Okay, it took me quite a while to post this because my mental health isn't great and I hated this chapter at times and I think it hates me as well. But, anyway, there is no point in putting it off any longer because this is one of the chapters that I can't edit into perfection and that is just the way it is. I hope you're gonna enjoy it anyway! More notes at the end.

#46

As soon as Thor's hands closed around the book, the air began to swell with magic, faint at first, but thickening quickly. Odin's successor, Loki thought, and he was in equal parts astonished and proud that the realization did not bother him. At least not at this very second. The vibranium vessel in which Shuri had secured the seventh stone began to vibrate on the table upon which she had placed it, sending fine wisps of black glamour through the air that stirred the other stones awake. The Time Stone and the Space Stone, which were resting on the scientist's desk in the same cylindrical glass containers that Wong had used to store them when he had extracted them from the demolished gauntlet earlier, began to flicker.

"W-what's happening?" the Widow asked, her voice hitching as unease sept into it. The Soul Stone in the broken gauntlet began to flicker as well, brighter and more aggressive, and Loki heard the Soul's enraged screams of protest inside his head, joined by the shrill outcry of the Reality Stone. The Mind Stone and Power Stone gnawed at the seals of the pocket dimension, demanding to be set free. Loki closed his eyes and exhaled a sharp breath as all of the stones began to hiss like snakes in a pit, the noise like sanding paper on his nerves.

"She wants to be put in the lock," Thor replied and his voice articulated the same disquiet that glared at Loki from everyone else's faces as soon as he opened his eyes again. "She wants us to know the truth."

"Is that … a good idea?" Bruce asked.

"It can't be," came from Nebula.

It has to be. They had come this far in their quest and Loki refused to believe for even one norndamned second that facing and vanquishing both Thanos and Hela should have been for nothing. If only the stones let him think. If only they fell quiet. They did not. Let me out, you miserable worm, screamed Reality. I will devour you, do you hear me? You belong to me! Let me oooooout … And, then another voice rang out inside his skull, a voice both soothing and threatening, soft and shrill, warm and cold. You befouled them. You hurt them. You abused them.

"Is it?" Valkyrie repeated when no answer came.

Thor shrugged his shoulders and glanced at Loki. Oh brother, if you do not start thinking for yourself soon … "She does want us to know. Nemesis," Loki said eventually, his head throbbing with the effort to tune down the stones' cries. "She wants us to know how devastated she is because we hurt her children."

"Her children?" came from the raccoon.

"She is angry," Thor concurred, not paying attention to Rocket's outcry. "I'm not sure it's the best idea right now."

Tears crept into Loki's voice. "She will not be any less devastated in the future, brother. She is a mother who has seen her children suffer."

"You okay there?" asked Stark.

"Of course," Loki replied but the words came out in a high-pitched half-sob. The engineer raised an eyebrow at him and Loki could feel his emotional defense unravel at the thought that, no matter how this ended, no matter whether the Soul released those she had devoured or not, Frigga would not return from Valhalla.

"Dude, you really cry a lot," Rocket pointed out, his voice devoid of any emotion except for a slightly irritated annoyance. "Just put the damn stone in the damn lock already."

Loki willed the tears into submission and quietly berated himself for his sensitivity.

"I really don't think we should," said Thor.

"What are you talking about? This is just a book," Rocket said, throwing his paws into the air in frustration. "A fucking book. What do you think is gonna happen, uh? A demon jumps out of the pages as soon as you put the stone in there and devours us whole?"

"With everything that happened so far, you're still not afraid of magic?" Pepper accused the raccoon without averting her gaze from the book. She too was frightened, Loki could see that, but there was still a flicker of curiosity in her eyes.

"It's a fucking book," Rocket repeated.

"It's not just a fucking book, plushie!" Stark yelled. "What if it's some kind of Indiana Jones thing where—"

"Stark!" Loki interrupted him, an exasperated breath trembling out of his slightly opened lips. "When will you understand that some of us have no idea what you are talking about? We have no idea who Elsa or Frozone or Davy Jones—"

"Indiana Jones," corrected Thor. "He's a Midgardian superhero."

"Fictional hero," added Rogers.

Loki stared all his exasperation into them, silently demanding an explanation.

"He chases, well, it doesn't matter," Stark interrupted himself. "But sometimes he finds secret devices like that in a temple below the surface of the earth or something, which fit perfectly into tiny rock crevices and—boom—the whole structure collapses as soon as he puts them in there."

"These are fictional stories!" Barton cried out.

