It was so abrupt, so painful.
Like being stabbed.
Loki supposed that was the poetic justice of the world or whatever this thing was at play.
One moment he was running for help as his brother bled far too quickly, lay far too still in the dirt, the light in his eyes fading as he stared up at his brother the next minute, his arm was snatched by the people in strange black armor.
"I don't understand," he sobbed, yanking at his captor's arm. "Please, I have to get help!"
"On behalf of the Time Variance Authority–" the woman who'd grabbed him began, but Loki really didn't have time for this. He bit down hard on her hand, broke free from her grasp, and raced toward the palace, hollering for help at the top of his lungs.
"B-15, he's spiking the branch," one of the other armored people shouted, and darted forward to snatch Loki around the waist. Again, he screamed for someone, anyone to help him, kicking and scratching at his assailant. "We've got to get him out before he disrupts the timeline further."
"I hereby arrest you for crimes against the Sacred Timeline," B-15 nursed her bitten hand and glared at Loki as if he wasn't anything more than an irritating fly to be smacked. "You'll be coming with us."
"No, wait!" Loki squirmed again. "Please, my brother; you have to help him, I… I hurt him. I can't go with you, please!"
His pleas went completely unnoticed, as if they hadn't even heard him in the first place, and they towed him towards a golden-orangish doorway that led to… who-knows-where.
Loki's father had always said he would be kidnapped if he stayed outside the palace grounds too much, but he'd never thought he'd get arrested. He'd never thought he would actually kill Thor, either.
In another world, a kinder world, yet a far harsher one at once, this would be a moment the brothers would joke about for years to come.
"There was this one time when we were young… He transformed himself into a snake, because he knew I love snakes…"
Loved. The note of past tense is pointless from the perspective outside of time, when you look at two timelines at once and compare them, however, the only difference between the two is how quickly present tense could no longer be applied.
"…I went to pick the snake up to admire it, and he transformed back into himself…"
Did it really matter what Loki's intentions had been? What was done had been done, and would remain done for all eternity. At least, until the timeline was erased and it would never have been done in the first place.
He had killed his own brother.
"And then he stabbed me."
It was that simple, that frank. Such small words for such a big consequence.
Pruning hurt.
Every atom in his body slowly ripping itself from this plane of existence and being sent forward into time, existing in two places on the timeline at once…
Loki screamed far more than he would've liked to admit. He was a big boy of eight years old. He didn't scream. He didn't cry. Yes, he passed out from the pain, and lay unconscious on the fields at the end of time as the winds howled bitterly cold over his still, small body. And if there was wetness on his cheeks, it was from the rain, from the humidity, something on the rubbish above him dripped on his face, perhaps even alligator spit…
Alligator spit.
Loki's mind whirled as he slowly came to the realization that alligator spit was potentially a feasible option, seeing as there was in fact an alligator sitting on his chest. Or maybe it was a crocodile. Loki wasn't sure how you were supposed to tell the differences.
From all the stories of alligators, he would've thought that they'd be bigger, but this one wasn't. He (Loki assumed it was a he and didn't want to be rude enough to check) was small enough to be picked up and cradled like a small child, and there was a teeny helmet with curved horns twisting up over his scaly head.
Blinking past his headache, he struggled to sit up and push the alligator off his chest so he could run and not get eaten.
Apparently alligators are too stubborn to be pushed. The little reptile only blinked placidly up at Loki and made a content hissing noise as he seemed to smile. Either that or he was opening his mouth to bite Loki's head off. Again, the differences seemed few and far between.
"You're not going to let me run away, are you," he said wearily. Thor would probably tease him for talking to threatening animals, but Thor was dead, and that was Loki's fault.
Wasn't he supposed to be sad about that? For the most part, he just felt numb. He couldn't even work up a tear for his brother's honor.
The alligator stared placidly up at him as if to answer his question by not moving at all. "Well, at least someone still likes me," Loki sighed, and resigned himself to simply existing beneath an alligator.
"What is this place?" He turned his head, scraping dirt and leaves into his hair as he looked around. It was overcast, a sense of utter gloom resting thick and heavy over the fields and small hills that seemed to be covered in garbage and ruined cities. He could see strangely-shaped birds that would be quail of their heads were shaped like quails' heads, or if they were attached to the rest of their bodies.
He didn't know the mechanics of pruning, all he'd known was that someone poked him with a stick for his crimes against the Sacred Timeline, and he had vanished and reappeared here. Was this Hel? Niffleheim, perhaps? Was he dead?
The alligator decided Loki's chest was no longer a sufficient place of repose, and crawled off, his long scaly tail scraping like sandpaper over Loki's shirt. Having nothing better to do, Loki sat up and watched the little creature walk away a few paces, then turned, and looked back at Loki as if expecting him to do something.
