Quick note: It's pretty much vital for you to have seen the LOKI series in order to understand this. Just letting you know! I hope you enjoy!

In a Crowd of Thousands

Chapter 4

"For All Time. Always."

Loki ran.

He ran from the "other" Mobius—the man who possessed his friend's face, but who was not his friend at all. Perhaps Loki could have made this Mobius understand, if he'd been granted several uninterrupted hours with him in a locked room. In fact, knowing Mobius as he did, Loki had no doubt that the laid-back analyst would eventually come round, no matter which variation of himself he was. But Loki couldn't risk that now. Not with the chaos that had just been unleashed.

The chaos that Sylvie had unleashed.

Loki's lips burned again as he dashed down the corridors, his vision still blurred with tears, his heart thudding with a terrible, deep ache.

A trick. A vicious trick. And he had fallen for it like a naive idiot. She had used him, conned him, and finally betrayed him. And now…

Dirty, sweating, bleeding and panting, he came round a corner and spotted a group of helmeted enforcers marching right toward him.

"Sorry! Sorry, sorry," he yelped as he blundered right into three of them, and they shouted expletives and dodged out of the way.

"Sorry, sorry," he said again, raising his hand sincerely, hurrying onward…

He lifted his other hand and glanced down at the TemPad he had just swiped from one of them. He rammed it into his trousers pocket and swung through another door, towards that section of the records department he had visited before…

He entered the relatively quiet section of the TVA, passed several stacks of bookshelves, and approached the little cubicle where the stern librarian should be.

He jerked to a stop.

She wasn't there.

Rapidly, he glanced around in search of her…

She wasn't anywhere. In fact, no one was.

Maybe they had all been called away to tend to more urgent business. It wouldn't surprise him, given the state of affairs.

But it also meant that someone could come in at any moment.

He swung around the cubicle front and sat down in front of her computer. He frowned sharply at the stark screen, then down at the keyboard. He hated these things. Grinding his teeth, he slapped a button.

The little orange clock with a face on it—Miss Minutes—popped up out of thin air to his right and smiled at him.

"Well, hello there," she said brightly. "What can I do for you today?"

"Uh…" Loki took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows, fighting to gather and organize his scattered, frantic thoughts. "Well, there seem to be quite a few timelines branching out at the moment, aren't there?"

"Yes, you could say that," Miss Minutes said worriedly, fidgeting her hands. "I've been busy all day. You wouldn't believe the number of files that are just piling up!"

"Lots?" Loki asked.

"Oh, billions!" Miss Minutes exclaimed. "It'll take several millennia to organize them all."

"I'd like to help in that regard," Loki offered. "Could you please show me the timeline—or timelines—in which Loki, after being defeated in New York, is taken back to Asgard as a prisoner by his brother Thor?"

"Sure thing," Miss Minutes told him. "Just give me a couple seconds." She spun and blipped out of existence. Loki folded his arms and sat back in his chair, his teeth clenching again.

He was sick of wallowing around in this chaos, this abyss of unfamiliarity. If he was going to anything at all about this calamity, he had to get back onto stable footing. Which meant finding a timeline that at least resembled one on which he had actually lived, and working from there.

Blink!

Loki jumped as the orange clock popped back up in front of him.

"I've loaded the top four for you," Miss Minutes said cheerfully.

"How many are there?" Loki asked.

Miss Minutes shifted her weight bashfully.

"Not sure, hon. Not anymore," she admitted. "But at the moment, these are the ones that most closely fit your request."

"Thanks," Loki murmured absently, unable to process that right now. Instead, he leaned toward the computer screen and frowned hard at the file names.

"Do these—some of these say 'pruned.' They've been pruned?"

"Yes, sir," Miss Minutes replied. "Three of them have been, to be exact."

Loki muttered their file names quickly.

"Loki Laufeyson: Death in London, Resurrection in Asgard – Pruned; Loki Laufeyson: Death on Svartalfheim – Pruned; Loki Laufeyson: Death simultaneous with that of Thanos - Pruned." Loki's eyebrows went up at that—but it was useless to select any of these. They didn't exist anymore. He could look at the one remaining, then send Miss Minutes to go look again. He selected the last file, which read:

LOKI LAUFEYSON: DEATH BY THANOS

This one did not have the ominous word "pruned" next to it. And as it opened, a span of data bloomed in front of him—a straight white line on a black background, paralleled by names, dates and pictures. Biting his lip, he hit the right arrow, scanning quickly along the line, past his adolescence and into his adulthood. All the names and dates looked very familiar. This was promising…

It took much longer than he thought it would. Midway through, he raised his left hand and clapped it to his forehead. How old was he? This was ridiculous…

There. There was Thor's banishment to Midgard. There was the breaking of the Asbru, and Loki's falling through space and time to the craggy nothingness in the middle of space where Thanos had found him. There was his training with the Mind Stone, his new armor, his meetings with the Mad Titan. There was the expedition to Midgard, and the capture of the tesseract. The Battle of New York.