"Are they fictional stories? Are they, Barton?" Stark asked him, his breath suddenly coming in sharp, rapid gasps, his voice bordering on hysteria. "After all this weird cosmological magic crap we have seen, you really still believe that? What if those authors had some Gods appear to them and tell them all those outrageous things about—"

"Tony, calm down!" Pepper shouted as she grabbed his hand and pulled at it, her features twisting with what might have been shock or apprehension.

"Please," Bruce added, seemingly for good measure.

Stark's hand traveled to his chest, massaging his heart. "I am calm," he pressed out.

"The gauntlet is almost finished," Shuri intervened. "I suggest we put the stones in there and then, when we are prepared, we put the seventh stone in the lock." The others nodded their hesitant agreement and Shuri turned to Loki. "Can you try to remove the Soul Stone now?"

Loki's mouth gaped open in a dumbfounded giggle. "There is no way in all the Realms that I am going to touch the Soul Stone when it is in such an aggravated state. You saw what happened to Tony earlier," he said before he could stop himself from using the other man's given name, "and I have no desire to anger it even further. My apologies but I have had my fill of suicidal activities for the week."

When Barton began to speak, Loki expected another accusation, but the other man's words surprised him. "It also might … might hurt them more when we make it angry."

Loki looked at the archer, unsure what to think, so he just lowered his head in a half-nod, his lips standing slightly open. When Barton nodded back, realization passed through the other man's eyes but it was gone so quickly that Loki could not tell what it was.

"What about the Aether?" asked Rogers. "Can you transfer that into the original stone?"

"Well, to be perfectly honest, I am afraid to let it out of its prison, Captain," replied Loki, surprising himself with the fluency and the ease of the truths that he was continuously allowing to escape his usually lying lips.

"Stop calling me that," Rogers said on defeated sigh and the words he spoke next filled Loki with a powerful sensation he could not even begin to explain. "We're all equals now."

Loki gave a nod, not trusting himself to speak in the face of the mortals' sudden change of heart.

When things were decided, they all changed into their battle gear once more—just in case—and, then, waited in silence for the completion of the gauntlet as the seventh stone's glamour wafted through the air, leaving swirls of cosmological mist that puffed out in tiny, toneless explosions while the stones continued their murmur inside Loki's head.

"It is done," announced Shuri, the joy of accomplishment glinting in her dark eyes. Time, Power, Mind and Space were finally resting in their spaces above the new gauntlet's knuckles, the brightness of their green, purple, yellow and blue colors reflecting in its gleaming black surface. Loki briefly wondered whether the Avengers had simply forgotten or chosen to block out his earlier statement that the seventh stone could deflect all powers of the others when he had suggested they build it but, then again, he himself had been maybe a little too hopeful when he had voiced the suggestion.

Hope, the most cursed sentiments of them all, a familiar voice snickered. Yes, it was. It truly was and yet Loki finally understood why the humans clung to it so desperately, refusing to let it go even when it was glaringly obvious that that there was no hope at all. The thought of losing everything he had gained in the past few days, of losing Thor again, was almost too much to bear and had infested his own mind with the ridiculous hope that this book was just a book that would present them with instructions on how to proceed instead of unleashing the Goddess herself. With the ridiculous hope that, even if that happened, wielding the stones against their creator would accomplish something, anything. With the ridiculous hope that, even if they could not accomplish anything, he and Thor would die and travel to Valhalla together and he would henceforth spend every day with his mother, talking walks, reading books, and feasting in Odin's Hall of the Slain.

Loki drew a deep breath, trying to collect himself. Shuri took the gauntlet from its mounting and presented it to Thor, who shook his head in protest. "You'd better give it to Loki."

"But he said …" The scientist's words trailed off.

"He said our bodies would pay the prize if we snapped and wielded the magic of all six stones at once. But this isn't about snapping, is it? There's currently only four stones on the gauntlet." Thor jerked his head in Loki's direction. "And he could use them in a way I never could."

"You know, you actually frighten me with your lack of intellectual capacity sometimes," said Loki, his chest swelling with pride in response to his brother's appraisal, "but you can do this too. I know you can."

"Can't you just take it?" asked the Widow and Loki thought he might have imagined those words.

"Please," said Stark. "You take it."

Thor took the gauntlet, came over to him, and held the glove out to him. "You really should."

"Where is your faith in yourself?" Loki asked incredulously. "You have always believed that you could do anything and you moved mountains across the Realms with that belief. What happened to that brother of mine, hm?"

