#19

Much to Thor's relief, Tony and Bruce had kept the Avengers informed about everything that had transpired, which meant that he did not have to explain either Loki's Jotun appearance or his brother's collapse or his own thunderous mistake. Much to his sorrow, however, the others were eyeing him with what one might graciously describe as distrustfulness when they stepped out of the vessel and greeted him with either wariness, incredulity or disappointment—or a mixture of all three. While Thor had known that Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff would not be likely to change their opinion about Loki any time soon and had suspected Steve Rogers to be still digesting what he had said about Bucky Barnes, Thor was stunned by Bruce's hesitant reaction. The scientist looked at him with the kind of disappointment that had an unmistakable trace of repulsion in it when he greeted him and Thor could not remember a time when he had felt more awful. He managed a contrite smile. "Hey, Bruce."

Bruce smiled back awkwardly and almost apologetically, as if it was somehow his fault that Thor had lost his temper. Fortunately for all of them, however, Shuri had apparently decided to fly the Avengers back to New York herself and her presence lifted Thor's spirits a little at least. From their very first encounter, he had sensed that Shuri was no ordinary mortal. She was terrifyingly intelligent, curious and wise beyond her years but, above all, she was kindhearted and compassionate. And even if she had made it quite clear that she did not want Loki in her own country, the Thundergod was sure that she would try everything in her might to help his brother with the vibranium technology at her disposal. She confirmed this assumption when she saluted him with a curt nod, asking, "How is he injured?" as she knelt down beside Loki's unconscious frame.

"He doesn't have any visible injuries," Thor answered while he watched Nebula escorting Pepper into the Wakandan aircraft from the corner of his eye. "No physical ones, at least."

"I can't say that I'm not enjoying seeing him so helpless after everything he's put us through," Clint said to Natasha in that kind of pretended whisper that was just loud enough for anyone to hear. Before Natasha or Thor himself could react to that comment, Rocket, who had apparently gained confidence as the team's mediator, intervened. "Dude, that was six years ago. Get over it."

Clint's eyes narrowed. "If he'd been inside your head, you wouldn't be welcoming him with open arms either."

Rocket shook his head in disgust. "I can't believe that whatever happened in 2012 is still your biggest problem." He guffawed. Meanwhile, Shuri removed one of the pearls from her bracelet and, almost gently, placed it onto Loki's wrist, where it transformed itself into a silver wristband that snapped shut with a soft click and projected a rectangular screen into the air that showed a glimmering plethora of numbers and letters Thor could not begin to decipher.

"Loki had Thanos inside his head when he did whatever it was that he did to you and you know it," Rocket continued. "Nebula told us. All of us. Why can't y'all let that fucking New-York-alien-army-mind-control-whatever-thing go? Thanos erased all our friends. He erased our families. He destroyed everything. He used Loki the same way he used Nebula. They aren't responsible for this. Thanos is. Why is it so hard for y'all to wrap your head around that?"

Clint swallowed and Thor could have sworn that tears began to pool in his eyes. Natasha's hand wandered to his shoulder and squeezed it gently.

"I know this isn't easy for you," Tony concurred. "It isn't easy for any of us but Loki knows stuff that we don't. He talked to the Infinity Stones and if they're still in Thanos' possession, which is more than likely, his magical abilities are a lot more helpful than anything we managed to come up with during the past weeks." He glanced down at Loki and Shuri and blurted out a strange noise when he caught sight of the numbers on the screen the scientist's pearls had brought into existence. "This is … incredible."

"What is?" Thor asked nervously.

"By human standards, he is, well, dead," Bruce replied quietly, a look of astonishment on his face. "His body temperature is so low that—"

"He's a Frost Giant," interrupted Valkyrie. "Look around you, Bruce. He can freeze water simply by touching it. Their body temperature is naturally low."

"But his heart is hardly beating," added Shuri. "Is that natural, too? His heart rate is barely even twenty beats per minute."

"What are you saying?" Thor asked anxiously, a brick of fear settling in his stomach. "That he's dying? Again?" Every organ in his body churned.

"Don't be stupid, Thor," said Valkyrie. "He isn't dying. He burned himself out using his powers. He spent weeks in the realm of the dead, from which not many people return unscathed. Hela's torture puts a strain on even the strongest of Gods and so does harnessing the power of the Infinity Stones. And we can't even know if he still has the resilience of an Aesir now that his body has been reversed to its Jotun form. Frost Giants too are resilient but I am not sure if they are resilient enough to withstand the power of magic as ancient as this."