There was his failure, his being dragged back to Asgard. This was something he hadn't experienced, but he'd seen it play out in that fateful room here at the TVA.

There was his imprisonment in the dungeons of Asgard. The invasion by the dark elves. The death of his mother…

Loki swallowed hard, his forehead twisting. That possibility was still too hard to look at. His eyes stinging, he scrolled past it as fast as he could.

There was a feigned death on Svartalfheim. Returning to guise and kingship on Asgard.

Odin's death.

The tragic inferno of Ragnarok.

The attack of their escape spacecraft by Thanos. And Loki's death at his hand.

He stared at the end of the timeline, where a single entry was stamped:

DEATH: April 23, 2018 a.d.

"All right, now I want to see past this," Loki said, clearing his throat and steadying his voice. He pointed at the screen. "I want to see beyond this event on this exact timeline."

"Sure thing," Miss Minutes answered, and waved a hand.

The line reappeared after DEATH, and turned red. New entries appeared. Great battles against Thanos—battles that were lost. Genocide on a universe-wide scale. Time-travel performed by the Avengers to retrieve Infinity Stones. The ultimate defeat of Thanos. The reversal of his genocide. The sacrificial death of Tony Stark.

"Past this nonsense, please," Loki muttered to himself, glaring at the name of that Titan as it passed. He wanted nothing to do with Thanos. The fact that he was dead and gone on this timeline was excellent.

"Now, I need to branch out the search, from here on," Loki told Miss Minutes. "I need to see anyone on this timeline at this point, who has extensive knowledge of the Infinity Stones, namely the Time Stone."

"Oh, that's easy, hon," Miss Minutes snapped her fingers. "That'll be Dr. Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme."

"What, really?" Loki sat up. "Where is he?"

"He's on Earth, here," Miss Minutes pointed to the screen…

And the timeline zoomed in, focusing on the picture of a very distinguished, solemn young man with piercing blue eyes, high cheekbones, a beard, a hard mouth and an intelligent brow. Loki rapidly scanned his timeline. Dr. Stephen Strange had been the best brain surgeon in the world until a near-fatal car accident had crippled his hands, and he went searching for a cure. His search had led him to the Ancient One, a mystical being who taught him magic. From there, he had rapidly learned the secrets of the Time Stone, and had singlehandedly defeated a world-devouring being called Dormamu.

"I can't believe this," Loki whispered, chills racing all across him as he stared, wide-eyed. The file went on. Dr. Strange had been "Snapped" out of existence by Thanos, but then reappeared because of Tony Stark's sacrifice. He returned to the New York Sanctum to continue guarding the world from powerful enemies, as well as—

"Wait—" Loki gasped, his hand flying up off the keyboard. The timeline stopped scrolling. He stared, his heartbeat picking up.

There, adjoining and firmly connecting to Stephen Strange's timeline with a neat little bracket…

JANE FOSTER

Loki leaned in so close his nose almost touched the screen, his eyes widening. He didn't touch the keyboard. Heat flared through his chest, and a violet light flickered across his vision for just an instant.

"This is it," he stated—his voice, loud and decisive, echoed back into his face. "This is it, right here."

"What's it?" Miss Minutes asked.

"The answer," Loki said quickly, tugging the little device out of his pocket and slapping it down on the desk. "I need you to program this TemPad to take me right here."

"Right where, dear?" Miss Minutes frowned.

"Right…" Loki zoomed in on the timeline, making it bigger until he could see individual days. "Right here. It's after the two of them have met several times, which means they're connected," he said quickly. "Right here…April 26th, 2024."

"What time of day, honey?" Miss Minutes asked.

"Erm…Nine in the morning," he threw out a hand. "Doesn't really matter, does it?"

"Of course it does," Miss Minutes said indignantly. "Nothing matters more than time!"

Loki wanted to roll his eyes—but he stopped himself. He couldn't afford to offend this powerful little creature. Instead, he forced a smile.

"Yes, of course, you're right." He faced her and clasped his hands, glancing down at the TemPad. "Is it ready?"

"Give it about ten more seconds," Miss Minutes advised as the screen on the TemPad blinked. Loki held his breath and bit his lip again, feeling his brow tighten. Then, in a blink, it read: COMPLETE.

"There you go!" Miss Minutes said, pleased with herself. Loki snatched it up and stood, reading the words on the screen beneath the larger word.

APRIL 26TH, 2024, 9:00 AM

All right, she'd done as he'd asked. It was going to send him to the right place. But once he got there…

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Loki muttered, taking a deep breath and turning away from the cubicle. He hit the button on the TemPad…

A golden, translucent door popped up in front of him.

"Have a fun trip!" Miss Minutes called from behind him.

"Thank you," he said absently—and stepped through.

To be continued…

Please review and let me know your thoughts! Speculate! I love to hear from you