Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Valhalla

Loki sees Mother first.

He’s standing at the end of something that looks like the Bifrost, leading to a gleaming city flush with life. It isn’t Asgard, but not unlike it either.

Mother walks the rainbow path towards him clad in a glimmering white gown and a welcoming smile. She’d been golden then too, when he’d denied her claim on him, when he’d caused her death. Facing her is torture, but worse is the pain that comes from looking away, and at Odin.

Loki looks back at Mother. He wants to walk towards her, but his feet freeze and refuse to be moved. Mother reaches him and cups his face in her hands. Her fingers capture the wetness there, and wipes it away.  

“Mother,” he rasps, because he still dreams of losing her, because of course she’s his mother. She is, and always will be his mother. Loki will never deny that again. He wraps his arms around her smaller frame and brings her close. She’s small in frame, but her arms are tight around him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. You’re home now, dearheart.” She had stopped calling him that at his behest many centuries ago, but to hear it again is destiny fulfilled. Asgard was not a place, Odin had said. It was the people. But he was no Asgardian. It’s been years since he stopped believing he would be allowed entry to this hallowed place. If Odin couldn’t allow a frost giant on the throne of Asgard, how would one be accepted in the coveted halls of Valhalla?

Odin. He remembers Odin, remembers him saying he loved—

He remembers Hela, and Surtur. The heat of the eternal fire on his face. He remembers tending to Thor’s damaged eye socket, letting the heavy head of his king rest on his shoulders as they fell asleep on the floor beside the bed like children.

Loki remembers the carnage. The Statesman. Heimdall, dead.

Thor.

Thor.

Loki seizes Mother by the wrist. “Where is Thor?”

“Your brother still lives,” Odin tells him. He looks at Loki with a tenderness he hasn’t seen since he’d been a child. The old fool really has gone soft in his old age. “Your battle is over now, worry no longer of the living. You, my prodigal son, have come home.” Odin offers him his hand. Loki looks at his father’s hand, still big enough to cover his own, and accepts it.

Titan

Move, Nebula tells herself, and the parts of her body that aren’t flesh and bone react to the order even as the rest refuses in anguish. Move, damn it.

There’s a wet choking sound from beside her, and there she finds the human with the gaping chest wound. Stark. The only one whose name Thanos had bothered to learn and remember.

The other human had surrendered his infinity stone for the life of this one insignificant human, and if he hadn’t turned to dust with the rest of them, Nebula would have killed him herself. But he’d seen fourteen million ways that this horrible nightmare had ended and believed success depended on a man named Tony Stark.  

Now it is just the two of them on Titan, the first graveyard that Thanos had ever dug. The madman had kept his promise, technically. Stark was still alive, but not for much longer if she didn’t do anything about it.

Somewhere in the alpha quadrant.

Tony wakes up and regrets it immediately. Tony wakes up and he’s not lucky enough to forget the horror; he remembers all of it with frightening clarity. He’s cased in a glass tube, naked and clean, but there is dust everywhere. It’s under his fingernails and in his lungs, coursing through his veins, and it’s all Peter. Peter, the high school student, Peter who deserved so much more than to die like a foot soldier on a planet long dead and forgotten. Tony remembers a gaping hole in his chest, but it’s a pink line that cuts through the arc reactor and shield scars.  He feels like a wall that’s been painted over one too many times — stretched and compressed and ready to crack. Tony remembers being dragged into a ship and pushed into this thing, remembers something being jabbed into his neck.

The glass tube opens, and the blue alien/android holds out a pile of clothes. Tony puts them on, slowly, wrapping it around himself like armour. The bleeding edge armour is still inside of him, but the nanites need repair, the kind of repair he needs to do in his lab, on earth. “Do you understand galactic standard?”

“Yes.” He’ll have to thank Thor whenever he — right. Thor is dead.

Nebula nods. “Try not too move around too much. You aren’t completely healed, whatever the hell you are, and your tech is actively fighting the regeneration process. Follow me.”

Any other day, he would have considered arguing, but now he doesn’t have the energy nor the will to do so. “What’s your name?” He finally asks as they reach the bridge.

“Nebula,” she sits down at the helm. “I’m taking you back to Earth.”

“Why?”

“It’s where you’re from. It’s a good place to start fixing this mess as any other.”

A good start? This wasn’t a start, this was the end, there was nothing left.

“No.” He hadn’t even realised he was saying all this out loud. Nebula turns around in her seat to face him. “This isn’t the end. This is where we fight back, where we don’t let that monster live happily ever after he took everything that mattered to us. We’ll fix this—”

“—fix what? We failed,” Tony snaps. Peter. Strange. All the other aliens — they’re all just dust. The whole universe is dust. Six years of forethought, and for what? “You were there! You saw what happened, we couldn’t protect anyone.”

“Then we’ll damn well avenge them,” Nebula snarls back. Tony does a double take. “Now shut up or be helpful, there isn’t enough fuel to run the FTL drive, but it’ll take a few weeks to get to Earth at near light speed. I need to manually navigate through this damn shipwreck here, you’re going to look at the star charts and make sure we’re going in the right direction.”

He’s so tired. He’s tried all he could, and it wasn’t enough. He wants to sleep and never get up again. Tony sits down at a console. There’s silence.

“I don’t even know where to start.”                                 

Nebula turns around in her seat. “Thanos thinks you’re a threat. That’s a good enough start for me. Now we just need to figure out —”

The ship shakes, a loud bang against the glass. Tony calls for the nanites in his bones, and Nebula jumps up into an offensive position. “What the ever-loving fuck was that?”

“Life signs, portside viewing glass,” the computer replies.

Tony looks up; he sees a humanoid creature, dark blue and oddly familiar, plastered to the hull glass.  

Valhalla

They feast for three days and three nights, and their plates are never empty and their goblets never dry. The Warriors Three welcome him, but that must be more out of duty for they also find their seats and continue to make merry. Loki sits beside his mother, drinking apple cider and mead and being given choice pieces of boar meat. Valkyrie comes in on the third day, a tall, dangerous looking Valkyrie follows her in. Val smacks him upside the head, hard.

“I’d have been fine if you’d left me on Sakaar,” she tells him, then kisses his cheek.

The other Valkyrie’s nose flares at that, and that’s when it clicks. Loki knows this face, he’s seen countless paintings of her leading armies of Valkyries adorning the walls and ceilings of Asgard.  

“I have no idea what you’re worried about, he’s like, five,” Val tells her. “I’m pretty sure you changed his nappy at some point.”

“What?” Loki stares at the other woman.

“Brunnhilde, meet, Loki. Loki, meet Brunnhilde,” Val says.

“Technically, we met a long time ago too,” Brunnhilde says with a smile. “There may have been nappies involved.”

“No, we didn’t, I think I’d remember meeting a Valkyrie,” Loki replies drolly. “And can we stop talking about nappies, please?”

“Really? You don’t remember Thor dragging you to watch the Valkyries train?” Frigga asks from his left.

A glimpse of the training grounds, blonde hair in twin braids. Tiny fingers reaching for a golden necklace upon tawny skin, waves of tickly hair making him sneeze. A child’s laughter in the background.

“Exactly how old are you?” Loki asks Val.

“Frigga, your son’s a rude little shit,” Val tells him, then bows to Mother before dragging Brunnhilde away, leaving Loki with his laughing parents, the traitors.

“That was odd,” Loki says when silence returns.

“Do you remember when Thor wanted a blue Valkyrie’s uniform?” Mother asks, and Loki means to laugh, but he knows what comes out of him is more akin to a sob.

“Loki?”

Loki empties his goblet. “What exactly is it that people do in the afterlife, because if it’s rather alright with you, I’d prefer to die again that go to another feast.”

-

The not-Bifrost, or more officially the Final Path, leads to all the stars in the universe. If he sits at the edge and focuses hard enough, he can see the world of the living. Not that they matter. He’s dead now, they’re not supposed to matter.

Loki’s never been good at letting things go though, so he looks.

He is on what seems to be the least backwards country on Earth. Thor is in a room of his own. Wide, open windows are covered in deep blue curtains.

Thor lays on the bed in a curled position, nothing to hold onto or to his name, and weeps like a mother whose children are never coming home. Like a king without a kingdom.

Odin finds him in the morning. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“We’re dead, why do we need to sleep?” Loki questions. “Or eat for three days?”

“We don’t have to, I suppose,” Odin stands beside him. “You’ve found Thor. He mourns you.”

“He mourns everything. He hasn’t got anything left.”

“He will survive. When we thought you lost to the Bifrost, he was inconsolable. But he survived it, and he will survive this.” Odin holds out his hand, and Loki feels half as tall as he is. “Come now Loki, let the living worry about the living. He is no longer in the same realm as you. This is your home now, and it’s time you got to know it a little better.”

Loki takes the offered hand, and follows him silently. He doesn’t ask how Valhalla can be his home if home is a people. Loki isn’t Thor, he doesn’t have people.

For a few weeks, he had Thor, but now even that is gone. He’s not sure what he’s doing here, but Loki is intrinsically adaptable. He’s the God of Mischief. He’ll find his niche, or worst-case scenario, he’ll make it himself.

-

Thor weeps.

Queen Shuri has allowed him a bed in her castle, even as she and her people mourn a brother and a king. Thor has no people to mourn for him, it is he who must mourn his people. They’d been so close. They had defeated Hela, Loki was finally by his side again, and he’d made friends with an actual Valkyrie, and all for naught. All dead, all in Valhalla while Thor, the idiot child who tried to play king still lives on with the dishonor of not even being able to avenge them.

Three weeks. It has been three weeks on Earth. The Avengers try to stitch up a mortal wound upon the planet, but they are failing. Then, they come here to lick their still scabbing wounds. Last night, it had been a leaking oil tanker in the north. Before that, stopping North Korea from invading its southern neighbour. Before that, stopping riots on the streets.

There is a food hall for everyone, but he can’t find the strength within himself to eat with the others. Someone leaves him food twice a day — it’s usually Bruce or Steve. Sometimes he touches it. Other times, he attempts alcohol, but it only reminds him of Valkyrie.

For the first time in his life, Thor gives up.

He helps when he can, for the horrors of this world are his fault alone. Why didn’t he go for the head? He will atone for this, but the rest, he leaves to Shuri and Bruce. They are trying to find a way to fix this, Thor doesn’t have the strength to tell them it’s futile.

Sleep is both blessing and curse. In sleep, he sees visions of a future that will never exist, and of a past that won’t loosen it’s hold over him. He sees children, his children in the library at Asgard — princesses with green eyes and golden curls. He sees Mother, a much younger Loki in her arms, in the very same library. He sees Heimdall, Loki riding on his shoulders. And he sees Father, giving him his first wooden sword.

He sees the life leaving Loki’s eyes, blood red and unmistakably Jotün, and a neck adorned with bruises bluer than the breath-taking blue of his natural skin.

Thor wakes up, and weeps.

-

Thankfully there is more to afterlife than feasting. There are gardens, and yes, libraries full of all the books of Asgard. There are grandfathers, two of them. Bor is quiet and indulgent and invites Loki to go hunting with him. Loki’s never been a grandchild before, and he’s not sure how to be one.

