#24
Thor's heart gave a desperate lurch when Loki's fingers closed tightly around the replica of the Mind Stone. He was worried—yes, he was worried sick—but apart from that, he had been going mad with rage on the inside ever since Loki had insinuated that the seventh Infinity Stone might be nothing but a giant cosmic ruse. If that was indeed true, he could have fought Hela without simultaneously trying to figure out what the existence of this stone meant for the war against Thanos and if he had been able to do that, he was sure he could have won. Damn me, Thor thought, his thoughts sinking deeper and deeper into a black pit of despair. Am I truly that stupid? Did this murderous hag really deceive me so easily? What am I trying to accomplish here?
The last hours—days?—whooshed past Thor's mind's eye in a blur: Loki coming back from Hel, brainwashed and furious, with sapphire skin and blazing red eyes, painting him as the antagonist and blaming him for his misery as if no time at all had passed since their return to Asgard after the Chitauri's invasion of New York. Their fragile reconciliation shortly after. Thor finally getting through to Loki for the first time in decades. Loki confronting his long-buried demons, sobbing helplessly against his chest. Thor choosing him over the Avengers; the Avengers not accepting his decision, making all sorts of demands after tracking him down. Loki's unexpected offer to help them. Their revelations on the plane. The short but fateful return of Loki's villainous tendencies. Tony's impulse to choke his brother with his Iron Man hands. Thor himself torn apart by a largely misplaced yet overwhelmingly strong protective instinct in response to this. The release of a thunderbolt inside Tony's plane that had jeopardized his friends' lives. Loki deciding to save them. The Infinity Stones hijacking his mind in the process to prevent their impending self-destruction, the threat of which was visible outside their window in form of a slightly but steadily growing portal that was ripping apart the fabric of time.
So much had happened since he'd last had a decent sleep—not counting the fifteen or so minutes he had dozed off by Loki's bedside—that Thor felt his mind was about to shatter into a million pieces. He still had difficulties to grasp that, by an unpredictable twist of fate, his little brother was now standing amidst his former adversaries with eyes closed in concentration, clutching the key that could put a stop to the unraveling of the universe and turn the tide of the war against Thanos in their favor. During their strange, dreamlandish encounter, the Infinity Stones had apparently offered him a monumental chance at redemption and Loki had woken up cognizant of it, seemingly determined to make the most of it by casting all previous resentments aside. Thor could not rule out the possibility that he was doing so on a whim because he had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, but, then again, how could he expect more than whims at this point? Even his companions had noticed that Loki was still riding his own private emotional rollercoaster of painful confusion, arrogantly sneering at Thor's stupidity one moment and silently pleading for his approval the next.
The worst thing, however, was that Loki's newfound—feigned?—altruism also meant that he seemed willing to hazard the consequence of sacrificing himself for the greater good. Thor had thought he had done this already aboard the Statesman but as he now knew, his brother's motivations had been more intricate than that and, besides, Loki hadn't had any witnesses back then. This time, he was parading his change of a heart in front of the very people who had thought him their enemy until very recently and most of them were more or less rising to the bait, Tony most of all. The engineer had still been furious back on the ice but when it had become clear on the flight back to New York that Loki was not going to wake up any time soon, he had somehow softened. He had not even raised objections when Thor had made it clear that he would not let them confine Loki to a locked room as if he were a prisoner. And ever since he and Loki had entered the conference room earlier, Tony had been eying his brother with a curiosity that was unnerving Pepper beyond measure. He had his intent gaze fixed upon Loki's closed eyes even now, his brown eyes sparkling with anticipation and an unmistakable trace of admiration.
If only you knew what I did to bring him back here, Thor thought, disheartened, every fiber in his entire body revolting against the predicament into which he had maneuvered himself as he watched his brother make a silent, mental pact with the Mind Stone that seemed to be taking forever. Thor's heart had assured Valkyrie that he was going to put Loki first from now on—and he had meant every word of it—but his sense of responsibility had also silently promised his dead father that he was not going to disregard the needs of the mortals he had sworn to protect. That he was striving to be a better protector of the Nine Realms than Odin had found it in himself to be. Seeing Loki in the middle of the conference room of the Avengers facility now, courting his own death yet again, Thor finally realized that he would never be able to keep both of those promises. He could not help Loki and save the universe at the same time. If he truly wanted to be an Avenger and a protector with his heart and soul, he could neither make room for his brother's mad impulses nor his dubious morality. Choosing Loki's mental well-being over that of the rest of the universe ultimately meant to betray his duties as king of Asgard. Valkyrie knew this. The Avengers probably knew it too. Apparently, even Loki knew it; and had taken the impossible decision for him.
