#22

"You are dealing with magic, Captain," said Loki. "To cut the matter short, Odin used the power of the Reality Stone to turn me into an Aesir and I assimilated its signature. This, I suppose, helped me absorb the signature of the Mind, the Space and the Power Stone into my own magic when I came into contact with them; even though I have to admit I wasn't fully aware of it until now."

"What do you mean you weren't fully aware of it?" asked Valkyrie. "How can you be only half aware of such powerful magic streaming through your veins?"

"I was aware that my powers had evolved after New York," Loki explained. "Telekinesis used to put a strain on me but, suddenly, I found myself able to effortlessly destroy my entire cell with only one thought. And even though it is absolutely obvious to me now, I never consciously considered that I might have absorbed the Mind Stone's energy until I used its powers on the ice and heard it speak." He laughed tonelessly. No, I did not even consider it at all. I fell for Thanos' speech and believed that the pain he had inflicted upon me had made me stronger and amplified my magic. Loki shuddered. Almost as though he never let go of his hold over my thoughts entirely.

"The Mind Stone?" Rogers repeated with a side-glance at Thor. "I thought you were using the Reality Stone."

Loki smiled at him. "This is not like deciding on a sword or a dagger to fight with. I have practiced magic for more than a thousand years, Captain. My signature is comprised of just as many colors that bleed into each other whenever I use a spell. You can hardly—" He stopped when he noticed their baffled expressions.

"What is important here," Loki continued, "is that the Mind Stone called out to me when I used its powers and then summoned me into a dream to show me where Thanos is hiding. I saw where he resides and the climate and vegetation of that planet seemed not very different from yours although I noticed there were two moons in the sky. I also saw the demolished Gauntlet, still unusable because of the Snap and the titan's deception, which is both your greatest advantage and the reason you are running out of time."

And then, Loki told them everything that the Stones had revealed to him through dream. Well, not everything, obviously. He left out the stones' accusations and their revelations about Asgard, the Bifrost and his parents. The Avengers remained silent for almost two full minutes after he had finished his tale and merely gaped at him, gasping and murmuring in agitation as their tiny mortal brains tried to process the quintessence that the entire universe might collapse in upon itself if they did not free the stones soon. Even Thor, Valkyrie and Nebula, who had a certain knowledge of either Asgardian or Infinity Stone magic, seemed flabbergasted for a moment.

Eventually, Pepper spoke, asking the only question that truly mattered to them. "Can the Snap be undone?"

"I'm afraid I have no answer to that yet," Loki admitted. "The people who lost their lives reside in the Soul World now. The only thing I know for sure is that their spirits are not entirely lost to us; like they were if they had died regular deaths." Well, he wasn't as sure about that as he wanted to be but he recognized that hope was too scarce a commodity among them to destroy the tiny little spark of it that he had glimpsed in Pepper's eyes.

The next question came from Valkyrie. "How does the seventh stone fit into this?"

"If it exists at all," Rogers added with a wary glance at Thor and Loki. "We just spoke to Wong before you came down. He spent the last twenty-four hours doing research and, so far, he hasn't found a single note of either Nemesis or that stone in any of their ancient books."

"Who is Wong?" Loki asked but he guessed the answer before it came.

"A Master of the Mystic Arts."

"It does exist," Thor insisted. "I saw it with my own eyes. It looked just like the others." His companions were reasonably unconvinced of this explanation. "Maybe the wizards' records are incomplete," Thor went on, his eyes searching for Loki's. "There was mention of it in the library of Asgard, right?"

"No, not exactly," Loki admitted as he took a quick inventory of what he did and did not know. The other six had told him that they had no creator and, as every other trustworthy source on ancient magic, the Asgardians books too had made mention of only six Infinity Stones. Whispers of Nemesis had only ever reached his ear through folk tales and hearsay and everyone knew how unreliable those could be. If the seventh stone was real, its existence was the best-kept secret in the entire universe. And if it did exist, where had it been all this time, anyway? If it was in Hela's possession now, it must have been within Asgard's grasp since Hela had been on Asgard when she had met her doom, meaning that she had either been in its possession all along—which was unlikely considering her banishment—or that she had somehow vanquished Surtur and then got her hands on it. Which too seemed unlikely. On the other hand, the seventh stone's existence was the only reasonable explanation for why he had not traveled to the Soul World like all other beings that had died at the hands of an Infinity Stone. If the seventh stone had intercepted his attempt to link his spirit to the Space Stone and had sucked him in because it too had felt that he had a role to play in this play, it stood to reason that—

"Hey, Frozone!" Stark snapped his fingers in front of Loki's face. "Did your divine books mention the seventh stone or not? Did the other stones?"

