He studied his hands. They looked the same. Was he any different from having travelled outside normal space and time? Outside of the imposed "destiny" the falsely worshipped "time keepers" had bestowed, whoever the author ultimately turned out to be?
Did his "other selves" rub off on him in some way? He now carried the magical sword, of a boy who slew Thor. And the memory of his older self, from another life, creating a city with his magic, so convincing it had given Sylvie and him the time they needed to reach the monster Alioth and enchant it. Did this not in itself mean he was now a new being? As a child inherited traits from its father and mother, he was inheriting traits from alternate timelines. Did that not mean that, even if he wasn't not already unbound from the "sacred timeline", he would nonetheless be a part of a new one he had created? One he had created with Sylvie, who he felt was truly the agent of change in this chaos that he thought he loved, but she spoke of with more convincing experience than he. More personal. It meant something to her. It was only because of chaos, the universe's desire to be free of this mad control someone had exerted on it, that she existed.
Perhaps, in some way, maybe that was love too? Something he had to grapple with more than he had before.
The "sacred timeline" was finally exposed for the farce it was although he took no pleasure in the loss the once-agent Mobius had experienced, and now they went to meet its maker, as the expression went.
"Here, you'll need this," she said. He hadn't recognised it at first. And then he smiled, tucking it away into his shirt.
"Bringing a small bit of reality with us, is it?"
She tossed her hair, to glance at him. "Something like that." She said, and said no more. But the feel and shape of it comforted him for some reason. The iris was before them, and they walked together. They had taken each other's hands, and they were all that would root them in their own reality, come what winds may to take them away.
Certainly he had changed. After having seen what his actions had wrought. He wasn't a fool. Others may have doubted him, but he liked to consider himself an intelligent being. And after seeing his future, it had come crashing down on him, and he had had to reconstruct how he thought of himself from ground up.
None of it was real. And yet it was. His choices had mattered. But he was never allowed a different choice. Therefore, he was not carrying out his campaign of destruction, mayhem and conquering because he willed it so, but because someone else willed it so.
Had Odin known? He had seen into the farthest reaches of time and space beyond where the Bifrost could ever go, and he had, according to what Loki now knew, discovered much more than had ever been told of in Asgard. This too, did he know? And yet spoke not of it? Why?
That thought bothered Loki more than anything. Was his father living a life under the tyranny of the TVA, never able to speak of it? Or was there something deeper to his father's arts that Loki didn't understand? Or was that knowledge yet to come? Perhaps Odin simply had not known. Even the Infinity Stones meant nothing in the meta-realm beyond the universe, where even magic held no power. Only the great edifice of a confusing work.