After Thor survived fire from the star and Groot made a handle for him to use the axe, the four of them headed to Earth with the tesseract in order to fight in Wakanda against Thanos' armies. In an electrifying blast, Thor brought lightning to the ground and killed hundreds of alien dogs in one swift movement of his new axe.
"Loki," he commanded, "bring me Thanos!"
He asked, "What am I now, your personal errand runner?"
Thor rolled his eyes at him and explained, "You know he's after you! Find him before he finds you so I can kill him! Go and be a hero for just one time in your life!" He charged into battle toward the alien dogs.
"Thor!" Steve said angrily, "You brought Loki here?" He stared at them in disbelief.
"It's complicated," Thor replied, "Loki, just-"
"I know, I know," he said, unamused, "find Thanos so you can kill him and save the whole universe. I heard you the first time, dear brother." He walked away from the battle nonchalantly.
It didn't take too long before Thanos did arrive in Wakanda with his spaceship, off to the side of everyone else in the forest hunting for Vision and his mind stone. After he stole that, he used the Reality Stone to grab Loki from where he was standing and lifted him off of the ground.
"Found him!" he shouted, "Thor he's-" He was pulled through the air, passing trees and people left and right, and his neck landed directly into Thanos' open right hand and he slammed him against the ground.
"No tricks this time," Thanos said angrily, "you have something I need."
"Do I," Loki said pityfully as he struggled to breathe, "I had no idea."
Without touching Loki, Thanos lifted the tesseract from Loki's coat and made it float into his hand. As soon as he touched it with his glove it burned through it and left Thanos screaming in pain. He dropped Loki unceremoniously to the ground as the tesseract fell beside him. "What did you do!" Thanos demanded angrily as he stood over him.
Loki caught his breath and explained, "I put a spell on it. No one else can touch the space stone."
"I'll kill you for that!" Thanos prepared to stomp on his chest.
"A dead man's spell is unbreakable," Loki explained, trying to stop his boot, "And you can't perform the snap without the final stone. You will never be a God."
Thanos kicked him hard and examined his glove angrily. "I don't have to make my fingers snap to make the universe suffer." He took the power stone out of his glove with his right hand and prepared to slam it into the ground.
"No!" Loki shouted, knowing as soon as the power stone would hit the ground with his force behind it, it would incinerate the planet as a whole. He reached out knowing that he had to stall Thanos even for a moment in order to stop the death toll from rising because of Thanos.
He grabbed the power stone in his hand and stole it from Thanos' fingers. As Loki pulled away he expected for it to burn and he'd be killed instantly. He froze when he realized that wasn't happening. "You're not dying a slow and painful death from the power stone's energy," Thanos said, completely shocked, "impossible."
Completely surprised he wasn't dying, Loki stared at the power stone in his left hand in completely shock. "I agree," he whispered.
Thanos saw the tesseract on the ground and stomped on it. Because Loki was no longer concentrating on the spell, it was broken, and Thanos easily lifted it off of the ground and placed it into his glove. He swiftly grabbed Loki by the neck once more and choked him out. Loki tried to keep the power stone his hand but the longer he didn't breathe, the harder it was. Eventually Thanos took it from his hands and added it to his gauntlet, making his collection complete.
Before he could snap his fingers, Thor's axe flew through the air, generating lightning as it went. Thanos threw Loki to the ground and tried using the stones to stop it's power. It continued on it's path and lead directly to Thanos' chest, purple blood sprayed in every direction, including down the left half of Loki's face and body as he tried to turn away.
Thor flew in from behind it and said, "I knew I would get the chance to kill you." He pushed the axe further into his chest as Loki scambled to his feet.
"You had to do that while he was leaning over me," Loki said as he tried to wipe away the blood, to no avail.
Thanos said, "You should have gone for the head."
"What?" Loki asked.
"No!" Thor shouted at Thanos snapped his fingers and then disappeared into a portal, leaving the axe behind.
