Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers
Warning: Angry Loki likes somewhat gruesome imagery
A/N: This is the longest one-shot I've ever written.
Loki smiled as he heard someone step into the room, their step was lighter than the others and he could tell it was a woman. He was about to taunt her when he caught the reflection of the person in his glass cage. He turned around shocked to find her standing there, she looked different and yet the same.
"Hela?" he asked breathless, not able to say more than that as his mind was spinning off at a million miles an hour. She was dead. She was supposed to be dead. He had begun mourning her more than a hundred years ago. She was supposed to be dead, but she wasn't, she was standing right in front of him wearing a smirk on her face. His smirk that he had been wearing up until the moment that he had seen her face. She was supposed to be dead, gone, no more and yet somehow she was in front of him.
"Hey Dad," she said like it hadn't been more than a hundred years since the two of them had last seen each other. That's only when he realized how strangely she was dressed...almost like she was a Midgardian. She was wearing the black fabric trousers that he had seen some of the Midgardians wearing, although most of their trousers had been blue instead of black. Her long black hair fell in loose waves around her face and on top she was wearing a dark green short-sleeved kind of top. There was something else different - her face;, her face was completely pale rather than half pale and half dead, she was also talking strangely.
She stepped forward closer to his cage. One that he hadn't minded being in just moments ago, but now he wished that the cage wasn't between the two of them. Although, it wasn't really like he could move anyways. His mind was still stuck on his daughter that was in front of him who was supposed to be dead.
"I'm sure you have a lot of questions," she said. This time her smirk faded slightly and she appeared to be slightly nervous but at the same time slightly angry. Hela had inherited his ability to hide her emotions from others, but the two of them had always been able to read each other better than just about anyone else. Jor and Fen hadn't been able to hide it as well as they could. A stab of grief flooded him and he furiously blinked back tears. He was still in the Midgardian prison and this could be some sort of attempt to break him. He would not cry in front of the Midgardians.
"I have a couple as well," she said. This comment had more fire to it. Was she angry at him? What had he done to deserve her anger? Right, he wasn't a fool, he knew it could be any number of things. Hela certainly had a long list of things that she could be angry with him for. Not the least of which was what had happened to her and her brothers. She raised her eyebrows like she was waiting for his questions, but Loki wasn't sure that he could have this conversation in front of all the Midgardians that wanted to stop him. The raven haired being found himself looking at one of the obvious Midgardian security cameras, even though he knew there were probably several less noticeable ones in the room as well.
"I disabled the camera and the doors and all the listening devices," she said seeming to understand his hesitance, though she crossed her arms like she was irritated that he wouldn't speak without hearing it first. "This conversation is entirely private," Loki just stared at her for a long moment. Even though he had a million questions vying for his attention, he could only keep thinking over and over again on a loop. She's alive. She's alive. How in the All-father's name is she alive?
"I…you're alive?" his voice came out shakily, he hadn't felt this scared, nervous, and vulnerable since the incident on Asgard. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. She frowned. at his confused statement.
"Of course I'm alive," she said slowly searching him for something but Loki wasn't really paying attention because he couldn't take his eyes off long enough to try to figure out what she was looking for. Loki scanned his daughter for injuries. There were no new ones that he could see from her pale but smooth exposed skin.
"Did you think that I was dead?" she asked slowly with more than a hint of surprise. He found himself unable to form a word and merely nodded his head. A brief flash of shock flickered over her features before anger settled in. So she was angry at him? His heart that he had tried his hardest to turn off months ago throbbed and all the things he had been burying starting bubbling their way to the surface. Her nostrils flared and she turned around a short angry circle a few times before she faced him again.
"Who told you I was dead?" she barked at him. Her harsh voice was little tiny little needles stabbing into him.
"The All-father," he said not willing to call him his father anymore after everything that he had done. Her jaw shifted angrily.
"I just thought that you had abandoned me, that bastard!" she shouted angrily a little green magic streaming off her. Loki backed away even though there was a glass cage between him and his daughter. He opened his mouth as he was so accustomed to automatically defending his father from any naysayers, but then remembered that he didn't care anymore.
"I don't understand," Loki said carefully. His daughter was a lot like him. She had his skin coloring and his hair color, then again Jor and Fen had as well. Another sharp jab of pain hit him and he focused on Hela alone. Temperament-wise Hela had always been a lot like him, although it took a lot more to make her angry than it took him. When she did get angry though she was just as explosive, if not more.
