Chapter 2:
Midgard is a filthy realm, filled with filthy beings.
Loki likes it not, and wishes the moment they arrive he could be away from this place, with it's petty, weak and selfish humans.
He never could fathom why it is Thor loves them so. Why it is he loves this world.
He remembers, when they had been very young, and Odin had brought them here, he and Thor. He remembers how once they had lived, these humans. Fractured and divided, torn apart by war and superstition. He remembers their lust for power, even amongst the villages and tribes of what they now called Norway. Their violence and mistrust of one another. He remembers seeing men kill each other for weapons worth nothing, because they were starving and there was food to be found nowhere, nothing even to steal, their ignorance manifest in fields waiting to be farmed, and they knowing nothing of how to do it.
They were hardly changed now.
Loki knew of Midgard.
He knew of the abundance of their resources, and yet still there was among them mass populations of starving people. People who had not food nor water, while in places like this, places like America, there was a grotesque glut of such, and waste of those things on a scale most phenomenal. So great an abundance, the people here grew fat on it, and knew not what to do with all that was still left, and so threw it away in trash heaps which built ever higher towards the skies, even as they tore open the earth to bury the evidence of their excess and greed. And yet even here, there too were people starving on the streets, begging for currency to instead drown their misery in drink, and most walking past them with nakedly feigned ignorance, the fear and disgust barely concealed within their countenance. A world broken up into countries, each vying for its own place of power, its own dominance. Each speaking a different language, divides upon divides. Hatred and fear and contempt for each other.
All the same species.
At least upon Asgard, their hatred and fear extended only to other beings of other realms. At least there, they recognized in each other the same kind, and for that kinship did not murder each other.
Though Loki is not so consumed with disgust for this realm that he cannot recognize the good there is in man.
After those boyhood ventures led by Odin to this realm, Loki had grown fascinated enough to come here alone many times, and make a study of the humans and their ways.
They harbored a great capacity for compassion. He recognizes that. And among man, Loki thinks, he has seen no other race of beings so able to create true art. Oh, there have been some men and women among them whom Loki would have truly felt honored to meet and know.
But those humans are the rare exception indeed, and for the rest of them, Loki can feel naught but contempt and disgust.
And Thor... Thor had spent all of three Midgardian days among them, and taken possession of them as his own, as he oft did with all things which took his fancy. But Thor knew not the humans as he did. Knew not their languages as he did, their culture, their history and art.
Loki understands why it is Thor takes to them so.
They are weak, and Thor is strong, and ever has Thor been keen to use his power to protect those unable to do so for themselves.
… It is no true enthusiasm for their ways which his brother holds dear. Only his good heart which compels him to act on their behalf.
As ever, too, his brother fails to give thought to whether the humans want his help at all, or really, truly need it.
"How do we find him?" Thor asks, and Loki feels his face draw tight.
"... We seek out his energy." He tells his brother flatly, and remembers the sneering, deriding faces of Thor's companions on so many quests, when the five of them were faced with a problem solvable only by magic, and their begrudging acceptance when Loki would offer his abilities.
"Yes, well, some do battles, others do tricks..."
Thor says nothing now, and Loki thinks his brother has changed; has learnt even, and for that, Loki feels his own, mild gratitude.
"Will it take long?" Thor asks as Loki begins to concentrate, searching through Midgard's magic for the familiar feel of Odin's own. A magic as closely known to him as his own, even. As closely known as his mother's...
Loki had, as a boy, used to trail after Odin and beg his father's attention for his own meager displays of magical ability, for he knew, even then, Odin's power was the greatest in all the realms, and he had so wanted to impress him...
A flush of anger stabs within his chest and for a moment he loses focus, his eyes coming open to find Thor staring back at him.
"... It will take a moment." He answers, frustrated. Whether at Thor or himself, it is difficult to say. "There are other magic users on this realm, though their power is not their own."
"... You mean there are sorcerer's among the humans?" Thor questions, sounding almost amused.
"Apparently." Loki answers, and he can feel his lips twitch upwards, nearly smiling. It was rather amusing. A small few of them seem to have worked out how to tap into Midgard's magical energy and harness it, though Loki has little doubt their craft is rudimentary at best.
His amusement grows as he senses the attack launched suddenly upon him by one such mortal. Clumsy and obvious, and Loki steps aside as the portal opens along the ground where he had a moment ago stood.
"A portal." Thor observes, voice dry, and Loki cannot help it now as he bursts into laughter, Thor plainly as amused with the attempt as he.
"What fool would attempt such?" Thor goes on, glaring at the swirling energy with naked derision.
Loki leans towards it, glancing through to the other side, and smirks to himself.
A pocket dimension, it appeared, doubtless intended to keep him falling in space.
Well, the little mage was soon to discover his error, Loki thinks.