"That brother of yours realized that what you call faith now was nothing but arrogant recklessness and pride," Thor replied with a warm smile that came from the depths of his heart. He thrust the gauntlet into Loki's hands as he moved closer, his other hand traveling to his shoulder and giving it a hearty squeeze. "I'm the Mighty Thor, brother. I'm a warrior, a fighter, a protector, an Avenger. I work with my strength. But you, you work with your mind. Why waste a formidable weapon that you can control with your mind on me?" He smiled again. "Just take it because you will handle it a lot better than I ever could."

Loki smiled through a fresh stream of tears that welled into his eyes in response to his brother's praise. All be damned, I am giving up. He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and then slipped his hand into the gauntlet under the watchful eyes of the Avengers. Power, he could almost hear Thanos murmur in a deep voice full of longing, infinite power. The stones' voices grew louder again, hissing into his ear.

I will not succumb to that same weakness, Loki replied as their energy streamed into him in bright flashes of green, purple, blue and yellow, little lightning blasts crackling around his wrist, until their powers were contained. "Uru," he marveled with a laugh. "This material is truly astonishing."

"That's vibranium," Bruce corrected him.

"Vibranium modified to replicate the molecular structure of uru, no?" Loki asked back and, from the corner of his eye, he saw Shuri giving a nod. "Anyway. Ready when you are," he said with a glance at Thor, who was about to open the vessel holding the seventh stone inside of it.

"Do it," Rogers said even though he did not sound overly sanguine.

When his brother opened the vibranium ball, there was a loud hiss and Loki could see the desperate flicker of the seventh stone. Thor took it out, put it between his thumb and index finger, and then grimaced in pain. "Wow, it really is awake now."

"Are we sure we want to do this?" Romanoff asked.

"What else can we do at this point?" Rogers asked back and to that, nobody had an answer.

"Let's just hope this isn't another one of your bold moves," Valkyrie jested. Loki supposed that she had put quite an effort into making her voice sound light but he could see how much the knowledge that it was Odin Allfather himself, who had left them the book, was ailing her.

And it should. By Ymir's bones, it should.

Be quiet.

Thor smiled but the smile did not reach his eyes. "Let's hope not." He walked over to the book they had placed on one of the tables, took a deep breath before he curled the fingers of his left hand around the lock, and carefully inserted the stone into it with his right hand. A flash of faint black light exploded around the book and flitted across the room, swiftly swallowed by the air molecules. Then, the chain softly clicked open and they all stared at the book in uneasy anticipation.

"Booooom!" Rocket screamed and, when all of the Avengers flinched, he broke out into a gleeful giggle. "Ha, that really works every time."

Loki snorted a laugh before he could stop himself. "Classic."

Rocket smiled mischievously. "I know, right?"

"I wish you would stop doing that," Bruce mumbled, to which the raccoon winked.

Thor paid them no attention. He drew a deep breath, removed the chains and opened the book. At first, nothing happened, the first page remaining black and blank, but then, the finest silver markings appeared, morphing into two columns of text in Eldar Futhark runes.

"What does it say? Is that—" asked Pepper but she was interrupted by her own gasp when the page suddenly came to life as once did the pages in the ancient books from a time out of mind that the Allfather had kept sealed in the Hall of Yggdrasil.

"The ancient tongue," Valkyrie whispered back, her gaze pinned to the magic rising from the paper in flimsy streams of energy, conjuring up a translucent projection of a being so fair that, all around him, Loki heard gasps of astonishment. Or perhaps they gasped because of the magic that swelled in the air like a brewing thunderstorm.

"There she is," Thor whispered solemnly and his eyes glazed over with the same awe that Loki felt throbbing beneath his chest. He had thought the incarnation of her children to be of ethereal beauty but Nemesis was fairer, paler, smoother, more imposing, and more majestic, and more of everything than the six translucent entities the Infinity Gauntlet had released in the dreamscape Loki had ventured into forever ago. The Goddess had pale blue skin looking smother than the smoothest silk Loki's fingertips had ever touched. Her hair was long and floating around her in black waves that were gleaming like liquid bitumen under the ceiling lights, and it looked finer than the finest thread of gold he had ever spun. And her eyes, her eyes were like galaxies, of the blackest black, with a thousand celestial alignments sparkling inside them and she fixed them in place with those eyes as if she were there in the flesh and not merely a spirit summoned by the magic of the Eldar.

"So, God is a girl," Stark mumbled but before Loki could enquire the meaning of the words that was, once again, lost on him, the projection of Nemesis spoke and it was not at the engineer that she directed her words.

"Sons of Odin Allfather," she said in a voice as soothing as the waterfall in the gardens of the Valkyries. All around him, mouths gaped open, and the bottom dropped out of Loki's stomach when he understood with a few seconds' delay that the architect of all things that were thought of him as Odin's son. "I have much desired to speak with you."

