#37
Nebula cherished Loki's comforting embrace for much longer than he would have ever dared to but when he glanced at the others, his own tears running dry, he realized that they too were comforting each other and that being overwhelmed by emotions was apparently no longer anything to be ashamed of in their company. Shuri was sobbing against Bruce's chest. Barton's head was resting on the Widow's shoulder. Stark and Pepper were huddled together still. Rocket, Wong and Rogers stood forlorn, murmuring unintelligible words. The only ones who did not seem overly shocked were Thor and Valkyrie, who had retreated towards the glass doors opening onto the lawn, urgently whispering in Asgardian. Loki strained his ears to hear but all he caught was a few fragments. How would I … can't possibly tell, Thor was saying. You must, came from Valkyrie.
After a few moments, the cyborg jerked away and glanced up at Loki, aghast at her own fragility. He could see a burning shame in her eyes that he understood all too well. She mouthed an apology and he tried to comfort her with a smile, but it died on his lips when he felt woozy all of a sudden. "She was your sister," he said, finally having figured out the nature of their relationship when Wong had referred to Gamora as another daughter of Thanos only moments ago. He blinked to dispel the mist that began to spread out in front of his eyes. "Your grief will not be mistaken for weakness," Loki continued uneasily even though he knew that he would judge himself no less harshly if he had crumbled like this.
Nebula gave a hesitant nod, hagridden by the crippling pain of her loss. "We need to get them out of there," Steve Rogers was shouting as Loki's legs grew weaker, almost giving out. "Now!"
"And how do you propose we do that?" Wong asked the soldier but Loki hardly heard him. His vision began to swim as if he had indeed consumed the barrel of ale he had yearned for earlier. "What is wrong?" asked Nebula, who was still standing beside him. He sensed rather than saw all eyes darting towards him.
Loki squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, groping for something to hold on to. Nebula drew closer to him, supporting his elbows. "I-I don't know," he lied, directing his attention inwards. By Odin's ravens, what are you doing to me?
"Oh come on, what now?" Romanoff chided him. "You really don't have to faint every thirty minutes, you know?"
"It's the Aether!" Thor cried out just as Reality replied with, What Mind could not, knocking all the air out of him. Had he really allowed this ancient force of infinite destruction to allay his alertness with its mellifluous speech about how he had been created with love and how he could master the Mind Stone if only he tried? Had he really believed, even for one norndamned second, that it was his own decision to absorb Reality into himself? All be damned.
You know, for one so treacherous, you really are quite gullible, Loki. Did you really think you could master me? The stone huffed a withering laugh and he felt a sharp stab of pain in his head. You are such as sapskull, blinded by your foolish need to prove yourself worthy.
"We need to get it out of you!" Thor yelled, sprinting towards him in a blur.
"Brother, no!" Loki cried out although he knew the warning would come too late. There was no stopping Thor once he had set his body in motion and before Loki could jerk away, Thor had grabbed him by the arm. Knowing what would follow, Loki inhaled sharply and then Reality unleashed a bolt of fiercely glowing red magic against his brother that sent him flying across the room and then crashed into Stark's machinery, which started crackling, smoke rising up into the air.
"What the hell?" the engineer screamed. "Why did you do that?"
"It wasn't him," Thor explained, seemingly abashed by his and Loki's continuous aggravation of every problem as he scrambled back to his feet. "It was the stone protecting itself."
Protection is as good a cue as any, Loki thought and began to chant a protection spell, trying to seal his mind against the force hurtling through his body. What I could with the power that flows through those veins, he had once mused but Thor had told him that it would consume him. What a nuisance it was that his oaf of a brother had been right. But I will not let you, Loki murmured. Do you hear me? You have to try harder than this. Reality seethed with rage when the spell began to take effect and then retreated. For now.
"What exactly is happening?" Rogers asked as soon as he had found his voice again. Loki blinked once more and, finally, the room swam back into focus. The Avengers looked horrified and he felt a pang of guilt that he had caused yet another disruption when all they so desperately wanted was to find a way to rescue the loved ones they had lost. "What do those stones want from us?"
