far back as possible, pressed to the far wall with an air of casual ease and nerves flickering at the very sight of that yellow-gold glow, that it happened.

He felt the gentle tug, on his magic, a slight pull that felt as if from very, very away. His heart sunk, and his hands went clammy, but the tug came again, more firm this time, until it was inescapable. He closed his eye once, suddenly so cold it felt as if he was falling.

Then, he calmly lifted his arm.

His hands, now all but entirely healed, flexed easily, one shifting back his vambrace while the other held still to reveal a shimmer of a glamour about his wrist; a magical band that he had fashioned as a bracelet, now so many days ago. He pressed two fingers to it, sending a pulsing acknowledgement back, then waited.

He did not have to wait long.

There was a tug on his seidr, again, his magic being used by someone else. He could feel wordless trepidation, on the other side of the bond, something that made his stomach sink again, but he still kept his silence as small jets of light were sent through from her to him, and then, to glow over his palm.

With each one, his hopes fell a little lower.

So this was how it was going to end, then.

"My companions?" Loki spoke up, interrupting whatever it was that Shuri had been trying to explain. He heard make a soft huff at being cut off, and would've tsked back, if his mouth hadn't gone dry and his body, ice-cold. "We have a problem."

As way of explanation, he held up his hand a little higher. All there was to see was the four glowing stars of multicolored light, rotating slowly and illusory over his palm.

"And it is the worst case scenario," he said.

It was, by the look on their faces, enough.

The king approached him first, grave-faced moving just a little too fast to be fully human to stand by his side, waving a hand through the illusion. "Your contact has approached you?" he asked, eyes narrowing. "Your-?"

"Nebula, yes." Loki closed his fist and his eye, trying to feel further across the magical bond. "She says we don't have much time. Hours. Not days. He's coming."

"I thought you also said that the Soul Stone was lost. That he would not be able to find it, that it was safe, and yet-"

"And I also said that if he gained the Time Stone, then anything, even the Soul Stone, would be in his reach," Loki snapped. "Which is why leaving the Time Stone unguarded in nothing more than a Midgardian's hands was folly that rises to the level of criminal, but a crime that it is too late to correct because now matters are just as I said, King T'Challa: he has all four stones, and he is coming for the last two." He waved his hand again, spinning the illusion around; Reality, Power, Time, and Soul all glowed eerily over his palm, four innocent, shining beacons of light that were set to spell about the end of the world.

After six years of running, there was nowhere left to hide.

"We are out of time."

The others in the room stiffened, turning back to face Vision. Vision, whose face was smooth and resigned, devoid of the panic that infected them all, his unnatural eyes only for Wanda as he floated gently down to the floor. "We have to do it," he said, taking one of her trembling hands in hers. "We are out of time."

"N- no-" she whispered, and her voice cracked. "Vision, no-"

"Wanda-"

"No." Wanda was still shaking, almost crying, but this time it wasn't her that spoke up, but the king. T'Challa turned away from Loki, facing the rest of those gathered with an almost unerring sense of calm- a calm Loki would call suicidally moronic, a calm that reminded him too much of Odin, but his shoulders were squared and his back straight with unyielding strength. "The only thing we have to do, is fight. Shuri?"

The princess nodded once, just as stone-faced and solid as her brother. "Vision, down here. We're beginning now, and not stopping until that stone is out of your head and you're standing alive beside it. Wanda, if anything ugly and alien gets within fifty meters of us, you send them to orbit. Loki-"

"-with me," T'Challa finished, turning his back to stride straight for the hall, hands curling and breaths measured. "It's time to suit up."

Thor jerked, bolt upright.

Nobody else did.

Nobody else moved reacted at all, in fact. Brunnhilde and Rocket stayed sat in their small huddle, the Valkyrie gazing gravely at her blade while the rabbit checked obsessively with his gun, over and over, like it might disappear if he let it be too long. Groot sat a bit across from them, his focus down and away as always, silently wrapped up into his toy, possibly to blanket himself from the devastation around them.

Those were the only noises. The beeps of Groot's game, and the faint clicks of Rocket's gun.

That was it.

But...

"Did any of you hear something, just now?" he asked, quietly. It felt almost dangerous to speak at all- like if his voice came too loud, it would scare off, whatever it was, and he would never hear it again. "A... a voice, I think. Or..."

