A/N: It's the end of the line.
Seconds ticked by, widening the gap from their past encounter while driving them ever closer to their next. At least, that was how they perceived it. Time was a construct of man, created for the purpose of forcing sense and order onto the world around them. The furtive creatures of the transdimension had no need of it.
They did not age.
Minutes could hours on the outside, hours could be days, days could be years, and nothing guaranteed that exiting this realm would insert them into the correct place on the timeline. Of course, leaving would only be a concern if they were victorious.
Mist rolled ever closer, its edges reaching towards them like spindly fingers. Loki fixed the rolling mass with a glare that promised great suffering if the creatures continued to encroach. Frigga had warned of their tricks and manipulation, though mostly through the context of bedtime stories. Never had she mentioned any manner with which to defeat the creatures of the fog.
A flicker of movement caught his attention. Pale, leathery and wrinkled flesh on a hairless back, translucent skin wrapped tightly around the ridges of a jagged spine and oversized rib cage. Its elongated snout dripped saliva, and when it moved, its limbs dragged on the ground. As he watched, the flesh rippled, adopting the gray, swirling patterns of its surroundings, the scent of sunshine and rain becoming overpowering. Wanda gasped her brother's name.
Loki spared her a glance. Frustration flashed across his features, directed inwards. His hands curled, nails biting into his palm, before abruptly going slack. "While often lonely," he began, pitching his voice whisper-soft so as not to attract the attention of the hunters in the fog, "it is the duty of the survivors to live. Not even the Aesir, as long lived as they are, have the time to waste chasing ghosts as they pass."
Her expression, as she listened, turned to steel. She took a step back, bringing her nearer to her allies, "I did not come to this place to die," and raised her palms, their surfaces radiating crimson light that expanded until it enveloped all three of them completely. Though Loki could pass his fingers through the surrounding sphere, the mist bumped against it, curling in on itself and spreading like liquid sliding up and down against the sides of a glass canister.
So this was what it felt like to be on a team. He was beginning to understand the appeal.
While Wanda was preoccupied with keeping the shield up, Strange decided to share his concerns. "Why haven't they made any moves to attack us? These creatures have had plenty of opportunities to do so."
"They are likely still digesting their latest meal," Loki replied with pitch-black humor. After a moment, his gaze turned considering. "Do you see them? The monsters?"
Regrettably, Strange shook his head. "I see only my mentor."
Which meant only one of them could see their true forms. Somehow, he'd always suspected that these creatures would use the visages of their lost loved ones against them, yet even so, he'd believed that… He'd hoped that…
But that was his mistake. A little hope broke the spirit far more effectively than pain.
Loki flexed his fingers. Somewhere, something howled. "Strip the protection spells from that pendant around your neck," he demanded of Strange, who clutched the Eye of Agamotto protectively, his suspicion of the outcast Asgardian resurging. "Once the infinity stone is exposed, the Mad Titan or his psychics will pick up on its energy signature, and for better or worse, Thanos will surely come for it."
"And we'll be ready for him," Wanda said consideringly. It was evident that she was tired of fighting ghosts, eager to face Thanos at last. Either they would win and leave this dreadful realm or lose and die. Anything was better than the agony of limbo.
Strange, however, was visibly less than thrilled about the thought of using the Eye of Agamotto, a magical artifact capable of reweaving and unraveling the fabric of time, one that he'd sworn to protect, as bait for a civilization destroyer. To be fair, though, he was rather new to the practice. "How do you know Thanos will come himself? There has to be more lackeys he could send in his stead." His cloak collar flipped upwards, as though it too were aghast at the suggestion.
"That part's rather simple, actually," reassured Loki, lifting his palms in a gesture of peace, though it fell short since each of the mages present were lethal with or without the use of weapons. "He spared me, you see. Thus, it is a matter of pride. He cannot abide my betrayal a second time." The confidence with which he voiced this was proof that there was substance to the legends that spoke of his silver tongue. Even so, though he desperately attempted not to show it in front of his companions, fear turned silver to lead. It was ingrained in his being, spreading from a dormant state like a virus. "He will come, Strange. I am certain of it."
Gradually, the collar began to settle as Strange pondered the proposal. He carefully gripped the Eye of Agamotto in his hand, holding it at chin-level, and began to dismantle the enchantments, peeling the shields and protective curses off one at a time, each of them briefly becoming visible in the form of bars, like those of a golden cage, until at last the stone rested bare and motionless in his palm. "And how long must we wait before he does?"