"But how—"

"He is resting," Valkyrie assured him. "It's a natural reaction. It's what happens when you harness too much power. Think of it as a type of Odinsleep."

"A type of what?" asked Shuri.

"Odinsleep." Valkyrie smiled wanly. "It's the regenerative sleep the allfather would take once a year to replenish his own and Asgard's powers. His body would also shut down almost entirely to hasten the healing process." Thor's heart swelled with a longing so fierce it robbed him of his breath as he admired the extent of Valkyrie's knowledge and mourned the loss of his father in equal parts. "The only problem is," Valkyrie continued, "that he is extremely vulnerable right now. His mind is extremely susceptible to cosmological interference and—"

"How can you know that?" Thor cut in.

"Why do you think Frigga encased Odin in a protection spell whenever he entered Odinsleep?" Valkyrie asked him pointedly and Thor was once again taken aback by how little attention he had paid to all the spellcraft and magic that had, if only peripherally, governed the daily routine in the Royal Palace of Asgard.

"So, you're thinking that harnessing the power of the Infinity Stones did that to him?" Natasha asked Valkyrie and thereby steered the conversation away from a topic that was beyond mortal comprehension towards a possible path for action. "Which means that you must think he harnessed the power of the stones recently even though you also said that this"—she gestured towards the ice island around them—"is a Frost Giant thing."

"The ice is a Frost Giant thing," Valkyrie explained.

"But he willed the ocean into shape before he froze it," Thor continued. "Which he probably did using his magic, which partly comes from the Reality Stone."

"And while he did that, the Reality Stone talked to him?" Steve Rogers asked, his features straining with reluctance and disbelief. "How is that even possible?"

"I don't know," Thor whispered. He inwardly cursed himself once again for his abysmal ignorance of all matters concerning Asgardian magic and felt a new wave of despair and anger surge inside of him. "I really … I have no idea."

Clint, who had apparently recovered from the reminder that Thanos had vaporized his entire family, gave a snort. "There seems to be an awful lot that you don't know," he pointed out sourly. "How can it be that, although the two of you grew up together, Loki knows so much about these damn stones while you know jack shit?"

"Because," Thor spat and took a menacing step towards his former ally, "Loki spent much of his youth in solitude, devouring every book in the royal library of Asgard, while I was roaming the Nine Realms punching holes into the faces of my enemies with my hammer." The tension in the air was more than enough fuel to kindle his hereditary urge to create havoc and he could feel his fingers tightening around his axe. Clint Barton stumbled an instinctive step backwards.

"Thor, stop! We've been through this, okay?" shouted Rocket. "No more bickering, no more punching, no more thunder!"

Thor groaned unwillingly as he suppressed his rage with all the mental strength he could muster. Clint's lips twitched into a half-smile that might have been one of relief or glee. Thor willed himself to look away and focused on Shuri, whose intent gaze was fixed upon the projected monitor.

"But do you actually know for sure that it was the Infinity Stones who talked to him?" Steve asked into the ensuing silence. "If you're saying that his mind is very susceptible to interference right now, couldn't it also be—"

"Thanos?" Thor finished for him.

Steve nodded hesitantly. "How can you know that this it is not a trap?"

"I can't," answered Thor.

"What did Loki say, exactly?" Natasha asked. "About what the stones told him?"

Valkyrie shook her head. "We haven't gotten that far. The only thing he managed to say before he passed out was that they had been talking to him."

"And last night, he told me that the stones were indignant and in distress because they were revolting against the iniquity they had been misused for," Thor added.

"So what you're saying is that you can't even tell if it's really the Infinity Stones who sent some kind of message into his mind or if it's Thanos messing with him again?" Clint asked.

Thor cleared his throat before he spoke. "I can't but why would Thanos—"

"Because Valkyrie just confirmed that Loki's an easy target in his current state?" Barton scoffed. "Or maybe because, brainwashed or not, Loki's been an ally of Thanos before and even you can't be sure if you can really trust your own brother because he's the fucking God of Trickery? And before you say anything," he added in a softer voice when he saw Thor's jaws work, "you admitted as much last night. You said, and I quote, 'I am not even sure if I can trust him'."

Every single one of his former companions looked contrite and Thor knew that they thought Clint Barton had a point. By Hel, Thor himself knew that he had a point.

"All we're saying is that there's probably a whole lot of stuff even you don't know about the alliance between Loki and Thanos," Steve continued.

"Thanos could be inside his head again right now," Natasha added, "planting another poisonous idea and if he wakes up—"

"You're right," Thor cut in. "This is too dangerous. Which is why," he continued on a sigh, "you should probably go ahead without us."