Brunnhilde and Rocket glanced wordlessly at each other. He could see it in their faces alone, what their answer was, but they both shook their heads for him anyway, the rabbit going back to his cleaning while the Valkyrie gripped her weapon just a little tighter. "Coming from where, Your Majesty?"

"That's just it." He frowned to himself, rubbing one still faintly trembling hand at his head. "I don't think it came from anywhere. It- it was..."

"A voice in your head? Because it's still all rattling around from being blasted facefirst by mcfricking star?" Rocket waved him down without really looking at him, then shared what looked like a grin with Groot. "You're supposed to be resting, anyway, not hearing voices. The sooner you get yourself back together, the sooner we can teleport over to kick some giant purple ass."

Thor scowled again, and the Valkyrie didn't look particularly pleased by the words, either, but they both kept their silence. In a way, he knew Rocket was probably right. There was absolutely no one here except for them and the dwarf. No route for any ships to creep up on them, and in the deadening silence, they would've heard if someone had try to approach any other way.

He was the only one who'd even heard the so-called voice in the first place.

There was another short few moments of quiet, Rocket sitting back to inspect his weapon while the noises from Groot's toy picked up. His heart pounded harder, aching with the unrestrained need to move.

And then-

"There!" he said, jerking up straighter again. "There! Did you not hear that?"

Once again, Rocket and Brunnhilde shared a look. This time, one that was almost openly worried.

"...Thor," she started softly, brow furrowing. "There's no one here but us."

"I know that! That does not change what I heard! That- did neither of you hear it?"

They looked worried about him, now; there was no question about it. Brunnhilde seeming about to push to her feet, staring at him as if he were unwell, and he was, but that was beside the point. "Buddy," Rocket said, "unless you alien-god types have a habit of hearing magical voices in your heads, then there's nothing-"

"I am not hearing things! I am telling you, there is something here, something that is not a magical voice in my-"

Thor stopped short, in the same breath as the Valkyrie gasped.

Magic.

It was, in fact, a magical voice in his head.

That was exactly what it was.

"Your Majesty," she said, already on your feet. "Are you sure? Is it him?"

"I- I do not know. I can't-" His heart skipped violently in his chest, lurching like a rock skipping over a pond. "Loki," he said again, then only in his head.

Loki?

Is that you?

For several moments on, there was nothing. Thor clamped down on the squirm of hopeless despair and pressed further, clawing after that faintest of whispers he could just barely feel, trying to brush against his mind. As if his brother was murmuring under his breath at the bottom of a deep, dark pit very far away, but it was him- it had to be. It had to be Loki, and if it was, then that meant he was alive, somewhere, he was still breathing-

Loki!

LOKI!

The deafening silence stretched on. Even Groot's toy had gone quiet, now, the young Flora Colossus pausing his game to watch him with bright eyes, and there was- something. Not a voice, quite. But he could feel it. Just the faintest scratch at the very edge of his mind, like a cat, begging to be let in.

Thor's heart quickened.

...don't know if... hear me...

"Loki," he gasped, and his voice broke.

Loki was alive!

The whisper came to him again, faint and scratchy, fading in and out as if the magic to support the connection wasn't strong enough and kept flagging. He heard his name, again, just Thor, and then coming... he's coming...

...if... alive...

...fight with us... Midgard...

I'm sor...

...

"No," he gasped, stretching uselessly, as if he could physically grab the fading voice in his head and haul it back. "No- what is it, Loki, I'm listening! It's all right, come back, keep going- brother-"

But the connection was broken, and as silently as he had come, Loki had gone.

Thor's heart lurched straight to his throat.

"Your Majesty? Thor? Thor?" The Valkyrie was shaking him, hand on each shoulder as she knelt before him, something close to genuine panic. "What is it? Is he okay?!"

He scraped in another gasp, clutching hard against the floor to try and anchor himself against the rising chaos, terror. No, clearly, his brother was not okay. Nobody was okay, but Loki certainly was not; Loki was far away or weak or both, Loki had sounded scared, earnest and scared in a way he hadn't heard since they were children, and-

Thanos is coming.

His throat tightened.

Then so are we, little brother.

