The STATESMAN, in all its suffering glory. Loki, in all his mischievous playfulness.
Dead and dying corpses lay scattered around in piles throughout the interior of the escape ship, all slaughtered at the hands of the Mad Titan. He has just blown a hole in the ship and captured Thor, while his loyal children murder the peaceful Asgardians.
Upon being attacked, Loki transforms into a pile of inanimate debris, projecting another version of himself into the scene, giving the illusion that he was present, when he was really more watching than participating.
Thanos himself has already bested the Hulk and killed Heimdall. He has acquired the Space Stone from Loki and applied it to the Infinity Gauntlet.
"There are two more stones on Earth," Thanos tells his adopted children. "Find them, my children, and bring them to me on Titan."
"Father, we will not fail you," Proxima Midnight promises, as she and her brothers kneel before their father.
"If I might interject," Loki interjects. "If you're going to Earth, you might want a guide." He smiles. "I do have a bit of experience in that arena."
"If you consider failure experience," Thanos teases, remembering how he hired Loki to take over Earth. The mission failed dramatically.
"I consider EXPERIENCE experience," Loki responds. "Almighty Thanos, I, Loki, prince of Asgard…" he hesitates, glancing at Thor, who is bound and immobile. Continuing, he adds to his name, "Odinson, the rightful king of Jotunheim, god of mischief—" Behind his back, he makes a dagger in his left hand, hidden from Thanos— "do hereby pledge to you my… undying fidelity."
Loki puts his head down as if bowing, before thrusting his dagger at Thanos. Inches from Thanos's neck, the Mad Titan uses the Space Stone to hold the dagger in place, keeping Loki from moving.
"Undying?" Thanos repeats to Loki's frightened face. He grabs Loki's left wrist. "You should choose your words more carefully."
Thanos forces Loki to throw the dagger aside, picking up Loki by the neck in his left hand, his hand wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.
As the fake Loki struggles, choking in Thanos's grasp, the real Loki realizes in his camouflaged state what he must do.
"You…" the fake's voice strains at Thanos, "will never be… a god."
With his last words uttered, Loki's neck is snapped by Thanos and his corpse tossed to the ground like an animal.
As Thanos and his children leave, Thor's dying (not dead) body drifts off into space, leaving Loki as the only living thing left on the STATESMAN.
Loki, too, drifts off, but not before going back to his man-form. His Asgardian and Frost Giant nature enabled him to stay alive in space for much longer than a mere human could, without a breathing apparatus. Alone in the void of space, he had time to think about the universe and his place in it.
"Everywhere I go," Loki ponders, "only pain follows."
This was Loki's sole thought as he wafted in the dark for nearly a day. He fell unconscious, going to sleep.
When he woke up, he found himself on a rocky planet, devoid of any life or technology. Simply rocky flats as far as the eye could see in every direction. A dark sky clouded overhead, blocking out any suns that might be in the atmosphere.
Quickly realizing that he's going to need a way to survive on this barren planet, Loki walks, hoping to find some sign of life. After several long hours, he finds a few bushes with some berries on them, greedily gobbling them up. In the distance, some more of the same type of bush lie. As thunder booms overhead, Loki realizes that these plants get their water from rain. He discovers quickly that rain is quite frequent, coming once every few days.
Smartly, Loki builds a shelter out of slabs of rock, fashioning a cup for himself to collect rainwater to drink. "If I am here," he reasons to himself, "then the pain that I bring will stay here with me. No one will suffer but me." Loki decides that this is his glorious purpose: to have none.
The next day, after an uncomfortable night, Loki walks again, remembering where his base is. He finds what looks like a Bilgesnipe with huge antlers. He makes a dagger and easily kills it, securing some meat for himself. He uses the antlers as sticks to make a fire, striking a couple rocks against each other to make a spark.
Eventually, he had walked all over the planet, which was about the size of the Earth's moon. There were more bushes and Bilgesnipe on the planet, and a few lakes that the rainwater came from, but other than that, he was the only thing on the planet.
This is how Loki spent the next 3,557 years, drinking rainwater and eating berries and Bilgesnipe.
In his old age, Loki decided that he must find a way off the planet. True, he had taken pain against others out of the equation. However, he was lonely. He had only projections of himself to talk with. He wanted interaction with another person. Maybe Thor, if he was still alive.
"I miss Thor," Loki thinks to himself. "Maybe Thor misses me, if he's still alive. Maybe somebody, anybody, out there misses me."
Mustering all the strength he had left, the old Asgardian began building a crude one-man ship out of rocks, using twigs from the bushes as binding and magic as power. Finally, after 3,557 years, he could leave the rock.
Just as he began to assemble the materials, a window opened in the air a few feet from him. Through it came a woman, clad in a black suit with armor and a helmet. Behind her were two others: a man dressed like her and a man in a suit-and-tie, sporting a mustache.
"Loki Laufeyson," the woman declares, "On behalf of the Time Variance Authority, I hereby arrest you for crimes against the Sacred Timeline."
"People!" Loki laughs, happy to have interaction with someone, ANYone. "Please, take me to where there are more people!"
"What will you do to go where there are more people?" The woman asks.
"Anything," Loki replies with trembling voice.
"Put this on," the woman commands, handing Loki a collar.
Loki obeys, then is quickly dragged by the armored strangers through the window.
"You know," the mustached man says to Loki, "you're the oldest one yet."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Loki is confused.
He is taken to an office building of sorts and thrown in a room with a machine that exchanges his green-and-gold outfit for a beige/orange prison uniform.
Next, he is taken to a room where there is a desk. On that desk is a stack of papers. Behind those papers is a man, who asks Loki to confirm that the contents of the paper are everything he's ever said.
Hesitantly, Loki signs the papers, glad to be taking orders from anyone but suddenly remembering how horrible it is to follow orders.
He is then put in a room with what looks like an Earth-made metal detector and is asked by the man running it if he has a soul.
"I have a sad and lonely soul," Loki answers.
"Great," the man replies sarcastically. "Now step through."
Loki steps through and then lands in a room with a winding line that leads to what looks like where a person buys tickets at a movie theater or stadium. He is given a ticket before he enters the line, and while he's in it, Ms. Minutes explains why he is there. At the booth, he is told to go to a certain courtroom, where he advances to the pedestal before the judge's seat. In the judge's seat sits Ravonna Renslayer, who reads papers pertaining to Loki's case.
"Laufeyson," she proclaims, "Variant L1122, AKA Loki Laufeyson, is charged with sequence violation 7-31-05." She looks up from the papers and asks, "How do you plead?"
"I'm not sure," Loki says. "What am I guilty of?"
"Trying to escape your fate on Morag," Renslayer answers. "Or, what's left of it after decay."
"Well, I did do that," Loki chuckles.
"That's enough. Prune him," Renslayer commands.
"Do what now?" Loki asks as a pruning stick touches his back, vaporizing him.
Loki wakes up lying down in a grassy field, where a child and an alligator watch him wake up.
"Am I dead?" Loki asks, sitting up.
"You will be, unless you come with us," the child answers.
"Who are you?" Loki questions.
"I'm you, as a boy," Kid Loki explains. "This is you, as an alligator."
"I remember that," Classic Loki chuckles. "That was fun. May I join your hearty crew?"
"Only if you want to survive," Kid Loki replies, "and nothing more."
"All I want more than survival," Classic Loki says, "is interaction, conversation. Friendship. And it looks like I've found it."
