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Chapter Text

It took far longer than Loki was comfortable admitting, but he had managed to get everything he wanted. Well, for a certain definition of everything. He took a sip of fine Elven wine and then leaned back in the bath, letting the past weeks... Months? Decades? It didn't matter. It was over now, all properly behind him. Time worked differently in the TVA, and his body hadn't aged a day since he was first picked up by Hunter B-15. The preservative effects would wear off in a year or so, which would be right on time.

It took time to explain the Sacred Timeline to the Mobius he met after Sylvie's betrayal. Well, betrayal was harsh. One had to have trust in the first place in order to be betrayed, and there had never been a moment in their acquaintance where the non-Loki Loki variant had trusted him with anything. She let him do a few things when they were functionally identical to what she had already planned to do and mocked him while he did them. That wasn't trust, he deserved better.

Sorting out the inside of his head had been a high priority after the confrontation with He Who Remains, and Loki had managed a great deal, but he still found himself in need of it from time to time. Perhaps he always would. Centuries of trying to gain attention and approval from Odin specifically and Asgard in general had primed him for what Thanos put him through, and that shaped who he was in many ways. Perhaps he always had needed help keeping his mind in order and part of why he went mad was a lack of it.

Part of why it took so long to get his head straight was that he couldn't use the magical meditation techniques he was more familiar with all that often. Magic didn't work in the TVA as a general rule, but he made the mistake of thinking it deactivated all spells when it actually consumed the magical energy outright. The protections in his mind that he had built over years, responses to the likes of Loralei and The Other, had been in tatters after the whole Mind Stone Scepter situation. The TVA had not been kind to him while hunting Sylvie by any stretch of the imagination, but he couldn't fault their basic hospitality. Physically, he had enjoyed plenty of rest and good food while he was useful to them. Loki had mistakenly thought that this would allow his mental protections to heal along with his body even if he could not access them at the moment.

This was true for the mundane aspects of his health but not the magical ones. He was under a lot of stress in a hostile environment, but it was better than living under Thanos' rule and Mobius encouraged him to think about the things that had driven him to attempted suicide in a way that was... Not helpful, necessarily, but at least accidentally healthier while still manipulative for his own ends. Somewhat more objective, perhaps. It wasn't something he would have done if anyone had bothered to give him specifics about where this variant came from and how she differed from him before he met her. Still, the TVA that abducted him offered him something that had been an unobtainable luxury for some time: quiet hours to reflect with no physical discomfort or distractions. He couldn't even use his illusions to amuse himself in the evenings. It was just the four blank walls in a drab suite that looked nothing like the prison he knew it to be, and the contents of his own mind. He certainly wasn't lacking in traumatic memories to process.

The second Mobius he met was more deliberately helpful, and he would miss his friend now that they parted ways. He could see now that his relationship with that first Mobius, who had likely ceased to exist when the version of the TVA tied to the life of He Who Remained was consumed by Alioth, had started in a rather problematic way. The second attempt was free of that terrible start, and he would cherish the memory of both times that easy friendship grew between them despite their circumstances. It reminded him that he did have good qualities. Thor's friends didn't appreciate his charm, but that didn't mean that nobody did. He'd even gotten on good terms with a few of the other agents after a while. Perhaps Thor was right, in a broken clock sort of way, and he did spend too much time "alone in his rooms" or at least trying to socialize with the same small circle of people who dislike him. Surely there were some others out of all the people in Asgard who could be his friends.

After, and he was fairly certain his life would forever be divided into before he knew of the Time Variance Authority and after the death of He Who Remains, he had even more time to process. Loki's information about He Who Remains and his fate was considered highly valuable. The "Sector" of the TVA he landed in treated him well and was glad for his presence. He met that sector's Kang briefly. A ruthless man far too serious, or perhaps simply too sane, to be recognizable if he hadn't had the same face and voice. Kang spoke of small closed systems, groups of very few timelines kept carefully trimmed that were cut off from the larger and more complicated webs and how he'd never thought of binding one of them into a loop. It wasn't something that particular Kang thought possible for his domain for a number of reasons, most of which he didn't speak directly about, but it was information he thought he could use against other variants of himself. What more effective trap was there, than the one you built for yourself?

It was possible Kang used that same tactic on Loki to a certain extent, but it seemed that no matter how often he said it or how much he meant it no one would ever believe that Loki didn't want a throne. His goals were, by his measure, quite humble. He simply preferred to go about getting what he wanted in the most extravagant ways possible.

In any case, it was only once he'd gotten some downtime outside the TVA (at a beach just before a meteor strike where Mobius could ride a jet ski and Loki could enjoy the sand and all the beautiful people in skimpy clothing for a few hours) that he was able to notice the state of his seidr. He was a wreck of tattered and torn magic. Loki cashed in the owed favor from explaining how TVA agents could safely take a vacation day without altering the timelines immediately, and Mobius helped him set up the chance to have all the detritus removed from his person properly. He did it in isolation on an uninhabited planet as the older version of himself had done, ensuring he didn't make a new branch of reality as he purged and recovered. It left him blue for the week it took his magical core to recover, but even that horror had some value in the sense that he had to confront his natural biology and learned something about his inborn abilities. Not that he ever planned on living in that form for an extended time again, but at least he could put on the skin he was born with without wanting to peel it off with a knife.

Progress, Mobius called it. Loki preferred the phrase “unnecessary ordeal.” He might appreciate that the Jotun people were not divided into separate male and female forms for the simplicity of not having to deal with strict gender roles in social situations, but as a changeling he had no need of becoming intersex full time to express himself accurately. If he felt feminine or masculine, then he'd be feminine or masculine in a skin that felt like his own and would not change his body in ways he didn't want to.

When Loki thought of himself there were certain physical features that were his own, just as those who couldn't shift their form knew their own limbs and shape. His gray-blue eyes that changed with the light in the room, the long legs and general body proportions, his hands, his dark hair... not that the physical was what made him who he was, but who he was wasn't Jotun. Not culturally, as he had only a vague idea of what life on that planet was like. The blue skin on his hands was distracting because of the novelty, the tribal lines meant nothing to him, he never got used to the glow from his eyes casting shadows at night. Like clothes in a strange style that cling in odd places, he disliked wearing that skin. He was glad that his dark hair and the general shape of himself remained while he was forced into the skin he was born in; he could still recognize his own face in a black and white photograph. He didn't know why he kept that photograph, Mobius had babbled a bunch of nonsense at him when he gave it to Loki, and the man had his own copy he kept in his wallet. Loki didn't keep much from his time working with the TVA, and he happily burned one of his TVA uniforms when he was finally able to replace his lost leather armor, but he had a few things. He was reasonably certain nobody knew that one of those things was a fully charged tempad. He hoped he would never need it, but best to be over prepared than caught off guard.

He found Sylvie mostly to see if she made it out alright, but she didn't want anything more to do with him that wasn't a tumble in the sheets or unkind words meant to make her feel stronger. Perhaps it was the recent reminder of his tryst with Sif, but a purely physical relationship with someone who didn't value him much if at all wasn't palatable. Neither of them had valued him much by any metric, really, he was just convenient. 