Stormbreaker carried them to Midgard as cleanly as cork in a bottle. Rocket whooped, screaming about how awe-some it was, and even Groot gave a stunned I am Groot!, yet Thor-Thor felt as if stuck in a hot, bleeding daze. Half his head on the lightning already burnt on his fingertips, the burning sun and the screaming Chitauri that folded in waves against his fury like paper. Paper he tore to shreds in blind screams because had this one hurt his brother? This one? This one? This one? and all he could see was Thanos tearing all that was left of his home apart and he hated him-

And the other half of him, underneath the bloodlusted daze, couldn't breathe, because his brother was still gone.

He kept trying to reach back out over a nonexistent bond, screaming in his head for the dammed fool to say something, but he screamed only to himself and nobody else. Loki was the only one how to reach out, because only Loki had listened when their mother had taught it, Loki was the only one who could project himself across a broken universe and find his mind.

No matter where his brother was, and no matter what help he needed, Thor could not give it if Loki did not reach to him halfway.

With a warped howl, Thor plunged Stormbreaker down again, a burst of his own explosive, electric magic burning outwards so hot it scalded his own blood. The screams of the Chitauri broke in his ears and he burned them even hotter, burned them until their bodies melted and their eyes boiled. And then again, for good measure, for every hurt they had visited upon Asgard and his brother and the world, and swore he would not stop until there was no one left to burn.

When the smoke cleared, he grinned.

"Anthony," he called, raising a hand. "It's been a while."

The iron man suit- which was a good deal larger than he remembered, actually, dwarfing even Thor as he dropped to a knee to whack at a Chitauri like a man would swat a fly- Thor realized something was off the moment he got a mechanical wave in greeting. Then he heard it for himself, in "Thor!"

"Bruce?" he returned back, peering closer. A flurry of emotion choked through him; Bruce was alive, he had survived the ship, he had not died for Asgard and a world that wasn't even his. Bruce was here, somehow, utterly incredulously, waving at him from an iron man suit like it was any old Tuesday. Bruce was-

"What are you doing?" he asked, because that was about all there was to encapsulate the sheer strangeness of the situation.

"Eh, long story," his human friend called, voice filtered mechanically through the helmet, then swatted another fly. "Boy, are we glad to see you! He told us you'd come!"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," he said, grinning once. Then he stopped, filtering through the rest of what had been said in his head."He?" Thor hefted his axe out of the ground, already aiming towards a new target. "Who is-"

"Thor, look out!"

Thor hurtled sideways, Stormbreaker wrenching upwards as a shield before he'd even found the threat. But too slow, he found it, too slow did he realize the blade spinning towards him, whip whip whip in the hot air, too fast for him to stop it in time-

And then, before his eyes, it stopped.

Frozen mid-rotation, paralyzed as if time itself had frozen to hover in mid-air, trembling against a sudden glow of green, hungry light. It heaved slowly once, creaking in protest at the magical bonds that held it.

Then, as neatly as it had come to him, it hurtled back from whence it'd came, and sliced off the head of a monster the size of the Hulk.

Behind it, his hands still aglow and curled like claws, his face wild and blood flowing freely, was Loki.

Thor gaped.

With a weary gasp, one that was more shock than exhaustion, Loki grinned once. He wiped his mouth as he rose, straightening fully, and gave Thor a look that was one part exasperation and ten parts relief. "Took you long enough," he said, smugly, as if it was something to be smug about, as if- "I was starting to wonder- ow."

Thor squeezed him tighter, gasping, then ducked his head to bury his face in his hair. "You-" He gasped, and there was so many things that he wanted to say, in that moment, so many at all and because he was not Loki, he didn't have the words for all or any of them. "You idiot."

"You-" Loki squirmed, once, one arm wriggling in vain to try and worm out of the embrace. "You are attempting to break me in half, I see."

Thor laughed wetly, and he was shaking, now, too. Whole for the first time in days, and suddenly light and sound bled back in around him and he could breathe, again. Choking once, he squeezed one more time, then pushed back, one hand to palm his neck while the other strayed toward his face, then wavered in horror. His face.

"Your eye," he gasped. He didn't dare touch the simple black eyepatch, caught carefully over one ear and half-hidden beneath an unkempt tangle of battle-torn hair. But scars radiated out from it like a spider's web, and in that breath his brother went from whole to not and Thor nearly choked on it. "What- what in the Nine happened?!"