"You destroyed my entire workplace," Stark gasped, his face a study of consternation.
"Not him. The stone," Thor repeated. "I told you how the Reality Stone once sought refuge inside Jane's body, right? That's what it does. It seeks out host bodies to draw from their life force and ultimately, I guess, it looks for a host. And if—"
"Honestly, who the hell cares?" Barton barked, glowering at him.
"We know you don't but we still need to get that thing out of him," Valkyrie replied softly, then focused Loki. "How do we do that?"
Loki shrugged his cluelessness.
"But why did you choose to absorb it if you knew what it would do to you?" Rogers added warily.
Yes, Loki. Why? He sighed. "Because, over the years, I have gotten spectacularly good at intricate plans going spectacularly wrong."
"Our friends are lost and miserable inside that hellish place, waiting for us to rescue them!" Barton howled, his cheeks vibrating with pain. "You all saw what I saw, didn't you? They are suffering and I will not stand here trying to save someone like him when I could try to save my family instead!" His voice broke.
"I understand," Thor began but the archer cut him off in a voice hoarse with tears. "No, you don't. That is the problem."
"I am fine," Loki lied. "Let us—"
"Fine?" Thor echoed.
Loki silenced his brother with a glare. He did not want to care about them—least of all about the archer—but he felt his intestines churn at the very sight of his agony. "Barton is right. The Aether can wait."
Thor grumbled his dissatisfaction but said no more.
"So, what do we do?" asked Rocket. "How do we rescue them?"
"What are our options?" Rogers added.
"You said there is a plane of existence inside those stones, right?" Romanoff asked Thor, who gave a nod. "Can't we use magic to enter it?"
"Enter it?" Wong looked at her as if she were a dense child. "Are you out of your mind? We are talking about a plane of existence inside one of the most powerful artifacts—beings—of this universe. Even if we had a way of entering it, we would never make it out of the Soul Stone's belly alive."
"Thor entered the seventh stone to rescue Loki and he made it out alive," Bruce pointed out.
"I didn't. Hela did," Thor clarified, to which Bruce grimaced. "And speaking of Hela—"
"The Soul must find her way home!" Stark exclaimed, paying him no attention. Thor, Loki realized, looked almost grateful, albeit slightly guilty, for the interruption while Valkyrie pinched her lips in exasperation. "That's what Gamora told us," Stark went on, softly speaking the Zehoberei's name. "Can't we just return the stone to … wherever Thanos stole it from?"
"Vormir," whispered Nebula.
"We could but even if it is true that it stops their agony, it won't bring them back," Wong explained.
"And if we did that, we wouldn't have all six," Shuri said, her voice a trembling whisper at first but growing more firm as she continued, her eyes landing on Loki. "Thanos obliterated half of all life with a single snap of his fingers. You said that we needed the rest of the stones if we wished to undo the Snap. Well, we have them. Why don't we just snap?"
Loki's lips parted in surprise.
Stark nodded eagerly, the usual spark returning to his eyes. "We have the real Reality Stone inside the gauntlet. We could reproduce a vibranium replica of it, so that Loki can get rid of the Aether by transferring its essence into the copy as he did with the Mind Stone. And we have the gauntlet too." He looked up, giddy with expectation. "We could build those things and then ... boom!" He snapped his fingers for emphasis.
"Please," Loki said. "You saw what the repercussion of Infinity Stone magic did to Thanos, right? He was thrice your size and"—Loki looked at Captain America—"well, thrice his size and his body was probably ten times more resilient. You fought him, all of you. Nothing could pierce his skin and look how wielding the stones' magic scarred him. If it had that effect on a colossus such as him, what do you think it will do to your fragile human bodies?"
"You said earlier that these repercussions were due to the spell Eitri had put on the gauntlet," Valkyrie reminded him. "That Eitri and his people were aware of Thanos's plan and knew too that the universe that would remain after he'd accomplished it would be none worth saving, which is why they ensured that an abuse of the stones' powers on such a grand scale would not only destroy the gauntlet but also him and the universe."