Thor's stomach was twisting with fear at the mere thought of losing Loki once more because he had agreed to accompany the Avengers to New York even though he should have been aware of the fact that following them to New York meant shunting his brother aside. Again.
If neglecting the only family I have left is what it takes to be king, thought Thor, despair gnawing at his every organ, I do not want to be one. I should have sent them away. I should have—
Finally, Loki moved and stifled a groan of pain that jolted Thor out of his self-pitying thoughts. He reached out instinctively when his brother began to stagger backwards with the scepter still gripped in his left and the replica of the Mind Stone enclosed in his right hand, but Valkyrie held his arm back, murmuring, "Thor, no."
Loki clumsily sat down on the armrest of one of the lounge chairs, moaning as his head tilted back and his eyes snapped open, their blood red taking on a soft yellowish glow. Thor heard the others murmur but none of them moved as much as an inch. Loki's fingers gripped the replica of the Mind Stone so tightly that his knuckles stood out white against the sapphire blue of his fingers. Once again, Thor had to watch the illusion of his brother's clothing dissolve before his very eyes. Once again, he could do nothing but stand idly by as Loki withdrew far too deep into his own mind.
"Holy shit," whispered Tony.
"This is gonna kill him," repeated Nebula and a tiny part of Thor was outrageously contemplating the fact that he might be able to circumvent Hela's bargain if Loki did not survive this ordeal and no one would ever have to know what outrageous thing he had agreed to.
"No!" Thor lunged forward to put his hand on Loki's shoulder but once again, Valkyrie yanked him back. "Did you not hear what he said?" she asked tonelessly.
"This isn't worth it," Thor whimpered, only half-aware of the hot tears that began to stream down his cheeks. Valkyrie's fingers laced around his and squeezed his hand tightly. Loki's grip around the scepter loosened and it clattered to the floor, the chink of its impact reverberating through the room.
"Brother, please," Thor pleaded quietly as he knelt down beside his brother, his chest tightening with concern and rage at Loki's flagrant recklessness. The sight of his brother sitting in front of him, his empty gaze enshrouded in the Mind Stone's yellowish gleam, blurred into the images of Loki falling from the Bifrost, his eyes glistering with tears of hopelessness as his entire sense of self was crumbling away; of Loki's body turning blue on the rocky plains of Svartalfheim as he intimately whispered his concocted apologies; of Thanos almost casually tossing Loki's body at his feet in the wreckage of the Asgardian refugee ship. "I am begging you to stop." The words came out in a broken whisper. "Please, I can't lose you again."
Yet Loki could no longer hear or see what transpired around him. The glow in his eyes intensified and then began to spread out across his face, his hair, his shoulders, his arms. Within less than a minute, flashes of yellow light encased his entire body, their crackling uncannily magnified by the anxious silence filling up the room. Loki threw back his head and, teeth gritted, heaved a heart-piercing groan, his arm shooting upwards and blindly groping about in the air before his fingers dug into the armor on Thor's arm for support.
"Isn't there anything we can do?" Thor howled, his entire being cracking from within as he realized that he might fail to save his younger brother yet again. He searched for Valkyrie's eyes and the endless knowledge in them but she shook her head, her body frozen in shock. "He said not to—"
"To hell with what he said!" Rocket shouted at her. "Take his hand! You're fucking Gods! Take a bit of the power off him! We did that before when we snatched the Power Stone from Ronan and we're mortal!"
Even though he had no clue what the rabbit was talking about, Thor grabbed his brother's hand that had been digging into his arm and wrapped it in both of his. Valkyrie too obliged and knelt down beside Loki, closing her fingers around the hand that was holding the Mind Stone's duplicate. Thor waited, steeling himself for the inevitable, but no surge of energy slammed into him. The room remained silent except for the Mind Stone's soft crackling and Loki's muffled groaning.
