Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters. All rights belong to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong.
No matter how fast light travels,
it finds the darkness has always got there first,
and is waiting for it.
~ Terry Pratchett
You never lose your demons.
You can only learn to live above them.
~ The Ancient One (Dr. Strange)
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lonely.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
#1
Darkness engulfed him, a complete and utter darkness so menacing that he could almost feel it touching his skin. Not again. He knew he would not be able to endure it a second time. He did not remember much but he remembered the powerlessness against that darkness. It was like a bottomless ocean that had kept him it its grip, swirling him around until he was seeing stars. He had struggled at first, as everyone would, but you soon get tired of fighting against so mighty a force. His mind and body had grown weak and he had drowned in that darkness, its evil shadows filling his thoughts like water streaming into a drowning man's lungs. There was no stopping it. You fight, but fighting against water is useless because you gasp for breath but the very reflex that has kept you alive is now killing you and the tighter you hold on to life, the sooner you lose it.
He had surrendered himself to the darkness and it had twisted everything. Thoughts. Memories. Emotions. It had made everything that he had thought was real seem unreal and everything that he had considered unreal seem terrifyingly, grotesquely genuine. The darkness had fabricated memories that were to this day pulsating through his brain like strobe lights on bad days.
Try to think, he told himself, but knew at the same time that thinking was dangerous. He could not trust his last memory. The last time he'd found himself wrapped up in that darkness, he had remembered something that had never happened, at least not in that way, but it had seemed realer to him than any other memory of his entire life. He'd remembered his brother grabbing him by the hand, both of their lives hanging by a thread as they were holding on to the collapsing rainbow bridge. He'd remembered the sight of his boots with nothing under them but the bottomlessness of space. He'd remembered their father appearing out of nowhere, telling him that he was wasting his time trying to make him proud because the allfather would never be proud of a monster's offspring. He'd remembered his brother's face breaking into a sneer; remembered him saying, "Monsters have no place in Asgard, Loki," before hurling him into the void.
Loki, yes, that's my name.
But who he was did not really matter to him. What mattered was his brother's cold gaze, his hateful sneer, the hatred in his eyes.
Enough, Loki. This is not what happened. It is not real. You know this.
He tried to shut out those poisonous memories, tried to focus on what had happened before his second descent into the darkness, but his brain was defending its memories against the force of evil that was threatening them. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes against the menace, focusing on every fiber of his being. You need to be aware of the moment, Loki, his mother had told him when she had first taught him magic. You need to be aware of the energy streaming through your body, all of it, and you need to channel its powers. He remembered her voice, warm and soft, like a ray of spring sunshine after a cold night. He remembered that he'd loved her with all his heart.
And then he remembered his brother; a very different image than the one from all those years ago. Thor—yes, that is his name—knee-deep in debris, his face a grimace of pain, covered in dirt and blood and tears, his mouth clamped shut by a metal device. No, Loki. Why were these words of so much significance? He did not know although he sensed their emotional impact on him. They had meant something to him once but their true meaning wouldn't reveal itself to him.
Not now, Loki. Focus.
He tried harder to channel all his energy into the task of remembering where he was and why he was there but feared that he would not see an unspoiled version of the events that had led to the present moment. But this time, he would not surrender himself to the shadows. This time, he would fight. The truth came slowly, in the form of a crackling voice. "This is the Asgardian refugee vessel Statesman. We are under assault. I repeat we are under assault. Engines are dead, life support failing."
Asgard, yes. That is the name of my home. No wait, it is gone, is it not? … Asgard is not a place, never was. Asgard is the people.
"We have very few soldiers here. This is not a Warcraft. I repeat this is not a Warcraft."
They are dead. Most of them are dead.
He remembered the screams of horror, the smell of fear and death, the metallic tang of blood biting into the back of his throat, the deep raw voice of Him saying, "If you consider failure experience."
Failure. Yes, his life had been one large compilation of single failures. That was not a fabricated memory. That was true. He was responsible for a wave of wrath and destruction that had washed over Midgard a few years ago. He had condemned thousands of innocent souls to a gruesome death in his endeavor to seek revenge for something that was, with the benefit of hindsight, almost justifiable. He had caused the death of his beloved mother when he had blindly tried to lash out at this family for imprisoning him after causing these deaths.
"You really are the worst brother," he remembered Thor saying. And then, "What would you like me to say? You faked your own death, you stole the throne, stripped Odin of his power, stranded him on Earth to die, releasing the Goddess of Death. Have I said enough or would you like me to go back further than the past two days?"
"You seem to just want to the stay the same."
No, that was not true. He wanted to change. He'd wanted to change for a while now but, sometimes, change and growth are just too painful.
"I'm impressed. You've grown stronger since you last betrayed me but, unfortunately, you are nowhere near strong enough to defeat me."
Him again. That deep, terrifying and yet curiously calming voice that had planted all the false memories in his head the first time.
I don't need to defeat you. I just need to defeat myself, Loki thought but He could hear thoughts as if the words were spoken aloud.
A condescending snort of laughter reverberated through his skull. "Are you sure you are strong enough to defeat your nature? Are you sure that you will not again bring death and destruction to the ones you claim to love? It is who you are, Loki. You are cursed. You carry a darkness inside you that will never leave you unless you fight really hard and you and I both know that you lack the strength and determination to do just that."
That was true as well. It would take him years of hard work, years without any trace of recognition, let alone praise, before the actions of his past would be thought undone and his people started trusting him again; if such a time ever came to pass. He would always be the mischievous one, the anti-hero, the wild card that nobody really knew whether or how to trust, the one whose alliances would always be unclear; even to his own people.