"Okay, maybe it's not just a book," Rocket conceded in a high-pitched croak that went leagues to define his current state of anguish. "It's fucking speaking."

Valkyrie and Pepper shushed him at once.

Thor glanced at Loki, who motioned him to go ahead by stretching out his hand, palm facing upwards. "You are the big brother," he mouthed tonelessly.

The Thundergod frowned at his younger brother but then he cleared his throat and began, "We have much desired to speak with you too, Nemesis, Goddess of all Gods."

"Before you speak," said the projection, "you must learn the truth, Thunderer." As soon as the words had left her lips, the room in which the sons of Odin and the mortals were standing turned dark. Well, not dark, really. It turned utterly black and screams of terror filled the air that no longer was.

"Where did she go?" cried the Widow.

"Wh-what is happening?" cried Shuri.

"Is that … Ragnarok?" cried Pepper.

"Nemesis!" yelled Thor but his words were met with nothing but nerve-crushing silence. "Please, hear us out!"

Stark harrumphed and said, "Just a prophecy, uh?" and his voice was trembling with fear and it was so close that Loki shuddered. He reached for his magic to light up the dark but his glamour had burned down to the last spark and the mighty weapon on his hand was no longer a weapon but simply a heavy, metallic glove rendered useless by the magic that predated the Infinity Stones and the Realm Eternal. Loki drew in a sharp breath that did not reach his lungs. Dread crept into his every fiber and his entire body began to shake at the thought of the ancient force they had just released but, still, he laughed because it felt so unreal that everything should have been for nothing. But then again, was that not how things usually turned out for the Trickster?

"What is so funny?" came from the raccoon.

"If this is the end, I suppose you deserve the truth in your final moments," Loki conceded. "What I told Hela, well, it was more of a wild guess, really."

"Our final moments?" Nebula, Barton and Bruce shouted in unison just as Rogers shrieked, "A wild guess?" from somewhere inside the blackness surrounding them. "You based your master plan to save our lives off of a wild guess?"

"And it worked, didn't it?" Loki asked, and even though he could not see their faces, he could sense—and smell and taste—their fear. "I know what you are thinking but who could have known that Odin used a lie to tell the truth?" Despite the fact that his whole body was shaking with fear, Loki giggled. "That is rather brilliant, actually."

"You really are the worst," said Bruce just as Thor grumbled, "That bastard."

"That accursed old bastard," Valkyrie concurred, breathlessly.

"Be still!" commanded Nemesis and her voice rang out from nowhere and everywhere at once, like a cacophony of demons chattering in the depths of Hel. "This is how I existed before the dawn of creation. This is what was before the universe." She paused for breath and Loki tried to think but the power of his mind remained out of his reach in the blackness surrounding him and he tried to swallow once more.

"Well, not quite," said Nemesis and even as she was saying this, Loki's body became weightless and the breathing of the others lapsed into silence.

"Thor?" asked Loki even though he knew that he was now alone. "Brother?" he asked again, his voice scared and small and shaking.

There was no answer, no magic.

There was nothing.

Notes:
~ First, as I said, this took me way too long and I can only hope that I will be able to upload the next chapter, which is, again, mostly written in its unedited form, a bit more quickly. But I am not going to make any promises.
~ Second, I would like to thank all those who recently started reviewing this. Aeon225, LokiRogers, BenevolentCupboardhatch, your comments and thoughts on this mean a lot and keep me going when I think it's mostly my friends who read this and, well, why bother? I also appreciate everyone who recently started following/favoriting. Your support too means a lot. And, Selina, I appreciate your reviews as well. You are absolutely right in saying that Clint did not evolve throughout the story but that is because he is going mad with grief and there usually isn't much psychological evolution when someone is just succumbing to their mind. I agree that it is frustrating, it was even frustrating for me writing it at times, but I think that is what happens if people can no longer think clearly. And, yes, of course, Loki was thinking of Odin when the others asked him what soul Hela would want more than his in chapter 38. Thank you for reading!
~Third, I absolutely enjoyed to write a Loki that is no longer holding himself entirely reserved around everyone and I found it fascinating how, with him opening up a bit and letting some of those feelings he previously suppressed out, he ended up being powerless against his emotions, particularly when it comes to Frigga and her death (speaking of Pandora's box, huh, Ravenleaf?). And yes, I also wrote another OS about Loki reacting to Frigga's death yesterday, so you might be right if you assumed that I am far too hooked on this at the moment.
~ Fourth, thank you again for the Indiana Jones idea, Akira. Credit goes to you!

See y'all in a bit.