"What," he asked, blinking at the horned alligator. "Do you want me to give you something?"
The alligator made a little hissing noise of exasperation, and walked a few more steps, only to pause again, and look back expectantly.
"You want me to follow you?" Loki scrambled to his feet, ignoring the ringing in his ears, and stumbled after his new scaly friend. The alligator didn't look back again, seemingly content with Loki following him over the grey, endless landscape. He was knee-deep in grasses and heather, and for much of their journey Loki could only tell where his small guide was based on where the foliage in front of him was rustling the most.
By the time the alligator had led him to a hatch-trapdoor-ish-thing that opened directly into the ground, Loki's legs were aching. How long had they walked? Miles?
Again, the alligator turned to look up at him in expectation. Alligators do not have hands, so he was probably asking Loki to let him in. How the small creature had been able to get into this place in the first place was a mystery. Maybe he belonged to someone, and was just leading Loki back to whoever had originally found the trapdoor.
Bracing his little feet against the soggy earth, Loki grabbed the handle of the trapdoor and heaved until it swung open, revealing a ladder descending down into the ground. There were lights down there, and the smell of something-or-other cooking. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until he smelled it; potatoes and some sort of meat. Throwing all form of caution and stranger and/or alligator danger to the winds, he crept down the ladder into the dim lighting. The alligator, having no ability to descend a ladder, simply jumped down, sailed past Loki's head, and land with a delightful thwump on a floofy pillow resting at the base of the ladder, set there for just such a purpose.
Loki had never been in a Midgardian bowling alley, so he didn't realize that was currently what he was looking at, or rather the remains of a very old and decrepit one. Old and salvaged items laid haphazardly across the floor, from pasta strainers to some sort of throne-thing. There was a children's wading pool half-full with cold water which the alligator flopped into, showering the floor around it with droplets of water. Just beyond the wading pool, an old man dressed in yellow and green, with the same sort of curved-horn headpiece sat next to a fire built in a cooking pot, one of the birds Loki had seen outside turning on a spit over it.
"I told you if you get the carpet wet, you'll have to clean it," he told the alligator, not seeming to notice Loki's arrival.
The alligator made a dismissive grumbling noise.
"I don't care if you don't have arms, you're figuring out how to use a vacuum." Fascinating. It was as if they were actually communicating. The man finally looked up and noticed Loki standing awkwardly next to the ladder.
"Hello," he said, raising his eyebrows in a rather startled expression. "Are you another one of us?"
"Of us?" Loki blinked at the old man's face. "You mean… Horned… people?"
"In a fashion," the man laughed. "But I mean a Loki."
"You're me?!" And he'd thought things hadn't been making sense, before. What misconceptions reigned in chaos. "I don't understand."
"New here, then?" The old man gestured to a beanbag chair that was vaguely damp thanks to the alligator's hapless splashing. "Sit down, dinner will be ready soon. Why don't you tell me what happened?"
Loki hadn't really had the opportunity to talk this through with a human, and when he opened his mouth, he found his voice hollow and far smaller than he had expected. "I killed Thor."
"I beg your pardon?!" Even the alligator looked shocked.
"I…" Loki was still surprised by how little he felt like crying. "I was playing a joke… It was just a joke! Or at least it was meant to be… I transformed my self into a snake because he loved snakes. And when he went to pick me up to admire the snake… you know… I stabbed him." The last bit came out so quiet he could barely even hear himself, but the man seemed to understand what had happened anyway. "I didn't mean for him to be dead." He glanced up to guiltily meet his eye. "And then the people in black armor came and took me away, and they took all my clothes off and put me in this…" He plucked at the ill-fitting jumpsuit dismally, "And then they told me I was guilty and poked me with a stick and then I was here. Your pet alligator led me to your… house."
The alligator growled in disapproval, but the old man was very quiet, staring at Loki as if trying to figure out what to make of him. "The alligator is not my pet," he finally said. "He's my friend, and a Loki just like ourselves. I'm a Loki, as well, just like you."
"From the future?" Loki guessed. He'd read books where such things happened.
"In a way. From an alternate timeline. That's not important." The man – the Loki – shook his head. "You're not even grown yet…"
Any other day, Loki would have protested, insisting he was very big, thank-you-very-much, he was eight years old and knew his multiplication tables all the way up to six. If there was anything more one needed to be a grownup, he had yet to hear of it. But today, he was so tired, so lost, and he really did want someone to act the adult instead of him. "What is this place?"
