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Loki slipped back into himself just as the automated voice identifying Timely as He Who Remains and opened the blast doors, revealing the Loom. He knew what would happen now. It had happened so many times, no matter how much he had tried to stop it. Loki turned away from his friends and looked at it, the sight of it caused him to tear up. This was the thing that he and his friends had dedicated so much time and energy into fixing only for it to blow up and destroy the extra branches anyway. And taking this finale look at it only just confirmed to Loki what he had to do.
“It’s worse than I thought.” Loki heard O.B say from behind him, “We have to move fast. Who’s it gonna-”
“No.” Loki interrupted him, shaking his head. “No.”
“‘No?’ Loki, what do you mean no?” B-15. The hunter that Loki hated upon first meeting for bringing him to the TVA, only for her to become one of his most trusted friends. Funny how things worked out like that.
He turned to look back towards his friends and shook his head again, “It’s not going to work.”
Mobius then chimed in “Loki it’s going to work, it’s okay.” Oh Mobius, sweet hopeful Mobius who had helped him in ways he hadn’t even realized. The man who was the reason he’d become a better person, a better god, in the first place. “No, no it’s not. It’s never going to work.”
“What do you mean?” O.B asked “Are you confused about the plan? Because I can explain it to you again if you want. Although it would have to be very short as we are in a little bit of a time crunch.”
“Who cares?” Sylvie snapped, “We don’t have time to sit around and talk about this.”
“Actually..” Loki raised his finger, exactly like he did with He Who Remains and with Sylvie when the branch was crumbling down around them. He wasn’t even sure if he could stop time in the TVA but he had to try, besides Loki had already proved it was possible to time-slip inside of the TVA so possibly…
When he looked towards the windows and saw that answer. The Loom had stopped, the branches had stopped, everything was stopped. Everything except for himself and the others in the room.
“How did you do that?” Casey asked, astonished.
“I learned to control it. My time-slipping.” Loki answered by putting his hand back down.
“What? Time-slipping? No Loki, we fixed that, remember?” Mobius said “You shouldn’t be able to time-slip anymore. And I certainly don’t remember you being able to freeze time before.”
“It came back. After the Loom exploded.”
“Exploded? No Loki it’s right there, it’s frozen but it’s there. And we need to fix it.”
Loki shook his head again “It won’t matter, even if we do everything right and install the Multiplier it won’t work. It’ll still explode because there will always be too many branches for it handle, and you can’t–”
“Y-You can’t scale f-for infinite. It’s like trying to di-divide by zero-o.” Timely finished, realizing just as he had before that they hadn’t fixed it afterall. Only just gave them false hope and delayed the inevitable.
“Exactly.” Loki said softly. “I’ve seen it happen, I’ve lived through it happening. Again and again we failed to implement the multiplayer into the Loom. And even the one time we actually managed to succeed it didn’t change anything.”
“So all this time we’ve been working towards a pointless goal?” Sylvie scoffed “So the Loom explodes and that’s just it? Nothing left?”
“Not exactly,” Loki responded “see, the Loom is a fail safe designed to protect the Sacred Timeline and nothing else.”
“Wait, how do you know all of this about the Loom?” B-15 asked, “Is it something we discovered after so many failed attempts?”
“No, I was told this by He Who Remains.”
“But he’s dead.” O.B chimed in, causing a small squeak to leave Victor Timely. Probably at the reminder that his variant was dead and that the people responsible for that were here in the same room as him.
“I went back, time-slipped to before Sylvie killed him. Hoping that if I could somehow stop that then none of this would happen.”
“But it didn’t work out huh?” Sylvie asked, already knowing what Loki was going to say about that experience. “Because the only way for you to stop me from killing him, was if you killed me.”
Loki nodded “That’s right. It was killing you or letting the Look explode.”
“So you’ve doomed us all then.”
Loki shook his head and took a couple of steps towards her–towards the stairs that lead down to the gangway–“No. I know that killing you, a variant of myself, was exactly what He Who Remains would have done. It’s what he did do in order to win the war the first time. But I told you in the Automat, remember? It’s up to us to be better than He Who Remains.”
“How do we do that?” Casey asked “How do we all be better if we’re doomed to fail?”
Loki took three steps back–so close now– “I have a plan. I know what to do. What has to happen.”
“Okay then.” Mobius said, clapping his hands together, “How do we help?”
Loki turned and looked at him, every interaction between the two of them echoing in his mind. Every word they said, and every word that wasn’t said, that should have been said if Loki hadn't been such a coward. Mobius, who had taken one look at Loki and managed to see beyond just his villainous facade, the one who had believed in and trusted Loki even when he shouldn’t have. The one who had made Loki into the person he was right now.
The one he would miss the most.
His eyes drifted from Mobius to B-15, remembering the journey he had with her too. How they started off hating and antagonizing one another to becoming true friends who could count on one another. He hoped that she would retain her kindness and continue to support and defend the other branches as she had been so determined to do.
