Somewhere in Norway, the grass is as shamelessly green as if it had never withered. Such is the boldness of mortals, and their petty, strangely permanent earth.
Somewhere in Norway, Odin called him son, and Loki wondered if it had always been so—
Simple.
.
Fault is a circular thing.
He could blame Odin or Laufey, at any given hour. Could blame his child self for harboring an eternal flame of want, before he even knew his sordid history.
Those who want are never wanted. It is a circle. A fault.
He could blame centuries of dark-whispering dreams. He could blame himself. He could blame Thor.
He could blame himself.
Loki finds that Loki, that smiling specter whom he has stitched back together so many times, comes round and round again.
.
At last, his brother wearies of him.
Strange: he'd always counted on Thor's patience.
By strange he means painful, but there's no time to say any of that.
Betrayal is like silver. It glitters in the moment and is quickly spent, but he is not overly fond of what follows.
Thor is standing beside him, as solidly, gloriously present as he always is—and Thor tells them that their paths diverged a long time ago.
Loki tries, and fails, to imagine two different paths.
(It has always seemed more like a circle.)
.
The frustration of time is not in what changes, but in what stays the same. Loki has worn different faces. He was a close-lipped scholar, a wild trickster. He was a cold-hearted, cold-blooded monster. He was, for a moment, the ruler of a world.
At all times, in all places, he was afraid.
The frustration of this lasts in a tangle of starlight and memory and dark-whispering dreams.
Loki knew Thanos was coming.
It was both his fault, and his fear.
.
After Ragnarok and before Thanos, there is a wide-open hour of space. Loki tells himself that the Tesseract will wait, and he watches his brother be king.
Thor is more of a king, more of a god, than Loki will ever be.
Time has not changed that. It has only shown it true.
Loki hunts deep within the hollow of his soul for that fear—and he finds it.
It hurts.
.
For all his many attempts on Thor's life—some serious, some in jest—it has never seemed likely that Thor will die. Thor denies death with the sort of brash certainty that only fate can accompany. Loki, like all immortals, is a believer in fate.
(He has never admitted this to anyone.)
.
Thanos blazes with power, with purpose, and Loki's hollow soul flares wide-open.
Thor is going to die.
.
Fate.
Fault.
(It is a circle.)
.
Undying—undying loyalty—
The sun will shine on us again.
As if it ever had. Loki cannot quite believe that, but Thor does, and that is what matters.
(Thor is always what matters.)
.
Loki is going to die. It hurts. He wants, incalculably, to see his brother's face. He wants to remember it, in whatever cold afterlife he will haunt for ages to come.
(Two different paths.)
He whispers, you will never be a god, because there is only one who deserves that title here, and Loki cannot see his face, though he knows it.
His breath and life are leaving him. Loki, trickster, trapped. He likes to imagine the paths converging again—his ending, so that mercifully, only one remains.
His brother is calling his name.
Thor lives; Loki dies.
But first, he reaches deep into the hollow of his soul—
And he finds no fear, no fear at all.