Loki left her in the company of Renslayer and rather uncharitably thought they deserved the highly dysfunctional relationship they had. Sylvie was right: she wasn't him. She'd managed to become more like Thor than any other Loki variant he had ever met (and he'd met quite a few while looking for her) despite the lack of sibling rivalry to push her into a contest with the oaf. Thor was quite adept at getting people to do things for him while not paying any attention at all to their needs, and she had that down perfectly. Perhaps that was the real reason why her timeline was pruned, it had a Thor and Loki who had swapped personalities and they wouldn't be able to fulfill their destiny properly.

Loki took a deep breath, savoring the perfumed air of his private bathing room and lazily running his hands through the warm water to disturb the floating herbs. He'd managed to get what he really wanted, and none of these things mattered anymore beyond idle thoughts and theoretical argument. The Sacred Timeline was a world tree made sick through over-pruning, but it was only a cutting from a much larger tree. Yggdrasil - the TVA could call this part of the multiverse by whatever alphanumeric code they wanted, his world tree was named Yggdrasil - was an enormous and unfathomably complex garden of thriving worlds based on a very strong foundation. This branch was slated for pruning after an 'essential element' was lost, meaning a chain of events that was necessary to maintain the health of the branch would never occur. In particular, Thanos would assemble all of the infinity stones and make his snap with ease. Since it was so simple, he would stick around to watch his glorious vision unfold instead of going into retirement on some backwater world.

It is a null condition: Whenever Thanos becomes aware that the people of the universe suffer greater strife and resent his actions instead of being deliriously happy about the death of half of all life like he expects them to be while he is still in possession of the infinity stones, he then destroys that branch of reality using the stones instead of attempting to destroy the stones. Pruning those branches of the world tree was far better than letting them rot and breed horrors as a madman with ultimate power reshapes creation on the fly with no consideration for cause and effect to attempt to achieve a goal that is too unstable and illogical to last.

In more practical terms: The essential element missing was Loki himself, as well as whatever weak pawn Thanos would send in Loki’s place in those universes where Loki did not fall into his clutches. In this branch his idiotic counterpart was dead. He had gone in person to Jotunheim without disguising himself instead of using the black market smugglers who ignored the trade embargo of Jotunheim to deliver a letter to make contact. He was killed on sight by the group of Jotun bandits he’d intended to use. They presented the corpse, which had reverted to its natural form, to Laufey. Then they died, executed for killing their King's kin. Apparently, Laufey cared enough for vengeance even if he only claimed him as kin and not as his son. Who could have guessed? Loki simply stepped into this timeline to fill the vacant space. Let the Jontar be confused about the body double, it shouldn’t affect much. He'd cheated death plenty of times in more honest ways.

Was it the ideal time and place to rejoin his timeline? Certainly not. The reason the timeline was available to him was that he was needed to botch the invasion of Midgard. Without him a more competent or willing scout would be chosen, or else Thanos would keep the Mind Stone and come to Midgard directly instead of gambling one stone to get another. Midgard would not be underestimated in this timeline the way it was in others because of a complicated web of cause and effect related to a Midgardian named Carol Danvers,  who also deviated a bit from the set path of the Sacred Timeline Loki came from.

Loki had to fall into the void in the appointed manner. It was a high price to pay to get his life back, but if it meant retirement from his job as a TVA analyst, he would take it. A long soak in a bath as part of an extensive self-care routine was, at least in Loki’s opinion, completely necessary for his first day back. He didn’t leave his chambers once in the day before Thor’s coronation. Tomorrow he would have to play his part in proving that this Thor in this world was a hot-headed warmonger unfit to host a formal dinner, let alone run a kingdom.

Chapter Text

The Jontar who attacked the vault during the coronation this time were much better fighters than the bandits Loki had used in his own scheme. The destroyer ended them just as easily, but they caused much more damage, and a rime of frost covered the walls and floors for an impressive distance down the hallways. Odin was even more cautious as a result, which was interesting, and went so far as to suggest that the Jotun people had willingly submitted to Asgard’s rule and wouldn’t support this kind of attack. This was utter nonsense. Loki knew full well that this timeline didn’t differ from his own at all until around thirty years ago, and those were only small changes related to the Kree and Scrulls that had only minimal impact beyond their conflict.

It was only Danvers and himself who had made “nexus event” level choices that removed this timeline from the parent universe so far, though those choices would soon start to have greater and greater consequences that would elevate this timeline from an alternate dimension of a greater story to an independent branch of the multiverse.

Logical cause and effect prevented timelines from branching multiple times a second. A natural entropy caused functionally identical timelines to blend back together harmlessly, the two alternate dimensions becoming one again much as a stream with a boulder in the middle would part and rejoin. Words said with different phrasing but the same meaning or a variation in one’s diet most likely had no further consequence, and quantum theory factored into the unknowable state of things when both possibilities might have been true or there is no measurable consequence from the alteration. If a man exited his bed on the right or left side it did not create a nexus event unless and until that choice had some further consequence that rippled through the cosmos, such as unknowingly dodging a poisoned blow-dart or walking straight into it. The TVA had very strict propaganda designed to instill fear, but in reality, it was more art than science as they monitored the natural variation in the flow of time. Even then, minor nexus events would create little change - just spawn a parallel reality dimension within the same universe that would follow along in the wake of the more likely timeline due to quantum entanglement. Larger nexus events (or many small ones that compound a single difference) would create an entirely new universe when the quantum entanglement between the two realities breaks down, making the things in those two universes incompatible with each other on a fundamental level. To those sorcerers who could visualize it, most of the multiverse looked like knots of similar timelines curled around the nexus events that spawned them, with long stretched tendrils where logical progression ensured that even very different universes had some things in common. If one took the time to tease out the tangles in each universe to see it's parralel dimensions, they would unfold in lacey shapes with branches knit back together here and there to make a delicate woven tapestry.

He’d always thought of the Norns weaving the fabric of fate as a metaphor meant for small children and visited the temple more for political and social reasons than as an exercise of faith. Finding out that without the TVA’s interference a completely wild and unpruned universe’s timelines resembled nothing more than an ever-widening lace cloth made him feel like he should visit the temple more often and be more attentive when he did so. There were higher forces than the gods of Asgard, and he could not un-know them.

When Thor journeyed to Jotunheim to inquire about the disturbance at his coronation there was some slight confusion on the icy king's face when Loki appeared, hale and whole. On a whim, he'd used the rudimentary skill he had in ice magic to scrawl "This Laufeyson is not that easy to kill" on the ground next to the corpse of the soldier who grabbed his arm. He berated himself for his self-sabotage later on, unable to comprehend why he cared about the opinion of a person who abandoned him at birth and torn as to how he would manage to fall from the Bifrost after ending the war with Jotunheim without killing his birth family. Shouting at Odin was just plain cathartic, and his expectation that he would be coherent enough to make better arguments this time around was entirely too optimistic. The simplistic answers were beyond frustrating and even though he didn't scream as much this time, Odin still reacted to his accusations and hostile questions by falling into The Sleep.

The confrontation with his mother was the first significant deviation from his previous timeline. When she explained why Odin didn't want to tell him about his heritage, he fixed her with a bland stare quite similar to how this had happened the first time he lived it. Unlike the first time he had this conversation and his second attempt with Odin, he found the emotional control to voice the betrayal he felt more effectively.

"I asked him to be honest with you from the beginning. There should be no secrets in a family." Mother was leaning forward over the healing pod as Loki sat on the other side. Everything from her tone of voice to her expression was beseeching.

