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“I see you got your throne after all,” Thor says, bitterly.
His golden hair is long and disheveled. His eyes glare up at Loki in colors of cerulean and amber. In his left hand, he holds Mjölnir and, in his right, a great battleaxe of dwarven make.
This Thor is a warrior, then. This Thor has held hatred in his heart for Loki, but also abundant love. This Thor has seen Loki die and does not yet fully believe to have found him again.
He stands before Loki through means which Loki himself isn’t quite sure of. Perhaps it was the Norns who pointed him in the right direction. Perhaps it was the human sorcerer who opened a portal, or maybe Tony Stark himself. Loki hadn’t been paying close attention to the once Sacred Timeline. It hurt too much.
But no, he remembers. Stark is dead in that one, slain by his own heroic deed of defeating Thanos.
Loki shuffles his feet on the ground to remember that there is a ground at all, runs his hands over the armrests of his throne to recall where he is sitting. He is real, and his body is real, even if it becomes easy to forget sometimes.
And Thor… Thor is not a figment of his imagination either.
“Brother,” Loki says, and the word feels a little foreign on his tongue. He has not spoken in a long time. Has not spoken here at all. He doesn’t know what he expected; an echo, perhaps, or maybe for the emptiness around him to swallow up all sound, like the vacuum of space.
But there is none of that. He speaks, and he is heard.
Thor’s face hardens.
“You dare call me that?” he asks. “After betraying me once more? After making me weep over your body and then go on a quest to avenge you?”
“Ah,” Loki says, realizing that of course this Thor would feel wronged by him, that he now bears the scorn for deeds he has never committed. “I am not who you think me to be.”
Thor’s eyes narrow in suspicion. He must either think that Loki is trying to be deliberately enigmatic, or that he is facing some being who only bears Loki’s likeness in order to taunt him.
Thor has not come here for him, Loki knows. This Thor thought him dead for many years before he found him sitting in this gilded prison, and thus he has every right to mistrust the ghost he is now being confronted with.
But the truth is, no one else has reason to come and find Loki.
His own Thor — the one from the world where Loki managed to escape from New York with the Tessaract in his clutches and was subsequently picked up by the TVA — is dead. Strangled by Thanos, much like Loki otherwise might have been. In that universe, Thanos never gathered all the Infinity Stones and the Snap never happened; instead, he continued to go about his plans in the old-fashioned way.
In reaction to his words, Thor gives him a hard look, trying to discern all there is to him. And slowly, very slowly, the mistrust melts away into marvel and mystification.
Can he taste the knowledge Loki has accrued in his centuries spent with O.B. as his tutor? The wisdom he gained while observing the timelines? Can he tell that this Loki is his Loki only in so far that you can never step into the same river twice, even if it continues to bear the same name?
Lokis, as always, are the crux of the matter.
“Your hands have touched mine, and my heart has loved yours,” Loki allows. “I am your brother in all the ways that matter.”
Thor swallows visibly, closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, he is still frowning deeply, but he sets down his axe and lets Mjolnir limply dangle from the leather strap around his wrist.
Then he takes a deep breath and looks around.
Not much has changed since Loki first came here. The branches have grown stronger, healthier, twining around each other to form thick braided stalks. They intersect here and there, realities touching one another, for better or worse.
But the higher up they go, the further they grow apart.
This is centuries from where Loki left off. Millennia. It’s futures decided by children who were never born in some realities. Futures of worlds that ceased to exist in others. Branches that break off altogether, because all life in them was snuffed out in some unfathomable cataclysm.
There’s a green glow to everything, courtesy of his magic that he has infused into the vines in order to sustain and stabilize them. The strongest among them positively pulsate with life. They are the ones that require the least attention, the least of his power. Other weaker ones begin to wither the moment he ignores them a little too long, like bird chicks in their nest, forever screaming to be fed.
There’s one of those now, squirming and squalling, a babe calling for its mother, and Loki reaches for it, lovingly caresses its spine. He can feel the wars that are fought on this timeline, the slaughter and the strive, but also the joy and jubilation. There’s no Loki in that timeline, nor anyone like him; Ymir never sprung forth from the Élivágar, and thus neither Aesir nur Jotnar ever came to be. And yet, Loki loves it all the same.
Once upon a time, he had been a capricious god. One of trickery and scheming. Now, all that feels like a faint memory, like lives lived by someone else.
His throne exists outside of time and space. He has been here for a moment and for eternity. He has not eaten or slept, he has not aged or grown fatigued. His hair has not grown longer, nor his eyes weaker.
Loki is in a place where things should not be. Loki is a conundrum. Loki is a paradox.
