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English
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Part 5 of Drabbles
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Published:
2023-09-11
Words:
524
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1/1
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An impossible situation

Summary:

A snippet of a conversation between Thor and Loki at an undetermined point in the timeline, where Thor has found out about Thanos and has realized important things, and that he doesn’t blame Loki for whatever decisions he made in trying to free himself from Thanos while minimizing damage as best he could.

Notes:

…that’s a great summary, I think. Basically this is me being a shameless Loki apologist

The amount of communication and awareness here is ooc, but I don’t care 💃🏻. I wrote this months ago specifically to get the emotions down, but I didn’t have a fic to put it in. But I like it too much to just delete it so I’m posting it as-is instead. Sorry that it’s so short and incomplete.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Loki shook his head. “…Because, if you were in my place, you would have let him kill you rather than do his bidding. You would’ve chosen to die if escaping meant the deaths of… so many of those mortals you love so much.”

 

Thor stared at him, the moment stretching out so long that Loki seemed to visibly bristle under Thor’s stare. Thor finally shook his head, “You think far better of me than I deserve.”

 

“I’m not wrong,” Loki said challengingly.

 

“Yes.” Thor nodded once, emphatically. “Yes, Loki, you are.”

 

Loki scoffed and moved to turn away.

 

Thor grabbed him by his arms, “I would’ve let him kill me to spare them, but not out of some noble reason as you seem to believe! And if obeying his orders is what kept you alive then I’m glad of it!”

 

“You don’t mean that,” Loki gasped.

 

“Yes I do!” Thor insisted. “And if I were in your position and it were between all those lives and yours instead of my own, I would choose to let them all perish!” He paused for a beat as if the statement had come as a surprise to him, then his jaw set and he nodded. “If you judge me evil for that then so be it, but it is the truth.”

 

Loki stared in shock, watery eyes searching Thor’s face for some hint of falsehood before Thor’s intense, stubborn expression became too much. He cast his eyes to the floor, watching with a distant sense of surprise and embarrassment as a tear landed on the toe of Thor’s boot.

 

There was a long silence before Thor continued in a softer tone, “You pretend it did not matter to you, that it is only I who care, but I know you feel ashamed at what happened. I know this because it was always you who tried hardest to talk me down when I grew too hot headed; it was you by my side reminding me to stop and think. It was you trying to minimize the damage I caused, and you who watched over us all time and time again even when I was Hel-bent on glory… on revenge and destruction.”

 

Loki let out a strangled noise as if it physically pained him to be forced to listen to Thor recount his better qualities to him.

 

“I am grateful to you for all that you have done and know that you regret the harm you’ve caused.” Leaning forward, Thor tried to catch his brother’s eye, but Loki stubbornly lowered his head further, avoiding Thor’s gaze. “But I would not change anything if it meant losing you,” Thor continued, “and for that I am sorry, and sorry too for ever having doubted you. You would’ve found another way if you could. …It was an impossible situation.”

 

Loki was crying in earnest now, silently shaking - tense in a way that seemed to indicate how much he hated to hear any words absolving him of blame, and how much he needed to hear those very same words.

 

Cautiously, Thor wrapped his arms around Loki and rested his cheek against his hair. 

Notes:

Pretty abrupt ending… but, oh well.

 

Edit:
I’m looking over this a few days later and I feel like there’s something missing (which makes sense because it was more or less an unfinished work/ just a part of a longer conversation) ……. I alternate between theories of what exactly the situation with Thanos was. Earlier on in the MCU I thought maybe Loki was following orders to an extent but under duress or pretending to follow orders but finding ways to botch the invasion and something about Thanos already knowing about the tesseract being on earth. So that’s kind of where Thor’s comment about Loki staying alive by following orders is coming from. Which in itself is enough of a bad situation Loki would want to get out of. But then Infinity War came out and Thanos said something that seems to imply that Loki has died and come back several times (and the times the audience knows of would not be something Thanos would necessarily know about). So it could be that while trying to get information from Loki he might’ve been killed (maybe more than once) and Loki made the deal that he’d only go under certain circumstances (I assume he was the only one who actually could go, otherwise Thanos would’ve sent one of his “children”) but the circumstances had to be something where Thanos wouldn’t…. Actually I was going to say Thanos wouldn’t be suspicious but he clearly was if you consider The Other’s warnings, the scepter’s influence and Thanos’ later lines in Infinity War….

Well anyway, based on all that, it doesn’t really seem as much like Loki was “following orders” to “stay alive” as much as making a really desperate and dangerous attempt to escape being killed and resurrected 😰 (that’s… just a theory though. But I know other people have written tons of meta pointing it out)

So here Thor might say he doesn’t blame Loki for following orders to stay alive and Loki might say that Thor doesn’t understand! That it was Loki’s plan! That if he hadn’t brought the army he would’ve had to go back immediately and he just couldn’t go through that again. Etc etc Others have also noted that by doing things this way, the Avengers were formed, Thanos’ army was depleted, and he lost 2 infinity stones.

….anyway, I guess it’s best that I just stopped this fic where I did because otherwise it’d just be a whole meta essay, when I really wanted to write was Thor telling Loki he doesn’t blame him.

Loki here is like: you would’ve died rather than give Thanos an Infinity Stone

And it’s probably closer to “well Loki, it sounds like you might’ve died rather than do that too, several times, but he just kept insisting so I don’t really know what you were supposed to do in that situation other than what you did, which was get people to wreck the army and lose the stones” (and then lie low on Asgard and pretend you were dead so Thanos couldn’t find you)

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