"So why did he lie?" Loki asked, his voice carefully controlled just as before.

"He kept the truth from you so that you would never feel different. You are our son, Loki, and we your family. You must know that." Well, he certainly didn't need to listen to the same script again.

"Did you make any choices related to my upbringing, or did you defer to Odin in all things related to me?" Loki said sharply. Frigga startled as if struck. "You say there should be no secrets in a family, but I have to ask what else you might wish to tell me, and why in all the heavens did you chose not to speak up before now." He paused, but she didn't speak immediately so he continued. "What would happen if I took a wife, or even a serious lover, and the child produced looked not at all how I would expect one of my own blood to look? Thor and I have both been grown enough for such things for quite some time now. Can you imagine," Loki said, looking away into the distance to remember the broad strokes of a messy timeline where he had five shockingly unique children across multiple partnerships, "I keep the affair quiet as to not cause a scandal, and then when the child is born the woman cannot explain the child's alien appearance. I deny her any financial support because the child simply can't be my own blood, and she accepts it as I am well within my right to be suspicious, but she was not at fault and did nothing to betray my trust despite appearances." A small noise caught his attention, and he looked back at his mother. Her face was pale even in the golden glow of the healing pod, a hand raised to her lips in horror. "This did not happen, but it could have. The maiden miscarried, and our relationship ended amicably," he lied.

"Oh. Oh, goodness, I didn't know," Mother's voice trembled and she took a deep, steadying breath.

"I think my point stands. I am not only not your blood, I am an entirely different species," Loki said gently, because if he wasn't focused on keeping his tone kind he would start screeching as he had with Odin. "This is not the same as if I was the orphan of some Aesir or Vanir soldier who fell on the battlefield. You didn't want me to feel different; I am different. I have always felt that difference, which I have told you before if not in so many words, I just didn't know why I was. I suffered for wondering. You, both of you as individuals, had no right to hide this from me past my majority. The only person you were protecting was yourself, and what you were protected from was this conversation." Loki stood and walked away. The dramatic exit was stopped by the council elders presenting him with Gungnir, as he knew it would be.

"Thor is banished, the line of succession falls to you," Mother said. Mother pulled herself together to voice her support for him as king in front of their audience, but she wasn't as composed as she had been that first time. He thought to leave without another word, but her hypocritical kindness in another lifetime had him turn back to give her one more chance. He murmured an absent apology to the Council Elder that he would be along shortly to begin the tasks set before him and waited for the man to leave them alone again.

"If only for your sake, I hope he will wake from this sleep, but the truth of my parentage isn't just a comforting lie that effects nothing. A house cannot stand on a foundation of sand. The rage I feel at having been being called the God of Lies by members of the court that I am prohibited from challenging to duels of honor of due to Thor's favoritism, all when it seems I'm the most honest of the three of us here has burned so hot it has become cold again. Is there anything else, Mother?"

"No, Loki," such a poor choice of words, such an enraging lie, "I am sure you will be a fine king."

"I know about Hela." He spat the words like knives.

"That. That is a history long over," she replied with a wave of her hand. "Long dead history."

"So, you don't know that she still lives?" Loki said it as gently as he could considering how broken his trust in her was. She froze for a moment, then looked at her sleeping husband. Loki knew his mother, and he was being careful to catalog every twitch of a finger and shift of a shoulder as she inhaled deeply.

"No." Mother's eyes were wide when she looked back at Loki, her voice raspy as if short of breath. "She died in battle against the Valkyries, after she turned against her home in a rage."

"Another battle trophy kept safe and secure in case it is ever needed. Perhaps you should look into that while you watch over him. I'm not certain, but I think her prison is tied to his life. It is a theory based on a thousand whispers, and I would only be able to call on a drunken former Valkyrie living on a trash planet to verify any part of the story. I doubt she even remembers me speaking to her with how pickled she was, not that I blame her considering what she lost that day, or the way Odin scrubbed our history books."

"He told me she was dead," Mother spoke with a tremble.

"If I imprisoned a woman's daughter in a pocket dimension, I might hesitate to..."

"Not my daughter. I'm not so old as that, Loki. Hela's mother died in childbirth while I was still a too young for marriage." Loki blinked at her hollow chuckle, seeing the tremble in his mother's frame as fear and not anger as he had expected. Her eyes were cast down to her lap now, at her fingers twisting anxiously in her shawl. "She led the armies that conquered Vanaheim, killed my father in front of me, and brought me to Odin as a hostage. I doubt she knew his plan for me, or she would likely have killed me despite his orders." Loki sat down next to his mother. She never spoke of how she came to be Odin's war bride. He had always imagined it was a more sanitary if purely political affair in the beginning, considering that she did seem to love Odin with all her heart in the here and now. "She is a monster, a necromancer devoid of all warmth and empathy who prefers the company of the reanimated dead. You trust this rumor?"

"I trust it enough. If we don't want her coming back from who knows what sort of solitary confinement foaming at the mouth insane and at full power when Odin dies, we will have to do something about her. I am only king regent while Odin sleeps and do not have the power to do anything I please, but if I did, I would call a Thing over it and let the Council Elders sort out who deserves to keep the throne when the dust settles."

"As king regent you cannot challenge Odin so directly, but a Lord of the Realm in good standing could. I will contact my brother and put a word or two in the right ears, but not at once." Mother looked up at Loki again and pressed one of her hands over his. "You have enough to deal with for the first few days of your reign, and we should have more than the word of a drunkard before we bring this forward. I will push the healers to perform deeper scans and try to find the spell's anchor, and I have other quiet methods of seeking information that I have left untouched for some time."

"I feel obliged to point out that you seem convinced by very little evidence."

"He has rewritten the history of how Asgard became the golden realm that rules over all others to sound as if it was never any other way, and the common people all took to it as if bewitched. Perhaps it is simply a very pleasing lie, and they wish to believe that they are so superior compared to all other life in the realms," she said with a shake of her head. "You are often fickle, verbose to the point of muddling any understanding of where you stand on controversial issues, and you have a shocking disregard for the intelligence of others when you are trying to hide something that you dislike about yourself, but this is not the sort of lie you are in the habit of telling. Not when you already have the advantage in the conversation."

"It is little wonder he didn't care that Thor would have been a terrible king. As things stand, and if my information is correct, none of us would survive long past Odin's death. We who live to see that day will be consumed by Ragnarok, one way or another."

"I hope you are wrong, and that there is some hidden plan in place, but it is at least true that we can't assume that all is well," Mother said. "Do not despair, darling. I meant what I said, and I will say it again: we love you, and we are your family. Even Thor may yet find a way home."

"Well, I suppose we can only hope he has more love for Thor than he did for the last warmonger child he was disappointed in." Loki left swiftly, before any coherent reply could be made. She could stew in her thoughts for a time, and he would see if she would choose to apologize properly instead of layering a thousand excuses with guilt. That he did feel real guilt over causing her distress simply meant that he had learned how to be a manipulative politician from the best.