He doesn’t understand why the first king of Asgard is so kind to a foundling frost giant, not until he meets his other grandfather. That’s when he remembers that Asgard and Jotünheim have no always been at war.

Bestla is regal and beautiful — and a proud shade of blue. He’s small for a giant, but nonetheless he is one. Bestla is not as warm, but he’s sharp-witted and acerbic and Loki has never been more entertained. But it is also Bestla who tells him of the Jötnar, and the long-lost glory of Jotünheim. Countless things he’d never known about Jotünheim before the war, before Loki. About castles made of snow and the festivals of first snow at the equator. About ancient temples with knowledge of magic more than any even the Aesir could dream of. 

“They aren’t all dead, there is a settlement in the north,” he tells Loki. “They are simple people, but proud. They may survive the winter yet.”

Loki wonders if he should apologize. He is willing to admit that he was rash in his actions after the revelation of his birth. He was mad with betrayal, but that really isn’t an excuse. He tries once, stumbling over words so badly that he thinks he may have to give up the title of Loki Silvertongue, but Bestla waves him away. He gives Loki elderberries from his garden and sends him on his way. Bestla has magic, strong like Frigga but sharper. He gives him books before he leaves, books about magic, space and time. There are more ways to manipulate them that Loki had ever imagined.  

Father and Mother live in the west wing of the castle, and Loki finds himself at the door. He’d seen Mother outside, planting her garden. Odin, however, opens the door in a bathrobe.

“Really?” Loki eyes his sartorial choice.

“I’ve been told it’s not a bad look on me,” his father tells him, and lets him in. “Come, there is pear cider and Frigga refuses to let me have any on my own.”

“That’s because you can’t appreciate a good cider,” Loki retorts, forgetting for a moment that they’re not exactly reconciled, that Loki has a whole new reason to be furious at Odin. “Why didn’t you tell me about Bestla?”

Odin pours them both glasses. “After the war against Jotünheim, it seemed like everyone wanted to forget. So, I let them.”

“Yet another lie to build up the great empire of Asgard.”

“Kingdoms aren’t built on truth, my son,” Odin tells him, passing him a glass. You sound like him, Hela had said. It gets harder and harder to deny.

“But why lie to Thor, to me? You must have known that one day, he would become privy to all your secrets, you were prepping him to rule.”

Odin reaches for him, running wrinkled fingers down his cheekbone before letting his hand fall back to his side. “I was prepping you both to rule. You asked me what my purpose for you was, once. I told you that I had hoped to find peace between our kingdoms. But when I saw you in that temple, I only knew you had Laufey’s family runes. You were his first-born, but runts were often sacrificed to the Norns for aid in battle. I took you because you were small, and crying, and because I loved you.”

“Why raise me as your son?”  Odin walks towards the balcony, Loki follows. “Even now, you won’t tell me?”

“That wasn’t the plan,” Odin tells him, looking down at the gardens. Mother sees them, and waves at them before returning to her work. “The plan was to raise you as a ward of the royal family.”

Familiar fury rises within him. “So what, I was meant to be your prisoner?”

“Stop twisting my words, Loki,” Odin sighs. “That was exactly why I didn’t raise you so. We never wanted you to doubt our love for you.”

“And yet I did.”

“And yet you did.”

-

Loki feels stretched tight, too full of emotions. It makes him antsy and weary. He doesn’t join the feast that night, disinclined to be in the same room as that many people. Instead he takes a plate of sweet breads and sits at the end of the Path, dangling his feet above the stars. Thor fights nature itself on a hurricane-ravaged island. The rest of the Avengers are useless. The only one who might be capable of protecting him is Iron Man, and Stark is nowhere to be seen. If they’ve lost Stark, then they might as well give up hope now. He wonders if he can see Stark, but that would mean looking away from Thor, and he’s not ready for that yet.

“So that’s where all the sweet breads went,” Heimdall says from behind him, then sits down beside him unasked. “Be careful or they’ll go straight to your waist.”

“I’m dead, I’ll do what I want,” Loki snaps back. The Avengers are returning home now, but the journey is unnervingly quiet. Thor sits on the floor with Stormbreaker beside him. Romanoff speaks to him, but he does not reply. Bruce sleeps beside him. “If that fool doesn’t snap out of this, he’ll die before he fixes this mess.”

“It isn’t your concern anymore.”

“Well, of course it is. That witless oaf is going to get himself killed,” Loki seethes. “How does that not infuriate you?”

“I cannot explain it. It is not that I no longer care about Thor, but I feel that my part in his life is over. We need no longer concern ourselves with the living, little one,” Heimdall tells him, looking outwards.

“Don’t call me that.”

“You’ve been saying that since you were five years old, and it still hasn’t worked. Why would it work now?” Heimdall stands up. “Good night.”

Wonderful. Even in the afterlife, he’s a madman who feels what he shouldn’t feel. He shouldn’t care, but he looks at Thor, aimless and alone, and he wants to break something. It was easier when he thought he’d hated Thor. Well, if he’s ever allowed to eat his feelings, it’s now. But when he reaches for his plate, it’s suspiciously empty. “That was mine, you thief!” Loki shouts in Heimdall’s direction. He gets an annoying, amused laugh in return.

-

Such is the irony of Loki’s entire existence. He spent eight years trying to say goodbye to Thor, and when it finally happens, he can’t bear it. Then again, what are eight years of strife against 1500 years of a life spent together? Loki has spent his life following Thor, it’s only fitting he spends his death doing the same.

Wakanda

Thor stands at the gates of Valhalla, Mjolnir in one hand and Stormbreaker in the other, bashing at the doors to open, but neither weapons nor his bare fists are enough. His father and mother are on the other side. Loki is watching from the other side. Thor begs and pleads, but the gates remain closed. Then Loki turns and leaves. Loki always leaves.

Everything turns white.

Thor awakens, smelling of smoke and ash. The entire room is a blackened cave, and at the door, Steve peers in with a worried look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Thor says. His voice sounds foreign to him. He hasn’t heard it as of late.  

Steve sighs, and comes to sit beside him on the bed. “You were screaming.”

“I’m sorry to have awoken you, friend,” Thor tells him, turning away. He attempts to leave the bed, but Steve places his hand on his shoulder.

“You’re not alone.”

Thor pushes his hand away and gets up. But Steve’s not done. “I know what it feels like, to lose everything at once. To get it back and lose it again. I know. I’m so sorry about your people, and your broth—”

“—Stop!” he can’t talk about it, it’s too much. No. He takes a step back, and another. And Steve looks up, there are tears in his eyes too.

“Thor—”

“Stop, I can’t—”

Steve gets up. “Okay, okay. Let’s clean this up.”

-

They clean together in quiet not-peace. It brings up memories of living in Avengers Tower. He remembers the cleaning schedule. He misses Natasha showing him how to sweep the floors an to make lasagna. He misses Steve dragging Tony to water the plants. Thor misses Tony.

Steve thinks he’s alive, he tells him afterwards, when they’re finally done, and the sun is rising on Wakanda. They’re sharing a breakfast of fried bananas outside the bedroom. The servants who walk back and forth give them strange looks, but Thor is used to that on Earth. “I would know,” he says. “I would know if he’s dead.”

Thor drinks more of his coffee and holds Steve’s hand. Tony Stark is dead. Tony was the only mortal to resist the mind stone. Tony wielded an infinity stone and created life, life that was worthy of Mjolnir. Tony wouldn’t have let this happen. That it did is enough proof that Tony is dead.

For now, Steve has lost enough, if he needs this hope, Thor will not be the one to take it away. Steve is older than a lot of the other Avengers, but he’s still young.

Valhalla

Mother sits with Loki as they watch him. “I’m worried about you,” she tells him.

Valhalla is all the knowledge of magic in the world, an eternity of stories to read, craft, and tell; it is everything that he wants, but it feels wrong. He feels wrong. Maybe he was meant for Hel. He tells Mother this and she fixes him with lightning blue eyes — he can’t stare at those eyes for too long without tears in his own eyes.

“You grieve with him.”

“You’re his mother, why don’t you?”

“It is beyond us now, we can only wait for him to join us,” she tells him, as if that’s normal. As if you die, and suddenly, your emotions just fuck off.  

Loki knows it’s more than that. He grieved for Thor on Sakaar. He’d grieved and tried to forget with every touch the Grandmaster forced upon him, every kiss that felt more like a shackle than a boon. He has felt lost and empty, but not wrong. Not since he’d picked up the casket of ancient winters and saw the blue surge across his skin.

-

Bestla comes to him a few days later. They sit for hours in companionable silence on the Path, watching Thor help rebuild broken homes in Wakanda. “You’re right.” He finally says. “You’re not meant to be here.”

Loki jerks back to look at his grandfather. “Then why in Norn’s name am I?” What was the point of it all?

“Have you ever cast the Threads of Fate?” Bestla asks him.

“Of course,” he replies. Which child of sorcery hasn’t cast it, and seen with wonder the colourful, glowing bonds that connect them with their loved ones, their family and the people who will affect them most?

“Do you know what happens to them when you die?”

“If I were to venture a guess I would say that the bonds break. Your connection is ended.”

“Not quite. Will you cast it on me, Loki?” Bestla turns, sitting cross-legged in front of him.

Loki moves until he’s facing his grandfather, and nods, He casts the spell, says the words, and watches the bonds take shape.

Loki waits, and soft, grey lines begin to materialise from his heart, in all sorts of directions and shapes.

Yes. In life, I was bound to Bor, Odin, and others. In death, destiny no longer has plans for me. I have no future world with others. I cannot affect the world anymore than any other dead thing.”

He feels the fresh cold of Bestla’s magic settle over him. “Grandfather?”

“Look,” Bestla says, looking at his heart.

Oh.

Countless threads, some golden, some silver, but all of them shine. One familiar one is a thread of green and red, bright and thick, and as he looks at the stars, he sees how to attaches to Thor’s heart, how it tugs. “I don’t understand.”

“The universe has bigger plans for you.”

“Then why did I die?”

“Probably because you’re a foolhardy son of Odin,” Bestla tells him with a smile, his unnerving red eyes somehow warm. “Now your parents are going to be very unhappy because this isn’t — strictly speaking — allowed, but I am Bestla of Asgard and Jotünheim. I do what I want.”

Loki looks up at the beloved turn of phrase and sees a mischievous smile on his grandfather’s face. He leans forward and presses his forehead to Loki’s.

The world turns white.

Somewhere in the Alpha Quadrant

Loki wakes up in a regeneration tube of Xandarian design. He looks around him, and laughs.

“Well hey there, Reindeer Games,” Tony Stark says.

Chapter Text

Somewhere in the Alpha Quadrant

In the bright light of the infirmary, Tony recognizes the blue alien to be Loki. Tony talks as they haul him into the regeneration chamber, “This was the Asgardian ship. Nebula, we should check for more survivors.” Hope, tiny fragile hope springs within him. Maybe Thor is alive.

“Already did,” Nebula says. “There’s nothing here. I don’t even know why he’s still alive.”

Why, oh why does Tony still look for hope where there is none.

 “Well, if anyone’s good at not being dead, it’s probably him.” At Nebula’s confused gaze, he continues. “This is Loki. He used to be a prince of Asgard, kind of went supervillain and then died, but then he didn’t. He also used to not be so… blue”

“I know who Prince Loki of Asgard is.” Nebula’s nose flares. “He fell to Titan years ago. I never saw him, but Thanos took a week to break him. I heard he screamed for his brother Thor the entire time.”

