Hello, everybody; ModernDayBard here!
So, while I still don't have any full-length fic ideas, I do have a couple of related Infinity War-based one-shot thoughts buzzing around my brain I think I can dash out in the few spare hours I have, and something's better than nothing—right?

Anyhow, for the description I couldn't post in front of the story because of SPOILERS FOR INFINTIY WAR:

Infinity War broke many hearts. No matter who your favorite character was, they are either lost, or they lost someone dear to them. No one escaped unscathed. But what if, when the inseparable were separated, it was the other one who survived—what if this story went 'The Other Way Round'?

Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel, or anything they own that appears below. I don't even work for them. The only thing I do own are the words I used—I'd say the ideas, but these are probably what-if's that many other fans likewise imagined their own versions of.

Chapter 1: Brother

Thanos ruined everything.

Was it only a few brief moments ago that his biggest worry had been how his brother's Midgardian friends would react to his arrival? That his mind was engaged in scheming up a revenge on that petty human sorcerer? (Yes, it was definitely the sorcerer who was petty—after his treatment, planning for some slight revenge most certainly was not.)

And now the ship he'd flown in so dramatically and with such perfect timing to the flawless recuse was destroyed, the people he had saved were dead, and all hard-won friends—that was, allies—flung to the stifling vacuum of space, or killed here and now by the Black Order—individuals he'd hoped never to see again, to speak nothing of their master.

Even the Valkyrie was gone, Heimdall was dead, and the beast on which he'd hinged a last desperate hope had been pummeled like a toddling infant, then flung who-knows-where. His brother, the fool, was restrained and helpless, still struggling to break free and continue the fight—the fight he knew they'd lost as soon as he'd seen and recognized the ship before them.

Thanos had taken everything away from him, and he was going to pay for that.

This had been his chance to be the great, dramatic hero, to get some good recognition—some appropriate appreciation for once in his often-overshadowed life—and now it lay in flaming ruins around him. Quite literally.

And the Mad Titan dared to smirk and smile as his followers spewed trite platitudes about balance and salvation.

Rage grew in the Jotun, fueled by the still-fresh memory of his brother's screams as Thanos tortured him—all to get the Space Stone from within the Tesseract.

And you gave it to him, you fool—you know what he will do. Do you honestly think you will escape him just by giving him what he seeks?

Of course he didn't. Here on this ship—or later, when all the stones were placed within the Gauntlet—for his previous failures, Thanos would kill him. Looking at it that way, he was already dead, or else on borrowed time. Better to go out on a blaze of idiotic glory that just might work, too, than try to flee from or barter with the inevitable.

He felt the knife form in his grip, hidden between his arm and his body, and dared to picture it actually stabbing into the Mad Titan's throat, winning the war before it truly began—who was the heroic brother, then?

But that strike never finished, frozen by the very stone he'd surrendered as Thanos' scarred visage loomed over him.

"…You should've chosen your words more carefully."

Death it was, then. And no time left for a trick, like last time. How long would it take Thor to believe, this time? Or would he know, too, that this had been the fate he'd bought himself years ago—that he'd tried to hide from under borrowed visages for as long as he could?

As the fingers closed around his throat, painfully tight, cutting off any oxygen, he turned to his first weapon—and his last one, too, he supposed—words. He growled out a final taunt, eyes fixed on Thanos, hoping to at least see the flicker of a gaze that indicated the sort of wound he knew best how to inflict.

Instead, the Titan read him, for he'd been to free, to open in what he thought of as his final moments. He'd showed his defiance too much, Thanos had seen his utter refusal to care for his own life at the moment of death.

And then, curse him, he remembered.

Thanos lifted the figure in his grasp, until Titan and Jotun were eye-to-eye. "I seem to recall an earlier pledge, as well. I think it was my lieutenant who delivered the terms, then."

The same memory, the same words, flashed through both minds:

"You think you have known pain? You will long for something as sweet as pain!"

He choked, then realized the grip around his throat had loosened marginally—just enough for a breath, a single breath every moment or so. Enough to live, but not happily. Torture and then death, then? Unpleasant, but then, he had felt the Titan's worst that time he'd become their guest after falling from the Bifrost what felt like a lifetime ago.

Then Thanos shifted his gaze slightly, and the trickster did not even have to look to realize what his defiance had actually betrayed—betrayed for one final time.

"Hold him. Let him see."

He was dropped, then—his body crashing painfully down onto rubble from their spacecraft, one knife-thin piece of metal stabbing into his abdomen. Before he could regain his feet, his weapon, his desperate, almost animalistic urge to fight for what was his, Ebony Maw waved his hand once, twice, and he found himself facing his brother, the two of them bound and gagged in nearly identical manners.