Green streams of magic were trailing out of her, he felt a momentary stab of jealousy as he looked at her magic. His magic used to be like that, powerful and strong before the incident. He shook his head and focused on his daughter. Her fists were balled up now and the green magic was now coming off her in waves. Tears were starting to fall from her eyes and trailed their way down her slightly pink cheeks. He wished he was on the other side of the glass, even if Hela was angry with him he wanted to comfort her. He could never stand to see her in pain, he never been able to see any of his children in pain, but Hela was the only one he had left.
"I hated Helheim," she said still angry but crying at the same time. "It was full of the dead and even if I was born half dead...it smelt of death, even through the walls I could smell it all the time."
Loki's heart broke with that revelation. He hadn't wanted to send her to Helheim, but his father- no Odin had convinced him it was the safest place for her after what had happened to Jor and Fen. He had visited her whenever the All-father had allowed him to and when that wasn't enough he had used his secret pathways, it was the reason that he had found about them in the first place. He had always thought she had been happy in Helheim though. She was a queen there and had been given an enormous amount of power. The biggest downside in his mind other than the fact that he wouldn't be able to see as much as he wanted to was the time difference. Time worked different in Helheim and she aged twice as quickly as she had when she had lived in Asgard. Making them to an outside eye look more like brother and sister than father and daughter.
"I couldn't take it anymore," she said with a shake of her head. His daughter looked down at her hands noticing for the first time the magic leaking out of her. The magic stopped and she looked back at him.
"I was tired of death, death, and more death," she said this time her face and voice were emotionally vacant.
"I wanted something more," she continued using the same tone. "I asked the All-Father, but he said that for the moment Asgard was too dangerous and that the rumor had gotten even worse. That all of Asgard had seemed to convince themselves of the rumors. I ask him to send me somewhere else if I couldn't go home, anywhere, but he said that everywhere else was dangerous too. That the stories had spread and that everyone now thought that I was death, that a single touch of my hand could kill anyone."
Loki nodded, it was true. He wished that it wasn't true and he had tried hard to combat the rumors but once they had started flying there had been seemingly no way to stop them. It was all his fault. If he had just kept a closer eye on his sons then the rumors about them wouldn't have started and they wouldn't have eventually enveloped their sister along with his sons. He felt an odd thing in his throat and his eyes were slightly blurry before he realized that he was crying steadily now.
"So I waited for you, only you didn't come… I kept waiting for you, but you never came. Since the All-father wasn't going to help me I decided to leave myself and wait for you to find me."
The tears thickened as he realized that his daughter had been waiting all this time for him to come and find her. After a hundred years of waiting she had probably thought that he hadn't cared enough to come find her when he would have given anything to find her if he had even thought that she might be alive.
"I'm so sorry Hela," he said meaning every word of it. He was sorry that she had spent the last 100 years believing that he hadn't cared, that he didn't love her, that there hadn't been a huge hole in his heart filled in with her absence, anger. He was sorry that she thought that he had been ignoring her. He hadn't. It had been during the period of time when wars were rampant, just when one war ended another one had started. For nearly a decade, it had gone on like that and he hadn't been able to use the Bifrost to visit his daughter and nor had he been able to access any of the pathways. When he had come home ready to see his daughter his father had told him of her death. Why in the nine realms would his father tell him his daughter had died when she was alive in front of him? Not his father-the All-Father he belatedly corrected himself.
"What happened?" he jolted back as he realized that Hela was now in the cage with him touching his cheek. Once he realized it was her he enveloped her in the tightest hug he could manage without cutting off her air supply. Everything seemed inconsequential now. If he knew now what he hadn't known then he would never have agreed to go if it meant not seeing his daughter. But he hadn't known that going would mean not only years of war but years of not seeing Hela, who had taken it as a sign that he didn't care. That assumption would have been further strengthened by the fact that he hadn't looked for her.
"War," he managed to croak out his voice sounding rough. "We went to war. I was of age and if I didn't go it would have seemed cowardly." It seemed rather foolish now. Because he feared looking cowardly, he had lost his daughter. He laughed bitterly. "As soon as that war ended another began. It was called the five-year war, even though technically it was made of many little wars," he sniffed. "None of the places were places that I knew how to use the pathways to or from. The only way to access you was the Bifrost, but they wouldn't let me use it to go see you because they said it posed some sort of security risk. I hated being away from you for so long, especially since I knew that however long I was away was twice as long for you."