"It's not working," Thor cried out. "Why is it not working?"
"Weird," was Rocket's only response. The others began to stir nervously around him, breaking out into panicked jabbering, but Thor paid them no attention.
"Because it's internal," gasped Valkyrie. Cursing under her breath, she let go of Loki's hand and inspected her palm for signs of damage. "This is not … I don't …"
"Loki," pleaded Thor. "Loki, please." His own palms were beginning to tingle as well but he could not care less about the frostbite his brother's touch was going to inflict upon him as he continued to squeeze Loki's hand, sending a silent prayer to the Mind Stone. Please, I'm begging you, don't kill him. He's just beginning to heal and you can't take that away from him. Not now. Please, oh please, spare his life. Let us have this last fucking chance.
After a few more agonizing moments, Loki's right hand slackened a little and revealed a glimpse of Shuri's vibranium replica through his fingers, faint traces of yellow now lacing its purple surface.
"He's doing it," Tony mumbled incredulously while Steve and the others articulated their consternation with murmurs and bewildered stares.
"I can't believe it's really working," Nebula whispered in astonishment as the flashes of light crackling all around Loki's body in shades of orange and yellow slowly began to zigzag towards the replica with soft hissing noises.
Loki breathed out in relief. The tension in his chest finally easing, Thor let go of his brother's left hand and flexed his fingers. A few moments later, the tingling sensation in his palms had almost subsided and the once-purple stone locked loosely in Loki's hand had finally absorbed the Mind Stone's colors. It was glistening in a bright lemon yellow now, emitting near-translucent shimmers of energy into the room; but none of those present took notice of this.
"Shit, you really did it!" Tony exclaimed as he and the others crowded in around them.
"I can't believe you were right," said Natasha and gestured outside, where no trace of the window into daylight remained. Not that anyone seemed to have taken heed of the rift in time during Loki's reckless endeavor. "The portal's gone."
"Thank God," said Bruce.
Loki himself gave no sign of recognition. He was sitting on the edge of the armrest with his lips standing slightly apart, his gaze entirely blank. Fear gripped Thor once more, its icy fingers crawling down his back. He grabbed his brother by the shoulders and shook him fiercely. "Loki!"
"Hey, wake up!" Tony yelled.
"Shit," mumbled Natasha, her expression darkening as the edge of Loki's pupils started to flicker in a bright blue.
"We should have known better," Steve grumbled just as Clint pointed out, "I told you so."
Valkyrie leaned over and, in a presence of mind that Thor could never hope to possess, reached for the stone in Loki's hand but, even in his trance, his brother slapped her hand away and tightly curled his fingers around it. Tony swirled around, grabbed a glass of water from the table and poured it over Loki's head. A few drops began to crystallize against his check.
"As if that's gonna help," scoffed Natasha. "You've got to hit him."
Rocket gasped. "Erm … what?"
"Slap him out of it," Bruce agreed.
"It's the only thing that worked last time," said Clint.
Wrecked with tension and incapable of reflecting on the value of their advice, Thor smacked Loki's face so violently that he could feel his brother's mandible splinter beneath his palm. Valkyrie gave a jump, crying out his name in disbelief, but Loki remained unresponsive.
"On the head!" Natasha yelled at him.
The phrase brought back a most unwanted memory. Thor hesitated for a moment. Steve, however, did not. He reached for his shield and slammed it against the left side of Loki's head. Rocket, Pepper, Valkyrie and Nebula startled at the captain's act of violence. The men held their breath. A few seconds later, Loki blinked, and then squeezed his eyes and mouth shut with a soft moan.
"Loki?" Thor whispered, his heart anxiously thudding against his chest with the force of an ancient war drum.
Loki slowly opened one eye, then the other, his lids fluttering. "I am … fine," he breathed. His hand wandered from his left cheek to his temple and massaged it softly, his face frowning with pain.
Steve had the good grace to bite his lip. "Did it … hurt?"