Physical restraints? Is that what they think of me, then?

Tuning out Thanos' taunts, eyes never leaving his brother—even as he saw realization set in to the remaining eye of the God of Thunder—the trickster reached for his magic, mind already racing for the best use of it to get them both out of this…

…it wasn't there.

He was drained, empty: either from all the effort expended during the fight, especially in those first few moments when he'd been all but overcome by panic at the Titan's ship appearing in front of him, the specter that haunted his nightmare; or else drained from him by the power stone as Thanos had held him. Did it truly matter which? It was gone—and now he lacked any means, magical, verbal, or physical, to stop what was coming.

A desperate sob threatened to wrack his frame at that realization; an angry scream tried to claw its way to freedom from his throat as Thanos set the power stone against his brother's head once more, this time with no intention of pulling back. But he wouldn't—he couldn't allow either out. Whichever emotion broke past his guard, however it manifested, would only amuse is tormentors, and hurt his brother.

As if he could be hurt anymore, right now.

Thor's cries of agony were muffled, this time, by the metal gag, but that somehow only made it worse, that and the blood that trickled beneath it from some injury won from the restraints, as if he were not already enduring the worst pain imaginable.

As they had before, those cries pierced him to the core, but this time he held no bargaining chip that could save his brother. He didn't even have the freedom to scream himself, and beg Thanos for some kind of mercy. All he could do was keep watching—for one, he physically couldn't turn his head away, but for another, he wouldn't, had he been capable. They were the only two survivors on this ship, and Thor, who shouldn't have been the one dying, at least shouldn't die alone.

Thor had asked him once, when they were children, if his magic had the power to allow him to read people's minds, or better yet to allow him to converse with a person in their mind, where no one else could hear. He had said no, and nothing else, thinking to himself, as he watched his disappointed brother walk away, that even if he could, he wouldn't want to hear the idiot with his mind as well as his ears, and thus had never sought out the answer that he, truthfully, did not know.

Now, he wished he had. Perhaps it wouldn't change anything about this situation, though the surprise may have thrown Thanos off enough for something to have happened. But even if he could just reach out to his brother tell him…something. I'm sorry? This isn't what I wanted? It was supposed to be me? I wasn't actually going to betray you this time? I do care? Or maybe he could've been able to shield his brother from some of the pain, grant him some kind of respite from the torture, even if it meant feeling it himself, instead. But there could be no final words, no closure, no farewell—

Stop it.

He didn't hear the words—with his ears or with his mind—but he could read them in his brother's remaining eye.

Don't give up.

Easy enough to read—it may has well have been his brother's life philosophy, if he'd ever thought to verbalize it. But now, it was a command, and a legacy.

Live. Fight.

The air was crackling now with the Power Stone, but Thor was silent. Not dead, yet—just unable to scream anymore. The end was coming.

Black Order be dammed, Thor had to know.

For the first time in a long time, he dropped any sort of guard over his face, tried to let Thor read him, like he himself was so easy to read. The overwhelming urge to look away, to put up any sort of mask was crushed internally—who cared about honor, dignity, or his stupid pride? That was what had led them to this mess to begin with! That was what had made this all start to fall apart, so long ago, mistakes that led them here, now.

I'm sorry.

Forgiven.

Then, in the final heartbeat before the Power Stone pulsed one last time, Thor repeated himself:

Live. Fight. For me.

Then the purple aura of the power stone exploded outward, burning his face and torso, making even Thanos' 'children' fall back a step, and propelling Thor's body out into the vacuum of space. He had tried to watch it, tried to hold on to whatever was left of his brother, but the blast had left him blinking spots from his eyes, and by the time he could see, his brother was out of sight.

Gone.

Before he could process the realization, before his many battling emotions declared a winner, Ebony Maw had turned to him, drew one of his hideous fingers down the trickster's cheek. He flinched away at the touch before he could curse himself for weakness, realizing he was no alone—so utterly alone—with the monsters from his darkest nightmares.

"Tears," the hateful creature observed with a mocking sneer. "Pathetic."

He snarled, deep in his throat, but still could neither move nor draw on magic. At once his bonds clattered to the floor. He fell with them, not expecting the release, and before he could stand, Thanos had again seized him by the neck, hauling him upright until they glared each other in the face, the Jotun's toes not even scraping the ruined deck.