"They didn't even tell you, at the TVA?" The Other Loki's eyebrows raised. "Miscreants. This is a moment at the very end of time, a single day looped until the timeline catches up. This is where the TVA sends anything from the timelines they prune."
Little Loki's face was so blank, you could've used it as a chalkboard.
"I see." The older Loki shook his head in an almost fond gesture, pulled the roasted bird off the fire, and set it on a plate resting on the floor. "The TVA are the ones who took you. They are the ones who make sure the timeline… well, that things happen the way they want them to, because they think that if they don't, there will be entire other worlds to deal with where they'll have to control what goes on there, too. It's very complicated and obnoxious, but all that really matters is that they take the people they think did the wrong thing, and erase the thing they did. Does that make sense?"
Loki curled his legs up underneath him as he shrunk into a small ball on the beanbag. "So… So they erased that I killed Thor?"
"Most likely," he said, his eyes still doing that weird perceptive stare as he looked at Loki.
"So I didn't do it?" Loki looked up, his eyes full of hope. "I can still remember it."
"I'm afraid you still did it," The other Loki sighed. "But not… in reality. If that makes sense."
It did not. Loki had been able to gather that the TVA had somehow fixed what he'd done, and yet he was still responsible. Sort of like when Thor had once broken one of his mother's dishes, and even though he'd glued it back together, he still had done it. At least Thor could still go on living…
"What about me? Is there another me, now? Or does Thor not have any brother?"
"There's another you," the other Loki replied, and…
Oh. That's why there were more of him. Now he was starting to understand. "Then you two did bad things, too? And the T… TBA took you away?"
"TVA," the older Loki corrected. "It stands for Time Variance Authority. We did things they didn't want us to do, not necessarily bad things. I went to go see Thor when I wasn't supposed to, and alligator Loki… Well, he claims he ate his neighbor's cat, but I don't think anyone believes him."
"You can talk to him?" Loki turned to glance at the very content alligator as he cheerfully swished his tail through the water.
"Of course," Older Loki replied, as if it was a simple fact of life. "We've been living the same day over for about two years now, together. It gets easier to figure out what he's saying as time goes on."
Alligator Loki had decided the conversation had been about him for not nearly long enough, and in order to be the center of attention, lunged out of his pool to close his jaws around the whole bird with a delighted purr.
"Selfish bastard," Older Loki grumbled, as if he had to put up with a lot from his small scaly friend, and this had not surprised him in the slightest. Judging from the way he was almost smiling, he'd probably even expected it.
"You said a bad word," Loki distractedly pointed out as he watched the alligator snarf down the entire bird.
"He did a bad thing," Older Loki sniffed. "Well, at least we've still got the potatoes, eh?"
They were wrapped in blackened foil, next to the fire-pot, and he picked them up, wincing as they burnt his fingers, and unwrapped the foil partway. A delicious plume of steam rose from the potato, filling the room with a delightful smell. Loki's stomach rumbled, and he reached out for the potato with eager hands.
"It's hot," Older Loki said, and he wrapped the foil in his handkerchief as he handed it over to Loki's small hands.
"Can I stay with you?" Loki asked as he poked at the still-steaming potato, and promptly burned the end of his finger. "I don't want to go back out there…"
"Oh, of course," he replied, like he hadn't even been considering allowing him to leave. "You don't even know about Alioth yet. It wouldn't be safe."
"You're going to keep me here, then? Like a prisoner?" Loki wasn't even sure how he was supposed to react to that, but being a prisoner of an alligator and an old man who gave him potatoes seemed better than the cold, bleak, damp outside world any day of the week.
"No, like a friend," he said. "That we care about and want to protect. Speaking of wanting to protect, you ought to be getting to sleep."
"It's not my bedtime," Loki protested. "And I haven't finished my dinner."
"But you're half-asleep, already." The other Loki stood up and pushed a blanket over Loki's little self to tuck him in. "Finish your potato and go right to sleep, alright?"
"You're not my boss…" Loki grumbled, but he couldn't deny he was exhausted, and slowly, at long last, his sadness seeped into every crevice of his body, filling him up like a water balloon of regret.
He could never go home.
He could never see his brother, even though he was alive, again.
This was what he'd have to be, the family he'd have to have, until the end of time, or until he died.
He didn't even notice the very first tear that had slipped down his cheek until he felt the alligator Loki's rough tongue lick it away.
Now he really did have alligator spit on his face. "That's really gross," he grumbled as he wiped at his cheek with his sleeve.
The alligator made his strange little grunting noise, and curled around Loki's waist in what was almost a hug.
Tentatively, he pet the top of the alligator's scaly head, just behind his horns in the same way you might pet a puppy.
And finally, after a full day of numbness, he wept.
TheOnlyHuman.