"Let's find out." Loki says, and he reaches out, grasping hold of Thor's wrist.
"Loki, wait..." Thor starts, but that's as far as Loki lets him before he drags his brother through a portal of his own creating, latching hold of the human's energy and pulling them through folded space to some ornately decorated dwelling, belonging no doubt to some pretentious ass of a man.
Loki harbors no ambivalence in that judgment upon seeing the mortal's shocked face. No, indeed, a pretentious ass of a man.
"How did you..." he begins stupidly and Loki steps at him.
The spell he throws out is again clumsy and of amateur, and Loki bats it aside, dissipating the energy into particles.
The man is too slow to react as Loki reaches out, grabbing hold him by the collar of his cape and lifting him bodily.
"Loki!" Thor warns, but Loki ignores him, pressing his palm to the mortal's temple.
The man screams with the sudden, burning cold, and Loki sneers up at him.
"Little man, you err greatly," Loki tells him. "in attacking a god."
"Loki, enough. Put him down." Thor's hand is heavy on his shoulder, a plain warning, and it is an effort to Loki, not to turn and strike his brother's touch from him.
He could sear the human's brain from his skull, or cast a world of terrors into his thoughts and drive him quick to madness. Or more simply still he could snap his neck in a single move and put the wretch out of his misery.
Thor would be upset if he did any of those things, Loki thinks.
He drops the human, letting him crumple to the floor, and steps back, eying the amulet round his neck for the first time.
He feels his face drain of color.
He thought he had felt... but then... he hadn't thought...
"From where did you get that?" He asks the man as he trembles on hands and knees, gasping through the pain still radiating through his skull. "Round your neck. From where did you get that?!"
The man seems unable to answer and Thor comes up beside him.
"What is it Loki? Why sound you so alarmed?"
Loki gestures violently towards the buffoon.
"Do you not sense it Thor?" He asks impatiently. "This fool bears round his neck an Infinity Stone."
"What?" Thor starts, quickly adopting Loki's own discomfiture. "How?"
"I know not." Loki replies, his anxiety increasing further. "As ever it seems the mortal's remain ignorant to their own folly."
Thor shakes his head, stepping closer to the man.
"He cannot have it." He states, and for once Loki agrees entirely.
"Hold brother." Loki stops him. "He's spelled it. It won't be easily removed."
Thor looks at him, incredulous.
"Can you not break it?" He asks, astonished.
"I can." Loki tells him. "But it would take time."
"You cannot take The Eye of Agamotto." The mortal gasps, finally staggering to his feet.
"... The eye of Agamotto?" Loki questions. "You mean the time stone?
"Whatever you choose to call it," the man wheezes, putting a hand to his head. "I am its guardian. Earth's Sorcerer Supreme."
"Earth's Sorcerer Supreme?" Loki repeats, and cannot help the peel of laughter which slips from his throat. "Your power is paltry, further still, not your own. You generate it from the magicks of this realm and, now I see, from that stone hung round your neck. A power you have no right to, nor the means to control. There are those who would take it from you by force. A force you cannot hope to counter..."
Memories writhe and twist in Loki's brain. Power. So much immense power, his own all but vanished entire.
He had been dying, when he fell there. His magic ebbed low beyond its limits, used up in the terror filled instinct to survive.
The cold of space overwhelmed even the rough hide of a frost giant, it seemed...
Hands more as claws upon him, and they had dragged him there, before that being. A thing Loki had heard tell of only in tales and legend. A being from a race of Titans.
He feels his throat close tight at the rush of sensation in his head, fear thick in his mouth at the flood of memories. The taste of blood and metal and rancid bile. Like choking to death on his own tongue.
… Thanos.
What had Thanos done to him...? What had he...?
The memories are there, and he cannot look at them.
He knows not what wounds worse. The fear of those things, or the shame he had tasted, for his own weakness. His own cowardice in the face of such power. How he had begged... Oh, Norns... how he had begged for him to stop...
"Loki!"
Thor's hand wraps gently round the nape of his neck and he looks up, seeing his brother standing there, looking down at him with grave worry etched upon his features.
"What is it? Are you ill?"
Loki feels his legs weak beneath him, his skin flushed and hands trembling, and for a moment his voice will not come to him.
He shakes his head, forcing his eyes past Thor to the mortal.
"There are things which I cannot explain here." He tells his brother. "Things out there which... would have this power." He gestures towards the stone.
"... The one who sent you for the Tesseract?" Thor says after a moment, and Loki's eyes cut to him, surprised. He never had been sure if Thor truly meant his words, that time. How conscious Thor had been of his correctness, when he had asked him who it was that controlled him then.
He nods weakly.
"Aye." He says. No use in pretense now.
Thor nods at him in understanding, and Loki feels a relief so strong he grows dizzy from it.