Thanos gaze flicked downward, noting the piece of metal still embedded in the trickster's abdomen, which he himself only just remembered. Casually, the Mad Titan seized it and flicked it away, tearing the wound a little wider.

"We can't have you die now. Not when your brother just bought your life with his."

He kicked, struggled, once again unable to breathe properly, but it turned out he had air enough to scream as Thanos used the barest flicker of the Power Stone's energy to seal the wound closed.

Behind the struggling trickster, a blue portal, torn open by the Space Stone yawned wide.

"If you survive, tell Earth I am coming for them."

And he was flung through and away from the scene of utter death and destruction.

He crashed through a ceiling, glass shards from some kind of skylight adding to his list of injuries, but paling in comparison to a different sort of pain, then hit the floor with enough momentum to dent it (he seemed to do that to a lot of Midgardian floors, if that's truly where he was—or so the one part of his mind that reveled in giddy insanity noted), but thankfully not enough to fully break through to the one below it. It was a little sad that he had enough experience with such landings to know the difference between truly hitting ground or hitting an upper story.

His ears recovered before his eyes did, or perhaps he couldn't see the room because he'd rolled onto his side and curled up after landing, trying to protect himself a few seconds longer, reconstruct some form of a guard or mask before facing the unknown.

Live. Fight. For me.

"Am I ever actually going to get a chance to repair that ceiling, or should I just wait for a third hole to complete the set?" An unknown male audience asked someone—hopefully not him, he had no idea what the fool was blabbering about.

"Is this how you guys normally get visitors, or is today just special?" That voice…that voice was more familiar, but he couldn't place it, yet. Ears had recovered before his mind fully had, it seemed.

There was an irritated huff—he could hardly blame the person—before there was a reply. "Are you absolutely incapable of more than a minute's silence, or are you actually convinced you are that funny?"

Damn.

That voice, he knew. He'd just been thinking about it, before everything had gone wrong, planning a fun little reunion with its owner before it became the last thing in the world to matter.

He rolled onto his other side slowly, painfully, cracking one eye open to glare at the human sorcerer, only to find that there were four men clustered close: Strange, a man he didn't know, his brother's friend, Stark, and Banner.

He only had the energy for a handful of words: at least three, beyond that he would need more time to recover physically and magically. He'd intended to lead with 'Thanos is coming,' in order to maximize Midgard's time and chance to prepare for the Mad Titan's onslaught, and the fight he knew his brother wanted him to aid, to join. But if Banner was here, with Strange and Stark, than they knew. The message had come even earlier, when Heimdall used his final moments to save the beast instead of his king—

He let that thought go. He supposed he should have said 'Thor is dead,' after all, he supposed is brother's friends would want to know. Hel, the blond fool would probably say deserved to know, probably counted them that close (really, it was a marvel just who and what his brother would pack-bond to—he supposed Thor could bond even to a tree if there was no one else).

But he couldn't say it. The words wouldn't come, and he didn't want to make them—to take that truth he wished was anything but, to ground it in words and make it…real.

Yes, if he said the words, then it would be real, and right now, that's the last thing he wanted it to be. Foolish? Absolutely, but it was how he was managing to hold himself together for now and it would have to do for a bit longer, if they were to have any chance at all.

Live. Fight. For me.

No, he could not say 'Thor is dead,' and he didn't need to say 'Thanos is coming,' but as the four men stared, only one in anything close to concern, Loki of Asgard, rightful king of Jotunheim, God of Mischief, Odin's Son, Brother of Thor, met their gaze and stood, swaying slightly but fists and jaw clenched.

"Trust my rage."

So, yeah. In case you hadn't figured it out: this isn't a fix-it for Infinity War, this is just one other thought to feel bad about. This one actually has a spin-off AU version of the movie in my mind that I'm still thinking through, but since I don't have the time to devote to such a project (and since I've only seen the movie once with no idea when I will even be able to see it again) I stopped here.
As emotionally hard as it was to write, most of this actually came pretty quickly. For some reason, this thought pattern and voice just comes naturally. (And no, I have no idea why I waited to the last paragraph to actually name Loki, beyond realizing I was five paragraphs in and hand't actually done it yet, and decided to make it a thing).
I had no idea it would be this long, and I have no idea how long the others will be—oh yes, there will be more in the next few days (but since I can't say exactly when, I'm listing this as 'complete'). I've got concrete thoughts for at least three more, and one other lingering feeling that I should do a particular one, but since I'm not the best at those particular characters, I'm not sure.
As always, if you saw something you liked, or something you think I can fix/improve on for next time, don't hesitate to leave a review and let me know!