"I tripped."

"On what, a sword?! You lost an eye!"

"Yes," Loki deadpanned, frowning, then reached up to pat the side of his face just as Thor did his. "And you seem to have gained one."

"What does that-"

"Give it to me."

"What?" Thor pushed back, then glowered. Lightning struck behind his brother, cleaving the approaching monster in two. "I shall not. Get your own!"

"Why, when there is a perfectly serviceable one right here?"

"Because it is not yours, that is why!"

"You..." Loki huffed once, sour grimace twitching. His hands twitched then, too, the only warning Thor got before green light howled around them, and he did not have to look to know a trio of monsters at his back had just dropped dead. "This is not over, Thor."

But his voice was easy, and his eye, sole remaining one or not, was clear, and for the first time since the Statesman had burned, Thor could smile back and mean it. "Aye," he promised, catching a hold of his wrist just as his brother tried to step away. "It is not. Because when it is, I will have words with you, Loki. I-" He stopped for a breath, sure this was not the time, but perhaps there never would be one. "I know. I know what it is, you have not said."

There was a flicker of something in his eye, too quick to catch, and then, another smile, too easy to be true. "When this is over," Loki agreed, "if we survive- I just might listen."

They were the usual indistinct, evasive words that were so typical of his brother- designed to avoid and distract, to pry underneath and needle while still sidestepping the heart of the matter. And Thor wasn't sure what to do- not sure how much Loki meant that, how little he held his own life worth today. He wavered himself, uncertain on what to say, uncertain if he should catch Loki and pull him back.

And then, his brother stopped on his own.

"What?" Loki said, and it took him a moment to realize he was not the one being spoken to. He turned once, hand lifting up to his ear, then raised his head back to stare back to the city they were fighting to defend. "You've got it?!"

"Got what?" Thor stared back at the sky himself, squinting, then back to Loki. "Brother, who are you-"

Then, the sky over the city split red.

He recognized it, distantly, the hue and spread of Wanda's chaos magic, but never had he seen so much of it before. He could feel it push even at his storms, writhing them away as wet paper, the Chitauri caught up in her web dropping out of the sky without a moment's pause. And at first it made no sense, not even as Loki was suddenly off at a run and a purpose-

Then he found Wanda.

Wanda and Vision together, falling together in a jolted hover against her chaos magic. But something was wrong. Vision's head was empty, the gem nowhere to be seen, and Wanda beside him had a scepter that felt eerily familiar, one he had never seen her yield before- which was wholly unimportant to the fact that they were falling, and Wanda was not strong enough to stop it or survive this height.

Thor dragged Stormbreaker out of the ground again, preparing its swing. He'd never flown with it before, but there had to be a first.

Thor had just left the ground, when a blue portal opened beneath them, and as neatly as a child taking a bite, it swallowed them whole.

The distinctive blue portals of the Tesseract.

Thor's heart went cold.

Loki...

Scarcely able to so much as breath, Thor spun back around, to follow his brother's path.

The overwhelming green glow of Loki's magic found him, first. A veritable eruption of it, overflowing halfway across the battlefield and the Chitauri he saw collide with it disintegrated to ash.

Thor was there in little more than a heartbeat.

Loki was down on one knee outside the magic circle, back straining as he panted with the effort, too pale and too tense and too still. Chitauri battered themselves against the circle, straining to get in only to collapse in on themselves, incinerating and crumbling against the walls of the vicious spell. And inside it-

Inside it, was Thanos.

Vision knelt behind the Mad Titan, straining himself against the gauntlet, pulling with every bit of his enhanced strength even if the only purchase he got was footmarks in the dirt. And Wanda stood in front of him, the scepter from before stabbed straight into Thanos' chest.

It was the Mind Stone, Thor realized.

They'd gotten the stone out of Vision's head, remade Loki's scepter, and now, were trying to master Thanos with it.

One stone against the power of four.

And they were not winning.

Thanos was held back, just barely, red and green lights swirling around him against the golden glow of the scepter, but even as Thor watched he threw his head back and he howled. The gems of the gauntlet glowed as he strained and shook and fought, and Wanda fought, too, her chest heaving as she cried out, trying to force it deeper, trying to force herself into him- but it wasn't working. Thor could already see it. She couldn't do it. She was strong enough to hold him but wasn't strong enough to win.