Loki squinted a few more times before he looked up at them and registered the expression on their faces. "A little more than I would have expected but it's nice to see you all so worried," he whispered, a weak grin scurrying across his face. "Even though, I suppose, you're not really worried about me."
Thor gave a tear-choked laugh and tackled his brother in a hug as the others around him let out a collective breath of relief. Loki squirmed free and shot him a reproachful look. "What are you doing? You'll just get burned again."
Thor found himself unable to form a coherent thought as the adrenaline that had built up inside his body for the past minutes—hour?—finally began to wear off.
"How can you even hold that thing?" asked Rocket. "Shouldn't you be on fire?"
"I'm a G—" Loki stopped himself. He lowered his head, uncurled his fingers and inspected the Mind Stone. "I suppose I still am a God," he said softly, rolling the gem around his palm with his fingers, smiling with both self-satisfaction and incredulity. The illusion of another black shirt, this one a little more casual than the last, enshrouded his naked torso in a faint emerald sheen.
Valkyrie turned away with an almost-smile playing upon her lips and poured herself a generous drink. Loki's gaze tracked her movements before he looked up at Tony, the sparkle of mischievous humor returning to his eyes. "You promised me one of those a few years ago. Does that offer still stand?"
Tony's lips twitched into half-grin. "Sure." He pushed the arc reactor on his ironclad chest that sucked his armor into it and then went to the table where he poured Loki a drink that was even more generous than the one Valkyrie had just poured herself.
"Wait a minute," said Shuri, her eyes narrowing at Loki as Tony handed him the drink. "This green magic that just appeared on your body?"
Loki emptied half of the glass in one slug and raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"
Shuri looked outside for emphasis. "The portal's edge was shimmering in the same color."
It took a moment for the meaning behind those words to register with Thor but when it did, he felt an all-too familiar spark of anger mixed with disappointment ignite in his chest. "Did you really—"
"He tricked us," Valkyrie spoke over him. "Of course he did."
Loki tossed back the rest of his drink and smiled at them; his blue face a mask of innocence. "Why would I do that?" He bit back a giggle. "I mean, in this particular case?"
"Because you're a manipulative little cheat," Valkyrie hissed.
Loki smiled wanly. "I just risked my life and my sanity to retrieve the Mind Stone for you. I dare say your unfounded accusations are both inappropriate and impolite. I had no reason to—"
"Of course you did," Natasha cut him off. "We would never have agreed to this reckless plan if the portal hadn't convinced us that there was urgent need for action!"
"This wasn't me," Loki insisted and, to his dismay-quickly-transforming-into-anger, Thor could not tell whether his little brother was lying. "What you saw was a rift in time, yes? The Time Stone's magic is green, just like mine."
"It is," Nebula confirmed.
"See?" Loki flashed them another innocent smile. "It was just an unlucky coincidence."
Clint grumbled an insult and took a step forward but Tony stepped in and positioned himself between Loki and the archer. "Come on. Whatever else he did, he did retrieve the fucking Mind Stone. Will you cut him some slack for once?"
"Since when do you trust him?" yelled Steve. "Why are you defending him?"
"In dubio pro reo, right?" Tony sneered. "You should know that better than anyone, actually."
Subtle energies wafted through the air on an invisible current and, within a matter of seconds, chaos erupted among the Avengers. Steve and Tony approached each other and began to argue, spitting out accusations; fists clenching, veins throbbing, eyes flaring. Pepper accused Tony of being obnoxious and stormed out of the room. Clint and Natasha sided with Steve, barking at Tony, while Nebula sided with the engineer, snarling at Steve. Valkyrie helped herself to a refill while Rocket and Bruce were yelling at their companions to stop. Shuri turned away and focused her attention back on her computer screen. Loki raised his eyebrows in derogatory amusement. "My, they are so petty, aren't they?"
The chuckle that escaped Loki's lips fueled Thor's anger even more. Oblivious of the fact that he too had once thought them petty, Thor grumbled, "Stop judging them. You have no idea what they've been through."
Loki grunted. "Knowing what I have been through doesn't quite stop them from judging me, does it?"