“Why would Thanos break him?”

“To make a puppet king out of him on Earth. Weren’t you the one who stopped them anyway?”

“There were six of us,” Tony replies. Who knows how many are left, now? “I thought Loki made a bargain with Thanos. The stone for the planet or something.”

Nebula laughs, but there is no humour in it. “His highness had no idea what was coming for him. Keep an eye on him, I don’t know how much damage Thanos did, or exactly how sane he is. But maybe he can be of use. We can’t just stay here and wait, I’m going to maneuver through the debris. Keep an eye on him.”

And with that, Nebula leaves.

Tony watches Loki. He is a face he hasn’t seen in six years. Loki had brought Earth’s to the attention of Thanos, Loki had begun this horrible mess. But then again, the Red Skull had been the first to find the tesseract during World War II. But then it had laid forgotten for decades. Tony wonders what would have happened if Steve had never been found with the tesseract, if Loki hadn’t come to Earth for it.  No one would have known there was a threat or begun preparing for Thanos. Well, fat load of good it helped him to know, he still couldn’t stop it.  

No, he couldn’t stop it, instead he’s on a last-ditch effort home with an android hellbent on revenge, and instead of Thor, his brother. He sighs, sits down at the doctor’s table, and waits. He doesn’t have to wait long when Loki opens his eyes, and they’re bleeding red. He sees Tony, and inexplicably, bursts into laughter.

“Well hey there, Reindeer Games,” Tony says. “Nice paint job.”

Loki’s face scrunches up in confusion, and then he looks down at himself. A shimmer of green but it dissipates before Loki can actually do anything with it. “Release me.”

“Hmm, let me think overnight about it. How about you first tell me exactly how it is that Thor and all his people are dead, and you’re still here and alive enough to be demanding things? Also, didn’t you die three years ago?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“You do, if you want to get out of that thing. And the way Nebula’s set it up, you can’t magic your way out of there.”

“What is the daughter of Thanos doing on a ship with you?” Loki actually looks scared. At the least, it doesn’t seem like Loki is working with Thanos.

“She’s not on his side anymore. We’re going to Earth, what’s it to you?”

Loki stills. “I’ll come with you then.”

“Uh no, last time you came to Earth, you broke New York City. And then the Hulk broke you. Are you sure you want to go through that again?” Tony asks. He’s not thinking of who’s left on Earth. Who’s alive and who isn’t. He can’t.

“I don’t care about New York or your backwards planet, and you might be happy to know that Bruce and I have settled our differences, now will you please let me out of this thing?” Loki asks, pushing against the glass.

“Again, not until you tell me how you’re alive. Bruce said you died.”

Loki sighs, and leans against the glass wall, his arms crossed in front of him. “I did.”

“I hate to break this to you, but you’re still alive.”

“I was dead,” Loki scowls. “I was in Valhalla, but they sent me back to stop Thor from moping because he’s an idiot-child.”

“Valhalla? You were in space heaven and they kicked you out?”

“They did not kick me out.” Loki groans. “Did you make the tube smaller? It’s not my fault that Thor’s useless without me. Aim for the head, how many times did Sif say that? He never listens.”

That’s when it clicks. Loki lies, but this is important. He has no reason to lie about this.  “Thor is alive?”

“I bloody well hope so, if not I just gave up the biggest library in the universe for no reason.”

“But Bruce said he died.”

“He did not. Let me out or give me something to sleep. I’m not overly fond of small spaces.” Ah, finally, a sentence that Tony can actually make sense of.

“If you go cray-cray on us, I have my suit and I will aim for the head,” Tony warns, and releases Loki.

“Fair enough.” He steps out of the chamber naked. Tony doesn’t mean to stare but he’s never learned tact. On his chest, there’s a long, jagged scar across his chest, and there’s a necklace of dark blue bruises around his neck. There’s a shimmer of green, and Loki reappears, dressed and clean, and no longer blue.

Loki catches him staring, so he blurts out. “No need to put on all that make-up for little old me.” Loki smiles, that amused smirk he often sported. He leads Loki to the bridge. “So, Thor is alive.”

“He is, and he’s being rather pitiful.”

“And you want to what, help? Bruce said you two had reconciled your differences. I find that hard to believe.”

“You cannot begin to comprehend the depth of my relationship with Thor. It’s not surprising you can’t believe it. You’re a mortal, we are not.”

“No, well, the constant death and resurrection is definitely making that clear.” Tony allows. “But I’m not taking you back to Earth just so you can bitch-slap Thor – we have bigger problems.”

“I am trying,” Loki seethes, “to help you.”

“How?”

A pause. “I don’t know yet.”

-

They get through the wreckage, set the ship to autopilot, and then Nebula disappears into one of the bedrooms. “You two pick whichever bedroom you want. I wouldn’t take Rocket’s unless you want to blow up. There’s food in the galley. Well, there’s a replicator.”

Tony sits down at the helm. Loki turns around and walks down to the galley. Tony wonders if he should follow, but he doesn’t have the energy. He doesn’t want food or drink, he’d really like to sleep, but he wonders if he can anymore.

He watches the stars go by instead, hands in his lap. All he can think of is Peter. What will he tell May? Or Ned or Michelle? What about Pepper? What if the only ones who care are already dust in the wind? There’s panic rising within him, he can feel it. He should try breathing techniques but what he wants is a drink. He needs a drink. He’s been sober for eight months, this has to be enough. He should be allowed to drink now. He can’t breathe. I don’t want to go, Mr. Stark.

There is no air, just dust – everything is turning black –

— the stark brown of dust turns emerald green, a vibrant colour with shades of gold that somehow pushes air into his lungs and forces him to breathe. There’s a warm hand on his shoulder and another under his armpit. “Come on.” It’s Loki, with his magic and his ridiculous face helping him through a panic attack. Loki conjures a drink in his hand, it looks like maple syrup. “Drink this.”

Tony, too disorientated to say otherwise, does. It’s sickeningly sweet and he wants to wretch, but his body learns to breathe again. “What did I just drink?”

“A love potion–”

“–didn’t work, try harder,” Tony shoots back through teary eyes. He takes in another deep breath, and his eyes focus on Loki.

“Don’t tempt me.” Loki retorts in the gentlest voice he’s ever heard him use. “Drink the entire vial. It will set your heart at ease.”

“Just what I needed, magical space Prozac,” Tony says, but downs the medicine. It might kill him, and all things considered, dying seems like it would be a lot less work that what’s ahead of them. Loki gives him a confused look. Good. Confused trickster gods are less dangerous trickster gods.

“Nebula was right. You should choose a room and at least attempt to rest. Let us examine these… rooms.” He stands up and holds out an arm. Tony accepts, and proceeds to walking down the living quarters hall with a supervillain by his side.

The first room has bombs in it. “That must be Rocket’s. Moving on. No, Stark, we’re moving on, no explosions.”

“Alright, fine. But only if you stop calling me Stark. I’m Tony.”

The next one is a collection of leaves, twigs, and sap. They close the door gingerly and head to the next one. Loki is a live commentary, and he’s rather entertaining. Tony doesn’t know what to make of him. The fact that he’s pressing his fingers against Tony’s pulse not-so-subtly while leading them through the rooms doesn’t make things easier. The next one has a cassette player fixed to the wall. A cassette player, from Earth. Tony moves on autopilot, reaching for the play butter. He presses it down and waits for the clicking sound, and then let’s go.

“Oh oh, child, things are gonna get easier…”

Tony looks at Loki, who looks back at him.

“Oh-oh child, things will get brighter…”

Tony turns off the music.

“I’ll take whatever’s in the next one. This one’s all yours,” Loki lets go of his arm and bows graciously on his way out.

“Great. Just great.”

-

Tony Stark is a broken man who is probably of no help to anyone else, let alone turned to dust. But Loki understands that madness within. He knows what it’s like to believe in something so passionately, only to learn that it was all a lie in the end. He’d seen it in a tower in New York City and he sees it now, behind a wall of pain and anger and suffering, a madness. It’s what makes Tony so maddeningly likable.

They need to attempt the impossible — that will require madness.

Loki closes himself into the bedroom, there is nothing in this one but a matt to sleep on, no soft bed. He can live with that. He’s not been able to sleep on a soft bed in years. He hangs up his clothes, conjures night clothes, and lies down to sleep.

Wakanda

Rocket tries to contact his ship, but even the help of vibranium isn’t enough to give him the range he needs. It’s just… he doesn’t need much. He just needs a twig or something of Groot. He’d been shedding enough to have left enough behind to grow him again. It’s not the same, he knows that, but he’s gotta try. If only he could contact the others. If they’re alive that is.

Not that he cares. It’s been Groot and him for long that it doesn’t matter if they make it or not. The only thing that matters is that he can bring Groot back. Everything will be fine then. Half the population or not, they’ll still want bounty hunters. They’ll be fine.

Besides, they’re probably fine. Except for Gamora, the others can’t possibly be smart enough to actually be considered living breathing organisms that were worth killing. Definitely, not Drax or Quill.

It’s fine. They’ll be fine. Not that he cares. Because he doesn’t.

-

Steve’s not sure how it happens.

One day, Steve finds Thor in a charred black bedroom, and the next, they’re sleeping together in a bed that’s barely big enough to fit both their frames. Thor sleeps like a child, curled in on himself. Sometimes he wakes up screaming, sending bolts of lightning through Steve but somehow not killing him, other times he’s awake before Steve, sobbing silently on his side of the bed.

Steve doesn’t sleep. The backs of his eyelids are the brownish grey of the dust Bucky turned into, that Sam and Wanda and the rest of them turned into. He looks at the ornate sealing and follows the patterns there, and sometimes he dozes for a minute or two. His mind can’t decide which nightmare is worse, so sometimes he sees them again, turning into dust before his eyes. Other times, he’s in Siberia, and Tony’s asking him, “Did you know?”

He remembers these dreams. He used to have them all the time. He’d dream about Tony killing Bucky, or him, or Tony bleeding to death in his arms, or leaving him there and coming back to find him there, frozen and gone, and alone.

They’re different now. Tony never punches him, never attacks Bucky. Instead, the tears in his eyes dry up, just like everything else, until he’s dust, flying away to mix with the white snowflakes flurrying outside the bunker.

He doesn’t move much in his sleep, but Thor somehow knows anyway, and shakes him awake gently. They hold each other tight, both searching for something that isn’t there, and fall silent. It’s not enough, but it will do for now.

-

Thor feels numb.

He sleeps and eats and helps fight uprisings and plants crops with the farmers. His beard grows longer and unrulier, his skin so tanned it is a startling bronze that separates his arms from his torso. He sleeps now, and his nightmares awake him with a startling lack of control, but when he is awake he cannot remember them anymore.

The sun rises, and it sets, and Thor does not care.

If he closes his eyes, he can see his people, but he has grieved too deeply to feel anything anymore.