"You couldn't cut his hand off first?!" Loki yelled at him, "Or his whole left arm, or did what he said to do-gone for the head in the first place, Thor! You killed half the universe because of your little oversight!"
"Shut up," Thor demanded.
Steve asked, "What happened? Where'd he go?"
As Rhodey flew in and landed beside him, he felt himself turning numb. "What in the-" he started, then began to discintigrate in the suit. When he disappeared, the metal suit fell over being the empty husk it now was.
"Steve," Bucky said nervously, "what's happening?" Natasha, Steve, Sam, and him looked around to see if anyone else had noticed people in the distance disappearing before their eyes.
Thor looked down at himself and saw himself starting to turn to dust. "Loki," he demanded, "what are you doing?" He grabbed Loki so he couldn't run away.
"I'm not doing anything," he said nervously as he clutched onto him, "this isn't me!"
"Loki!" Thor shouted at him just before he turned to ash completely.
Steve asked shakily, "How did that happen?"
"It's Thanos," Loki said sadly as he hugged himself where Thor just was, "he won."
The next day, after a horrible night sleep from everyone who was left, Bucky, Natasha, Steve, Loki, Sam, and Bruce, were at the Avengers headquartes in upstate New York. Natasha sat at the kitchen table and leaned her body over it, face down.
Bucky grabbed a plum out of the fruit basket on the counter and asked, "Did you go to bed last night or did you stay in that spot the whole time?"
She sat up, eyes glazed over and puffy from crying and her hair was in a mess over her face. "I haven't moved," she said slowly, "I couldn't sleep knowing that Clint and so many other people are gone so I stayed here and cried the entire night. Pretty pathetic, huh." She fixed her hair away from her face.
Bucky pulled up a chair, only to notice the table had a huge crack down the middle. He said, "It's not pathetic. I've been there before myself, once I remembered how many lives I destroyed for Hydra, I couldn't sleep for days."
"What about right now?" she asked, "You look like you're handling this a little too well."
He bit into the purple plum and explained, "All things considered, this isn't too abnormal for me. I mean, I've never seen anyone disintegrate before, but the fact that I now have to adjust to a whole new reality or else I'll suffer, that has been my life for the last seventy five-ish years. If anything, this is better since I'm not getting electrocuted nor am I being forced to murder anyone." He took another bite into the plum.
"I get what you're saying," she said, esasperated, "honestly, I do, 100%, despite my tone of voice, but if you say that to anyone else besides me they will think you're a psychopath so don't say that ever again."
"Understood," he said awkwardly.
Steve walked in from behind Natasha and him and said, "People all over the world are freaking out and I don't know how to help them. Someone here better have something positive to say or I'm going to lose it."
Bucky said nervously, "Fruit is still good." He motioned to the fruit basket in front of him but Steve's face was unwavering in disappointment.
Sam walked into the room from the other side, obviously tired, looked at them, and asked, "What happened to the table?"
"I was going to ask that," Bucky said, looking at Natasha.
"Loki's upset," she said, "apparently he has powers where he can move things with his mind and when he's upset he breaks things uncontrollably."
"Awesome," Sam said sarcastically.
Steve lowered his head and asked, "Did he break anything else?"
"The refrigerator," she said, "and the oven, but the stove is fine last time I checked and the hallway walls leading downstairs are also all cracked. I think he's down there, sulking in his own misery and feeling of failure."
Sam asked, "How do you break an oven but not a-you know what-nevermind, I shouldn't even ask." He walked over to the fridge and saw that it was cracked wide open to the point where water was running onto the floor and the shelves were all broken. Food spilled out toward him onto his feet. "Now that's just great," he said sarcastically.
"So," Bruce said awkwardly as he walked into the kitchen, "what's the plan today?"
Natasha answered, "I think we should try to find Thanos."
"Right," Sam said, "because that worked so well yesterday when we tried to track him down with nothing to go on." He slammed a cabinent door shut.
"We're all on edge here," Steve said, then glanced at Bucky who looked fine, and continued, "all of us are upset. Let's try not to get on each other's last nerves."