"They didn't," Loki replied and glanced at Thor. "Neither of them did. Are you really sure, brother? I mean, Hela never confirmed it was indeed an Infinity Stone, did she?"

Thor glowered at him. "Do you doubt my judgment?"

"Well, yes," Loki admitted and flashed his brother an apologetic grin. "No offense but you are not exactly an expert on magical artifacts."

"Or anything magic, if it comes to that," Valkyrie added.

Thor's beard bristled with anger. "I know what I saw."

"Do you have any idea where that planet might be?" Steve Rogers asked and Loki was not surprised that he had picked out the one detail that was not entirely beyond human comprehension.

He shook his head. "There really were no clues but locating his hiding place should not be our primary concern, Captain. You see," Loki elaborated when the other man frowned at him, "I have absolutely no way of knowing what Thanos knows. I know he picked up the Gauntlet while the Stones' astral projections were still linked with mine and noticed that they were glowing because of that—which, I suppose, he has not seen since the Snap—but what he will do with that knowledge, I couldn't say."

Again, the Avengers seemed too stunned to speak as they probably tried to make sense of the journey Loki had undertaken into dream. Rocket was the first to break the silence but what he said was of no value. "Damn, do you always have to talk so dramatically?"

Loki flashed him one of those smug, gleeful grins that almost reflexively appeared on his lips whenever he felt remotely affronted. "I guess you could say linguistic prowess is my superpower."

"What could he do?" asked Stark, ignoring the exchange. "Theoretically? I mean, what are the possibilities?"

"If it's possible that he has already been alerted to your presence through that dream," Shuri added, "then isn't it also possible that he knows what you're planning and intercepts your attempt to free the Mind Stone?"

Loki shrugged. "While I was still in that dream, I thought he might have access to this conversation through the Mind Stone but if I think about it now, it doesn't make much sense."

"So what you're saying is," Natasha Romanoff translated, "you are not sure and there is a possibility that you might be leading him right to our doorstep."

"For the third time," Bruce noted in a low voice and Loki realized that the scientist's quiet consternation unnerved him more than the openly articulated distrust of the others.

"First of all, I am pretty sure he knows where you live anyways. Secondly, he cannot use the Stones anymore," Loki reminded them. "Otherwise they would not still be encased in the Gauntlet; which means that he cannot use the Space Stone to teleport himself. He would have to travel by ship and that would take him a while."

"He could also just hijack the connection you have with the Mind Stone and tell you to kill all of us with that thing," Clint Barton noted dryly. "Right?"

"You're never gonna let that mind-control thing go, are you?" Rocket grumbled.

Clint smiled sourly. "What can I say? It was kind of a life-changing experience."

"And I am sorry about that," Loki acknowledged with as much sincerity as he could force into his voice. "It was truly nothing personal and, in my defense, I was only half aware of what I was doing." He feigned a deep-drawn sigh. "As much as it pains me to admit it, I was not much more than a puppet at that time. So, if you think about it, it was not really me inside your head." He paused for effect. "It was Thanos."

The archer's lips parted in consternation and all color drained from his cheeks. "You mean …"

"Yes," said Loki. "He was controlling me when I wielded that scepter and every manipulation was not really mine, but his."

"So what you're saying is that … that this monster saw everything that you pulled out of my head?" Clint Barton whispered, aghast.

"Probably, yes," Loki admitted. "That's how I am relatively sure that he knows where you live."

"So that's how he knew me," Stark mumbled, more to himself than to anyone in the room. His face paled and his lips started to tremble, and he drew in a deep breath, his hand clutching at his chest.

"I suppose 'glow-stick of destiny' was not an overstatement after all," Loki sighed quietly. He smiled when he saw the engineer's bewildered expression. "Isn't that how you referred to the scepter? As a glow-stick of destiny?"

"You remember such an irrelevant detail even though you claim to have been brainwashed into this whole thing?" Clint demanded, his features darkening. "What, do you remember our memories, too?"

Loki glimpsed into the mental shaft of his deeply buried memories but all he could retrieve was a bricolage of blurry faces and emotions. "Not really, no."

The Black Widow narrowed his eyes at him with growing suspicion. "You are telling me you remember Tony calling that goddamn scepter a glow-stick of destiny but you don't remember what you saw in Clint's mind even though you used his memories against me?"