Somewhere in the Alpha Quadrant

The galley is a big communal space that reminds him of the kitchen at the Avengers Compound. Tony finds himself there with Loki and Nebula occasionally over the next two weeks. They don’t necessarily have meals together, but often enough, Tony finds Loki eating fresh fruit from the food replicator as he pours himself a hot cup of Xvi, the closest thing the ship has to coffee. There’s a table and a bench and many good workplaces, but Loki enjoys sprawling on the floor with his books. His possessions are always on him with tiny little blocks that are pocket dimension. One is an entire library.

“So how do I sign a book out of that TARDIS-like library of yours?” Tony asks. There is only so much sitting around and doing nothing that Tony can do. He needs a workshop to grieve in, and barring that, he needs alcohol. He’s got no workshop and he promised himself he wouldn’t drink again. Loki doesn’t look away, opening a portal to his library with a waving hand. A book comes flying out of the portal and slowly comes to rest in Tony’s open hand. When Tony opens it, the language is similar to Old Norse, but indecipherable.

“What? Did you think Asgardian scripts would be written in galactic standard?” Loki mocks. “If only you could go back in time and convince Thor to teach you a more useful language that a stupid made-up one for idiots who can’t be bothered to learn Asgardian.”

“Careful, that Asgardian superiority complex is showing through,” Nebula says as she walks into the galley. She pours herself a cup of Xvi and sits down at the table.  

“Drit og dra,” Loki says nonchalant, flipping a page in his own book, and then casting some whammy that’s shiny and green and cover’s Tony’s book. The words change themselves to English. Old, pre-Shakespearean English, that gives him flashbacks of his high school lit class, but it is English nonetheless.

"Kyss meg i ræva," Nebula snaps back. Loki looks up from his book with a mildly impressed look on his face.

“You speak Asgardian?”  He switches back to galactic standard.

“I know enough to start a barfight on Vanaheim.” She pulls up a console.

“Åh, jeg liker deg,” Loki replies.

“Note to self, learn Asgardian,” Tony says, plopping the book on the table in front of him.

“Don’t bother, it’s not like there are that many of us left.”

Tony doesn’t know what to say to that, so he starts to read his book. It’s about the functions of the Bifrost, how it creates portals between long distances. Once he understands the terms, the math and physics start to make sense. And that’s when he realises that Asgardians had an actual theory of everything. It’s hard to imagine manipulating spacetime to this extend without a theory of everything, and the scientist in him wants to jump up and down like a little kid. “What’s a light-year expressed in units of rôst?”

“About 9.8 trillion in an Asgardian year, it’s – hold on, Selvig and I figured this out, it was 8.6 trillion rôst in Earth years.” Loki winces at Selvig’s name. “Whatever happened to him?”

“Well, he went loco for a bit, understandable since you did brainwash him with an infinity stone, he was working in Tromsø last year.”

“In my defense, Thanos was quite insistent on results.”

“I still don’t get why you did it.” Tony turns in his swivel chair to face Loki. “I mean, I get the whole wanting to get revenge on Thor thing. Well, I don’t. But I get it. I don’t get wanting to help a mad alien kill of half the population of the universe — why did you?”

“I’m the God of Chaos, why wouldn’t I?”

“Then why do you want to help now?”

“I just want to get to Thor.”

“Oh, so was that the goal? Let Thanos destroy all of Asgard so there’s no one left for Thor but you?” Oh, Tony knows he’s got Open-Mouth-Insert-Foot Syndrome but being aware isn’t the same as controlling the symptoms. “He’ll have to love you now, is that it?”

There’s a moment, where Tony realises that in a room with the daughter of Thanos and an actual supervillain, he’s the one who said a really shitty thing.

“If you don’t mind terribly, I’ll take my leave of you,” Loki says, gathering his books. He leaves the galley with silent steps but leaves Tony with the book on the Bifrost.

“I told you to keep an eye on him, not test out his sanity.”

“I’m just trying to understand the reasoning behind his actions,” Tony says.

“People aren’t logical,” Nebula says. Tony should know this. Even he isn’t logical, but he remembers the Chitauri. He remembers the people who lost their homes and jobs and lives because of the Battle of New York City. It’s easy to pretend that it had never happened, and joke around with Loki as if Loki hadn’t been the one who brought such brutal calamity to Earth in the first place. But they’re a week from Earth and Loki wanting to help Thor isn’t easy to believe.

“Luphom wasn’t part of the nine realms, but we were close. There used to be fear of invasion, but they say Odin grew old and didn’t want to conquer anymore. Instead we had trade. When I was young, my grandmother told me about a state visit from the princes. She had been a little girl then, a flower maiden in the royal house of parliament. Prince Thor was loud and big and full of joy. Prince Loki was quieter, and always to Thor’s right-hand side. There was a drought, so Thor gave us rain, and filled our reservoirs, and Prince Loki worked with the Queen to create crops with higher yield. That was nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“You think he made a mistake?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he gave away his morals to survive. I did. Thanos razed Luphom. I’m the only one alive, and I stayed that way by destroying planets for him, until I couldn’t anymore. Maybe he just wants a chance to be better. Like I did.”

Tony thinks about Obie, about his old man and all the weapons with his name and the pools of blood dripping from their shrapnel. He finishes his cup of Xvi and grabs Loki’s mug. He refills them both, tucks the book under his armpit, takes the mugs and starts to leave the galley.

“Are you going to barrage him with questions again?”

“No, I’m bringing him space coffee.”

-

Loki sits on the floor in the room. It’s sparse, but that’s good. Loki likes working on the floor with a halo of books around him. If he tries hard enough t connect this knowledge with what he learned in Valhalla from his grandfather, maybe he can find a way to get the gauntlet off of Thanos. The only way to fix this is to use the stones again and undo what was done. The how is the hard part of this question, but it’s far easier than the why.

He tries to throw himself into the books. It works. Sometimes.

It’s probably for the best that we’ll never see each other again.

You really are the worst brother.

He can’t argue. He is a pretty horrible brother. It’s been a few years, when his anger and Thor’s arrogance had made him blind to everything but the slights. But before that, they’d been brothers.

He remembers sneaking into Idunn’s gardens with Thor, reading to Thor when he caught sick until he fell asleep, blonde hair tickling Loki’s bare arms. He remembers before Thor began to train with the Warriors Three and Sif, when it was only Loki who played Thor’s shadow. How did he forget all of that? Had his anger and envy wiped away all the love he’d shared with Thor? Had it wiped away the love Thor had for him?

Would Thor want to see him, or did he blame him for taking the tesseract on board with them?

There’s a knock on his door. “Sorry, I’m unavailable at the moment, please return once we land on Earth.”

The door opens anyway. Humans. Always so contrary. “I bring an offering of peace,” Tony says, holding out a cup of Xvi. “That what Vikings did right?”

“I haven’t had one of those in a thousand years,” Loki muses. “I’ll accept.”

Tony passes the hot cup and sits on the floor. “I don’t know if you know this, but I have this terminal illness when I’m an asshole. One day it’s going to kill me.”

Loki smiles. “I can relate.”

“Shouldn’t’ve said what I said, though.”

Tony’s brought his book along, and he begins to read it. Loki goes back to his texts. It’s the history of the six stones. He’d read this as a child once, but he reads this time with focus on removing the gauntlet, or at least transferring its possession to another. “I was as wrong as dividing by zero. Thor loves you more than everything in the world. You should have seen him after London, it was just sad, man. But, I just… need to know you’re not going to attack us or decide last minute that you’re on Thanos’ side.”

Loki pauses for a second, he has no words. He has seen Thor mourn, has seen the heartbreak which he must suffer even now. “I was nearly dead when Thanos found me. He recognised me, and he had plans. I didn’t know what they were, I thought he just wanted to rule. I was happy to let him rule his end of the galaxy if I got what I wanted.”

“What did you want? Earth?”

What had he wanted? Thor to admit that he was wrong? That they were equals. That his place wasn’t below Thor, but beside him?

“I don’t know anymore, to be honest.”

“You don’t know? You killed 82 people and caused a shit-ton of damage. You fucked with Barton’s mind and you stabbed Thor.”

“In my defense, I’ve been stabbing Thor since we were five years old. It’s more to annoy him than hurt him, really.”

“You’re joking.” Tony nearly spits out his Xvi. “Wait, I thought Thor was your older brother.”

“That is the assumption,” Loki says. We shared a womb, brother, we will share this life and kingdom as well, Thor used to say so when they were younger – when their hearts were still wide-open expanses to each other. “Thor was already born when Odin brought me to Asgard. Not that anyone actually knows what my birthday is, but that’s what happens when you steal babies from altars on strange planets.”

It teases a small smile from Tony’s mouth. “You’re really good at changing the topic.”

Loki puts down his book and pulls his legs up to his chest. He doesn’t know why he needs to explain himself to Tony, but he will need him to stop Thanos. “I don’t want to work with Thanos. I don’t want to hurt innocents.”

He’s not particularly concerned for them to be honest. Before his fall from Asgard, he’d been to angry to imagine all Jotuns as anything other than monsters. After Thanos, pain and suffering no longer felt real. Their pain is no longer his, as it used to be. He’d forgotten them in his rage and jealousy. He’d become like the Thor he’d despised not so long ago, arrogant, selfish, unthinking. But on the Statesman, healing broken limbs and burns, that desensitized bit of himself was found again. It felt like a piece of him that had been scorched away is finally healing.  

Since his resurrection, that piece can no longer be ignored, especially not the part that feels for Thor. His brother’s suffering has become insufferable to him. It makes Loki burn with fury. “I don’t know how, yet. But I want to find Thor. I want to undo what Thanos did.”

Tony looks up at that. “Do you think that’s possible? Undo it? Bring back the people he killed?”

“If we can somehow get the gauntlet, we can ask for everyone back, and kill him with it.”

Tony shrinks. “We tried that. He didn’t even have all the stones, but we couldn’t take it off him. Peter was so — we were so close. We failed.”

“Who was Peter?” He doesn’t remember a Peter being on the Avengers. But things have changed.

Tony goes rigid at the question. “He was just a kid.”

“We’ll get him back.”

“You’re so sure about that.”

“I am.” Loki stands up, getting up and moving towards him. “I was dead. I was in Valhalla and the threads of destiny wouldn’t let me go. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for a reason.”

The words seem to resonate in Tony. For a long while, he says nothing, and Loki considers returning to his work. “I need books on how Asgardians came up with a theory of everything, and the fabric of spacetime. And we’re going to need more Xvi.”

Wakanda

Thor is digging a well when he hears the alarms blazing. He’s the furthest away from the castle, and the last to arrive. “We’ve got an incoming ship, no idea if it’s hostile,” Steve says, eyes hard.

“Is it hailing on any frequencies?” Rocket asks.

“No, but they are sending out an SOS, in English and galactic standard,” Queen Shuri says. “It just says, that they are running out of fuel, and they’re not hostile.”

“Alright, this could be a trap, so let’s tread carefully,” Steve tells them in an exhausted voice. Thor knows that he didn’t sleep at all last night. “Start evacuating civilians from a possible landing location.”

No one says Avengers Assemble.

They’re on route and nearing visual capability when Rhodey shouts. “We got a bogey, Cap! Bogey leaving the ship!”

“Stop calling me a bogey, honey bear, it’s starting to get old,” Tony Stark’s voice comes through loud and clear through the comms.

“Tony?” Rhodey’s voice comes out in a whisper. It’s echoed in Cap’s voice as well.  