“I thought Yggdrasil was a legend,” Thor says cautiously. He is taking care not to touch any of the vines surrounding him, his shoulders hunched inward. His gaze is still alert, as though he might expect an ambush from without.
“You thought Ragnarök was a legend,” Loki reminds Thor. “And we were legends to humans, once. There’s a grain of truth to every story that has ever been told.”
The truth is that Loki has always loved stories, and poetry. His silver tongue had not become silver by itself. The existence of Yggdrasil had been one of his favorite tales and, when they were younger, he and Thor had often set out in search for it, but never found it.
How curious then that Loki seems to be the one who had created it. Further proof that he existed outside of any chronological constraints now, that his present had become his own past, that Time was not linear, but fluent and interwoven.
Reach the end, only to return to the beginning. Like an Ouroboros. Like a Möbius strip.
Mobius, Loki thinks wistfully, and laments that he and Sylvie were the only Lokis to ever meet the man. He has checked the timelines; their paths have never crossed elsewhere.
He forces himself to concentrate once more. It’s difficult, because Loki normally has little reason to focus on anything but the timelines. But Thor is staring at him in growing awe, fear and pity in equal measures etched into the corners of his downturned mouth.
“You created this,” he realizes, his voice halting. “You grew Yggdrasil.”
“I did not plant the seed,” Loki corrects. “I merely water the roots as needed.”
A long-held breath escapes Thor, and then he loudly sucks one in again. A sigh and a gasp, juxtaposed. Does he need to breathe in this realm? Does Loki?
Then, with all strength seeming to flee him, Thor collapses, going down hard on one knee, genuflecting like in so many of Loki’s most frivolous fantasies. His right fist flies up to his breast, pressing against his heart, as though swearing fealty in front of his king.
“Whether you are my little brother or the creator of all things,” Thor says brokenly. “Whether you are both, or neither — I have come to ask you a boon.”
“A boon,” Loki returns, surprised. He is not sure he is a god who can answer prayers or grand wishes. No shrines have been built in his name, no holy scriptures written to spread his word. No one know where he is. No one knows what he does.
And yet… Thor seems to have found him somehow.
“I have exhausted all the means at my disposal,” Thor explains, sounding more wretched than Loki has ever heard him. His entire frame seems to tremble with his impotence. “I have spoken to gods and doctors, to witches and seers, but none could offer me an answer.”
He shudders out another breath, catches himself from crumbling in on himself.
“I have come to save my daughter.”
His daughter. Immediately, Loki’s thoughts flash toward the child that Sif bore him in a universe where Ragnarök has not yet come to pass, where Thor took the throne and a wife befitting his station, and raised a daughter who would one day become one of the Valkyries.
He does not think of the sons that Loki himself bore — for his brother, his lover, his king.
Because that’s the thing. They weren’t always raised as brothers. Sometimes, Odin chose diplomacy over theft, and arranged a marriage between the princes of Asgard and Jǫtunheim. Sometimes, a boisterous Thor invaded the icy plains of Utgard and found a bride instead of a battle. Sometimes he was banished for it, leaving Loki to rear their firstborn on his own. Sometimes, they were lawfully wedded and gifted Magni a little brother not so much later.
Loki likes those timelines. He hadn’t at first. Originally, it had disturbed him to see him and Thor in passionate embrace, to bear witness to their earth-sundering love.
But then, slowly, gradually, he realized that the world where they were only bound by fraternal or platonic affection — or worse, by hate — were by far in the minority. In most universes, they ended up falling into each other’s arms and beds. In quite a few of them, they had been raised side by side as brothers, and still couldn’t resist the draw they felt for one another.
The Sacred Timeline was the oddity then. The one where things went wrong.
“A curse has befallen her,” Thor explains, unaware of the things Loki has seen, the things Loki has felt. “And I have no one to blame but my own hubris and carelessness. If anyone deserves punishment, it is me.”
“That is not for you or me to decide,” Loki tells him, gently. He knows what it’s like to love a child. And to lose one, too.
Thor’s face crumples like a brittle leaf crushed by a cruel fist.
“Please,” he begs, pressing his palms to the cracked marble. Begs on his hands and knees as though he were not a god in his own right. “I have lost friends and lovers. I have lost my home and my family, including you, many times over. I cannot bear to lose her, too. Take my life to save hers, if you must, but don’t let me live on, when my love dooms everyone it touches.”
His pain is so palpable that Loki’s heart seizes with it. He wishes he could help, he wishes it, truly, but-
“I am not allowed to interfere.”
Loki is neither an Allfather nor a shepherd watching over his flock. He can neither govern nor actively protect. He is damned to watch instead of participate.