If only they could understand what had caused the darkness inside him grow so strong, so independent, so uncontrollable. If only he could understand it himself. At some point, the dark part had gained enough strength to overpower him. He didn't understand why or how, he only knew that he could not protect himself or others from this part of himself. He had tried and he had failed countless times. He also knew that this dark part was feeding on his controversial feelings for Thor and that it hated him. It hated him so much that, at times, Loki had felt the hatred starting to eat away at his sanity and he knew that, even if they survived this attack and rebuilt Asgard and even if he would try to stand by his brother's side because he was the rightful king, it would surface again. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not soon, but eventually it would. If he tried to do right by the Asgardian people, by his family, by Thor, and everyone would still punish him with contempt and distrust while loving Thor just for who he was … He could feel the dark part stirring awake from a momentary slumber. No, he could not fight this.
His voice again. "See? You are still weak."
It was true. It was time to stop pretending that there was a way out; that he would ever be able to develop the strength to fight against the darkness inside him for the rest of his life. It did not occur to him that it might get easier over time or that people might actually be willing to help him if he let go of his borderline narcissistic pride and revealed his struggles. The only thing that did occur to him was that there was just one way to protect Thor from having to endure another betrayal, another hysterical outburst of hatred and jealousy and rage and that was to make the dark part disappear forever.
It would be one of his few acts of heroism; something Thor would remember for the rest of his life. Thor would remember that he, Loki, had sacrificed himself for him and that would ease the pain because, at last, he could be sure that his brother was more than the god of chaos and mischief; that, at heart, he was and had always been his ally.
That was what he had been doing. This was the present. He was sacrificing himself for his brother. He'd freed himself from Thanos'—yes, His name was Thanos—control over his mind but not from his physical hold over him. Thanos had yanked him off his feet, his giant purple hand wrapped around his neck.
Loki had confronted Thanos, not entirely trusting himself what he would be doing. It happened sometimes, that the dark part started acting on its own. It was as if he was changing into his own version of the Hulk, with the exception that he did not turn into a giant green monster, at least not on the outside. On the inside, he was no less of a monster when the dark part was in control. He'd seen his brother kneel in the debris of their broken spaceship, seen him helpless, overpowered, grief-stricken.
"Kill away," he'd said to Thanos. Torture him, kill him. That was what the dark part wanted. It wanted to see Thor suffer. But then he had seen the anguish distort his brother's face and he had snapped out of it. He had wrestled against the dark part and he had won, telling Thanos to stop and giving up the Tesseract in order to save Thor's life and his own. From then on out things were blurry. He had tried to stab Thanos, which was sheer and utter madness considering the titan's raw strength, and he was not sure why he had done it. Thanos had paralyzed him mid-attack with the Space Stone, his giant hands closing around his throat. His touch had brought back the darkness, that same darkness he had been sucked into when he had let go of his brother's hand because it had seemed easier to just let go than to face the painful truth that their father would never be as proud of him as he was of Thor.
Yes, he was a coward. That was also true. He was a coward and a trickster and he had spent fifteen-hundred years taking the easy way out whenever there had been trouble, running away from his true nature and from taking any responsibility for his actions. He had staged his own death in front of Thor's eyes and had exiled his father to earth with a spell so that he could take his place on the throne of Asgard and hide from Thanos and the entire universe in plain sight.
No more of that.
He would do the right thing now and protect his brother from future madness, future heartbreak. The pressure around his neck tightened. "I would like to see you try to change, Loki," Thanos murmured inside his skull, "like to see you fail miserably because of who you are, but I just don't think you deserve another chance. You have had too many of those as it is."
Says the one who is about to wreck half the universe with a giant golden glove, Loki thought. Thanos increased the pressure to a point where Loki's vision blurred at the edges. The titan was full of rage but that was just as well. He had sworn to kill him a long time ago and, deep inside him, Loki had always known that he would never escape. Sometimes, he had almost waited for it to happen.
Wait! This could not be the end, could it? It did not have to be. The pressure around his neck began to decrease, or was he just imagining that? No, I don't have to die like this. I don't want to die like this.
Oh, Loki, make up your mind.
I don't—
You fool, if you want Thor to suffer, you do it. And if you want to save him, you do it, too.
That makes absolutely no sense. What should I do?
Thor will survive but he will suffer. He will save Asgard's people but he will suffer. He might defeat Thanos but he will suffer. He will be safe but he will suffer.
"Y-you will never be a God," Loki told Thanos on his last breath before he felt his consciousness slipping from his grasp, his mind going blissfully blank for once.
Notes:
- Somehow, I feel the need to add that I don't think Loki deserves to suffer any more than he already did, but my mind is actually very dark and twisted, so I had this thought stuck in my head ever since I watched Infinity War that Thanos' presence actually bought all the torture memories back (even though he was not in possession of the mind stone at this point), which might have caused Loki to lose his mind and attack Thanos. I also think that, while Loki seemed to be healing in Ragnarok, madness (depersonalization/dissociative identity disorder/psychosis, whatever it was) never completely subsides and that it can be triggered by pretty much anything. (The mind stone concern will also be addressed in subsequent chapters!)
-Ah, and another disclaimer: By this point, my knowledge comes almost exclusively from the MCU (hence the tag). I might add more comic/mythology stuff over time if it fits and I actually find the time to read and write (that means I won't include any comic/mythology stuff).
- That being said, feel free to comment/ask questions/get in touch (my twitter is CurtisMcQueen8).