"That was part of it, surely," Loki conceded, "but no mortal could ever hope to—"
"No mortal, no," said the Widow, pausing for effect. "But you could do it."
A few hours ago, they accused you of wanting the stones for yourself and now this? Loki laughed incredulously. "What?"
"You are no mortal," Rogers elaborated. "You know magic. You completely restored our bodies even though they were as good as dead. You could wield the stones to undo the Snap."
Loki thought of Thanos and his charred face. He thought of every warning he had read about the Infinity Stones' limitless powers in the books of old. He thought of Mind's and Reality's attempts to take possession of him. He thought of Frigga's words when she had first taught him the art of sorcery. Beware that by using magic, we only ever slightly twist reality, my son. We do not, under any circumstances, change reality in fundamental ways, for no one can ever be sure if they would be able to bear the consequences. He too thought of how all of them had been rather unwilling to acknowledge his usefulness until this moment. "Why would you suddenly trust me with such a monumental task?" Loki asked warily, a probable explanation creeping up on him as soon as he had voiced the question.
"What, are you scared of getting your flawless skin torched?" Barton sneered, confirming his silent suspicions.
"Because you earned our trust," Stark said, silencing the archer with a glare.
Liar, was the first thought to cross Loki's mind. Trust cannot be earned so easily. "But my body is not resilient enough to wield such an amount of magic," he replied through clenched teeth, his entire body seething with rage when something inside his mind began to whisper to him that the sole reason they would elect him for such a task was because he was expendable to them.
"No?" Romanoff asked with a snort. "What happened to the whole While-you-merely-wish-to-be-a-God-I-truly-am-one narrative? Why can a not-God do it and you can't?"
"Well, technically, I am a giant," Loki snapped, his voice turning into a soft growl. Neither of them cared if the repercussion of using all six Infinity Stones at once was going to harm him and the realization roused the dark voice from its slumber faster than Loki could steel himself against its assault.
"Are you really gonna refuse?" asked Rocket. "I mean, refusing a handshake is one thing but this …"
This is all too much, Loki thought, the raccoon's voice fading away. Whatever he had believed to be able to accomplish, it was never going to work. He did not belong among them and if he had to spend one more second in their suffocating company, he would set the entire compound on fire. "And what makes you so sure I won't succumb to my evil nature and use the stones for some destructive purpose while I merely pretend to snap my fingers to bring your loved ones back?" Loki flared at them, momentarily delighting in the collective consternation following his charring words.
Thor cleared his throat, approaching him with great care. "Brother, please, calm down, okay?"
"Do not dare to brother-please-me," Loki growled, unable to stop himself. "This is what they all thought I was going to do until I helped them to kill Thanos, was it not? How come they suddenly changed their mind?"
"We changed our minds because we realized that you've changed," Stark yelled, jerking away from Pepper, who was anxiously trying to hold him back. "Come on, just snap out of it! We know you're not the villain anymore, okay? You don't even want this! Just, you know, calm the fuck down!"
The urgency in the engineer's words slammed into him, leaving him stunned. "He's right. You need to calm down," repeated Thor, his voice maddeningly calm.
What was that bit about usually falling short of expectations? Loki drew in a sharp breath. You can rise above this. I know you can. "I am calm," he said eventually, forcing himself to breathe despite the fact that he felt trapped. Trapped by his own foolish desire to belong somewhere although he knew in the bottom of his heart that no amount of good deeds was ever going to be enough to prompt a lasting change within his dark, chaotic nature.
"Great," Valkyrie exhaled. Stark flashed him a smile that could almost be described as encouraging and Loki's cheeks began to burn with hot embarrassment.
"I bet the Hulk could do it," Bruce mumbled with an expression of guilt stamped across his face, dispersing the silence that ensued.
"Physically, maybe," Loki speculated, trying to shake off the impact that the accursed self-proclaimed genius had upon him. "But cognitively? Not a chance."
Pepper had not spoken the entire time but now she straightened. "The question of physique aside, if the stones themselves are so malicious, could we even use them for something good? Or are they going to corrupt anyone who wields them anyway?"