As they get closer, the blurry dot becomes the red and gold of the Iron Man armour. Thor recognizes the ship that’s slightly above him. It’s the Milano. “Hey Rhodey. I’ve got shit on this ship that’s precious goods to some people so let’s make sure it doesn’t crash okay?”

“Alright,” Rocket says. “Who the fuck are you and what are you doing with my ship?”

“Long story, help me set this thing down first, and then I’ll tell you all the details!”

Between Thor, Rhodes, Bruce and Tony, they land the ship with some minor cosmetic damage. He wonders how many people are in there, how many turned to dust. Thor flies towards the bay doors, meeting the rest of the Avengers. Iron Man lands knee-first in front of the ship. “Hey guys. How’s it going? Thor, glad to see you’re still alive. I bought you a present.” He moves to the side as the bay doors open downwards. Quill and the others he met on the Milano are nowhere to be seen, instead, two pairs of feet are seen.

“Where is everybody?” Rocket asks from behind him, but Thor doesn’t see anyone. He sees a prosthetic leg, and then black boots over a familiar frame encased in black and green and gold. A graceful neck covered in blue bruises. Green eyes that have been haunting him for weeks, and pitch-black hair that’s already beginning to curl from the humidity of Wakanda.  

It is Loki, alive and smiling at him like he’s stolen savory pies from the palace kitchens.

Thor can’t move. There’s commotion around him, utter chaos and laughter and tears around Tony, but he can only look. It is Loki, who died in his arms, again; who left him, again. Except he hadn’t, he was here, and safe, and alive the whole time. Loki takes long strides to reach him. He’s an arm’s breadth away now, close enough that Thor gets a whiff of Loki’s unmistakable scent — honey and peppermint and very old books. He tilts his head to the side, looks at Thor with those emerald eyes of his, and says, “Miss me, brother?”

Thor punches him.

Chapter Text

The apparition flickers away when Thor’s fist connects with the air.

“Oh come now. I don’t need to be a witch to know when it’s safer for me to send a projection,” Loki’s voice — oh and it is his voice — drawls. When Thor’s eyes follow the direction of the voice, he sees Loki sitting on the mouth of the ship. He wears not the dreaded outfit that the Grandmaster had fashioned for him, but the green and black robe he’d dressed in when Thor had found him on Asgard. His crown is the frizz of his hair. A necklace of bruises embellishes his neck. “I didn’t come all the way from Valhalla just to be your punching bag.”

“Baby brother got kicked out of space heaven,” Tony quips from behind them.

Loki rolls his eyes and stands up. “Tony, for the last time, I wasn’t kicked out. I was—”

It’s too much. He can’t look at Loki, he can’t even bear to hear his voice. Is he cursed to spend eternity mourning for a brother whose favourite melody is the breaking of Thor’s heart? Rage ignites within him until he can see the white creep in to the edge of his vision. If he stays here any longer, he will lose what little control he has learned recently.  

“Thor?” Loki asks. He sounds concerned, but Loki’s the god of lies, Thor knows better than to trust him.

(No, he doesn’t, not really.)

He calls for Stormbreaker, and joins the wind.

-

Lightning sizzles from Thor, beginning to overtake his eyes and Loki hasn’t seen this lack of control since, well, since Asgard fell. And before that, maybe half a millennium ago. The thunderer raises his axe — where did he get an axe from? — and flies away.

Loki had expected anger, of course. He knew Thor. He hadn’t counted on retreat. That wasn’t a word he’s ever associated with the thunderer.

He faces the Avengers, who, until now, had been so focused on the return of one of their own that they hadn’t considered him. Now, the weary warriors focus on him. If it weren’t for the dust and the heat, this could be New York City all over again. Except this time, Tony Stark has gone from his biggest concern to his only defence.  

“Look, I know he’s a dick, but Thanos is a bigger dick. I have this hare-brained plan that might what he’s done. But for that, I need Loki. And from what I’ve see, he wants to help.”

“I do,” Loki says. This is his mess, and he’s created enough of those. He’s broken many promises, but he made one to Thor he plans to keep: the sun will rise on Asgard again. “And it’s also my plan.”

“Sure. It’s about 12% your plan.”

“I trust you, Tony,” the Captain says. “If this is your best plan, I’ll follow.”

“That’s sweet, Rogers,” Tony replies, there’s bitter gourd in his voice, “but seeing as this is Wakandan soil, it’s King T’Challa’s opinion that matters here.”

There is an awkward silence. The king is dust.

“If Queen Shuri allows you to stay, you may,” a bald warrior says. Whoever this queen is, hopefully she won’t be a big hindrance. Then she points her spear at Loki. “Should you raise your hand against anyone on Earth, you will find the entire might of Wakanda on your head.”

“Same goes for the Avengers,” the Captain tells him.

She has the same look in her eyes that Thor has before he starts a fight. Loki nods then he can’t help but smirk. “I like her,” he tells Nebula in All-Tongue.

“There’s no Terran translator pack on file, what is she saying?” Nebula asks.

Tony translates before Loki gets a chance. “And it’s English, not Terran. Guys, Nebula. Nebula, guys.”

“You will both come with us to the palace, and seek asylum with the Queen,” the warrior woman orders him. Tony translates again. This is going to get boring, fast. Loki looks to the skies, wondering if he should just risk it and follow pursuit. Then again, Thor is too duty-bound to disappear permanently, and Loki can wait.

The rain begins slowly, but Loki’s familiar enough with Thor’s gifts to know that this is but the beginning. By the time they reach the palace, he is soaked to the bone.

-

The Queen is a child, albeit an incredibly smart one who makes Tony look like an idiot even as she rushes out of her throne to embrace him. She wears a black and purple suit, with panther claws around her neck. She isn’t secure in her throne, though, that is obvious. She looks at her mother, wearing all white and standing to her right, for advice and assistance. One thing is clear. She was not raised to be queen.

Loki understands her.

She lets him stay, but only because Tony Stark convinces her that’s the right thing to do. The Avengers stand by Tony, as if they have lost their way and he is their only salvation.

(Loki thinks he might just be.)

-

The last time Tony had been admitted into the royal court, T’Challa had been king and Tony had been swooning over his baby sister’s brain. Wakanda was worlds ahead of the rest of the planet, yet at the same time, the technology everywhere else had learned to evolve without the help of vibranium. It made for many a long conversation with Shuri when they’d worked on perfecting BARF for Barnes. Technology, like life, was prone to convergent evolution, they’d learned together.

That little kid who had sat on the floor of her laboratory and tried – quite unsuccessfully — to fix him up with her pet CIA agent, now sat on the throne of Wakanda. There is a line of people waiting for audience with their regent, so once Loki and Nebula are given permission to stay, they leave.  

Friday had come back online when he’d re-entered the atmosphere, ripping a band-aid off quickly by connecting him directly to Pepper. She’s alive. They may not be a couple anymore, but it doesn’t mean that Pepper is one of the most important people in his life. But Happy is gone, she had told him in a whisper, and Tony wishes he were dust all over again. The only good thing is that at least Tony won’t have to tell Happy that he’d failed Peter. Despite jokes and jabs, Happy had loved Peter. On his screen, he’d found Rhodey’s tracker in Wakanda; it’s why they had headed this way.

He doesn’t want to go to New York, but he does, at some point. If not for Pepper, then for May Parker. But he’ll deal with it later.

He hadn’t considered who else would be in Wakanda. Or who wouldn’t. Rhodey walks beside him, while what’s left of the Avengers follow. So they’re back to this — the original line-up, more or less. A demigod, who, going by the storm outside, has lost control of his powers; a living legend who doesn’t quite live up to the legend; one master assassin-turned-friend-turned-betrayer, and a Hulk who can’t Hulk out.

“Tony.”

One word. One word and that’s enough.

He was sure he’d grown up, that Steve couldn’t affect him like this. They’d talked on the field, and it had felt oddly normal. But that’s how it’s always been with them. They were always in-sync on a job. It was in the aftermath that things fell apart so catastrophically. After everything that had happened, the past didn’t seem to matter as much, but suddenly his numbing heart aches.

Thor’s a good bro though, because thunder cracks, and Tony calls for the armour within him. It shrouds him faithfully. “You guys need to stop dripping around the palace, the servants are giving you dirty looks. I’ll go have a heart-to-heart with Thor.”

And before anyone can stop him, he flies out.

Thor’s easy enough to follow, the increasing severity of the storm is like a neon arrow towards him. There’s too much rain to physically see beyond a few feet in front of him, but Thor is easy enough to find with the suit.

Tony discovers him sitting on a cliffside outside of Birnin Zana. The eye of the storm is quiet. “It is unwise to be in my company at present, friend.”

“Never let it be said that I’m a wise man,” Tony replies. He opens his mask, but keeps the suit as he sits down beside Thor. He braves a look at Thor’s face; it’s the saddest Tony has ever seen him. “Nice beard.”

Silence.

“I’m ambivalent on the haircut though. ‘Was a big fan of the L’Oréal waves.”

Thor chuckles. Then he laughs, as if he doesn’t, he might start weeping. Tony gets that.

“I’m being mocked here, and I don’t even know why. Explain the joke.”

“Dear Tony, you still remain the one thing in the universe that can’t be explained,” Thor says. He pulls his legs up to his chest and locks his arms around them. He’s too big to do that, it just looks comical. “Even if everything else has changed.”

Around them, the rain comes down even harder. The city is a far-away blur.

“Well, you think you’d be used to change, what with having the god of chaos for a brother.”

Lightning brightens the entire sky, and thunder follows. “Truly, it is not safe for you to be here.”

“What are you going to do? Overcharge my suit again? I’m good.” Tony wonders what’s the kindest way to approach the situation. Then he remembers that he’s Tony Stark and decides the foot-in-his-mouth way works just fine. “I thought you’d be happier that Loki came back. You were pretty broken up about him being dead after London.”

“But he wasn’t! Do you know how it feels, when the ones you love the most lie to you? Treat you like you’re just a variable that simply needs to be considered?”

Maybe Thor was right, and it was unwise of him to be here. “More than you think.”

“He took the Tesseract. He brought it with us, brought Thanos to us. Our people are dead, our world destroyed, our culture soon to be forgotten. And yet again, he uses me like a plaything. Convinces me that he is dead, then returns whenever it pleases him to — “

“— Okay, okay, hold on.  I can’t believe I have to defend Loki of all people, to you of all people.” Tony looks at Thor. “I know Loki does that often enough, but this time, he really didn’t plan this. When Nebula and I found him, he was floating around in space. We thought he was dead until the ship picked up life signs.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. He said he was in Valhalla. I still think he got kicked out, but he said he was sent back.”

The rain begins to let up, just a little bit.

“I sent him into the vaults,” Thor rasps out. “And I didn’t wait for him. I assumed he’d find a way out. Well, of course he did, he found the Tesseract. This is my fault.”

“This is not your fault.”

“Tony—”

“—No. We do not have the luxury to play the blame game. Maybe I’m at fault. Maybe everybody’s at fault, maybe we can lay the fault crown on Loki’s head and then at least he’ll finally be king of something and stop scheming. He’s the least trustworthy person in the universe, but if he were evil, he wouldn’t be working on a plan with me to undo what Thanos did.”