The Norns damn him. Thor narrowed his eyes at his brother and tried to stifle the unreasonably strong resentment at Loki's alleged deception, searching his face for the slightest trace of malevolence. "Please tell me I can trust you?"
Loki's disdainful smile turned astonishingly sincere. "Yes, brother. You can trust me." He lowered his head and studied the stone inside his hand with a thoughtful expression, frowning ever so slightly, before he handed it to him. "Here." Thor took it hesitantly, suddenly in awe of the ancient powerful magic in their grasp. "Take it," said Loki. "Take it as a token of my good faith. A peace offering for all my past offenses, if you wish."
Thor felt the stone stir against his palm, pulsating like a beating heart. The others were still flaring at each other and, finally, the Thundergod began to understand where his own anger was coming from. "It really is alive."
Loki gave a hesitant nod. "It is."
Thor jerked his head towards his bickering companions. "And it's manipulating us."
Loki nodded again.
Thor exhaled, picked up the scepter and carefully inserted the glowing stone into the fitting but before he could say anything, Bruce slammed his hand on the table and shouted, "Alright, stop! All of you! Don't you guys realize what's happening here? We've been at this exact point before! Six years ago, aboard the Helicarrier, that same stone tried to rile us up. It's not Thanos or Loki or anyone else. It's the stone itself. It's sentient and it's amplifying your emotions right now!"
The scientist's words squelched the fight in an instant. Tony and Steve stumbled backwards, their mouths hanging slightly open. Clint looked as if he'd been hit by a lightning blast. Nat and Nebula looked away, contrite.
"So, what the hell are we gonna do with that thing now?" asked Rocket, flicking a side-glance at Loki. "How is it gonna be helpful if it's so fucking dangerous?"
"More importantly, if the stone is really acting on its own behalf, what does it want?" Valkyrie added and tossed back the rest of her drink before she placed her empty glass on the table with a chink. "I mean, it's no mystery what the Soul Stone wants but the Mind Stone? I never heard—"
"It is a mystery to us," Bruce reminded her.
"The Soul Stone longs for the souls of beings living and dead," Nebula said quietly, "longing to steal them, to control them, and to change them; in order to change the very essence of life itself."
"To what purpose?" Steve asked.
"Power," said Loki and the single world hung heavily in the air for a few seconds.
"Are you saying that the Soul Stone … claimed our friends?" Steve asked tonelessly and the pain in his eyes sucked all the air out of Thor's lungs.
"Not precisely," said Loki. "The Soul World is inhabited by all the souls of those who died at the hands of the Infinity Stone wielders. This is on Thanos."
"So, it won't … hurt them?" Clint whispered, his lips trembling.
"It might," Nebula conceded quietly and Thor thought of all the Asgardians he had lost when Thanos had snapped his fingers, his stomach clenching.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
"But the Soul Stone ain't our biggest problem right now," Rocket pointed out quietly, nodding towards the scepter. "What's this thing's agenda? Why is it messing with our brains right now?"
Loki sighed. Something flickered in his eyes that but it was gone so quickly that Thor had no time to identify what it meant. "I don't know."
Steve had apparently not missed the spark either. "There's something you're not telling us." He glowered at Loki. "What is it?"
"I would tell you," said Loki with one of the sincerest expressions on his face that Thor had ever seen, "if only I understood it myself."
"Maybe I can help with that," announced Shuri from her position at the computer, where the nexus of glowing purple lines that had been nothing more than an inanimate diagram the previous night was now flickering on the screen like the pulsating veins of an Asgardian soul forge.
Author's Note:
~ Credit where credit is due: The line "his entire being cracking from within as he realized that he might fail to save his younger brother yet again" was inspired by the book Avengers Infinity War—Destiny Arrives written by Liza Palmer.
~ Alright, folks, I've been thinking about whether I should continue this story for some time now and while I am thankful for everyone who recently favorited or started following this story, it doesn't really get any response in form of reviews. This is frustrating as a writer and so I've decided to put it on hold until further notice. I will continue writing it for myself but I do not see the point of investing so much time into typing it out and editing it if I cannot be sure that anyone is reading it at all. Except for you, Akira, of course. Thank you for your loyalty and your support.
I hope y'all understand. Much love xoxo