Thor's friends came to beg for his return and while he didn't replay the scene word for word it had the same outcome. He wasn't so cocky or arrogant about it as he had been the first time, instead he let his words drip disdain and frustration. They were being stupid, both in inter-realm and very local terms. There would be no talking to any of the other realms about any of the treaties they held with Asgard if Thor wasn't punished for ripping up the peace treaty with Jotunheim and lighting the ashes on fire in a childish tantrum. Not without a convenient scapegoat to pin everything on, and Loki was quite over playing that role in their family dynamic. Beyond that, if Thor in his current fragile mortal form was brought back to Asgard he would be assassinated before the following dawn. Closer to home, they were declaring that they had no confidence in Loki's rule by demanding that even stripped down to a mortal Thor should be king, were openly questioning Odin's decree, and generally painting the words "potential traitor to the crown" across their backs. The Einherjar of Asgard may be the most elite and loyal guards in the nine realms, but they still talked and those who weren't prone to gossiping like weaver women were married to gossiping weaver women. The entire city would know within a day or two that Thor's closest friends as good as asked Loki to reverse Thor's banishment and step down so his brother could lead them in the war he started.

Thor's friends were not Loki's main concern. If they caused a riot, he'd charge them with sedition and send them to sit in the dungeon until he had time to hold a full trial about it. There was war on the horizon that that needed to be his focus.

After a great deal of research and several hours of meditating on the facts, Loki came up with a plan of action he was certain would work. The solution to the problem at hand was hilariously simple considering he had “the wisdom of the Norns” and was aware of the complexity of how the world tree was woven. No fancy plots or complex machinations: He simply invited Laufey for peace talks. Pure, honest, above-board peace talks with a genuine offer to discuss both his own heritage and the state of affairs on Jotunheim. The trade embargo that had been in place for his entire life was well past due for renegotiation. The Jotun people had paid their debt to the wider universe in the form of economic ruin and natural disaster. So long as their leader was sane, they deserved the chance to plead their case.

Loki sent the Destroyer automaton to Earth not long ago when Thor’s friends abandoned their posts and violated the order that no Asgardian warrior would use the Bifrost until further notice. This time he utilized the more automated functions - he was perfectly capable of utilizing technology when he had a chance to study the controls for more than a split second, Sylvie - and forbid the automaton from using the ranged heat beam attack while on Midgard. That should reduce casualties, but Fandrall, Hogun, Voltstagg, and Sif should all know full well that if they surrender the machine will simply retrieve them for trial without causing a ruckus. Still, it should take one or two hours, and Loki should have plenty of time to begin negotiations and get a clear picture of what Laufey was really like and how Jotunheim fared.

Of course, Thor would make his life as difficult as possible and return ahead of schedual with his friends while Loki was still standing on the Bifrost bridge after the formal introductions, stunned and trying to absorb the fact that Laufey was his birth mother.

How he’d missed that detail over the years since he’d found out he was related to the Jotun King he couldn’t fathom. To be fair to himself, he did have a lot of other things on his mind and there were only so many things he could deal with in a given day. Everyone who spoke to him about it had always referred to him as Laufey’s son and Laufeyson meant that Laufey was his sire in Asgardian vernacular, but Loki had started calling himself by that patronym. No person in a position to actually know his parentage had ever called him Loki Laufeyson. The known fact that the Jotun people were all intersex hadn’t ever interacted with the concept of who his birth parents were within his mind. At best he’d noticed his physical similarity to Hela and decided to forcefully crash that train of thought as permanently as possible with quite a lot of the TVA’s horrid beer-adjacent beverage and then never think about it again.

He was Loki Laufeyjarson and the Jotnar had matrilineal inheritance, because of course it was more logical to track what womb a baby came out of than who the sire was when gender roles didn’t exist to put a thumb on the scale. While he was trying to fit that startling concept into his head, he noticed that his five idiots were back when Thor streaked past his field of view after being backhanded to death by one of Laufey’s honor guard.

Hel take them all.

Loki lost track of the fight quickly. Sif and the Warriors Three attacked the Jotnar who had remained near the Bifrost’s gate as rear guards on sight when the destroyer brought them back from Midgard, starting the fight. As before, Mjolnir returned to Thor and restored his power upon his death, this time streaking out from the Bifrost observatory and taking out several people on both sides as it went. After being revived Thor leaped over the battle from his brief dip in the sea to rejoin his friends still fighting inside the Observatory. The Destroyer first tried to restrain the prisoners and then seemed confused by the Jonar present, firing at a Jotun Loki was fairly certain he was related to before Loki bent his magic to shut it down. Laufey’s delegation assumed this was a planned back-stab, Loki’s own guard moved to defend him, the soldiers at the end of the bridge meant to welcome the Jotun delegation for peace talks saw the fighting and started a charge, and then it was every man for himself in a confused maelstrom of violence wherein not a single person was listening to their King.

“By the Norns, I said stand down!” Loki shouted to little effect, his voice mostly lost amid crashes of thunder.

“We’ll not surrender to the Frost Giants on the order of a traitor!” Sif shouted back, so at least she heard him.

“We came here peacefully, you attacked us!” Laufey accused, icing over a portion of the bridge with a stamp of their foot. The magic humming within the bridge made it quite warm to the touch, so this was an impressive display of power. The other Jotnar were quick to stand on the spreading ice, sacrificing mobility to anchor their feet on the narrow bridge. Not to be outdone, Loki multiplied himself so there was at least one of him for every two Asgardian soldiers - far more doubles and spread over a greater distance than he’d have been able to make the first time around.

“Lower your weapons! Stand Down! There is no threat here beyond stupidity,” Loki said, seeming to speak from every direction. “It was those brought home in chains for abandoning their posts who attacked us, not the Jotun delegation. Do not give these fools the satisfaction of aiding their idiotic rebellion against Odin’s decree.” That, at last, got the soldiers who charged down the bridge to disengage completely. Thor, Sif, Hogun, and Fandral still fought near the entrance to the Bifrost observatory, but Volstagg stood still in indecision long enough for the destroyer to lift him up and bind him with bands of metal.

Loki stalked angrily past his birth parent, magic snapping and sparking around himself. The Jotun and Asgardian royal guards had made a hazy sort of line to try and contain the fight, each on their own half of the bridge’s width with many wary glances between the two groups. The shorter Jotun injured by the destroyer that resembled Loki more than not sat behind two guards, keeping ice on their burned leg. He paused and flashed a numbing spell at the wound. It wouldn’t make up for this fiasco, but perhaps it would prevent the peace talks from disintegrating entirely after Loki was gone.

This wasn’t how he wanted to go. It was half a day early. He was supposed to have at least enough time to hear the results of the deep scan on Odin so he would know if Hela’s banishment was truly tied to Odin’s life. Loki used his anger to fuel his magic and struck.

He could lift large buildings with his magic, when he wanted to. He didn’t use the ability much in battle because it was dishonorable, but these were not honorable combatants, they were prisoners guilty of sedition. First Fandral, then Sif, then Hogun were each tossed in a high arc that would land them on or near to the shore, where the guards there could contain them appropriately. Unlike last time, he’d made a clear public statement after they arrived on Midgard that they had left their post to defy Odin’s decree. They would not get through this with their honor intact this time.

“Loki, stop this madness!” Thor shouted.

“What madness?” Loki said, marching forward. For the good of the universe, but he didn’t care about the universe. This was vendetta. “I am ending this war, properly this time.”

“You would side with these monsters to take the throne?”