"I don't know what to do! I can't do it!" Wanda slipped to her knees, gasping, sobbing with the force of the exertion. The red swirls around them worsened, turning more chaotic, tearing her jacket and floating her hair and when she turned back, her nose burst into bleeding. "Loki!" she screamed, choking, "Loki, what do I do?! I can't hold it, I don't know how! Loki- LOKI! HELP ME!"

"Wanda-" Thor reached out to her, then jerked back, hissing; the chaotic swirls of her magic caught against his hand and nearly twisted it, trying to yank it out of its socket and he wasn't even near her. She was out of control, he realized in horror, she was completely out of control and was going to kill herself before she stopped Thanos. Would kill Vision, and then kill herself, and Thanos would still be standing, and Loki was-

Loki...?

His brother was still on his knee, still panting, still shaking with the effort of keeping the catastrophe contained. Of keeping any who'd seek to aid Thanos out, and fighting to keep what he could of Wanda's magic in.

But his face did not look like the blank, tense concentration of a difficult spell.

He looked terrified.

Not of Thanos- Thor looked between them once and it wasn't that. The strain on his brother's pale face was deeper than that, something more primal as he pulled away, straining backwards, not from Thanos himself, but from the magical glow...

Thor's eyes widened.

He thought that Loki was too damaged, Gamora had said. To escape the Mind Stone.

He was scared of the stone.

Something in him snapped.

"Brother," he growled, and he didn't dare touch him, didn't dare disrupt the spell, but he dropped down himself to force into his eyesight, trying to make their gazes lock. "Brother, lower the spell! Let me in- I can end this! I can stop him!"

But Loki shook his head once, breathing high and hard through clenched teeth. "I c-can't," he moaned, then cried out himself, nearly buckling down to collapse. "It's n-nearly too much as is- it'll take me, Thor, it'll h-have me again-"

The Mind Stone. "No it won't, Loki!" he swore, hands hovering uselessly over his shoulder as they spasmed, wanting to grab, to protect and keep safe. "Just for a moment, that's all, then you can get away from it- Loki-"

Loki's eye widened, not on him but past him, staring still into the deadly magic circle and the catastrophe within. He mouthed something, the blood draining from his face.

Then, with a wretched, writhing scream from behind him, Loki wrenched his spell down in a course of panic, and Wanda's magic vanished.

Thor knew what that meant.

He swiveled around with Stormbreaker up again, one arm held out in front of his brother and the other shaking, hot light already crackling on his fingers. He faced Thanos, for the first time since he knew the full and horrible truth, and his blood boiled.

Wanda was collapsed on her stomach, a good ten feet or more away. She was not moving. Vision, still, pulled and fought and gasped against the gauntlet, face straining, shouting, "NO!", but he might as well have been trying to push a mountain.

And at Thanos' feet, was an already half-broken scepter, complete with the Mind Stone.

No...

The Mad Titan shook his head once, obviously still dazed even as his free hand lowered from throwing Wanda away like a broken doll. He groaned, rolling massive shoulders- and then, with a smile on his face, started to reach down.

Loki beat him to it.

For a stricken heartbeat, it was as if time had stopped.

His brother appeared underneath Thanos, not by lunging or teleporting but sucked there straight by the pull of the Space Stone, the same pull that knocked the titan back and gave him the precious second he needed. And his brother landed back on his feet, blood-soaked and bruised but as immovable as a god, and he hefted up the scepter without the slightest breath of hesitation and drew back to thrust it straight through Thanos' chest.

There was no hesitation at all.

What he did see, in the heartbeat that their eyes locked, was resignation, instead.

And the world about them exploded in green instead of red, and Thor could see his brother no more.

He could feel Loki's seidr in the light, the force, the oppressive power that welled up to crack the ground and sky and all but swallow him whole. It lashed against Thanos, grabbing for him again and again, raising higher still and burning like the fires of the stars, twisted and chaotic and tearing the world apart. There was screaming, underneath it; Loki's, Thanos', scared, enraged, mad, he didn't know, he couldn't see; he fought against the buffeting swirls of magic but was forced back every time. "LOKI!" he screamed, "LOKI!" but it was too late and he could not catch him.

Because Loki was falling.