"That's not what we meant," Natasha said. "You can't—"

"We have done enough damage as it is," Thor interrupted her once more. "I don't want to see anyone else get hurt. We are going to stay here until he wakes up and I can be sure that he is still himself."

"Oh, Thor," Valkyrie murmured in a tone that falsely suggested they had already had this exact conversation a thousand times before. "You just admitted that you are entirely out of your depth. You have no plan. You have no idea what you are dealing with. You have no idea what state of mind he's going to be in when he wakes up."

"Which is exactly why we should not take him to New York," Thor insisted. "Or anywhere else."

"But you can't do this alone," Valkyrie insisted.

Thor glanced at his brother. "I'm not alone."

"That's not what I meant," Valkyrie mumbled grimly.

"And just how are you planning to stop Loki if Thanos is inside his head again?" Tony inquired; his face strained with what Thor knew by now was anxiety. "You don't know half as much about the Infinity Stones or Thanos as he does and it's not as if you're likely to fight him because, let's be real here, the tiny bit of reason and logic you possess go straight out of the window when it comes to Loki. So, what are you gonna do?"

"I will figure something out," said Thor even though he felt with every fiber of his being the certainty that he had finally reached an impasse for the first time in his life. "No offense but I am sort of a God. I will be okay."

His companions only stared at him for a moment. Bruce was the first to speak and he did so in a broken, trembling whisper. "We know that you will be okay, but what about the rest of the world? The rest of the universe? If there's any moral to your little history lesson, it's probably that Asgardians, Gods or not, are better not left unsupervised."

Thor flinched inwardly as a torrent of memories poured into his mind. Loki's attempt to destroy Jotunheim to gain Odin's favor. Loki's descent into genocidal madness that followed the destruction of the Bifrost Bridge. Thor's decision to bring Jane into Asgard, hazarding Malekith's attack and causing their mother's death. Loki's decision to take the Tesseract that resulted in his own death, which, in turn, resulted in Thor's hardly-thought-out plan to bring his brother back and agree to Hela's outrageous terms in the process. Bruce was right. Every single one of their attempts to fix things had claimed at least one life and with half of all life in the universe erased already, they could hardly afford to continue down this path.

"He's right," Tony agreed. "You're coming with us so that we can keep an eye on both of you."

You know what you have to do, my son, his father's voice suddenly reached his ears from far away. You know that you are lost without counsel. Do not disregard the needs of the mortals you swore to protect as I once did. Do not repeat my mistakes. Be a better protector of the Realms than I was.

Thor let out a breath, glanced at Loki one more time, and nodded solemnly. "Alright," he conceded quietly and scooped up his brother.

For what felt like a long while, Loki's sleep remained blissfully dreamless, but eventually, a part of his subconscious stirred awake and inevitably became susceptible to the shadowy ephemera that chased through the hazy, shapeless world in between deep slumber and wakefulness, just waiting to latch onto the mind of a sleeper struggling against their deepest secrets. At first, there were only images scurrying by in a blur. The worry in his mother's eyes that belied the smile on her lips. The crackling fire of the Eternal Flame licking the crown of Surtur. His brother's face, half obscured by a menacing shadow, deep lines of worries etched into his features. Odin's sneer. Laufey's grimace. A glinting blade. A shimmer of purple in the dark. Hela's icy blue eyes. The Infinity Gauntlet. Asgard erupting into flames. A gloomy stone cave. Turquoise lightning, streaked with whitish blues and greens. His own face, hollow but gleaming in a dazzling sapphire blue, a trickle of indigo blood dripping from his lips. I mean, what are you? A vampire? The images might have been daunting individually but they were harmless enough as they sped by. Soon, however, there was a voice, faint at first but growing louder, which lured him away from the bricolage of fuzzy images and alerted his subconscious enough to make the dreamscape seem alarmingly real, blurry at first but quickly swimming into focus.

Loki found himself standing under a blindingly blue sky on a patch of grassland surrounded by steep forested hills as far as the eye could see. The sun was glaring from its highest point in the sky and Loki was glad that he did not have to experience the power of its rays physically. The grass was swaying in a light breeze that his dream-self could not feel on his skin.

"Look over here," said a voice that Loki recognized as that of the Mind Stone and that was coming from a lonely wooden cabin that stood about thirty feet away. He crept closer and if he had been there in his corporeal form, he would have held his breath. What if this is a trap? Of course, it was a trap. Anything else was unconceivable. How could he have summoned the Infinity Stones? He was no one. He was merely a renegade of both Asgard and Jotunheim. He certainly was no hero. If anything, he was a risk; a liability; a lunatic followed by chaos and destruction wherever he went. Out of nowhere, he remembered the lines of the play that had tumbled into his mind when he had sprawled in an armchair in the Royal Chambers of Asgard with nothing but a silken bathrobe hugging his bare skin, lonely and languid, his brain stupefied with wine. On that day, I did not yet see in you Asgard's savior. No. You were merely a little blue baby icicle that melted this old fool's heart.