"As soon as it was over I was going to come for you but my- The All-Father told me when I came back that you were dead," As much as Loki now hated the All-Father he had no idea why he would have lied to him about the death of his daughter. At the time, Hela was the All-Father's only grandchild. How could the All-Father have done that after what had happened to Jor and Fen? As cruel as Loki thought him to be, he hadn't thought that the All-Father could stoop so low.
"He told you I was dead?" Hela's voice was a little muffled as Loki was holding her against his chest tightly, but she wasn't trying to break his hold, that was at least something.
"Did...why..why would he do that?" she sounded confused as best as he could tell with her voice still being muffled.
"I...I don't know." Maybe even then a child of a frost giant wasn't worth it to him, especially since she couldn't be of use to him like Loki could have been. Maybe the only use his daughter had to the All-Father was her ability to be in Helheim without dying, making her the perfect ruler. Maybe since she hadn't wanted the role anymore, he hadn't wanted anything to do with her.
That make his blood boil. Gone were the tears and he wished he could do what Hela had done only a few moments ago. But he couldn't and that was the All-Father's fault as well. Loki looked down at his left vambrace which covered the symbol in his arm that his father had bestowed on him not long after Hela had been declared dead.
"I'm going to kill him," he said emotion draining from him. It was a fact, he was going to kill him. Odin took away his magic, his hope and now his daughter; Odin was going to die. He started as he felt a cool hand on his face, Hela was holding his face looking at him.
"That's not why I came here," she said softly.
"Why not? He separated us, took away my magic and then told me you were dead."
Hela frowned at him but didn't move away from him. "I've seen you use your magic," she said softly.
Loki looked at the cameras and then decided he had to trust his daughter. He removed his left vambrace and showed her what Odin had done. There a symbol in his flesh. It was a combination between three symbols magic which resembled an R, across the R there a symbol which the layperson might think resembled a poor drawing of a fish which meant separation and the last symbol was for constraint which to the layperson would look like a strange X. All in all the mark was only about two inches wide and long, but it kept him from accessing the majority of his magic. It left him only illusions, and if he concentrated enough, telekinetic blasts. She looked down at the mark on his arm to him and back a few times.
"Why do you have that?" she asked as usually only criminals were laden down with such things, if said criminal used magic as their main means to perpetuate crime.
"The All-Father," he spat, "said that I was using magic too much. That I was depending on it too much, and that one day my use of only magic would get me killed if I didn't also learn how to fight better. He told me that once I learned to fight without magic more efficiently he would take the symbol off. I guess that's never going to happen," he said furiously. He had thought that he showed his father that he was a worthy son and he had thought that if he showed that he was a worthy son that Odin would have taken off the symbol, and well the three of them would have a storybook ending. He was a fool. They were never a family and they would never be a family. He was going to kill Odin for all his betrayals. "It's still inside me," he continued, thankfully, he had heard stories about what happened to magicians who suddenly lost their magic. It was hard enough not being able to access his full power but he could still access some and feel it thrumming underneath his skin.
"You're angry," she said and sat down on his lap like she used to when she was a little girl. She didn't fit nearly as well now and it was Odin's fault.
"He destroyed everything!" Loki hissed. "I'm going to kill him."
"So why are you here?" she asked.
Loki blinked, he had forgotten all about where they were for a long moment. He was still in the Helicarrier, in the glass cage that any moment could be hurtled to the ground. If the communications were really not working as Hela had said, then she must have used her magic to keep the glass cage from hurtling him to his death as well. Not long from now his team would come for him and he would take down the Avengers and take over Midgard and rule it. That would really make Thor and Odin mad, plus when Thanos came he had promised that he would destroy Odin and Thor and leave Frigga alone. Only now he wasn't sure that he wanted to just leave it up to Thanos, he wanted to destroy the All-Father himself, and Thor too if he got in the way of any of his plans.
"Certain plans require I be here," he said vaguely.
"Plans that involve perhaps ruling Midgard?" she asked raising an eyebrow.
"Plans that will culminate in my destroying the All-Father," he answered and found that Hela could, in fact, hide her feelings from him when she put her mind to it as her face was perfectly blank now. She grabbed his arm where the symbol was, and looked at the symbol in his skin for a long moment.