It wasn't the same as Wanda. Loki's magic was controlled and pinpoint sharp where hers had been wild and mad, the glow of the Mind Stone focused and he could see even through the black-green glow that Thanos was giving to it. The titan was already starting to keel down, the glow of the gauntlet intermittent and sputtering, now, like caught fireflies as the world streamed and split and tore around them-

But as Thanos gave in, Loki gave in, too.

It came first as a warped cry, a banshee-like shriek that pierced his ears as Loki slipped to one knee, then two. His brother convulsed, shuddering in the epicenter of the waves of magic, and his magic shuddered, too, flinching about Thor like something in it had snapped and gone broken. Then Loki screamed a second time, keeling over to bend at the middle, and while one hand still clutched the scepter the other was suddenly pulling at his own hair. Over and over, he spasmed and howled and hit, now pounding a hand against his own head as he fought and screamed and no matter how hard Thor fought to reach him, the wild and terrified magic held him back.

Wanda had lost to Thanos, but his brother was losing to the Mind Stone.

Because he'd already lost to it before.

"Loki!" he cried desperately. "LOKI! STOP!" He tried to shoulder his way in only to get hurled back by a magic so broken and strained it no longer knew him, no longer knew itself, no longer knew anything except to fight. Gasping and horrified, Thor shot back to his feet, again trying to force his way in through brute power alone. "LOKI!"

He couldn't do it. Neither of them could do it. Loki couldn't win against an infinity stone that already owned a piece of him and Thor could not make it to him in time to catch him. He gasped and fought, step by agonizing step into the storm, blinded and buffeted by the chaos of Loki's shattered magic, but step by step he could already feel it waning and step by step, he could already see Loki waning with it.

Loki was on both knees, now, hunched over and just screaming. A non-stop, bloodcurdling, horrified howl that pierced as high as the screech of his magic, both hands clutched to his ears and the waves of seidr about him rippling so violently they tore the world apart. The scepter glowed, too, a weak yellow light that wrapped to Thanos, but it was so weak, as weak as his brother's scream was wretched, and Thor could not help it, he shouted his brother's name again, and this time Loki twisted, turning to stare at him with one sorrowful, shattered, terrified eye that was all blue-

And then, it was over.

Thanos' eyes opened again. Still hazy, a bit, still clouded, a bit, but they were his own and his mind was no longer prey. He smiled once, again, that same magnanimous, sick smile, and like a parent might to a child, he looked down at Loki's bowed, trembling head.

"Welcome home," he said to him.

And then, the scepter already crumbling in his grasp, he lowered a hand down to Loki's head.

Thor saw blood.

Lightning struck his own brother.

Loki was sent flying and then sprawling, just as Wanda had before him. He heard the sick thump as his unresisting body hit the ground, a dozen meters away and then lay there as still as the dead, but Thor's anger had been caught and it was too late to put it out. "You," he breathed, and with a sick crack he heaved Stormbreaker up again and this time, prepared to swing it one last time. "You will NEVER touch my brother again."

And, once again, Thanos smiled.

"You're right," he said. "I don't need to."

His gauntlet glowed red and green, and with all the power of Reality and Time in the universe, Thor was frozen as solid as ice.

And as cleanly as a knife through butter, spacetime slid open over his brother's still smoking chest, and down fell the Tesseract.

The last of the six.

Thor would've liked to say that time seemed to slow. That it did slow, by the horrible green glow in the gauntlet. He would've liked to say that time stopped, and the moment slowed as Thanos turned towards his final prize, inching on as if in slow, horrified motion, the world itself rearing back from what was about to happen.

It did not slow.

Thanos simply held his hand out for the Space Stone, and it came to him off his unmoving brother's chest as an obedient and willing dog to its master. It fit as neatly into the gauntlet as all the other five, and with a sick, final click, everything was at last lost.

He raised his hand, and snapped his fingers.

And then, he was gone.

The world staggered.

In the first breath, there was nothing. Nothing at all, the battle raging still around him while his entire world had gone dark and cold. At first he thought he didn't do it, at first it's a mistake, but then the gasps started behind him, the empty clatters of weapons and a sudden hush of silence, and he knew.

He could not dare turn.

"Steve," he heard a man say, just yards away. Looked up just in time to see a soldier, reaching out for Captain America, face dull with the muted shock of it. He stepped forward once.