"I suppose Stark seemed more significant to me than the two of you," Loki conceded, unable to hold back the marring words before they tumbled onto his tongue and out of his mouth in a misguided attempt to gain the upper hand for at least one moment. The right corner of Stark's mouth twitched into an almost-grin. Thor rolled his eyes in quiet frustration.

"I'm not sure if that counts as an apology," Clint grumbled.

"I'm not very good at apologies, I'm afraid," Loki replied. "So, let us get back to the point. In order to do what you suggested, he would also have to use the Mind Stone and, as I said—"

"Hold on," Captain America interrupted him. "Let's not discard your memories too quickly. What do you remember, really?"

Loki's heart plummeted into his stomach. After everything that had happened with the Infinity Stones, he had already expelled most of the horrific, identity-threatening torture memories back into the murky darkness of his subconscious; and he was by no means interested in pulling them back out. "Not much," he pressed out.

"This random, irrelevant detail proves that you have access to your memories of that time," Rogers persisted. "There might something buried inside your head that helps us understand Thanos better. So, tell us what you remember of Thanos, his plans, his goals, and the attack. How did you end up as his ally? What did he tell you of his plans? What did he want from you exactly?"

Damn you, Loki. Why can't you ever keep your accursed mouth shut when it matters the most? "Didn't his daughter already give you all this information?" he asked half-heartedly.

"What makes you think he shared all his secrets with me?" Nebula asked with that dead, empty expression on her face that still chilled Loki to the core.

"Plus, you promised to tell us everything," Stark pointed out. "Didn't you?"

The urge to bolt was nearly overwhelming but Loki knew that in order to keep the dark voice at bay, he had to prove to himself that he could be halfway honest for once. That he could play along. Come on, just this once. If this is over, you can do whatever you want. Loki heaved a sigh. "I did."

"So, you ended up falling from the Rainbow Bridge," Rogers began with a strained expression that attested to the effort he put into visualizing this image. "And then what?"

Loki glanced at Thor, who might have looked pained and somewhat contrite at his companions' request, but Loki knew that his brother too longed for answers. "I fell into a wormhole," Loki began and hardened his mental defenses against an ambush of the dark voice that would undoubtedly accompany these memories. Best to palm them off with the physical pain first. That will superficially look as if you admit defeat while subliminally reminding them of your stamina and strength. "I don't know for how long I fell. Everything sort of dissolves around you when you fall through space and it is quite … disorienting, to put it mildly. I don't fully remember the landing, either, since I was bereft of most of my senses. The only thing I do remember is an arrangement of rocks floating through the sky and that every bone in my body seemed to break when I landed on them. Or maybe they were already broken by the fall through space, I don't know. Suffice it to say that I remember pain; and a lot of it."

Thor's hand clumsily wandered to his back but he jerked away from his brother's touch. There were faint shadows of compassion flitting across the faces of the Avengers and, realizing that arousing their pity might ultimately help to mitigate their feelings of resentment towards him somewhat, Loki took a deep breath and lunged into the tale of his disgrace. Well, into one chapter of it. "My first clear memory is one of Thanos' children looming over my bed when I woke. I suppose, my armor had identified me as Asgardian because they demanded information about the location of the Infinity Stones from me. Thanos knew that at least the Tesseract had been in Odin's possession once and they wanted to know if it still was. I was in too much of a shock to speak, however." He flashed them a grin. "Hard to believe, isn't it, but I focused all my energy on healing my body and did not open my mouth for must have been days, which proved too long of a wait for them."

"That is hard to believe," Stark noted.

"But I guess Thanos was afraid that Odin's army of Einherjar was going to search for me and hunt him down," Loki continued. If only they had. If only I had never let go. If only I had never found out … Gosh, stop this nonsense, will you? Focus! "Apparently, he was loathe to wait until I would speak, so he came to me himself, scepter in hand. Healing my body had required so much of my mental energy that I found myself too weak to use a protection spell against the Mind Stone's intrusion and, surprise, he just pulled out everything he needed to know." He hid the pain of the humiliation beneath another lopsided grin.

"Which was what, exactly?" Bruce asked.

"That Asgard was weakened by the destruction of the Bifrost, that the allfather had no Infinity Stone in his possession and that the Tesseract was buried on a planet with no outer defense system to speak of," Loki replied. Good. Keep their attention on the Realm Eternal. "That was quite enough for him to initiate operation Chitauri."

"So, how did he win you over?" Captain America asked. "Did he really promise you dominion over our planet? Was that really the deal? The Tesseract in exchange for the Earth?"