"Do you know where I went after I left Helheim?" She asked but didn't wait for him to answer before she continued. "For a long time I thought that the All-Father was right. That I couldn't find anywhere free of the rumors, free of the people that wanted to hurt me because of what they thought I could do. But there was one place. One place relatively untouched by the gossip," she said then trailed off and Loki had a pretty good idea which realm she was talking about. "That place was Midgard, though the locals here call it Earth," she said.
Loki's brow furrowed. Had Hela been here for over a century? Midgard? A technologically backward planet full of Midgardians that were hardly better than the apes that they pretended to be better than.
"Do you love me?" Loki blinked as the rapid change of topic.
"Of course," he answered. How could Helo think that he didn't love her? Right, a century of thinking that he had abandoned her might do that. He was going to tear Odin into tiny pieces and feed him to a-.
"Then I need you to stop this," she said knocking him from his pleasantly gruesome thoughts.
"I need to do this," he said putting his hand on top of hers, didn't she see that? Odin had torn them apart had torn his life apart and he needed to pay for it. He looked for understanding in her eyes but didn't find it.
"This is my home," she said her eyes becoming glassy again. "You can't hurt my home."
"I'm not going to hurt anyone, only the ones in my way and once they're all gone I will give them peace." Didn't she understand? Hurting Midgardians wasn't his main goal, though he didn't care all that much if he killed a few here and there. Overall things would be better for the Midgardians once he was ruling it. Plus it would make Thor and Odin furious. Although he cared less about making Thor and Odin mad now than he did about killing Odin. She shook her head and she appeared to be saddened by what he had said.
"They won't give up," she said with a shake of her head "They're stubborn, they'll fight until everyone dies."
"Once my army gets here, they'll see they're outnumbered and technologically inferior and they'll give up," Loki disagreed with a shake of his head. "If I have Midgard then that will make Asgard and Odin easier to take out, especially with Thanos's help. Even if I fail they will bring me home and I can get at him sooner or later." She didn't seem convinced, he would have to convince her. "He took me from Jotunheim because one day he might have use for me. He didn't tell me what I was and I grew up with stories about how monstrous the people of Jotunheim were. Despite that, I met a woman, fell in love and she became pregnant with three beautiful kids, only for her to die in childbirth." He looked away not wanting to see the look of pain in his daughter's eyes when he talked about her mother. "I had to raise the three of you and I had duties as a prince," he said and then become choked up again. "I should have been home more," he muttered. That one was on him; he should have been home more.
"Dad it wasn't your fault," she said softly rubbing her hand on the back of his arm.
"I should have been there, I should have stopped them," he disagreed with a shake of his head. Boys in Asgard often went on adventures, many times without adult supervision, but Fen and Jor had only been 400 and he had told them they to wait until they were a little older. Maybe if he had taken them himself...maybe then they wouldn't have snuck out and gone on their own. His boys had never come home. As far as they could figure it out a Jor had been eaten by a giant snake and Fenrir by a wolf.
Somehow as the story spread it changed until Jor had been the giant snake and Fenrir and giant monstrous wolf. Little pranks his boys had done had turned into monstrous deeds. No matter how much he had tried to remind everyone of what the truth was, even those who had lived it seemed to have forgotten it after a few decades. Even some of those who had been the funerals seemed to believe the rumors about his boys being monsters who had deserved their fates even though they had only been 400 at the time of their deaths. After Hela had been moved to Helheim, everyone stopped talking about his children and the rest of the world seemed to forget about them.
"They wanted to go," she said her eyes mirrored his, the utter devastation that they both shared. They were really similar. "They were determined," she said and Loki could see in her eyes that she blamed herself as well. He hugged her tightly. Even if she couldn't see it his way yet, at least on this they were on the same page. "I never understood how so many people could believe the lies."
"I think that someone who didn't like me used a light compulsion charm to get the idea started and to keep it going," Loki admitted aloud. He had thought so over the years but had never been able to admit it aloud. He knew that he tended to rub people the wrong way with his various stunts, pranks, and his sharp words but it was low to take a tragedy and make it that much worse that it endangered the only child he had left. He did know if he ever figured out who had been responsible he would flay their skin off.