Loki laughed a toneless laugh. He was not and would never be Asgard's savior, and this was not the road to redemption. This was the road to damnation and if he continued to hope even for one second that he—the God of Mischief, Lies and Trickery—might be able to save a single soul when he had not even been able to save his own, the consequences would be dire.

Still, his curiosity kept pushing him forward until he reached the cabin and caught sight of the Infinity Gauntlet, which was resting on a small table on the wooden porch; dented and blackened by smoke; rendered useless, much as he had predicted. Then he saw the titan's golden armor, mounted on a scarecrow with outstretched arms, glinting treacherously in the bright sunlight. Filled with dread, Loki stumbled backwards, trying to break free from the dream, but the Mind Stone's voice was holding him back. "No, you must stay."

"I know this is a trap," whispered Loki. "I am not a fool." His voice grew louder. "So, where are you? I know you are here. If you want me, the least you can do is show yourself, Than—"

"No!" hissed another voice that seemed to come from inside the Gauntlet. "Do not utter his name lest you alert him to your presence."

"Then why don't you show yourself?" Loki commanded. "Yourselves."

The stones, still encased in the consumed Gauntlet, flickered and released six amorphous shadows that slowly metamorphosed into six translucent entities of ethereal beauty. Their appearance was reminiscent of the elegance of the Light Elves but they were fairer still, fairer in a way that defied any description. Their skin was of a pale white, looking as smooth as polished alabaster, while their gleaming, vigilant eyes, their hair and their silken robes assumed the color of the stones that hosted their souls. Time, soul, power and reality were recognizably female as they materialized in their garments of green, orange, violet and red, their waist-long curly hair flowing around them. The Space Stone's hair was a lot shorter, its length approximately that of Thor's hair at the time of his appointed but thwarted coronation, and the lack of curves under his silken robe suggested that he was male. The Mind Stone, who was the first to step forth from the circle, was neither. Their hair was long but straight and their features were androgynous. "I bid you welcome, Loki, child of Asgard."

Loki did not bother to point out that he was, in fact, no child of Asgard. "Why did you bring me here? Is that His sanctuary?" He cackled at the equivocation. "The place where He is planning to live out his life in peace?"

Mind gave a nod.

"And, by implication, you are trapped here, too?" Loki guessed. "You have been compromised and your powers are fading but as long as you are bound to the Gauntlet, you have no way to escape?"

"Wow, he's quick," observed the being clad in green.

The orange incarnation of the Soul Stone murmured her approval before she glanced at Mind, her eyes narrowing in thought. "Who is he, exactly? Why do you think it has to be him?"

"That is an excellent question," Loki sighed.

Soul took a step towards him and he instinctively stumbled backwards, cursing himself because this was only a dream, after all. The stones could not possibly harm him in a dream. Or could they? The being that was the Soul Stone gazed at him with her piercing orange eyes and transfixed him in place as she reached deep into his own soul with invisible magical fingers. Yes, they could.

Author's note:
Alriiiiight, this took me a while, and I'm sorry but *deep breath* I'm not exactly in good health right now. Also, I originally planned to deal with this chapter in the same way I started the second part of the previous one, namely by just describing what happened in the hours that Loki was unconscious, so that I could get to that dream sequence faster because this is gonna be the turning point of the story and I wanted to write this for so long. But then I realized that I would probably end up having to describe Thor's decision to go with them in flashbacks and in order to avoid this, I just squeezed the first part in. The bad thing is, it doesn't really feel right, even to me, and I'm not really satisfied with it; even though I had a lot of fun with Rocket and also with Valkyrie. Thanks for all your comments regarding Rocket, by the way. I totally agree that he is such an underrated character and I really like the idea that he's basically the only one keeping his cool; even though he also lost everyone. And I just like the idea of Valkyrie being so much older and stronger and wiser than Thor (and Loki, in a way, even though Loki is, of course, a lot smarter than Thor), who has been a spoiled princeling for most of his life, and is basically still a dimwit when it comes to all these things he never paid attention to. And him realizing this stirs up a lot of anger, of course. The good thing, however, is that most of what comes next is already written, so the next update shouldn't take me quite so long. Thank you so much for staying with me :)