Here we go. Loki glanced at Thor, who stood next to him, his expression hard as granite, eyes sparkling with suppressed anger. "It's more complicated than that," he settled on saying.

"It's really not that complicated," Barton objected. "Did he or did he not promise you the Earth in exchange for the Tesseract?"

"He did," Loki conceded, "but—"

"But why you?" Stark asked. "I mean, no offense, but what did he want with someone as traumatized and mentally unstable as you apparently were back then?"

Loki drew in a sharp breath. This is going wonderful, isn't it?

"Exactly," Romanoff concurred. "Why manipulate you into retrieving the Tesseract for him? Why not do it himself?"

"Because it was too early to reveal himself and his plan," Loki snarled. "He only possessed two Infinity Stones at that time and he couldn't risk being discovered so early in his quest to collect them all. He needed a scapegoat—someone to take the blame in case the invasion went wrong—and, unfortunately, I was the perfect choice."

"How were you the perfect choice?" Stark asked again. "I still don't get it."

"Isn't that obvious?" Loki grumbled. "He knew I would make a believable villain because I had a believable reason to attack your planet. I wasn't just some disciple carrying out his plan. I had revenge fantasies of my own and all he needed to do was to amplify my rage to make sure that I would act upon them." Don't you dare reveal too much and stop the goddamned growling, will you? "And it doesn't really matter anymore now, does it? The only thing that matters is that it worked," Loki hurried on, rubbing their own ignorance in their faces. "You all believed I attacked Midgard because I craved vengeance; you all believed that the attack was ultimately about Thor." Loki glanced at his brother. "Even you. I mean, you suspected at some point that there was someone else controlling me, I give you that, but you never pursued that thought after you captured me. You all thought until quite recently that I was the one who initiated the attack and sought out an ally who would provide me with an army. You never even suspected that this was all part of a much grander scheme."

"Dammit," Thor cried out and tore his fingers through his hair, his jaw working with anger. "How could I have been so blind?"

"Hey, relax, okay?" Rocket warned.

"And his grand plan has always been to annihilate half the universe?" Romanoff asked.

Finally. "Well, yes and no," said Loki. "He didn't think of it in terms of annihilation. He thought of it in terms of salvation." The word left a bitter taste on his tongue. Hear me and rejoice. This is salvation. Smile, for even in Death, you have become children of Thanos. He suppressed the urge to gag.

"That's always been his motivation," Nebula concurred. "At least, that's the lie he fed to all of us."

"He did not lie to you," Loki sighed. "Not on purpose, anyway. He deceived himself. He truly believed that he was going to perform a miracle to liberate the universe from torment and he probably still believes it. He is delusional. That's what makes him so dangerous." Oh, the irony. Loki chuckled before he could stop himself. "The only way I know about his subconscious motivations is because he, probably unwillingly, revealed them to me through his manipulations." Loki forced himself to allow the memories in one more time. Do you truly think this is suffering? No, Loki, you are coming to life for the first time. "He thinks of suffering in terms of empowerment and believes pain to be the fabric of all life." Loki took a deep breath and quoted, "True power can only be achieved through mastering pain."

"That is why he did this to me too," Nebula added, her finger pointing to the mechanical parts on her face. "He wanted me to become stronger."

"So, he decimated half the universe to … what?" asked Rocket.

"To empower the half that remained," Bruce Banner concluded. He had hardly spoken at all since Loki had entered the room but the words he had uttered now weighed as heavily as if he had given an entire lecture.

"That's what I believe, yes," Loki said softly. "He believes that he has brought a new universe into being and he did it with loss, torment and suffering. A universe, crippled by pain, which will arise from the ashes like the proverbial Phoenix, its inhabitants hardened by their collective trauma. And he has created it. He is its God. That is his legacy."

"That sick bastard," Stark spat.

"I should have gone for the fucking head," Thor growled, his jaw muscles working so hard now that he was probably going to shatter his teeth.

"I should have told father," whispered Loki and felt tears catching in the back of his throat. "But it is too late for should-have's and what-if's now." He cleared his throat. "For better or worse, Thanos' delusion is also what is ultimately bringing about his downfall right now." Finally, it was all beginning to make sense. "The Infinity Stones used to be artifacts but they are coming to life in order to break free from the Gauntlet; which is the only explanation for why they could talk to me like this in the first place. But their coming to life—fully coming to life—will go hand in hand with their destruction and the destruction of everything that has been created with their magic."