“You know nothing,” Loki snarled, striking at Thor with Gungnir. The first blast went wide and damaged the mechanism in the Observatory. Magic sparked and shimmered, the gears lurching and grinding. The second grazed Thor. “Always so focused on yourself that you assume other’s motivations work the same as your own! My actions are not for you to judge.”

“I would not attack my own home!” Thor screamed, and Loki very deliberately chose not to duck. He winced and hoped the flinch would seem like a dodge started too slow to their audience. He dropped the spear to push at the hammer that Thor threw at his chest, not precisely on purpose. The hammer arced back toward its master and Loki kept going, sailing over the floor toward the malformed portal. It wasn’t quite the same as falling, but it did the job.

The void took him. It was a long game, and he would certainly help save uncountable lives, but he didn’t do it for them. Thor was a selfish and greedy boy as Odin had said, but Loki was too, just in his own way. He would suffer, and the dread of knowing what he was falling towards lay heavily on him, but then he would return and claim glory beyond any he could hope to have by any other means. Thanos was coming, and the last titan would die on Midgard. Loki would make ready the path and revel in the carnage when it came.

Chapter Text

Mental clarity was rare and highly valued. It waxed and waned and Loki chose his moment. There was pain. He focused on that: the dull ache in his limbs, the gnawing in his gut, the sharp sting of irritated cuts… even the lesser irritation of sweaty skin chafing in clothes worn too long. Loki made those thoughts fill his whole mind, covering any other worry or concern until the only thing that The Other could possibly detect was a desire to heal himself and be battle ready.

The runes weren’t simple, but the smooth metal floor was a perfect surface for them. Healing runes, so he would be fighting fit when the Chitauri army arrived on Midguard. A few cleansing runes because the food was wrong and his body clearly had toxins to purge. That’s all. Total focus, no stray thoughts. He was loyal. He was true. He was bound to the Mind Stone Scepter by blood and pain, and he would act as an extension of Thanos’ will. He just needed to be fighting fit to properly represent the glorious purpose he was burdened with.

Thor and several others burst into the room, but they were too late to stop him. The round glass prison filled with flickering flames: Green and teal and blue blazing as the ritual magic fueled by runes written in blood did its job. Cleansing runes, oh yes they were cleansing runes, but not meant for the body. His mind was always running on multiple tracks, which made enchantment of any kind much more difficult. He also had experience with exactly this type of control and knew how to subvert it. Sticking to the plan, holding to the old script laid out in his memory, made it so simple to keep up the separation. He moved mostly like a pre-programed automaton while his inner self worked out exactly how to break free of the chains on him. The green consumed the teal and purged the blue, biting at it in a way more animal than flame. As it was fighting the foreign magic off the golden sparkle returned to the bright emerald green flames. Loki breathed deep, pulling the cleansed magic back into himself with each inhale and purging more filth with each exhale. He left a shimmering haze in case the scepter tried to get back into his head.

“I must thank Dr. Stark for the inspiration,” Loki said when he came back to himself, cutting off Thor’s demand that the prison be opened so he could physically reach Loki. The Captain was standing next to a familiar-looking agent. The Spider hung back in what might have been a less noticeable position if he wasn’t looking for The Avengers specifically. Thor was near the control panel, thankfully aware enough of his debatable technological savvy that he hadn’t touched it. “The energy field he carries around shielded him from the surface reading abilities of the Mind Scepter. I can’t replicate it, but it seems that I can get close enough. I wouldn’t test this shielding against physical contact with that cursed thing, but it does seem that I’ve managed an effective enough barrier.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, Stark’s glowing energy source was the inspiration for the ward Loki cast on himself. It just wasn’t the Stark from this timeline that he was talking about.

“What foul plans are you enacting now?” Thor asked. Loki ignored him and kept his body language and attention on the Captain.

“Should you wish to awaken non-mages - that is, those without the ability to manipulate energy fields within their person - I’d recommend rendering them unconscious. A blow to the head would work, though I believe your people are advanced enough to have discovered suitable tranquilizers.” Thor demanded to know where the Tesseract was, but Loki continued to ignore him. “Anything that interrupts the mind’s function will work. The enchantment is a bit like a… what do you call them here? A Newton’s cradle? Interrupt the process and it stops unless it is restarted deliberately.”

“Why are you telling me this?” the Captain asked.

“I am as much a victim in this as the rest, and the faster the others are freed of his control the better for all involved, don’t you think? Your enemy is elsewhere.” The agent stepped forward.

“Pretty convenient for the God of Lies. Considering your show of power didn’t damage that prison cell, I’d say you’re looking to talk your way out,” the elder man said.

“I was merely purging the taint from my person,” Loki replied, stepping effortlessly through the glass. Everyone raised their weapons. “As you can see, I could have left that prison at any moment. Well, provided I wasn’t splitting my focus due to the Scepter’s influence, that is.”

“What is your plan, Loki?” Thor asked. Loki cocked his head and rubbed at the ear on that side.

“I don’t converse with people who have sworn genocide against my race or my kin. Especially those who have fit actions to words and attempted it,” Loki turned to show Thor his back. His skin crawled. Turning his back on an angry Thor had never been a good idea, and while he had seen Thor accept some part of who he was in other timelines he knew that they almost always remained at odds throughout their lives.

“You are still speaking nonsense.” Thor’s voice rumbled.

“You know, Captain, you should ask more questions of potential allies. Perhaps not in the heat of battle, but you have had time enough to ask Thor why there is conflict between us and what explanation he has for my actions. I am quite curious if he mentioned that while I am royalty, I am not Asgardian by birth. I am a different species altogether, taken as an infant to be raised in Asgard and later installed as a puppet King of those people, a practice not unknown on this realm if a century or two out of fashion. When I last saw him, Thor was attempting to murder my birth family for the clearly heinous crime of being on Asgard with the permission of the crown during peace talks between our realms,” Loki said in a rapid, instructional cadence.

“You would have handed over the throne to the Frost Giants!”

“I was the rightfully installed regent of Asgard with the full backing of the Counsel of Elders. Calling for peace talks instead of leading a senseless war based on the hurt feelings of a single person was the responsible thing to do. I’ll bet a cask of wine from my estate - assuming that my personal possessions weren’t all sold off after I was tossed into the void and forgotten like as sack of garbage - that Sif is the source of that accusation. She was too busy defying Odin’s orders because she didn’t like her playmate being put in time out to have been aware of the peace talks. In other words: mindess, prejudiced gossip from someone who has hated me since our physical relationship failed to become a romantic one.” When Loki finished speaking the elder Agent stepped closer to him.

“So this conflict started during peace talks with Frost Giants…”

“That’s a slur, you would say a Jotun, the Jotnar, and from Jotenheim.”

“…with the Jotnar went sour and Loki ended up presumed dead.” The Agent finished his sentence and looked at Thor.

“Is any of this relevant?” The Captain asked. “We should be focusing on getting the Tesseract back.”

“It is only as relevant as Thor wants it to be,” Loki said with a shrug. “Your enemy is a madman named Thanos, who aims to restore natural balance to the universe by culling half of all sentient life.”

“So you are willing to work with us against this Thanos?” the Captain asked.