To Casey, the same person who Loki had once threatened to gut like a fish. He had threatened Casey back then because he had looked weak; only now Casey didn’t look weak now. He carried himself with so much more confidence than Loki had ever seen him, and he hoped that would stay. Loki remembered seeing him in that jumpsuit after having clearly escaped a prison of some kind. If only they had more time, he and Casey–and even Sylvie if she wanted to–could have caused so much mischief together. Driving Mobius and B-15 up the walk with various pranks.
Perhaps…Perhaps in another life.
Then he looked towards Ouroboros–O.B–someone he had still only just met, but a friend he had made so, so quickly. He was the person who had taught Loki so much about physics and science and even if it had been all for naught at least he had managed to spend that time with a friend. He would miss O.B’s blunt but optimistic personality, he had truly never met anyone like him before. At least this time he wouldn’t be forgotten and left alone in the TVA basement for 400+ years. He’d be remembered and visited by everyone at the TVA, and he would have his book everywhere, on every single desk. Exactly as he’d always wanted in his own timeline.
And finally he landed on Sylvie, even if some part of him was insanely frustrated with her for getting them into this mess in the first place, he couldn’t 100 percent hold it against her. She had suffered immensely at the system He Who Remains put into place, and was driven by nothing but revenge for so long. He thought he loved her once, and perhaps he still did, but not in the way he had originally thought he did(no he felt that way about someone else now, perhaps he felt that way the whole time and never realized it). He loved Sylvie the sand way that he loved Thor. He hoped that she would finally be able to be happy on her branch, finally able to live out her life freely and without fear or worry. Without pain and suffering and death and chaos. At least perhaps one Loki could still win here.
Loki smiled at all of his friends, feeling tears build up in his eyes and raised his hand to unfreeze time.
“It’s time to make the hard choices,” He said, quoting past Mobius, “and break something to replace it with something better.” Echoing his conversation with Sylvie.
And with that Loki he turned and raced down the steps to the gangway, locking his friends out once he reached the bottom. He could hear the sound of their footsteps on the stairs as they tried to go after him, but he couldn’t let them in. If he did that then he’d never be able to do what needed to be done.
“Loki, open the door. Open the door Loki.” Mobius demanded as he pounded on the door.
“I know what I want. I know what kind of god I need to be, for you.” His eyes went to Mobius, hoping that he would see everything Loki wasn’t saying, everything he wanted to say about how he truly felt for the analyst. “For all of us.” He looked to everyone else; to Sylvie standing next to Mobius, to B-15, Casey, and O.B standing on the stairs looking at him with heartbreak written all over their faces. And simply because he just couldn’t stop himself “For all time. Always.”
Then he smiled one last time at everyone. He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. But he knew that they would understand what he had said.
He then used his magic to peel the doors to the gangway and the Loom open, and immediately was hit with a rush of colors, sounds and radiation. The radiation hurt a lot more than he was expecting but he didn’t care, he wouldn’t let a little pain stop him from doing this.
He walked down the gangway, his eyes never leaving the Loom watching it grow bigger and brighter the closer he got. As he walked he felt his clothes peel away and were replaced with dark green robes and a flowing cape. But then he realized that while the initial burst of temporal radiation hurt he realized that the rest of it was seeping into him, into his bones, his blood, his very soul. He knew what the radiation was doing to him, it was changing him into what he needed to become. What he was probably always destined to become.
When he got to the end of the gangway he stretched out his hands, letting his magic flow through him, and put all his might into pulling the Loom apart breaking it. There was a giant flash of light and then–
Darkness.
Dark and quiet as the branches that the Loom drifted around him. They were dark and breaking apart.
They were dying.
No.
Loki reached out and grabbed one branch, using his magic to fill it with life and energy. The branch glowed green and drifted up, alive once again. He then did the same to another branch, and another, and another, until the once dark Loom was filled with floating branches all glowing a brilliant green.
But it wasn’t over yet.
The glowing branches then moved as a rift opened up showing Loki where he had to go next. And where he’d have to stay.
The End of Time.
Loki turned around, looking back out at his friends one last time before stepping off the broken gangway and climbed up to the rift where the end of time was waiting for him. Grabbing more branches as he went and pulling them along. Loki climbed up the rock where He Who Remains citadel once stood. Now it was just a rock floating in space with nothing left on it but a throne. A throne that he climbed towards and watched as the throne turned into a gilded one, waiting for him to sit upon it.
Loki sat down on that cursed but necessary throne and pulled the branches together with all the strength he had left in his body. When he had finally connected them there was a bright flash of green light and then there was Yggdrasil. The Tree of Life. Something that could allow all the branches to live together and thrive. To grow and bloom and be nurtured, just as it always should have been. Just as Loki was always destined to do and what he would continue to do forever.
And Loki smiled and cried as he let the sounds of a thriving multiverse echo through his ears, knowing that he could never share this experience with the ones he truly loved.