“Why not?” Thor challenges. The mere fact that he has found someone to argue with seems to restore some of the strength and courage that had previously forsaken him. Pigheaded, till the very end. “Why have I come all this way to find that the being at the end of all time wears this face, if it doesn’t mean that I deserve a morsel of mercy for once?”
“This face is meant for neither promise nor pleasure,” Loki says. “It is just my face, and I have no reason to change it.”
“Then help me!” Thor demands. “Do something! Why are you sitting at the core of it all, when you won’t lift a finger to save her life?!”
He is angry now, the kind of anger that is born from fear and grief and panic. Loki had been angry like that before. Loki had been wiling to sacrifice all that he had left.
Loki opens his mouth to placate Thor, but any and all words elude him.
Feeling foolish, he belatedly realizes that his rule of non-interference has been self-imposed. The multiverse was always about free will, about allowing variants to live. That’s what Sylvie had wanted. Loki had never aimed for anything beyond that.
He didn’t want power. He didn’t even want peace. He just wanted to protect those he loved.
And Thor, he remembers, is among that group.
“I’m not sure I can,” Loki admits. Suddenly, he is afraid of touching the branches. What if he upsets the balance and destroys something? What if, in his attempt to save Thor’s daughter, he wrecks everything else he has built? “I don’t know how.”
With an anguished cry, Thor pushes himself up from the ground and then stalks up the steps toward the throne. His hands are outstretched as if to grab and shake Loki but, instead, he reaches past him.
“Don’t!” Loki warns, but it is already too late.
Thor touches a strand, closes all his fingers around it. He stills, stares, as if in a trance, only to jerk back after a moment, sweat-soaked and frantic.
“What is this sorcery?” he demands, short of breath. The look in his eyes is that of a cornered animal.
“Oh,” Loki says, small-voiced. He already has an idea what Thor may have seen. After all, he keeps all his favorite timelines close to him, to revisit precious moments and enjoy what could have been.
These are the ones where Asgard sees a long and prosperous period under Thor’s reign, where Frigga lives to die of old age. The ones where Loki never falls off the Bifrost to be found by Thanos, where Loki is not eaten up by the revelation of his heritage. They are the ones where Thor lives and where Loki lives, and where they love each other wholly.
Quickly, he touches it, too, just to make sure, and sees his worries confirmed.
Thor is king here, and Loki his consort. They are brothers still, but they have always been more. The kisses started in their adolescence, and the rest quickly followed. Frigga gave them her blessing, and they gave her grandchildren. It’s one of the easier timelines, one bereft of betrayal and bitterness. Loki could watch it endlessly. He often does.
“It’s one of the universes,” he explains, drawing his hand away and avoiding Thor’s eyes. “One possibility of many.”
“A possibility?” Thor echoes in disbelief. “For us to have- to-”
“To share a throne instead of fight for it,” Loki finishes for him. It stings that Thor cannot even bring himself to utter the words. That Thor is so shocked and confused.
I was, too, he reminds himself. I was disgusted by what I saw, until I watched long enough to understand.
“I am not responsible for what happens in these worlds,” Loki explains. “The people in them make their own decisions and follow their own desires. I just safeguard their freedom to do so.”
Thor is still breathing heavily, once more throwing wary looks at the way the tree envelops them. For the first time, he seems to recognize it for the cage that it is. Then he seems to compose himself.
“My decision was to come here,” he says, resolute. “My desire is to save my daughter. What do you make of that?”
Loki purses his lips.
“I do not know,” he replies, his words halting. “No one from within Time is supposed to be here.”
Thor frowns. “You’re here.”
“I haven’t been touched by Time in a long time,” he says, knowing full well it would be too complicated to explain all about the TVA and the variants and the time slipping. “I was taken out of the context of my own reality and put somewhere else. That’s what used to happen to those of us that made the wrong decisions. We were taken and we were erased.”
It must sound haunting to one who has always been an integral part of the Sacred Timeline. Like describing colors to a blind man and expecting him to understand.
“What was your decision, then?” Thor wants to know, and Loki smiles.
“I ran from you,” he says. The best world, after all, are those in which he stays.
At that, Thor looks at Loki, truly looks, and — at long last — seems to realize that he is really speaking to Loki. Not some higher entity. Not some malevolent spirit. Just the boy he grew up with.
“Aren’t you running right now?” he asks, as though Loki were not bound to this wretched place.
“I-” Loki says, and nothing more.
How long had he run from the possibility of having to kill Sylvie? How long had he pretended that Victor ought to be the one to volunteer? How long had he tiptoed around that which was readily apparent?
“I can try,” he relents, and does.
And so Loki plucks at the vine of the Sacred Timeline the way a musician might pluck at the strings of his instrument. The resonance reverberates through his entire being and reveals all its truths to him. Past, present, and future.