“As willing as your Dr. Stark is to viciously dismantle the Ten Rings, and for much the same reason. My quarrel with Asgard is unrelated, and I’ve stated my intention to never speak directly to Thor again. I will gladly ignore him. It would only become relevant at the end of the fight. Thor will no doubt wish to drag me back by the ear to be re-educated on why my species is comprised of nothing more than vicious animals. I would prefer to remain on your planet if something can be arraigned, not permanently just to aid with the cleanup and provide information that would be useful to you in exchange for the chance to rest and prepare means to get myself back to the planet of my birth instead.”

“You seek to avoid Asgardian justice.” Thor rumbled.

“Oh, by the Norns.” Loki turned to face Thor. “Fine, we’re doing this. You get one chance to not say something offensive or stupid and convince me to go home to Asgard. What do you think happened before you threw me off the bridge?”

“I did not throw you off the bridge, you fell.”

“I fell after you threw your hammer at me, I’d hardly classify that as an accident you had nothing to do with, but you are entitled to lie to yourself if your want," Loki said, voice low and quick. "Perhaps you can tell me why your hammer threw me off the Bifrost bridge while it was malfunctioning.”

“You brought the Frost Giants into Asgard, and gave them back the Casket of Ancient Winters so they could resume their destructive march across the Nine. They planned to use it to terraform Midgard into an icy wasteland.” Thor said, and though he was too loud to be conversational he seemed calm enough to listen.

“I brought the King and his honor guard to peace talks. The ceasefire at the end of the war was written only by Asgard and has stood for as long as I have been alive. Things change, and trade is valuable. Yes, they do have valuable resources for trade and no they are not mindless animals out to hunt small children who don’t eat their leafy greens. The Jotun population has diminished enough that they have no need for colonies, a 34% loss in overall population between the war and the famine caused by the the trade blockade that followed. As for the charge of terraforming a type 2 planet, I checked Odin’s records when I was King Regent and there isn’t much evidence. Did they take the Casket of Ancient Winters to Midgard? Yes, but it is the primary power source they use for many great works including interstellar travel. It is not merely a weapon. Also, they never actually did any terraforming, at least as far as the records show. We don’t know, I was a newborn, and you were a boy too young to notice his mother acquired a child without being pregnant first. They may have planned to do so, but they also could have been using it for other things. In either case I return to the 34% loss of life and have to ask if that sufficient punishment?”

“They attacked Asgard once they arrived.”

“Let me guess, you came through the Bifrost last and saw a fight on the bridge as soon as you returned from your banishment?”

“Yes.” Thor said, confidently incorrect with a defiant look on his face.

“I was having a conversation with my birth Mother about the events surrounding my adoption, which they call my abduction. When they returned from Midgard your friends attacked the Jotnar on sight. The soldiers defended their King and themselves. Just as you attacked them on Jotunheim and they defended themselves. The five of you were the aggressors in both situations.”

“They attacked the vault during my coronation.”

“Good timing on their part,” Loki said with a huff, “Imagine if a bigoted, self-absorbed, greedy child took the throne!"

“I knew you helped them.”

“I did not, but there are days I wish I did,” Loki snapped. It wasn’t like there was any proof Loki was involved, not when the person who did the crime was dead and cremated while he was still very much alive and walking around. “I’d planned to take a sabbatical and let you crash and burn on your own, then come back and help with the cleanup. My exact words to you before you decided to go to Jotenheim and start a war were ‘You can’t do anything without defying Father’ followed by ‘No, no, no, no, no, no I know that look…’ and then you ignored me and rallied your sycophants to follow you on your arrogant crusade.”

Loki thought of the mess he’d seen his brother make of himself after Thanos’ death in timelines similar to the one that had been deemed sacred by He Who remained. First fat and drunk, having abandoned the throne to wallow in his own defeat. Later on, fit but intellectually lazy to the point of joyful ignorance, offensively selfish and arrogant, and so wrapped up in his own fantasies of self-importance that he was delusional. At his worst Loki had never gotten so out of touch with reality around him that he would claim he was giving a ship he was a guest on to the people who owned and lived on the ship in question upon leaving their company. “I went with you only to try and talk you down and avert violence, and I nearly succeeded. I couldn’t have imagined how willing to delude yourself you are, and for what purpose? To shield your ego from your mistake? To use me as a scapegoat when it was your friends who are guilty of sedition by bringing you back to Asgard against Odin’s orders so the lot of you could stage a coup? All when the only reason I was ever on the throne in the first place is because Odin was so exhausted by the magical and emotional strain of banishing you while already ill that he collapsed.”

“I… well… You are saying that what I saw was not what was really happening?” The sentence ended as a question, which was progress but the words were still infuriating.

“I find it very suspicious that you are claiming the entire thing is my fault and that the Jotun delegation attacked us more than a full year after these event occurred. Surely King Laufey would object, and there are a score of soldiers who witnessed them stand down. Did you kill them all after I fell from the bridge, perhaps scared the soldiers into silence? Am I now an orphan, and my birth mother conveniently unavailable to explain why they called it an abduction instead of an adoption?” The energy field around Loki crackled, and he turned away and walked to the opposite end of the room to take several calming breaths, covering his ears as he did so. It didn’t really block out any sound, though he could have used some magic to do so, but the petty action was the only acceptable catharsis available. “The scepter operates by enhancing and manipulating the negative emotions of the victims. The shielding I am using is imperfect, so you can bloody well shut up and take the time to actually use your brain to analyze the situation instead of relying on others to do your thinking for you. You are not stupid, just infuriatingly lazy about using the good sense the Norns gifted you with. If nothing else sways you, you know how skilled I am at the forge, how difficult and expensive such a device would be to commission, and how much money I am in the habit of carrying on my person while at home conducting diplomatic work. For the benefit of our audience: not very, exceedingly much, and none at all. You aren’t the only realm with the concept of bank drafts and tabs.”

“Right,” the Captain said, stepping up to Loki and waiting for him to uncover his ears. “So the scepter isn’t yours, and there is somebody somewhere else pulling the strings. Will you tell us where they are?”

“The collapsing bifrost portal dropped me into deep space, near the edge of the galaxy. Roughly 135 degrees and 98%.”

“Wait, what does that mean?” the Captain asked.

“Standardized radial percentage coordinates? That doesn’t translate? Right. This is a spiral galaxy, so if you draw a line to the center of rotation from your current location or a known point of reference you can express the location of any other place in the galaxy with an angle off of that line.” Loki aided his explanation with a small illusion to diagram what he meant. “There is a great variety of methods for describing the height of the star, and the order the coordinates are given seems arbitrary, but most civilizations tend to use radial measurements for how far around the spiral you need to go and a percentage distance from the center for how far out. There are rare cases of measuring how far in, though they are the minority, and also some argument for how far out 100% is. There is a small intergalactic cold war that’s been going for nearly a million years because the one system has charted the other’s home planet as being at 100.01%, ostensibly saying they aren’t a legitimate part of our galaxy.”

“That’s an elegant system.” Dr. Stark’s voice joined the conversation. The petite engineer carried a flashy suitcase but was otherwise outfitted in rather casual attire. “Very important for future diplomacy to know how to read the maps. So, the BBEG is all the way on the ass end of everywhere and needs a portal to get here in a timely manner.” The agent tried to herd the mortal - who appeared unarmed - back out of the room but was ignored.

“Actually, it is the Nine Realms that are isolated from the more densely populated regions of the Galaxy, so perhaps you ought to reverse that statement. Either way, it would take the best part of a decade, factoring in Thanos’ unwillingness to delay his great work and the logistics of feeding his armies. When he culls half the population of a world he doesn’t leave the meat to rot, after all.”