A massive gash appeared in the realm, as though space were made of paper. The edges flared and writhed, shifting rapidly through a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors. Inside the portal, they could make out a barren planet, its surface covered with dunes of rust-colored soil.
Loki noted the widening tear with a wry smirk. "There he is now."
From somewhere beyond the portal, a pair of thick, muscled legs came into view, each of them clad in the armor of a conqueror. It certainly wasn't hard to see how alien civilizations with no concept of the notion could mistake the titan's intimidating presence for that of a god.
One booted foot stepped through the portal, followed by the gold-encased torso and head of a giant with infinite power on his side. As Thanos rose to his full height, his words reverberated throughout the realm, "Had I known you would become such a thorn in my side, I would have had my daughters end your miserable life the moment you washed up on my shores."
Facing him once more had been Loki's sole purpose since Thanos had taken it upon himself to punish Thor for his failures, but now that the Mad Titan stood once more before him in all his glory, it was all he could do not to fall to his knees. The conqueror's presence was a devastating blow.
The chill sinking down to his marrow was unbearable.
And though he managed to curve his lips into a mirthless facsimile of a smile, his treacherous body wouldn't stop trembling.
A whirring sound, like buzzsaws, snapped him out of his spiral. He glanced to the side of him where Strange now wielded a pair of disk-shaped sigils as weapons. "Don't let him get to you," he called out over the noise. "Whether this is about redemption or some vendetta, you haven't accomplished anything yet, have you?" Wordlessly, Wanda stepped beside them, entering a fighting stance of her own, the intensity of her scarlet-infused gaze locked on Thanos. Once the shock of the moment passed for the most part, a wild grin split Loki's face.
Daggers appeared in his hands, their surfaces glittering with the reflected light of infinity.
Thanos stared down at the humans with bemusement, "You have all suffered so much loss. I understand how it weighs on you. But why? Why, in spite of this, do you continue to fight against your salvation?"
Disgust painting her features, Wanda lifted her chin defiantly. "We mourn our loved ones when they are taken from us." Her voice climbed to an impassioned shout, "How can you claim to know anything about grief when you are the monster who would steal them away?!"
Words, as always, held power. When was a monster not a monster? When it is in the company of something crueler and far more dangerous than he. In front of Thanos, perhaps the trickster and liar of Asgard, the Frost Giant's changeling, could fight on the side of the good and righteous.
While he wasn't entirely sure he believed that, it was unarguably a nice change of pace - not having those words directed towards himself. On second thought, however, there was something about the Mad Titan's reaction that disturbed him. His gaze whilst it remained on the witchling was softened, even tender. Rather like how he had always looked at his favorite daughter... They were roughly the same age, were they not? Those in the favor of Thanos had a tendency to be spared from the destruction of their race, yet none would ever say it was fortunate to be one of the select few in the universe the Mad Titan believed he loved.
His arms sweeping out in a shallow bow that obscured Wanda from the titan's dangerous attention, Loki grandly stepped forward. "I, on the other hand," and he placed a palm over his heart, feigning sincerity, "have no doubts towards the intimacy of your understanding." The eyes of his companions burned into his back. He ignored them. Any moment now, Thanos was going to strike. "Having been the engineer of so much of it yourself, I'd rather expect you must to be something of an expert on the matter."
But rather than deal with the uncertainty, was it not preferable to force his hand?
The gauntlet shooting off sparks of color in his rage, Thanos loomed, high and immovable as a mountain, and when he spoke, his voice came out low, his words dripping with the promise of violence. "And what would you know of it, Silvertongue?"
That was when Loki realized he hadn't just touched a nerve. A raw nerve, exposed and weeping. The color draining from his features, he asked in a muted, horrified tone, "What have you done?"
On the golden gauntlet, four stones sparkled, their potential limitless. The stone of power he'd attained on Xandar, the stone of space had been traded for a life, the stone of reality had been hidden on Knowhere, which must have been naught but ruins now, and the soul stone… Loki didn't know where Thanos had found it or what he'd sacrificed, but there was only one thing that could break the titan's heart.