“Do you really think you can undo this curse?” Thor rasps, voice breaking as if he’s trying to throttle hope inside his throat.  

“Don’t put all your eggs in the Team FrostIron basket yet,” Tony sighs. “But yeah, we think so. Theoretically.”

Thor places an arm over Tony’s knee and squeezes. The metal creeks. The nanites will have fix it when it’s in his bones again. At least, he’ll have some new data to analyse. Thor let’s go and stands up. Tony does too.

“It won’t be easy,” Tony warns. He’d tried for six years and failed. This is a hail Mary. If it works, it’ll be the greatest trick he’s ever pulled.

“My brother once told me, if it were easy, everyone would do it,” Thor tells him. His visual prosthesis isn’t focusing right, but Tony’s got ideas for that too. “I believe in you, Tony.”

They don’t say anything after that.

-

After Tony flies away, two maids come and tell them that they have rooms ready for Nebula and Loki. The Avengers look uneasy in his presence, and though it’s amusing, he really could use a room and a bathroom, so he follows one while Nebula tails the other. The little rabbit thing follows her.

The room is spacious and full of light. The bed is low and made of a light wood. He thanks the maid, refuses her offer to run him a bath, and sends her on her way. She was kind. Loki won’t forget that.

He drips his way to the bathroom, and runs the water before he undresses. He peels his soaked clothes off. He could spell them clean and dry, but he enjoys the effort needed to scrub them until they shine. He opens the window and hangs them over the windowsill for now. The rain is starting to let up.

The bath is a pool, about as big as the one he had in his own rooms on Asgard. There is a basket of cleansers in one corner of the pool; he finds bath salts in a soft shade of purple and pours some of it into the rising water. The smell of lavender fills the bathroom as he waits and begins to remove his jewellery. The rings come off easily; the ankle bracelets, he lets be, but there’s a necklace that usually remains hidden under his armour at all times. It’s a gold and silver amulet on a chain, two snakes, one gold and one silver, are wrapped around each other, eating other other’s tails. The water is nearly risen, so he turns off the tap, and sinks into the heat. Traditionally, Loki has always run cold — not uncomfortably so — and the heat was never a welcome joy, but simply something to be endured. But suddenly he misses it.

It reminds him of falling asleep in the middle of the Asgardian summer, struggling and ultimately failing to get Thor’s cumbersome body off his own overheating one. He sinks further into the water and lets it consume him.

His throat aches. Loki could use his magic to heal himself, but he’s awoken up far too many times with the sudden fear that he’s been returned to Valhalla, that he’d rather this wound takes its natural time to heal.

Loki reaches for the basket of cleansers and pull out a shampoo, applying a small amount to his scalp and then rinsing it right out. He misses his laboratory, it has been an age since he’d used his sorcery to brew potions, and he is in dire need of one to smooth out his hair. For now, he wears it naturally. The conditioner promises soft, shiny hair, which he takes with a pinch of salt, but still he rakes through his ends, and lets it sit. There is a dark brown bar of soap that smells like old forests, and he uses it to lather up a washcloth before beginning to scrub at his skin. Kurse’s mark on his chest still aches. His magic had saved him then, but the wound had never healed properly. His body has its own collection of scars now.

When he’s been younger, he’d never collected them the way Thor and other warriors of Asgard had, never needed to. His sorcery was his ultimate shield. The only callouses he’s worn were from his knives. If those warriors could see him now, they wouldn’t dare call him a coward behind his back again. Not that they can, of course. They’re all dead now.

Loki doesn’t feel bad for them. He doesn’t miss the Warriors Three or Sif. He doesn’t wonder where Sif was now.

(He does, but he’s not thinking about that for a decade at least.)

He focuses on running the washcloth against his arms, his chest. He hears movement behind, surefooted steps he’s been able to recognize since those feet learned to walk. He says nothing, continues to wash up as he hears clothes being removed and dropped on the floor. When a spooked animal comes closer, you don’t startle it — the most prudent part of the hunt is the wait.   

Water is displaced by heavy body; the waves lick his back. There’s a warm, shaking hand on his shoulder. Only then does Loki turn around to look at the tear-streaked, red-eyed face of his brother. There’s a replacement eye in the recently emptied socket. It looks sore. His hair is beginning to grow in, still shorter than Loki has seen in over a millennium, but long enough to tug at if one were to run their hands through it. Thor takes his washcloth out of his hands, and Loki silently lets him. Thor is thorough, and the longer his ministrations continue, the surer his hands become. By the time Thor lifts him onto the edge of the bath and begins to wash his feet, his hands are certain and firm against Loki’s skin.

It might just be Thor, but the air feels charged. It unearths wants that Loki had harboured when he was much younger; when he had been greener and so much more foolish. It reminds him of the things he had put away in a lonesome corner until it had festered into something ugly and bitter.

This is dangerous territory.

When Thor runs the washcloth up his legs and reaches his thigh, Loki snatches the material from Thor. What a naïve nuisance his brother is. He ignores the confused look on Thor’s face and pushes him forward before dipping into the bath again. He lathers up the washcloth once more, and then turns Thor around and pushes him, belly-first, against the wall of the pool. He scrubs his back until it starts to look red and angry, but Thor says nothing. He runs the cloth over Thor’s neck, behind his ears. He nudges Thor to turn around; his brother obeys.

He’s crying again, the sentimental fool. Loki ignores it in favour of running the washcloth over Thor’s skin. He is tanned a deep bronze now, and when Loki presses his hand over the skin that stretches taught over the muscles of Thor’s abdomen. Thor shudders.

It seems he’s ventured into dangerous waters again.

Loki pulls away, squeezing out the washcloth and throwing it over the tap to dry, then he presses a button to release the blocked water. A moment to compose himself. That’s all he needs. And maybe a distraction. He turns around, and notices how tender the eye socket looks. “Take out the prosthetic,” he orders. Thor obeys.

The skin around it looks red. Loki silently casts a cooling charm over the area to soothe the inflammation. Still, Thor says nothing. They’re nearly chest to chest again.

When Thor reaches for his neck, Loki sees it coming, it’s a familiar motion that goes farther than his memories do. Nonetheless, Loki flinches. If he could forget the sound of his windpipe being crushed, he would. Thor yanks his hand away as if he’d been burnt, and Loki sees red.

No.

He will not let that monster playing at god take away something older. For a few years in-between, this touch had felt like a manacle around his neck, but now he knows that there is no point in denying it. Thor is, and always will be, his brother, his obviously better and dumber half. His touch is no gilded cage, it is a safe house. He will not let this be destroyed. He grabs Thor’s hand with both hands and places them around his neck again.

Thor is gentle, Loki had forgotten how gentle his giant of a brother could be. He ghosts his fingers over traces of blue. The bruises hurt, but Thor’s touch is a confirmation of what he finds hard to believe.

Thor seems to understand, and pulls him closer. They stand there in the rapidly sinking water, their foreheads touching. “You came back,” Thor whispers, voice hoarse. “Stay with me?”

A hundred years ago, Loki would have taken that as a challenge. You’re always so perceptive about everyone but yourself. No longer. He cannot hide behind anything now. He must accept this truth for what it is — unchanging and undeniable. If even death would not dare separate him from Thor, then how can Loki consider leaving?

“I will.”

-

“I wondered where this thing went,” Thor finally says when they’ve climbed out of the back. Loki’s back is turned to him while he’s scrunching the water out of his hair. His voice is the sounds of an old ship slowly being coaxed away — its engines ate still lazily fighting against the will of the captain. Loki doesn’t need to turn around to see what Thor is talking about, still he does. Thor holds the snake pendant, dangling it from his fingers. Water trickles down his fingers and onto the golden chain.

“It looks better on me,” Loki replies.

“That it does, little snake,” Thor says. He walks towards Loki, and stops only when Loki can feel his breath on the bridge of his nose. He reaches around, and clasps the chain around Loki’s throat.

-

Tony’s settling into his still untouched guest room in the palace when someone knocks on his door. He knows that knock. He thinks about running away. Then he thinks about everything they’ve lost, and how little they have left. He thinks about the scar on his chest from a shield that’s sitting untouched with the rest of his Captain America memorabilia, in a house in Central Park he hasn’t visited in two years.

“Come in, Steve,” he finally says.

The Steve who walks in is a broken facsimile of the man that Tony fell in love with six years ago. He holds himself tighter, as if he’s one gust of wind away from crumbling. He looks at Tony with shining blue eyes, and bowed shoulders. “Tony, I…”

Steve trails off, like he doesn’t know what he wants to say, even though he had two years to think of a good line. Tony stares. God, it’s hard to believe, even a month ago, how much the very name Steve could tear apart his soul. Now, there is only relief. At least Steve is still here. At least he didn’t break his heart and then die on him too.

“I couldn’t think about it, you know,” Tony says mildly. “I didn’t want to think about you never being able to pick up that phone. We weren’t even on speaking terms when I left, and I kept wondering, what if I’d called. I was on that ship for three weeks and I didn’t want to know who was waiting for me. If anyone was.”

“I was,” Steve says, eyes wild as he walks towards him, Tony can’t help it, he flinches. Steve freezes in place. “When the phone rang, and it was Bruce, Tony I was so scared. But I knew you weren’t dead. I knew you would come back. But all I could think about was the fact that I never called you, I never even tried.”

“No, Steve. I should have called you.” A part of him is afraid, but another part of him, the part that still stubbornly misses Steve crushes the fear. It’s what moves his feet towards Steve until they’re nearly toe-to-toe. “I couldn’t swallow my pride. But now the thing is, now that worst has happened, none of that seems to matter anymore. I need to fix this, but I can’t do it on my own. I’m not half as good at anything as I am when I’m doing it next to you. And that’s the truth.”

“Tony,” his names spills out of Steve’s mouth as he holds out his broken heart, and Tony wants nothing but to gently press all the pieces together until it’s whole again. “You gave me a home, and I took it for granted. I lied to you about your family. For that, I’m sorry. And even then, after everything we did and said to each other, you still helped Bucky find his way back. I should never have let ideological differences separate us. I’ve missed us. I’ve missed us.”

Steve stands rigid, as if it takes all his strength not to reach for him. So it’s Tony’s turn to take a leap of faith. He couldn’t make the phone call, but he can do this. He wraps his arms around Steve’s waist, and holds him close. “I’ve missed you too, Steve.”

-

“Were you truly in Valhalla?”

They’re sitting on the bed in Loki’s new room, clade in dark red sheets. Despite Loki’s predilection for green, the deep red that Thor finds so pleasing makes Loki’s alabaster skin even more striking, especially where the tunic he wears slips off of his shoulder.

Thor has a vial of baobab oil beside him. Humans were barely making their way across the great seas of Midgard the last time they did this. Still, Thor has not forgotten the hours and hours of instruction that a younger Loki had haughtily given him. Thor coats his palms in a small amount of the oil and begins to detangle the ends with his fingers.

“I saw Mother.” Thor’s fingers freeze. “And Father.”

“Did he send you back?”

“No. Bestla did.”

“Grandfather Bestla, you mean?” Thor asks, as he lets go to pour some of the oil into his palm.

“You knew about that?” Loki asks, turning to face him.