“Is that cannibalism? There have been semantic debates for decades on if eating sentient aliens counts as cannibalism, usually in bad faith by vegans but sometimes as an intellectual exercise. How does it translate to you?” Stark asked.

“First,” Loki’s voice squeaked, and he paused to clear his throat. “First of all, when Thanos says half the population he includes all sentient, animal, and ambulatory life. If fungus is the dominant life form they burn half, which is quite the sight to see, but other than that insanity the stationary growing things escape his notice. So, there is plenty of food available from non-sentient creatures. Second, yes, it is cannibalism to eat another sentient creature. Third, I am just now realizing that I don’t know for a fact that the Black Order do not practice cannibalism and highly regret not having paid more attention to what they were harvesting for food.”

“You were there for a year…” Stark began to say.

“Please change the subject at once,” Loki demanded, feeling nauseous. He’d never once thought to check, but with a philosophy centered around the scarcity of resources, he wouldn’t put it past them. He really did not need another trauma to deal with and vomiting on their shoes was not something he wanted to do during these people’s first impression of him without the scepter’s influence.

“So where is the Tesseract?” the Capitan asked. Loki turned back toward the other midgardians, but didn’t let Stark out of his line of sight.

“I think it would be in place by now. The plan, such as it was, was for me to be here as a distraction while the portal is assembled and installed. The portal will need a large power source, and since I was not afforded much time to plan I went with what the SHIELD agents told me when I landed and what was in a news report I saw while resting after we escaped the initial portal collapse caused by my method of arrival. Well, I suppose there were other options, but I wasn’t trying very hard to win. Quite the opposite, in fact. The control isn't absolute, but allows for some independent action so long as it seems to further the end goal. I needed to heal myself for the coming battle, but then I healed myself mentally instead of physically."

“Oh, you would,” Dr. Stark said, shaking his head. “The glow stick of destiny manipulated your mind, but didn’t change your personality.”

“Quite so,” Loki said with a smile. The mortal was quicker than he remembered, or perhaps the information was slower to reach him before.

“So where is it?” the Captain asked.

“Stark Tower, New York,” the shortest Avenger said. “Emo Crazy McEyeball Stealer or Sparkle Motion with Family Issues, we still have a full-tilt diva on our hands.” The agents immediately started acting on that information, and the low vibration of the engines changed pitch as their course changed.

“Are you a thespian in your spare time, Dr. Stark?” Loki asked. “Your manner of speaking is fascinating.”

“Do not flirt with him,” Thor said, a warning in his voice.

“Whoever that was directed at, your bigoted opinion is unwelcome,” Loki said, shape-shifting into female form just to be contrary as he fell in step with Stark. “In case it matters; my gender is a state of mind. You can all do with that information what you will.”

“Safe sane, and consensual hold true up in fairy land?” Stark said with a little giggle. Adorable.

“Informed consent is an intergalactic standard, but the Fae races of Alfheim are non-standard in many ways. Excellent vacation location, but I wouldn’t live there.”

“Anything else we should know before we get to New York?”

“The Chitari are a cyborg-enhanced hive mind,” Loki offered. “Naturally they have a short-range psychic connection and communicate both through conventional speech and pheromone signaling. When individuals pass their expiration date, they are lobotomized in what I would call an end-of-life ritual and implanted with cybernetics that replace their organic hive mind connection, extending their range and strengthening their bodies to be somewhere between Captain America’s enhanced physique and the most fit of your baseline species. These enhanced are the soldiers you will face when the portal opens, as well as a very large flying species they domesticated and use as a carrier. The species has evolved in the void and the the hive ship is a living entity in its own right. No non-augmented Chitauri leaves the hive ship, and their mouthpiece is called The Other. His function, aside from being the biological pair for the queen, is to be a living psychic conduit and an interface between the cybernetic and organic hive mind network - at great cost to his physical strength. Since they are not functioning individuals any longer and the soldiers are essentially technological zombies, cutting them off from the hive mind will terminate all of their higher functions. They won’t be dead, but they will flop to the floor like a fish, as inert as any inanimate object.”

“You know the frequency they use?” Stark asked eagerly. “Or can we jam it some other way?”

“That information is an extremely well-guarded secret. They do have a maximum range that is certainly not interstellar. Closing the portal will end the fighting instantaneously.”

“Techno-organics, my least favorite sci-fi monster.”

“I choose not to insult you by mentioning how you use your implant in a derogatory fashion," Loki retorted with a smile.

“Not exactly something I volunteered for there, Trans Pride.” Stark’s name for him threw Loki off, he’d never heard that one in any of the timelines he's observed.

“No. I prefer water metaphors if you must reference my gender, though that may be a bias I picked up from a memorable summer I spent in Ljosalfgard when I was in the blush of puberty. I did not transfer myself from one thing to another the way one might move houses. On a related note: I wish to be addressed using male or neutral pronouns, always. I admit I do not know much about Jotun culture, but my birth mother has always been referred to as the King of Jotenhiem even as I was being born.”

“No problem, Loki-doki. I will have many, many questions later on about this royal drama you are putting my planet in the middle of, but I am capable of staying mostly on topic despite what Fury is yelling down the coms. So, what el…” a distant explosion shook the ship.

“Oh, right, Barton was on his way,” Loki said.

“You couldn’t have said that earlier!” The Captain shouted.

“I forgot.”

“Likely story,” Stark said as he opened the case he was carrying, and it rapidly swallowed him into his armor.

“My memory of the last few days isn’t actually very clear, and I’ve been in pain and half-starved for months. I’m just the advance scout, not the leader,” Loki argued. A flicker of magic adjusted his armor to something less likely to catch on shattered metal debris. “Despite the fear-mongering I engaged in earlier, my chance of being rewarded with rule over this planet should Thanos win is vanishingly small.”

“Barton's plan is?” The Captain prompted.

“Harass you, bring me to the portal, do as much damage as possible, and unleash The Beast in the process.”

“So exactly what we thought you were after,” Stark said, his voice too filtered by the suit to gauge his mood.

“What I was after was returning to the Nine Realms and ruining Odin’s day by any means available.”

The Agent, who finally introduced himself as Coulson, stayed with Loki while Stark and the Captain restarted an engine. Loki didn’t know where the spider went, but Thor glared at him in what passed for thoughtfulness for a long while. Idiotically, one of the peons was allowed to lay hands on the scepter and started monologuing about their Glorious Purpose. After checking on him to ensure that he was still sat in his chair like a good boy who wasn’t attempting to take over the planet, Thor left to deal with the new future king of Midgard. Norns save us all.

“Not going to offer to help?” Agent Coulson asked.

“It sounds mostly over, and if you wanted my help you would ask. I’m well practiced at being places where I am not much wanted without wearing out my welcome. I was raised amid court politics, after all.” Loki picked at his fingernails. Where he’d accumulated such stubborn grime, he didn’t know.

“Not sure we can trust you.”

“I am physically capable of breaking every bone in your body. A cubic centimeter of my flesh is three times the mass of yours. I could rip open the walls of this room with only my magic without overextending myself, or teleport to a warm sandy beach and use illusions to steal a fancy cocktail. I chose to do none of those things. My behavior is the best I can offer as an assurance of my motives.”

