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“There’s no comfort. You just choose your burden.”—Mobius, S2E6, Glorious Purpose
“Burden of care… describes the physical, emotional, social, and financial problems that can be experienced by family caregivers.”— National Institutes of Health
After about half an hour of laying in bed, Thor somehow managed to muster the motivation to get up. He put his hands on his back and did a slight standing backbend, showing off the start of a beer belly to no one. He knew that he should get back to working out, nip the pudge in the bud before it became an issue, but he couldn’t help but wonder who he was doing it for?
His family is dead. Jane is dead. The Guardians are gone, and Valkyrie is too busy with the job he pawned off to her to do anything these days. Even Korg went off with Dwayne to start his new life as a father.
So who would care if he got fat?
He made his way over to the kitchen. He needed a beer.
Then Thor saw something out of the corner of his eye, like his kitchen was unraveling, spaghettifying. He moved to face it to find his entire house–walls, floor, furniture– was coming apart and finishing into a green haze.
And there he was on a stone island in the nothing.
“Brother?”
Thor turned to find Loki sitting on a golden throne atop a stone dais. After a moment, Thor realized there was no back to the stool, and what he thought was a baldachin behind him was countless cords leading into his back, hooking him into some unseen thing in the haze.
“Oh, Loki,” Thor said, pain evident in his voice. “What did you get yourself into this time?”
Loki grimaced. “For once, I’m exactly where I am meant to be–honestly, I thought you would be more concerned with my apparent resurrection than what’s going on in my life.”
Thor shrugged. “A lot’s been going on in my life this past week.”
“I know,” Loki reached up and drew one of the cords behind him into his hand. “I’ve been examining the timelines, helping some of my friends get to the place best suited for them, and I saw what happened with you and Gorr and…Jane.”
“How–Where is this place?” Thor asked.
“The Nexus of All Things” Loki let go of the tendril and let it drift back up into the haze “The Trunk Yggdrasil.”
“Yggdrasil,” Thor whispered, and the memory of him telling Jane all about the Nine Realms beside the campfire conjured itself in his mind. “How did you get here? I thought you would have gone to Valhalla when you died.”
“That version of me did, but this me diverged from my path before that fateful encounter with Thanos. I’m different from the man you remember. All the way up to the invasion of New York, I am the same, but I have ceased to be the God of Mischief–I have become the God of Time and Stories.”
“Time and stories,” Thor said, taking in the sight of all the branches.
“Not much else to be the God of out here.”
Thor snapped his gaze back to Loki, the weight of Loki’s position finally beginning to set in.“So you’re all alone here?”
Loki chuckled humorously. “Most of the time. There are visitors, from time to time. I’ll see Uatu or a Strange variant from time to time, but mostly it’s just me. Me and my wonderful chaos,”—he glanced at the web of timelines— “My glorious purpose.”
Loki must have seen that Thor was becoming uncomfortable because he said “I may not be your Loki, but I do consider you my Thor.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Because… I need a favor. A favor that only you—in your timeline—is truly capable of.” Loki turned his body to almost see behind his throne. “Come on, Kid.”
Thor watched as a kid, fourteen at most, came out from behind Loki’s ruined throne. Something about him was familiar, but in a distant sense, like he was the child of one of the castle staff he’d spar with growing up. His coiffed black hair was held back by a golden coronet with both wings and a V shape on the front.
It took Thor only a moment to realize the front emblem was not of a V but two horns.
This kid, too, was Loki.
“Most of the banished Lokis have found a close enough approximation of their original branch to return to” Loki explained “However, just because anything can happen doesn’t mean it will happen twice. Even if it did, they would punish him for an accident he has already paid the price for tenfold at the hands of the TVA.”
“Why me, though?” Thor said “If what you say is true, then why am I more special than the other Thors?”
A single tear escaped Loki’s eye. “Because you chose love. You not only chose it, but you convinced Gorr the God Butcher to choose it…and this kid’s going to need your help to choose it again, too.”
Thor looked over at the Kid Loki. He may have the physical appearance of his brother as a child, but Thor realized that the kid hadn’t looked him in the eye once, slumping his shoulder and finding the ground or some lower branch more interesting.
“Hey,” Thor said.
Kid Loki glanced up for the briefest moment just to check that Thor was actually talking to him. “Hey.”
“I don’t know if I can handle him,” Thor said, and it was true. The pain of losing Jane was still fresh in his heart and psyche. Loki talked about love, but he had no one beyond touch and go friendships with Valkyrie and Lady Sif.
“I know you can because I’ve seen what you’re capable of. Just one timeline to the left, Gorr did not survive after wishing his daughter back, and you chose to take her in, to love her as your own. You were Love and Thunder, father and daughter. You have that love inside you, the only difference is that you have nowhere to put it.”
Thor looked at the kid wistfully. He didn’t want to be alone. If that was a selfish reason to take in a kid, then so be it.
“You were a handful at that age,” Thor said.
“So is he, but unlike me, he actually wants to be good. Chaotic good, but nonetheless good.”
Thor laughed, tears rolling down his eyes. He was doing this. He was actually doing this.
“What about you?” Thor said.
“What about me?”
“You’ll be alone once he’s gone.”
Loki shrugged. “Glorious burden.”
“Loki,” Thor said. There were a million things he wanted to say. He wanted to tell him how much he loved and missed him. He wanted to know how to get back–how to help him not be lonely.
Instead, he did something he wasn’t sure he ever did. He ran up to his brother and hugged him. He felt Loki wrap his arms around him, and, though tears in his eyes he could see all the timelines extending from Loki float around him like an air hug.
“I love you, too, Brother,” Loki said.
Thor, despite his heart, let go of Loki. He saw the world falling away like strings around him, revealing his kitchen yet again.
He blinked, unsure whether any of that truly happened.
“So where the Hel is this place anyway?”
Thor flinched, finding his teenage brother standing in the flesh.
“Norway, Midgard.”
“Midgarde,” Loki said, walking around and taking in the place. He grabbed a picture of Thor and Jane and glanced at it before moving on to Thor’s other tchotchkes and trophies. “Other Me said that he once lost a bet with you and had to come down here and rob a plane.”
Thor chuckled. He’d forgotten that story. “Yes, yes he did.”
“So can we go rob a plane?”
“No.”
“What about a bank?”
Thor sighed. Yep, this definitely was his brother.
“Wow,” Loki made his way to the cabinets in search of food “I mean, the other me told me about Ragnarok and everything, but I had no idea how boring Earth would be. I can see why he chose this place for invasion. Wouldn’t want to be persona non grata for somewhere you actually want to be should things go awry.”
“I can assure you, Brother, this world has much to offer if you let it.”
Loki stopped what he was doing and scrunched his lips in the same way he’d seen a thousand times. He was debating whether or not it would be better just to keep his mouth shut.
“Oh,” Thor said. “I suppose I did jump the gun there.”
“No,” Loki closed the cabinet and turned to face Thor. “It’s just… it’s been a long time since anyone has called me brother,” he paused for a moment before tacking on “Brother.”
Thor smiled. Part of him knew that this was not the same person he had grown up with over the centuries, but it didn’t matter. He was family–something Thor never thought he would get the chance to have again. On Earth, there was the adage that grief was love with nowhere to go. The grief was still there, maybe it would always be there, but now, Thor had someone to give his love to.