He continued to try to get Hela to understand. "It was no longer safe for you," he said sadly as he stroked her black hair so much like his own, she smiled tearfully down at him. "So you left and I wanted to go with you, but you could only be there because of your other half," he touched the side of her face that usually looked death, silently asking what had happened to it to make it look as normal as it did right now. It wasn't an illusion; if it was he would have felt it.
"I learned how to shift my form permanently," she told him proudly and he felt pride for his daughter swell within his heart.
"I thought you were dead," he repeated again still feeling his daughter's normal firm healthy skin. "I had just lost my wife, my sons, and my daughter...some days I thought I wouldn't survive," he admitted. "Some days it hurt too much, but I got to days where it hurt less," he said putting the hardest period of his life into a few short sentences. It was a hard 50 years but then he had started coming out of it. "Then I slid back in with Thor and he welcomed me back and for awhile it was like nothing had happened, like we were 500 again," he said with a huff as he couldn't believe it now.
"Odin was going to makes him king, but he wasn't ready for it, but no one else could see it," he said with a shake of his head. "All I wanted to do was make them see it," he said., "But I got much more than I bargained for. I'm…" he looked down at the floor "I'm Jotun," he admitted the way he hadn't to anyone else. He didn't look up, he just continued his story. "I confronted him and he told me that he had taken me to be some political tool and then fell into the Odin's sleep," he said with gritted teeth. "Thor was banished and I was the only one left. I just wanted to show him I was his son, but he told me that I would never be his son." The anger coursed anew in him, he would rip out Odin's teeth one by one, but he realized he had forgotten one thing.
"It was during my mourning period that he took the last thing I had left, my magic, with that thin excuse that I believed at the time, but I very much wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe that he was only taking away the thing I had that I shared with all my kids because he wanted me to be able to protect myself. He took everything away from me...and I'm going to do the same to him," he added just deciding that. Maybe he had started this thing equally as angry at both Thor and Odin but Thor was just a fool. Odin was the one that needed to die, but he would need an army to kill him. But just because his motives had changed didn't mean that anything else would, the plan would still work.
"You want to kill him."
"I want to destroy him," Loki spat.
"And this planet is just some victim that's in your way," her voice had no inflection, but she still didn't seem pleased by this. He had thought that he had explained it well. "Even if you mow down anyone that's in your way, what then?" He would have thought that would be quite obvious.
"I destroy him, slowly and painfully." It was wording similar to what he had been planning to use with the widow, the person he had initially thought that his daughter was. She rose from his lap and went to the furtherest wall away from him, crossing her arms across her chest.
"You know I've lived here for over a hundred years. Despite their short life spans, they are remarkably like us which means I had quite the opportunity to study them."
Loki had no idea where she was going with this, also he had no idea why she would want to study the ants in the first place.
"Do you want to know what I've found?"
No, not really but he didn't say it aloud.
"Revenge consumes you. It becomes your life, it becomes all you think about and there isn't any room for anything else," she shook her head "And this doesn't come all from other sources, for a long time I was so angry with you angry. Angry that you could abandon me like that, I wanted to make you pay. But it was really the people of Asgard that I wanted to destroy. They talked about Fen and Jor like they were monsters." Angry tears came to her eyes. "I wanted to destroy them, but it took over me, it wasn't until I was able to let the anger go that I was able to heal," she said her eyes searching his out, only Loki couldn't look at her.
Revenge was his major driving force, had been for so long he forgotten what life would be like without revenge driving his thoughts. What would he be without his thirst for revenge? Even more important was could he let Odin get away with all the things that he had done to him without payback? He couldn't imagine letting the anger and the thirst for it go, not when it was the only thing keeping him together.
"I can't let it go," he said with a shake of his head.
"Can't or won't?!" his daughter shouted still crying angry tears.
"Both," he admitted after a few moments.
She nodded, and Loki hoped that meant that she understood how much this meant to him.
"If you start your war here people will die."
Loki sighed, as he thought that they had already gone over this.
She shook her body and said quietly. "I can't stand by your side as you destroy my home and my friends."
Loki frowned. "You don't need to-" then he realized what she meant. "You're not-" but then he realized that she was.
"You can either have happiness and a family, or revenge; you can't have both."
Loki was honestly stunned, had she not heard his story? She wanted him to let Odin get away with everything? To forget about everything?