Shuri raised her eyebrows. "You mean like the One Ring?"
"What ring?" asked Loki.
"It's a famous fantasy story that was strongly influenced by Norse mythology," Pepper explained. "It's about a dark lord who secretly forges a master ring to control all other magical rings given to the other races of the world and it contains his malice, cruelty and his will to dominate all life. Which is why it will corrupt everyone who touches it and must be destroyed."
Loki's lips opened, then closed again, as he tried to process this.
"Well, we have the Time Stone too," Rocket reminded them, "and there's nothing inherently good or bad about setting the clock back." He glanced up at Wong. "Thor said that everything went to shit when their father died shortly before Thanos attacked, no? Why don't we just, you know, rewind the clock a few weeks and have an Asgardian army led by Allfather-God-Odin blow that purple shitbag into oblivion before he can ever think of snapping his fingers?"
Wong shook his head.
Thor screwed up his face as if someone had kicked him straight in the crotch. "Our father," he said with a grief-stricken side-glance at Loki, "he succumbed to madness after our mother died. If we were to prevent any of this, we would have to set the clock back five years and—"
"How about six years?" Bruce interrupted him, shooting a glance at Loki as well. "And you tell your father everything about this threat as soon as Thor brings you back to Asgard? That way, humanity wouldn't have anything to fear at all."
"That is not how it works, Bruce," Loki pressed out. "Time travel is nothing but a dream concocted by the overactive imagination of troubled Midgardian writers. Even if you turn back the clock, it will not truly change anything. The threads of our fate have already been woven long ago. Even if you get to change things, the outcome will be more or less the same."
"What is that even supposed to mean?" Rocket cried out.
"It means that we cannot tamper with natural law on such a grand scale," Wong replied. "Thanos did and look what happened. The universe itself has become unhinged. The magic cohering our reality has been disturbed. If we were to set back time so many years or tried to change the fabric of reality again by availing ourselves to the powers of all six stones—if that is still possible at all—we would only make everything so much worse."
"So, what are you saying?" Barton whispered. "That there is nothing we can do?"
"I guess this is where Nemesis comes in," Rogers speculated, turning to Thor. "You said that freeing her might stop all of this?"
"I-I'm not sure," Thor stammered. "But that's what she said to me."
"Said to you?" Loki echoed, stunned by the fact that his sorcery-illiterate brother had apparently communicated with the ancient magic locked inside an Infinity Stone. "When?"
"Well, it was Nemesis who called out to me," Thor began. "You said you never called out to me for help and, as it turns out, you were telling the truth. Nemesis did. She sent me a message in a dream and as soon as I heard it, I set out to get you back. I didn't realize it was her at first but then I felt the same magic on Hélgidomur and I somehow reached out to it and she said that I must free her or else the universe would soon bear the full damage of father's passing."
"But Reality said," Loki began, stopping himself when he realized that her advice could no longer be trusted. "Never mind."
"What?" asked Stark.
"Nothing," Loki answered.
"No book in the library of Kamar Taj ever mentioned Nemesis," Wong interjected and Loki silently cackled at the wizard's naïve conviction that the library of the Masters of the Mystic Arts held all the secrets of the universe.
"Well, Loki knows of her," said Rogers, boring his gaze into him. "What is she? What is her purpose? And what was this surge of magic turning the whole of Hélgidomur into darkness all about?"
"Why are you asking me?" Loki asked, his voice sounding almost whiny.
"Because you knew of her existence all along. You said that the only reason you told us you weren't sure was because you wanted to provoke us into action," the captain reminded him.
Loki exhaled a breath. "I didn't know. I only heard tales. Until a few days ago, I thought that her existence was nothing more than a legend of old, a myth like the Midgard Serpent or the squirrel dwelling in the World Ash."
"What did the tales say?" Romanoff asked, ignoring his references to Asgardian lore.
"That she is the Mother of all Creation and that she brought forth all life in this universe by shattering her own existence and sending the splinters of it, the Infinity Stones, into the void. And once she reunites with them, she will be reborn," Loki recited.