“Mother told me,” Thor answers. The second time, it’s easier to hear her spoken of out loud. Mother had told him of Bestla when she’d told him of Loki’s hidden parentage. “After you’d fallen from the Bifrost.”

Loki scrutinises him for a moment, then turns back. “It’s your fault, really. You were just being so pitiful, people who’ve never even met you felt sorry for you.”

Of course I was pitiful, Thor can’t get the words out. I hadn’t even begun to mourn for Father before I lost you. I wasn’t ready. I need you. Thor gathers his hair, running his fingers against the sensitive skin behind Loki’s hair. But instead of softening, Loki stiffens. Typical. Loki feels vulnerable, and Thor waits for the dagger in his rib, while sectioning the hair to begin a brain from the crown of his head. It doesn’t come. Instead, Loki relaxes bit by bit as Thor braids down his neck. “Have you got a ribbon?”

They’re not ready to speak of deeper things. They will be spoken, that is certain, but not today. Thor has learned patience, and Loki has learned to allow him closer. He conjures a black ribbon made of silk, and hands it over.

With all his hair out of the way, the blue bruises on the back of his neck are revealed. They are a stark reminder to Thor of how close he had come to losing Loki. Thor finds himself itching to press his mouth on those bruises. They haven’t shared such innocent kisses since they were small enough to both sit in their father’s lap. They’d grown up, realised that it was improper, and pretended they’d never been so affectionate with each other. Well, there’s no one left to call them out on it now.

Thor kisses the back of his neck, it twists something low in his belly, an unfamiliar feeling that makes him feel dizzy with it. Loki twists his hand to grab Thor’s wrist, hard.  

This is enough. This is where they stay, Thor’s lips on Loki’s neck, Loki’s hand around Thor’s wrist, until unknown knuckles rap against the door.

Chapter Text

They’re summoned to dinner with the rest of the Avengers, and then make their way to a sleek laboratory. Loki wants nothing more than to ignore everyone else and just work on this with Tony, and maybe Bruce, provided he doesn’t turn green and angry. But it seems the other Avengers aren’t ready to leave Tony alone, and Thor has become Loki’s shadow. They crowd around the lab while Tony has his familiar FRIDAY transfer the work they’ve done into the main server.

Tony explains their theory. “Thanos was able to kill everyone with the use of the gauntlet, so the only thing that can return them is the gauntlet.”

“But how are we supposed to get the damn thing from him when it’s made him so ridiculously powerful?” Rhodey asks.

“Taking the gauntlet off of him when he had four stones was near impossible, with six, there’s almost no point in trying,” Tony replies. “No, we need the stones, but they don’t necessarily have to be those stones.”

“You want to travel back in time and get them, from when we knew where they were,” the Queen concludes. “But that would change the timeline each time we did so.”

“According to Merlin here, that would just create multiple bubble universes without changing what happened in our universe,” Tony explains. Loki rolls his eyes at the nickname, but before he can explain that Merlin was a third-rate crook who’d stolen the Norn stones for power, he’s interrupted by Bruce. Apparently, the Hulk likes him enough that he’s been asked to call the scientist by first name.  

“So is this a confirmation of the many-worlds interpretation—”

“–and what exactly does that mean?” the Captain asks.

“It’s only building on basic quantum mechanics, but there was a proposal by… Everett, I think, he thought measuring a quantum object does not force it into one comprehensible state or another, it causes an actual split in the universe. This can be applied on a macroscopic scale —”

“– you lost me at basic quantum mechanics, Tony,” Rogers says with a stupid-looking smile.

“Think of it like a pathway,” Loki takes over. “Imagine that on a large scale, each event in your life that has more than one possible conclusion results in the universe splitting when that action is taken.”

“Okay?”

“If we go back, for example, to take the Tesseract from the Vaults of Asgard six years ago, then a new universe would cleave from our own, following a different branch of the universal tree while ours continues untouched,” Loki says. “Even entering the past would be a so called “quantum event” that causes branching. If we succeed in collecting our own stones and gauntlet, then return to this universe, we can use the gauntlet to undo Thanos’ work.”

Silence.

“Is no one going to ask me how exactly we’re going to travel back in time?” Tony asks.

“Can we get our hands on Thanos’ time stone?” Natasha asks.

“The time stone rewinds the entire universe. Everyone but the person using the stone for forget all that’s happened,” Loki explains. “That’s a very big risk.”

The child Queen smiles dangerously. “We need to build a Tipler cylinder, don’t we?”

“Well, that’s great, except how are we supposed to create a cylinder of infinite length?” Bruce asks.

“Hey, Tipler himself thought a finite cylinder might produce closed time-like curves if the rotation rates were fast enough,” Tony argues.

“Tony, he didn’t prove it though.”

“That’s because this Tipler was a human and a fool, which is apparently not always mutually inclusive,” Loki interjects. “I proved it possible fifteen hundred years ago.”

“Wait what now?”

“So, turns out our favourite sorcerer here is basically a space scientist.” Tony looks positively gleeful. Loki rolls his eyes at these ridiculous human terms. Science. Sorcery. What’s the difference?

“But how?” Bruce asks.

Loki summons his books.

-

Romanoff and Rogers leave after a few hours. Rogers returns with provisions. “I bought coffee and tea, I wasn’t sure what you drink, Loki.”

“You must try this concoction, brother! It is delicious, far better than Xvi or any tea I have ever had.”

Coffee is, indeed, delicious. Loki finishes his cup and gives it back to Steve. “Thank you, Captain.”

“You can call me Steve,” he says. “I’ll be in the operations centre, call if you need anything. Thor can show you how.”

-

“You don’t have to stay here,” Loki tells his brother after Steve leaves.

“I won’t get in your way, I promise.”

Shuri lets out a sad laugh. “My big brother used to say too. It was always a lie. Now, show me what you’ve done so far.”

Loki has been writing in Asgardian rather than the All-Tongue, figuring he could translate it all later. He holds up his notes. Shuri tilts her head. “Why do you speak IsiXhosa but write in an alien language?”

“We speak the Allspeak. It allows us to be understood by all. But the language we speak is Asgardian.”

“Can I learn Allspeak?”

“No, it is spoken only by Earth deities, the descendants of Gaia. Thor’s been giving free Galactic Standard lessons though—”

“I would love to teach you Galactic Standard! Or Asgardian, if you prefer!” Thor tells her enthusiastically.

“Both, both is good,” she replies.

Loki rolls his eyes fondly, and throws Thor his pocket dimension cube. “Do not mix up my books.”

“What do you mean, books? Where are the books?” Shuri asks.

“Oh kid, you’re going to love this,” Tony says, and Thor activates the door.

They disappear into the library, and quiet reigns.

When the sun begins to set, the queen mother enters the laboratory and has to physically drag her child back to bed. “But I’ve only learned Galactic Standard, let me learn Asgardian before bed, mama!”

Thor follows her out of the portal and watches in amusement as the laboratory doors close behind them. “She perfected Galactic Standard within three hours, Tony, I do believe she has beaten you in the battle of wits.”

“She beat me and left me to the dogs ages ago. Isn’t she the best?” Tony sits on the table, working the holotable like he was born to it.

The sun sets and then rises again. The other Avengers comes and go, bringing food, and sometimes dragging Tony to bed. Humans, they need so much sleep. The sun begins to set again, and Loki still needs to figure out how much energy input is needed for the contraption. It depends on their distance of the point in spacetime they’re trying to reach.

Time travel isn’t easy, it’s rarely done right, and since he proved that it was possible without a time stone, Loki hasn’t bothered to attempt creating the energy needed for the various speeds the contraption asks for. And he’s never done it without the help of his Mother’s sorcery. Ever. But drastic events call for drastic solutions.

Loki sits on the floor with his books, checking and double checking his calculations. Banner and Tony are already beginning work on the frame of the time machine. Steve Rogers sleeps on the couch, his sketchbook and pens abandoned on the floor. Thor sits at his side, watching. He’d been gone all day, dealing with skirmishes in some place called Madripoor. He’d brought him sweet breads as a treat, and then just never left. He looks over Loki’s shoulder, as if he could understand the complicated spell work done in numbers.

“Why are you using base 10?” “That’s what’s common on Midgard.”

“What are you calculating here?” “How to safely transform this much energy as magic into the machine.”

“I thought Aldin’s Theorem was proven wrong.” “That’s not Aldin’s Theorem. Do you even know what Aldin’s Theorem is?”

“I think there’s an arithmetic error here.”

Loki stabs him. Then he rechecks the line. Indeed, he had forgotten to bring down a variable.

Thor rolls his eyes, pulls out the dagger and begins to wipe it clean.

“Don’t worry, he does this a lot,” Bruce tells Tony, who’s staring at them, one eyebrow raised. “I think it’s his version of “I don’t know how to win this argument with words, so I’ll resort to violence instead.” I saw him stab Thor no less than five times on the ship.”

“I can hear you,” Loki tells them. Thor passes him his dagger back, shiny and clean, and Loki banishes it.

“Yeah, and I can hear you making a math booboo. Go to bed.” Tony’s argument would stand, if he hadn’t then dropped his blowtorch, his toes only saved by Bruce swiftly pulling him aside.

The noise wakes up Rogers, who jumps off of the couch. “What — Tony?”

“Hey, it’s okay, everything’s fine,” Tony assures him, picking up the blowtorch and putting it away.

“What time is it?”

“Four thirty. We have a good momentum going here.”

“In the morning? Have you been working all night?” Steve stands up. “You can’t sustain this momentum if you pass out. Bedtime. Come on.”

“Don’t tell me about sustainability, I’m the king of sustainable energy, I know what I’m about, son,” Tony declares. Loki snorts. “Oh, you think I’m funny? At least I’m not making mathematical errors.”

“Oh for Norns’ sake, it was one tiny —”

“— Steve is right, Loki. Even God’s need rest sometimes. Come now, brother,” Thor says, pushing himself off the ground and holding out his hand for Loki to grasp. “Let us also retire for now. You’ll be better equipped once you’ve rested. There is no need to rush, you’ll be going back to the same time either way.”

Loki considers stabbing him again, but he doesn’t think it will keep Thor from following him around like a lost puppy. He supposes he could use a few hours of sleep. He takes Thor by the forearm and lets himself be pulled up. When he tries to pull away, Thor stubbornly holds on for a moment longer than necessary. He leaves his books and conjures a hologram with the words, “do not touch” in Galactic Standard. Then he erases it and rewrites it in English. He turns to the others. “Gentlemen, I bid you goodnight.”

Thor follows him, and he doesn’t try to hide his surefooted steps, but Loki ignores him. He reaches for his door, enters swiftly, and turns to close it in Thor’s face. The expression is one he used to wear when Mother forbade them from playing before their studies are complete, or when a handsome woman refused him her bed — disappointed acceptance.

How long are you going to mope around like a lost child? Do you think this behavior is befitting of a king?” Loki asks.

Thor’s face crumbles. “I am no king. I have no kingdom.”

There are servants bustling around them, despite the early hour. Loki is too selfish to share this with them. He sighs theatrically, pulls Thor into the bedroom and locks the door behind them.

“Is this where you finally yell at me?” Loki asks. He sits down on the bed, pulling at the laces of his leather shoes until they loosen. He pulls off his socks one by one, and tucks them neatly into the shoes.