There is Ragnarök, and the snapping of Loki’s spine. There is the slaying of Thanos by Thor’s hand, and the long stretch of darkness following it. There is Jane Foster, dying in Thor’s arms. And there’s the girl, fading, fast.
But, even as he watches, the events surrounding Thor seem to change. Moving. Realigning.
There is Thor, stepping outside of Time, like an umbrella opening above his head. And then, when the umbrella closes, his path is clear.
Oh, Loki marvels, beginning to understand.
Thor made the decision to beg. And Loki made the decision to help. The Sacred Timeline complies, as though it were always meant to happen.
“You will go to the planet of Sennight,” he says. “And to the city of Yestreen. There’s a beast there that guides a garden, and in the garden you will find a flower. The beast will try to kill you, but if you kill the beast, the garden will turn into dust and ashes. You must feed the flower to your girl, roots, stem, and blossoms. Then, and only then, will she live.”
“How will I know which flower it is?” Thor wants to know. “There could be millions.”
“There are,” Loki confirms. “But I have already told you enough.”
Thor’s exhales, his nostrils flaring, but he does not prod Loki for further answers. It’s only a glimmer of hope, but it is hope. He nods, pacified.
“What about you?” he demands instead, and Loki looks up at him in bewilderment.
“What about me?” he returns.
“You think I am going to leave without you?” Thor asks. There’s a hint of humor in his voice, but it has a desperate edge to it. “After I have finally found you again?”
“I am not yours, and you are not mine,” Loki tells him sadly, but Thor merely gives him a grim smile.
“You are,” he says. “In all the ways that matter.”
Unbidden, tears rise to Loki’s eyes.
“Don’t make this harder than it is,” he pleads. “Go save your daughter and forget about me. I cannot leave any more that you can stay. We both have our duties to fulfill.”
“Your duty?” Thor echoes, giving the tree another derisive look. His fingertips, however, reach toward another branch, curious, only to recoil at the last moment. “To drown yourself in could-have-beens?”
But Loki shakes his head. “The tree will die without me, and then all realities will collapse. Everything and everyone you know would be doomed.”
This, at least, is the truth. He might be able to, one day, when the tree has grown strong enough to sustain itself. But, until then, he is caught here.
The TVA taught Loki the value of humility. The throne taught him the cost of greatness.
Suddenly, it all seems like too much.
A wretched sob racks Loki’s body, making himself curl inward on himself like a child.
“I don’t want to be here,” he cries out. “I am sick of watching, of guarding. I want to live again, to be part of it all.”
Hell would be kinder than this, he thinks. What glorious purpose is there in watching his children be born and die within a blink? What heroics in watching Thor marry Jane, marry Sif, marry a dozen different women? What reward in watching his mother be slain again and again and again?
Suddenly, there is a warm palm on Loki’s cheek, and it is so unexpected he flinches. The last time he touched another being was when he shook hands with a Mobius who barely knew him yet.
When he looks up, a single tear escapes his eye, only to be quickly brushed away by Thor’s thumb.
“Loki,” Thor says, and it sounds like a prayer.
He bends over Loki on his throne, and his hand moves toward the back of Loki’s neck in a half-forgotten gesture. When their foreheads touch, the rest of Loki’s tears spill over.
“I will come back for you,” Thor promises. “Whatever happens, I will come back.”
“You can’t,” Loki protests. “ I can’t.”
“We can,” Thor insists. “Decisions, remember. I have decided to bright you home with me. Now it’s your turn.”
Loki’s breath hitches.
It shouldn’t make sense. Thor is not supposed to be the smart one. Thor shouldn’t be able to find loopholes in the tightly-woven fabric that Loki has spun around himself.
But there are. You just have to poke your fingers through them.
When he regains his composure, Thor pulls away, calmly watching him as Loki wipes at his damp cheeks.
“So?” Thor prompts. “What now?”
“Go save your daughter,” Loki instructs him. His voice still quavers, but he is certain now. “And then… then return for me.”
For Loki exists outside of time. No matter how long he stays here, he will not age or die. Whatever feels like an eternity here can be a blink or a millennium in the real world. So, should he one day be ready to leave, he can pick whichever moment on whichever timeline in order to go back.
It would have to be one where there is no Loki, he muses. Where there is a Thor in need of one. The Sacred Timeline is just one of many now. But Loki thinks he could once more find his place in it.
Blindly, he reaches for the according branch, closes his eyes to read it, to feel it.
Then he nods. His eyes blink open, and his gaze is clear once more.
“We will meet again,” he decides.
Thor’s smile, when it comes, is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.