He doesn't understand why.
"If we leave that stone with him," Loki nods towards the mortal. "it will be taken. And if it is, I cannot..." again his feels his throat threatening to close at the wave of fear which whites out his thoughts. "I cannot express the peril in which the universe will be placed." His eyes lift to Thor. "There is a reason I so failed in my attempt on the Tesseract Thor. There is a reason."
He watches his brother's face tighten, his eyes lighting with a dawning realization, mingled with certainty.
"I thought..." he starts, pauses, thinking over his words. Another change in Thor, Loki thinks. He never used to think so carefully over such things. "You were not acting yourself. I thought that. It was unlike you to act so recklessly. I did not... I did not allow myself to dwell on it. I... thought only..."
There is shame in Thor's eyes suddenly. Naked shame, and Loki steps away from him, his stomach tight with queasy uncertainty. He is not used to such looks in his brother's eyes. Not used to hearing him admit to any mistake.
Loki had thought... he had thought he would revel in it, were Thor ever to consciously face his own blindness. Only now he finds the uncertainty in Thor unsettling. Something like a twisting confirmation of his own fear.
He likes it not.
He likes it not at all.
"What do you need me to do?" Thor asks and again Loki looks to him, again taken aback. His brother is earnest, eyes bright with his sincerity. "To help retrieve the stone from this man." He clarifies. "What do you need me to do?"
"Hold on a minute!" The mortal protests. "I don't know who you people think you are, but..."
"Hold him for me." Loki tells Thor, and Thor moves without further prompting.
The mortal launches another of his clumsy attacks, and it is Thor this time who bats it aside with Mjolnir, moving with what has always been shocking speed for a warrior of his size. He is upon the man in an instant, wrestling him to the ground as easily as he would a child, and Loki wonders not for the first time how it is Thor is so able to control his great strength.
Loki moves when he sees the man held fast, ignoring his hysterical screams and protests.
The spell he's cast upon the stone is moderately impressive, for something crafted by a mortal, but not anything Loki has not encountered before, and he knows with some patience, he'll be able to undo its knots.
Though, he has to admit, the shrill voice of the man is already beginning to grate heavy, and it takes more effort than likely the spell will to stay his hand from smothering the idiot.
He is perhaps half an hour into undoing the spell work when he feels it.
From Thor's startled expression, his brother feels it too.
"... What is that?" He asks, face already set grim in determination.
Loki doesn't answer, waiting, reaching out his magic to feel for the energy again. And it comes a moment later. A powerful force of disruption. And he can taste the magic of Odin upon it. A spell cast by his adopted father, itself in the throws of coming undone.
Alarm spikes through Loki's heart and he stands abruptly, his hands leaving his own work, nervous tension filling his gut.
He knows not of anyone who should be capable of undoing a spell cast by the All-Father.
It follows fast he catches the energy of Odin himself, only it is passive and yielding, and in an instant Loki knows...
His heart twists with something sick and awful, throat tight with a rush of horrid emotion.
He cannot keep it from his face as Thor lets go the mortal and stands with him, coming near.
"Loki, what is it?" He asks.
The man scrambles away from them, and Loki should not let him go. He cannot let him keep the stone, only...
"Loki..." Thor calls his name again, voice thick with urgency and fear.
His eyes cut to his brother, and he can barely swallow past the knot in his throat.
"... It's Odin." He manages to say, his voice weak and shaking.
No, he thinks. He shouldn't care. He shouldn't. Only he does. Norns, he does. Odin was not so old that he should...
"Loki!"
"He is in Norway." Loki stammers out. "Thor, he's..."
"Then bring us to him." Thor cuts him short before he can say, and Loki does not know whether it is relief or greater dread he feels. When Thor finds out, when Thor sees what is happening, he will blame him, likely. And if he did not kill him before, he very well may now.
But he cannot keep this truth from his brother. Thor will discover, whether now or after.
More still, it was Thor's right to know. Loki has no claim to keep this from him.
He reaches out, grabbing hold of Thor's hand, and once more pulls them through to the shadow paths, taking them where their father stands dying.
/
AN: Hey guys! Thanks for reading and I hope you're continuing to enjoy. So, I guess it's pretty obvious by now that I'm taking this in a very different direction from the film. Full disclosure, I absolutely hated Ragnarok with a burning passion, most of all because of how it totally disregarded any and all previous characterization of both Loki and Thor from the other films, and how it treated Loki's trauma and pain from the previous films as fodder to be made into a joke. Particularly making Loki the butt of almost every single joke and the fool to every other character in the film. So, as you can probably tell, I'm saying screw all of that and doing what I want here. If that offends you, I can't really apologize, because, well, it's my story and I'll do what I like with it. If you enjoyed though, I'm glad and I hope you continue to! Please leave a comment if you get a chance!