“We’ll see how that works out for you,” Agent Coulson said with a mild smile.

Chapter Text

The Avengers did not prevent the portal from opening, which was a shame. It would have been better for everyone if they had, but the confirmation that Loki wasn’t making it all up out of whole cloth did help his credibility. The Midgardian who took Loki’s place as leader of the operation was not properly prepared for the role and suffered an aneurysm in his brain from the strain of the connection with The Other. Not that it mattered, they followed the plan Loki had laid out for them and the new ‘leader’ just held the Mind Stone Scepter with little more to do than be a living conduit so Thanos’ underlings could know the plan was still on track.

Loki did take part in the fight, which was wonderfully cathartic. Slicing through Chitauri drones, using energy blasts to make their chariots explode, and generally getting to rip them apart was far more enjoyable than he wanted to admit. At the end of battle, after Stark fell out of the portal, Thor pulled Loki away from an unmoving pile of them that he had been stabbing repeatedly. They weren’t dead, aside from those he’d gotten to, just lobotomized. Somebody needed to finish the job, and Loki found himself both willing and eager to do the job. This wasn’t, perhaps, the sanest reaction to the day’s events.

“Brother, the battle is won. You can stop now,” Thor said, physically steering him back toward the group.

“I know that I can, I simply don’t want to,” Loki snarled.

“Well, that’s a lot of anger pointed at a mutual enemy,” Stark said, his customary flippant tone defusing the tension. “I think we can clear Reindeer Games of anything that would require liking these bastards enough to work with them.”

“You’re projecting,” Romanov murmured.

“Ask Cap how hard he’d punch HYDRA if any of them still existed.” Stark must have been sent by the Norns, a gift to Loki to make up for the trials he’d been through… or perhaps it was the TVA meddling to keep him happy. Loki would take either.

“I know that name,” Loki said, turning toward the captain. “Is Stark implying that HYDRA did something similar to you as what was done to me?”

“Capsicle was frozen for seventy years, but back then HYDRA was the big bad he was fighting, and he went into the ice because of them,” Stark explained when the Captain didn’t speak up fast enough for the smaller man's manic energy.

“I had to put the plane down or the bombs would fly off to destroy the entire free world,” the Captain said with a nod.

“But these enemies are allies now?” Loki asked, his expression mildly interested while inside he was savoring the moment.

“They’re all long dead,” Rogers said with an equal measure of satisfaction and nostalgia. “Seems like only a month or two ago to me, but it’s been decades.”

“I must be misunderstanding, or perhaps my memory of the last few days is too skewed. I remember there were several HYDRA agents in the group that fled the facility where the Tesseract was being studied. I believed them to be an elite force within SHIELD, carrying out missions to further the true goals of the organization: to keep this world orderly and temper democratic mob rule using control from the shadows and manipulations of world leaders. I’m afraid that, as a God with an energy field that enhances the chaotic side of probability, I took some offense to the idea of that sort of control. It is part of why I was disinclined to play nice with SHIELD, even after I was myself again.”

“You met HYDRA agents while you were Cuckoo for Coco Puffs?” Stark asked.

“That’s not possible,” Romanov said with a dismissive shake of her head.

“Put up or shut up,” Barton said, his expression grave. “Names, specifics.”

“I… I can try to make a list,” Loki said, exaggerating his insecurity. “You should try to as well; I vaguely remember talking about them as part of our strategic planning. We separated them into their own group, did we not?” Barton blinked rapidly, his eyes opening a little wider with each blink.

“Fuck, we did! We had a fucking HYDRA unit,” the archer said with a gasp. “Why the fuck did I think that wasn’t important?”

“You’re sure he’s not still in your head?” Romanov asked.

“Wait, HYDRA still exists, but as some shadowy organization pulling strings?” Captain Rogers spoke up, clenching his fists.

“Jarvis, hey, J are you listening?” Stark said. “Dig into that data we skimmed, start flagging anomalies. Somebody shot a nuke at New York City with enough power to take out everything from Boston to Delaware, and that stinks like yesterday’s fish special. We’ve got to be able to trace that.”

“It’s not like I’m just remembering it now, it’s just… I was trying not to think too much about anything I did when I was…” Barton’s false starts were just alarming everyone.

“The entire experience was unpleasant. We could go stab some more of the Chitauri if you like,” Loki suggested. “Someone needs to end their vegetative lives. It felt quite cathartic; I highly recommend it as a means of purging frustrations. Unless the plan is to cremate them while they are still breathing? We could help with that, too, I suppose.”

“I can’t, what were their names? I remember talking about them, but…”

“Do you have any artistic ability?” Loki asked. “Names are unimportant to the Chitauri drones, at least spoken names. They refer to each other mostly by function and rank. Since the scepter is what it is, and was tied to The Other and his will, our thoughts were twisted into a more… amicable shape. Not only for the purpose of the mission but in general, so our alien way of thinking didn’t confuse him through the limited connection he had with us. Our species are very different from his, after all, and I theorize that the difficulty we have in processing the last few days is due to that adjustment of our thoughts. A few days rest and our memories should become clear, provided I’m correct about why they are clouded.”

“So why are you asking if I’m an artist?” Barton asked.

“Making a list of names would be difficult, but it should be easier to draw their faces.” Loki shrugged. Thor clapped him on the shoulder, the disagreements between them temporarily laid aside in the face of a battle well fought as shield-brothers against a common enemy. Thor was more easily swayed by Loki’s enthusiastic participation in the battle than expected, but the moment any sore subject was brought up Loki was sure Thor would go right back to blaming Loki for every ill in the nine.

“We can get mug shots of everyone who was under the scepter’s influence,” Romanov suggested.

“Already have them, from when this whole thing first kicked off,” Stark cut in, “but we’re going to be getting in range of some working cameras and audio devices soon. Call me paranoid, but this sounds like a tomorrow problem, and we should probably stop talking about it where the bad spies that may or may not be spying on the good spies can spy on us.”

“We should enjoy our victory,” Thor proclaimed loudly, “and not borrow tomorrow’s troubles. Where shall we have this feast of Shawarma?”

“We might want to bathe, first,” Loki muttered, looking critically at the bloodstains covering his leathers. “Or at least change clothes.”

“Hulk hungry.” Loki looked at the beast nervously and decided to try his luck.

“It’s unsanitary not to wash one’s hands before dining.”

“Hulk not stupid. Hulk know to wash hands.”

“Bathrooms off the main lobby are still functional, and there is an emergency shower in case of a chemical spill, but the Tower’s water recycling systems got knocked offline so let’s be frugal until that’s back up and running. The medical floors are already triaging survivors, and they’ll need water,” Stark said, completely serious for once. Loki hummed thoughtfully, deliberately pausing outside the bathrooms to make a show of deciding which one currently applied to him.

“Is it presentation, breasts, or the ability to bear children that is the deciding factor here?” he mused aloud.

“Can you use a urinal, or do you have to sit?” Loki wasn’t expecting Captain Rogers to be the one to respond, and the deadpan question startled a laugh out of Loki, Stark, and Barton.

“Well, that’s a practical way to go about it, and in the spirit of practicality I’ll use the less crowded space.” Loki decided, following Romanov into the lady’s room and ignoring Barton’s rude yet accurate assertion that that didn’t answer Cap’s question.