As Sam pulled out a brand new full gallon of milk out of the broken fridge, Loki came out from the hallway. He was still half covered in Thanos' blood, but was wearing light colored clothing instead of his usual black, green, and gold leather.
Sam asked as tactfully as he could, "You're not going to uh...clean the blood off...there?" Loki twitched and the gallon of milk Sam was holding broke, spilling milk all over himself and the floor. "Ah come on man, that was a new jug," he said halfheartedly.
"There's a spaceship heading towards us," Loki said.
Natasha asked, "Do you have powers that sense that too?"
"No," he said, "I looked out the window and saw an ugly orange ship heading straight for us."
Bruce said, "That can't be good." He was the first to head out the front door with everyone else right behind him.
Outside, a disheveled Tony awkwardly walked off of the platform with Nebula and Mantis walking in behind him. When they stopped at the top of the ramp, Mantis lost her balance and Nebula grabbed her and straightened her out without changing the expression on her face. Mantis smiled and nodded at her gratefully.
"Tony," Bruce said, "we were worried we lost you." He helped him off of the craft alongside Steve.
"I lost the kid," he said sadly, "and that strange wizard person and the weird people that we met the guardians of the something-they're all gone but those two. The blue one is Nebula, the one with antenna's on her head is Mantis, at least they're alive or else I probably would have starved to death on Titan before managing to fix a ship to get back here." He motioned at them to come down.
Steve said, "A lot of people are gone, Tony."
"You!" he pointed at Loki, "What are you doing!? Are you here to gloat!? To rub it in our faces that we lost!? What are you covered in, face paint? What are you wearing?" He stumbled forward as Bruce and Steve held him up.
Bruce said, "Now wait, Thor's gone too and that is his brother so-"
"This is what I get to live for now," Loki said shakily, "to be harrassed by midgardians." The glass in the windows next to them cracked violently.
Steve said, "Why don't we go inside and try to relax?"
Everyone awkwardly sat or stood around the kitchen table as Tony got an IV for hydration and nutrients.
Bruce explained, "The news says pretty much every town and city is looking for anyone and everyone who can help with the clean up effort. There were hundreds of car accidents after this happened and we don't even know what else yet."
"We haven't taken a census at this point," Natasha said, "obviously, but from the looks of things he really did take out half of all life. I think Thanos is still alive out there, somewhere, but we have no idea where he could be."
"Tony," Steve said, "you fought him in outer space. Did he mention where he is now?"
"That's wrong," Tony said angrily, "actually, I didn't fight him. He threw a moon at me and then a wizard gave him an infinity stone and then he was gone and so was everyone else. He didn't leave any clues or hints as to where he was going either." He looked over and saw Bucky. "You have to be kidding me. You get to live alongside us?" he asked hastily as he stood up.
Steve took a breath as he stood between them and said, "This isn't the time Tony, we're in this fight together."
Tony tried to get closer to Bucky as he shouted, "Together! Yeah right! Where were you in New York when aliens showed up again! Nowhere to be found meanwhile Thanos lets an assasin like you stay alive! A murderer gets to live among us who are so lucky to have survived his little finger snap! Meanwhile little old Peter Parker who's a superhero for Queens and only wants to do good for the city and the world as a whole-he has to die! He was just a kid never mind a 100 year old serial murderer gets to live! That makes all things are equal and fair and just in the world! Don't you think!?"
He tried to push Bucky, but Bucky held Tony's shoulder carefully with his metal arm, keeping him an arm's distance away. "Tony," he said calmly as he made Steve step to the side.
"Don't say my name," he said angrily, "don't pretend like we're friends! Peter should be the one alive right now, not you! If you want to fight me and kill me like you killed my mother who also never did anything wrong, go ahead! Here, I'll give you a head start." He ripped out the light in his chest and handed it to Bucky. He passed out before he could say anything else and Bucky caught him and carried him bridal carry style.
Bucky asked, "Where should I put him?"
"Come on," Bruce said, "there's a bed in here."