“For what?”

“For bringing the Tesseract aboard, for getting our people killed?”

“I should have known.” Thor kicks his shoes off, and Loki casts the spell before he realizes he’s done it; it sends the shoes skittering to the right of the door, until they plop down.

“Not as predictable as you thought I was, then.”

Thor doesn’t smile at the jab, or respond to it in any way really. Instead he comes and sits beside Loki, his forearms on his thighs, his head low. “I sent you in there like you were my executioner, not my brother.”

Thor is hurting, again, and Loki can no longer control this long-forgotten, rather childish anger that builds within him. “Well, I have been denying you brotherhood for nearly a decade now. At some point, you were bound to accept it.”

Loki doesn’t say that he knows now, with hindsight, that Thor’s rejection in the elevator had been the most painful thing Loki had ever experienced, and that included the pain Thanos subjected him to all those years ago on Titan. He doesn’t expect Thor to move suddenly, kneeling in front of him. He takes Loki’s hands in his own, gripping so tight it hurts. “No, Loki. Please.” grab his hands, both, the grip so tight that it hurts. He looks Loki in the eyes, face earnest. “We have hurt each deeply of late, but never doubt that I love you.”

It is too much. He feels too much, it is worse than not feeling at all. He doesn’t try to pull his hands out of Thor’s grasp, but fashions armour out of words. “Must you kneel to your subject? Truly, brother, this is unbecoming of a king.”

Thor doesn’t pull away at the jab. Instead, he sends current through Loki’s body. “Why must you mock me so? Where is Asgard, then?” There is lightning behind Thor’s eye. “Where, dear brother, is my kingdom?”

Silence.

Loki’s hands are heating up in Thor’s, his eyes burn under Thor’s gaze. The time has come for the trickster to give up his scheme, to tell the truth for once and for all. Loki breathes low, gathers air low in his gut and releases. He pulls his hands out of Thor’s, only to grasp them in his own, and bring them against his chest, to the right where his Jotün heart beats a messy melody. “This is your kingdom.”

This is all they have now. Loki made Thor a promise — the sun to shine on Asgard, and it will. In the meantime, they are all they have. Thor, the king of Asgard, and Loki his only remaining subject.

Thor surges up, electric fingers surging around Loki’s neck, and then Loki is swallowed by the current that passes through Thor’s lips into his own. He can smell the way it chars his clothes, but Loki has always been able to withstand Thor. He kisses back just as savagely, wrapping his arms and legs around Thor.

Thor presses him down on the bed and rips his way to bare skin. Loki laughs with Thor’s lower lip between his teeth, and banishes the rest of their clothes to the vanity. Loki has wanted this so long it makes him sick to his stomach with it. He wonders how long Thor has wanted him; if it is recent. Or if it is something sudden — a result of grief. Maybe this will be the one thing the makes him hate Loki when this this done, finally when Loki knows that he needs Thor’s affection like a lost child needs their mother.

Their lovemaking is frantic. Thor presses Loki down into the bed and forces him to look Thor in the eye when he first enters him. His brother is a possessive lover, he wraps himself tight around Loki even as he rocks into him with heavy thrusts.

Loki is just as possessive, he holds Thor by the hair and tugs him into vicious kisses. He bites Thor hard enough to break skin and then soothes the wound with the flat of his tongue savoring the taste of his blood. Thor begs for more. Thor holds his manhood in his fist, pumping in time with the thrusts of his hips, faster and tighter until Loki curses him and thrice his kin.

Thor laughs and tells him to stop cursing himself, and then fucks him harder. Soon he loses rhythm comes with a cry as he empties his pleasure into Loki in hot spurts. And that’s what does it. Thor, fucking into him as Loki leaks his spent, still hard, still wanting, still demanding Loki’s pleasure until he finally surrenders it all over his brother’s fingers and belly.

Loki collapses on the bed, and Thor rolls off of him, laying on his back beside him. Never doubt that I love you, Thor had said to him only moments ago. He wants to believe, but there will be no going back what they have committed.

It’s quiet — he can hear Thor’s breaths. If he runs first, it will hurt less, Loki tells himself. He readies himself, opens his mouth to let out something scathing, but finds no words. He looks at Thor, with his eyes closed and his chest covered in Loki’s spent, and he cannot find the conviction to push him away. You lack conviction, that human had said to him on the Helicarrier so long ago. Against Thor, he always has. How can he, when hurting Thor only serves to jab a hot poker through his own flesh?

Thor edges closer and closer, pushing Loki to his side and then wrapping an arm around him. He tugs him closer until they’re chest to back. Thor splays a palm over Loki’s chest, right over his heart, his ring finger rubbing against the sensitive skin of his nipple.

“What are we doing, Thor?” Loki whispers.

“Going to sleep.”

“It is morning.”

“It is barely five. And you haven’t slept in two days.” Thor throws one of his legs over Loki’s as if that would keep him from running. Fool. Where would Loki go?

And then? Loki wants to ask, if it didn’t sound so needy.

“We’re filthy,” he says instead.

“We’ll bathe when we wake up. Go to sleep, brother,” Thor nuzzles against the back of his neck.

“I don’t think we can call each other that anymore,” Loki replies mildly as he waves the curtains shut and the lights off.  

Thor holds him impossibly closer. It hurts, but it will hurt more when Thor lets go. “Loki. We will always be brothers. Nothing will change that.” Loki’s heart learns to beat again. “Rest, brother.”

Loki rests.

-

Thor wakes up to the sound of his identicard beeping somewhere. He opens his eyes, throws out his arms, only to realize that he is alone in bed. He sits up, looking for his clothes, and finds them folded on the vanity table. Loki is not to be seen. It fills Thor with trepidation.

He tries to ignore it, focusing in on the card itself. “Hey Thor,” the card reads his fingertips and connects him to Steve. “We have an incident. Can you come to the conference room in fifteen minutes?”

“On my way.”

He turns off the card, and calls for Stormbreaker. The lightning passes through him and cloaks him in armour just as the axe slams against his palm.  

“I didn’t take you for the kind to leave so soon after receiving favours,” Loki asks from behind. Thor turns around. His brother stands under the doorframe to the bathroom. He is adorned in his jewels and the bruises on his skin. The ones on his neck are gone, Loki’s magic at work. The ones that remain are Thor’s handiwork.  

He sets Stormbreaker down, walking towards his brother. Loki stands fixed, locks him in with glimmering green eyes until they’re nose to nose. With one hand, he holds Loki in place by the behind. With the other, he covers the amulet.

“I bought this on Alfheim four hundred years ago. Why did you take it?”

Loki raises his arms to Thor’s shoulders, runs them down his chest. The residue off his fingers marks the metal of his armour like war paint. “Well, you just left it lying around in your room, could you blame me?”

“Right, just lying around. Inside my trunk.”

“Same difference.”

Thor laughs. “Why else?”

“I missed that entire adventure because I had to remain on Asgard with Father to renegotiate trade agreements with Xandar. Maybe I just wanted a souvenir.” Thor stills, Loki’s eyes on him, his hands at his waist. He shakes his head.

“It was meant to be, overhasty little magpie,” Thor leans in to whisper into Loki’s neck. Loki pushes him away, holding him in place by his neck with both hands.

“For me?” Loki asks, with genuine surprise on his lips.

“Well, yes. What, did you think it was for me? When have you seen me wearing necklaces? You’re the one with all glittering trinkets, the rings and anklets and waist chains and —” Thor stops himself because that’s a whole distracting thought on its own. “Anyway, who did you think it was for? Mother?”

“Oh I don’t know, whichever handsome palace maid that had caught your eye that week.” Loki’s eyes glint in a way that makes Thor brace inwardly. “It doesn’t interest me anymore. What does, is how long have you wanted to sodomize your brother.”

Honesty is the only path here. “I cannot give you an answer, I don’t have one. It feels brand new, and yet very old. I think, I have loved you as far as my memory goes, and wanted you since my body learned to want. But I, your witless oaf of a brother, did not recognize the way my stomach twisted at your bare skin, or how my face heated up at the sight of your smile, for what it was.”

“To be that fortunate,” Loki muses, “To be unaware of your own perversities.”

Thor takes his hands away from Loki. His brother is looking for a fight. Thor won’t give it to him. “Do you think this perverse, Loki?”

Loki blinks furiously, shakes his head and looks behind Thor. “Is it not? Or do you no longer think of us as brothers?”

“Do you think I can simply change my mind overnight? Loki, I will tell you this every day for the rest of our lives until you believe me. You are my brother, and also so much more. When we lay with each other last night, it filled me a rightness that I have never felt before. If you do not feel the same way, then tell me, brother. I will never ask this of you again. We will simply be brothers, if that is your wish.”  

“If I wish. What do you wish brother?”

If only all the question he were asked were this easy. “You.”

“And what of later? When we stop Thanos, and we bring our people home? What of when you no longer want for a kingdom, but for a wife and an heir?”

“Then I will offer you a dowry, half my kingdom, and if I’m very lucky, you’ll bear me a child just as Bestla did for Bor.”

Before Loki can reply, the Avengers identicard beeps again in his pocket. “Thor, you wanna hurry up? And if you see him, tell Loki that Bruce and Shuri are waiting for him in the lab.”

“Yes, Tony. I apologise for my lateness. I’m coming.”

He puts the card away. “I have to go.”

Loki stares at him silently still. He licks his lips, leans in, and then his mouth is upon Thor, the gentlest of kisses. His fingers come up to his face, and soothing cold seeps through one of them into the sore eye. He draws familiar runes of protection over Thor’s heart. Loki speaks not, but Thor knows how to read the language of Loki’s love. It’s built from protection runes and gentle kisses, it’s the way he told Thanos to kill away and then traded his only bargaining piece for Thor’s life.

“Wait for me?” Thor asks.

“I will.”

-

Valhalla

New Asgard is a floating city above Earth.

The last Valkyrie trains the next generation of Valkyries. The Bifrost gleams from the edge. The King of Asgard flies above the farmland, giving my needed rain. The other King of Asgard has been prescribed bedrest, and curses Eir. Heimdall sits with him, going over important points of a security council meeting he’d missed.

“He’s got quite the vocabulary,” Bor says. “This pregnancy is truly bringing out the moodiness in that child.”

“Oh no, that’s just Loki,” his daughter-in-law tells him from his left. “He has always been sensitive.”

“Yes, but this is a whole new level,” Odin stands to Frigga’s left, his arms around her. “Beloved, you weren’t here when he threw Thor out of the balcony window. He ended up in the middle of the biggest ocean in Midgard. Those poor sharks.”

Silence reigns as they watch over their legacy. There are but a few thousand Asgardians remaining, but they learn, they play, they spin yarn and train soldiers. They live. “Do you think they’ll ever be what Asgard was?” Odin asks.

“No,” Bor says. “It will be something better.”

Their legacy was one of blood and violence and selfish consumption, a system that failed far too often to continue to be used. His grandsons have learned from it, have created something new, something kinder. It will last.

“It’s a girl,” the goddess of prophecy reveals. The others turn to look at Frigga in surprise. “What? I’m dead, why should I keep my prophecies to myself now?”

Odin laughs, leans in to kiss his wife’s cheek. “It’s a princess. We should celebrate. Oh, we should get the pear cider.”