He crumbled to dust, before he could complete the second.

No...

Wanda, still slumped, still unmoving, just at the edge of his eyesight. Turning grey and fracturing apart, swept to the wind and gone so quickly that he blinked once and it was over. Soldiers that he did not know all around him, Chitauri and human alike, whispering into nothing.

He'd done it.

Thanos had won.

Thor, scarcely able to breathe any longer, turned his gaze towards Loki.

He was still there.

He's still there, he saw, and wanted to sob. "Loki," he rasped, staggering closer on numb feet. He was still there. He was moving, even, slowly working to push himself upright. And he could see blood running down one ear, and one arm nearly torn clean off, hugging to his chest with the shoulder clawed straight through by black magic, and the wrenched scorch mark emblazoned across his chest as a brand, the wound from his very own lightning. But he was moving, and Thor couldn't stop shaking even as he reached his brother and collapsed to his knees and threw his arms around him.

He couldn't talk. Couldn't breathe at all, through the heartstopping terror and shock and madness welling in his throat. Couldn't do anything but kneel there and shake and clutch onto his brother for dear life.

And then, Loki said, "Thor."

And he knew.

"N-no," Thor choked out. He squeezed his brother tighter, one hand in his hair and the other grasping about his side, pressing him to him so close that he couldn't see. Did not want to see. "D-don't say- Loki, no-"

Two cold, slender hands landed on his shoulders. Shaking badly, already, shaking from the inside out. They pushed, and Thor was already shattered himself and terrified, so he let Loki push him away, and he saw him face to face, eye to eye.

Loki was trembling from head to toe, a quiet, intrinsic shaking that rattled him so fully it made Thor's hands shake, too. His seidr sputtered, whatever was left of it, shimmering on his skin in intermittent waves- a hand faded only to be remade again, a piece of his ruined arm disintegrated only to form again a second later. Over and over, pieces of his brother crumbled and fixed again as Loki stared back at him, one too wide, green eye staring back, shocked so thoroughly there was no room for anything else.

He was dying.

Loki was dying.

Slowly, cracking, like pieces of a crumbling puzzle, the blank shock on his face gave away. His brother blinked once, still shuttering and blank, then, so easily it made Thor's crack and just shatter, Loki gave him a sad, sad smile.

"It's okay, Thor," he said. One hand reached for him, and grasped his shoulder for only a second before it faded away, and then with a hot burn of seidr it was back. "It's okay."

The resignation from before was back.

No.

"N- no-" he croaked. "No. Don't- d-don't do this, Loki-" Thor choked and reached back, cradling his ice-cold face in both hands now, stroking back hair and blood and trying to stroke away the sad acceptance, too. "No- what do I do? Tell me what to do, tell me how to stop this, Loki, no, don't-"

"It's okay," Loki insisted, voice gone hollow and thin. He shook his head, placing his hands over Thor's; thin tears overran his green eye and Thor nearly doubled over with the force of another sob. "It's okay, Thor. It's over."

"No! Do not say that! Loki- brother-" he was still smiling, why was he smiling; how could he be smiling?! "No, don't you dare, stop it, Loki- I told y-you, I'll never let you go, Loki," and he grasped his face harder, thumbs digging into the side of his head, fingers shaking as he grabbed his hair and held on. "I'm not letting go, s-so- you can't, Loki, not after we've made it this far-"

"Thor," he said again. "Let go."

"No! No, Loki, stop! Let me fix this! Let- L-Loki-"

"Please," Loki whispered. He trembled harder, breaking apart even as Thor scrambled to drag him back together. "Thor- you-"

"Stop it, Loki! Don't! Don't-"

"T-thank you. For..." His head rolled, lolling sideways against his hand, and Thor cried out, grappling to drag him closer as his brother's knees gave out and he collapsed. His mouth worked underneath rough sobs, moving as if he wanted to speak but didn't have the words for it.

Then, he just gave him that sad, broken smile again, and shook his head.

"I love you," he whispered. Squeezing one of his hands with both of his, but the grip was so weak and hollow Thor barely felt it at all. Then, still smiling, pale tears streaking down the muck and dirt on his face, he murmured, "Let go."

The next breath, the wind came.

Loki's seidr went out.

And he was gone.