"I'm not saying that you forget, but don't drown in your anger so much that that's all you are! Even if you get what you want that fire will never go away, just let it go before it consumes you," she begged him with tears falling down her face. "Please father," she said slipping into the more familiar accent that he was used to. "Don't let yourself drown."
He stared into his daughter's green eyes; he could practically feel her desire for him to drop his vendetta, but he wasn't sure if he could. It was his daughter and she was making him choose. His revenge or his daughter? Her eyes darted down to his still exposed arm.
"I can even give you your magic back if we work together, but I won't if you plan to use it to hurt my people."
"They aren't your people!" Loki shouted, just because she spent 100 years with these Midgardians didn't make them her people.
"Aesir? Jotun? I may have only spent 100 years here, but they are more accepting of strangeness than either of them. I like it here and it's my home, respect my home," her eyes were fiery but also desperate. She looked off for a second at the wall.
"My time's almost up," she said quickly "I have to go soon. Just a few more parting thoughts. If you spend your whole life hating him and wanting to get revenge on him and everyone, you give them too much power, don't let him win." She looked toward the spot again.
"I won't be here in a few moments, but you will be and only a few minutes will have gone by."
Loki's brow quirked as he didn't understand that, but didn't interrupt. If their time together was truly almost up he wanted to hear everything that Hela had to say. "Now this part is important. I know you well enough to know that you wouldn't allow yourself to be taken without some sort of backup plan to get out of here. When the time comes I need you to meet me in Mindy's cafe in Pleasant Grove, Idaho. I'll be there for at least a week if you choose me meet me there, if not…" she trailed off. "If you pick revenge don't ever come and see me," she warned sternly but her eyes gave her away. "I've already lost you for 100 years I don't want to lose any more time. Give up revenge and come and meet me," she said before she was disappeared.
Loki blinked as he heard another step of footsteps coming forward. He turned and saw the widow woman there. He had all these things that he was planning to say to her, to taunt her, to play with her. All he could think about was his daughter and the choice that she had left him with. Soon his team would be there and the real fun would start...but Hela?
The widow tried to engage him in conversation but while he wanted to taunt the woman, he kept missing half the words as he tried to figure out what to do. He loved his daughter, always and forever, there was no doubt about that. It should be an easy choice, but there was so much anger burning through him that it felt impossible to just let the anger go, especially without taking any revenge. The widow was now just staring at him, most likely because she had just asked him a question. A question that he hadn't heard and at the moment could care less about at the moment with this monumental decision in front of him. He turned to face the woman again; she was a woman that might be able to understand. Normally he would never reveal his cards this way, but he needed a second opinion.
"Have you ever felt anger so all-consuming that you don't know what you're going to do if you can't get it out?" For a split second he saw a flicker of emotion but before he could figure it out it was gone. She doesn't answer, probably she thinks it's some kind of trick. He laughs because it's not. "You see I have this anger inside of me." Talking to the widow is probably a bad idea, she'll take this information and probably use it against him somehow, but he had to talk to someone and she is the only one around. "It burns so brightly, there's only way to get rid of it," he said, picturing blowing Odin into atoms or tearing his head clean off his neck. Though he could guess that she's probably thinking that he's talking about ruling Midgard. Midgard is really only a stepping stone to his true goal. He gritted his teeth in anger and frustration. He didn't know if he could give up his anger, his power, his motivation to keep living. But he also couldn't give up his daughter, his last blood kin that probably didn't want him dead. He looked at the red-headed woman again.
"Does anger tear you apart?
It wasn't long after their conversation that his team came to get him, to free him from the glass cage that had been his residence only for a short time. While he was captured he had been able to think, and also to figure out that his daughter had never actually been there and they had shared a sort of dream state.
He now had Thor trapped in his former prison with his finger over the button. One small gesture and Thor would plunge down to his probable death and Odin would feel a small part of his pain. The only problem was he was pretty sure that any more deaths, to his daughter, would be a sign that he was not choosing her, so he wavered for a moment.
It was the most important decision he would ever make. The most important choice in his life and he had to choose right. His finger inched it's way to the button, but his mind still hadn't been made up. There would be no going back once the decision was made. If he abandoned this he wouldn't be able to pick it back up again and Thanos would be angry, and Thanos was a terrifying being. That alone should be the reason for him to do it, but he his finger still hovered. If he was going to to continue they had to leave, he had to make the decision now. His eyes momentarily closed before he came to his decision.