"And what happens then?" asked Rocket.
"The Reality Stone said that the Infinity Stones would perish if they were ever reunited with her but I am no longer sure I can trust anything the stones told me." Except for one thing, maybe, Loki thought warily, replaying the conversation with them in his head once more. We have all been in Odin's possession for an unthinkably long time when the universe was still young. He could feel that the puzzle, which had been laid out in front of him upon his arrival in Hela's lair, was beginning to piece itself together in the abyss of his mind, pushing its forming image ever closer to the surface of his consciousness. Ragnarok. The lie that bent the entirety of the Nine Worlds to Odin's will … It was Nemesis who called out to me… You gained access to my memories … Not I; this place …
"But if the stones really did perish?" Nebula asked. "What would happen to … us?"
"That no one knows," Loki answered truthfully.
"But she is the mother of all stones." Thor searched for his gaze. "That's what you said. That the Aether was birthed by Nemesis and that this is why Hela could use it to reverse the spell that turned you Aesir because the seventh stone can reverse all changes to reality caused by any of the other six. So, if we had it, couldn't we use it to undo the Snap without dire consequences?"
"It is possible," Loki conceded after giving it a moment of thought. "If we could convince Nemesis to do that."
"So, what do we do?" Rogers asked. "Just steel ourselves for her arrival?"
"You said she was coming, right?" Shuri clarified when she saw the look of confusion on Loki's face.
"How could she be coming though?" Stark asked no one in particular. "I mean, as far as I understood, her conscience is locked inside a stone. She can't come here unless someone is carrying the stone here, right?" He glanced at Loki. "Right?!"
"Right," said Thor, the reluctance in his voice unmistakable.
"Which brings us back to Hela," Bruce stated uneasily. When Thor nodded, he continued with, "So, what you're really saying is that Hela is the one who is coming for us? Is that what you were trying to tell us earlier?"
"Yes." Thor cleared his throat and Valkyrie suddenly took an intense interest in her feet. "No." He paused, his teeth pulling at his bottom lip. "Well, it's complicated."
Here we go, Loki thought again, mentally rubbing his palms together with childish excitement when it became clear that no one was going to interrupt his brother this time.
"Complicated how?" Stark asked.
"Well, I-I have a confession to make," Thor declared and all pairs of eyes in the room darted towards him in an instant.
Author's Note:
~ Okay wow, this chapter feels quite long to me (even though it isn't overly long judged by the word count alone) and I know there's some of you who'll probably think that I'm dragging Loki's emotional struggles out a little too much. But, the way I see him, there's always going to be this force of dark chaos inside of him that he can't fully shake off and that will break through whenever he feels overwhelmed or cornered or out of his depth. When I wrote this, I also had something in mind that Tom Hiddleston wrote to Kieron Gillen when Journey Into Mystery came out in 2011. "You and I see Loki the same way," Tom told him. "He's one dark, anarchic, bottomless black hole of rage, hatred, pity and pain. An exiled outcast, a lost & lonely agent of chaos, who wouldn't know what to do with familial forgiveness if it walked up to him in the street and slapped him in the face." Now that was in 2011, obviously, and Loki had time to heal but especially that last part I think will remain true for a long time. It would be quite the miracle if he were suddenly able to change overnight.
~ Other than that, you probably have a ton of questions. Are the stones truly evil? What do they really want? Was everything they told Loki a lie? Did they just use him to get out? Could any of the Avengers hope to ever wield them again? Can they be destroyed? Should they be? Well, I guess you will see.
~ Oh, and I probably have to say too that one of the main problems I had with Endgame was that seemed so very easy to me. Time travel is always too easy a solution in my opinion and that everyone was suddenly able to wield the stones also bugged me. So, I'm obviously making it more difficult for them because there must be stakes.
~ Last but not least, and you will have noticed this, the "gotten spectacularly good at intricate plans going spectacularly wrong" is a slightly modified quote from Daniel Kibblesmith's fourth Loki issue.
That said, see you soon xx