Gamora had known the risk, as had he. Even so, the sight of the reality stone in the titan's grasp hurt more than having the flesh pried from his limbs by a scalding blade. If he'd gone with her and her merry band of misfits, perhaps things would have turned out differently, though there was no way to know for certain.
One thing he did know was that in order to lose something, one must in some way have it. And Thanos never had Gamora. She was never his to lose.
"I think you'll find that," a shimmering outline split off from him on both sides, then redoubled, duplicating themselves over and over until dozens copies of Loki surrounded Thanos, "we have a very different definition of loss." And the legion of illusions charged the titan, their palms firing off beams of concentrated aether that singed and blackened his armor in the hopes of diminishing its integrity. Wanda used her magic to propel herself higher, where she aimed her crimson blasts at the titan's eyes and unexposed flesh, navigating nimbly through the air to avoid swipes from his huge palms.
And while they kept him distracted, Strange focused on opening a portal around the titan's arm with his sling rings. Though he'd never tried to displace such a large target before, there was only one way to find out if it would work.
"Enough of this foolishness," Thanos growled, and the soul stone in his gauntlet glowed, revealing a core of white light in each of the duplicated Loki's.
One of the copies piped up, "They're not mere illusions." Another added smugly, "Each of them holds a piece of my soul."
Accepting this, Thanos raised his gauntlet at the highest concentration of clones, "Then I imagine this will hurt you greatly," and fired a blast from the power stone, eradicating the majority of them in the span of a blink. Swooping in, Strange managed to grab hold of one of the duplicates farthest from the blast and spare it the fate of the rest. It writhed in his grip, its expression contorted in agony.
Once they were out of the titan's immediate range, Strange demanded, "You can split your soul?" As he watched, the soul within the duplicate became larger and more complete as it assimilated with the pieces freed from their vessels.
He who was Loki-once-more rasped, "Yes," offering the sorcerer a feeble smile with a wheeze, "though it's not exactly encouraged."
Once Strange had helped him to his feet, he called out to Wanda to halt the titan's movements for as long as she could manage, and she soared closer, perching on his shoulder, right at Thanos' temple, where her psionic energy could do the most damage. As the tendrils of her mental connection seeped into his mind, his body slackened, his face becoming twisted with grief. Groaning with the effort, she called down to them, "His mental defenses are too strong! This isn't going to hold him for long."
A portal appeared around the gauntlet, on the other side of which was Central Park, though there was evidence of destruction there now that hadn't been present when they'd walked its paths before. Once it was formed, Strange attempted to slam his palms together to shut it, but a field appeared around the gauntlet, repelling the edges. Muttering a curse, Strange dispelled the construct with a flick of his wrist. "Cutting it off isn't going to work. The stones are protecting him."
Thanos began to blink rapidly, coming out of the nightmarish stasis Wanda had inflicted. An arm as thick as the trunk of an ancient redwood rose to snatch her from his shoulder, but before this could come to pass, Strange ripped open a smaller portal beside her, and another beside him. Without hesitation she leaped from the titan, his fingertips so close they brushed her hair, then barreled through the second portal, whole and out of harm's way.
"What's the plan?" Then her gaze flicked past them. She appeared distracted for a moment, her gaze becoming unfocused as her lips shaped a name. Abruptly, she lunged at them, forcing them to the ground, "Get down!"
A second blast from the power stone razed the space where their heads had been an instant before. Each of them were breathing harshly when it passed, their foreheads beaded with sweat from the heat, of which Wanda had borne the brunt.
Once released, Loki asked the pair of them to buy him some time, as much as they could. As soon as she heard his request, Wanda nodded, clumps of her sweat-saturated hair sticking to her leather vest, and the ground began to shake and crack and splinter, an aura appearing around jagged pieces of rock as they floated upwards. She plunged into the battle, Strange joining her to provide portals she could escape through if cornered, and also to make the trajectory of her projectiles harder to predict, and thus more challenging to blast to oblivion or turn to foam. With them keeping Thanos on the defensive, Loki was able to concentrate on his form.
Slowly, his bones began to length, thicken. Muscles swelled, the skin around them stretching to compensate for the newly grown mass. Arms shrank into his sides as his mouth filled with serrated teeth, their tips ripping into his gums before the flesh became tougher. His senses changed as the space between his eyes widened, and his nose flattened, now a pair of slits at the end of a long snout. His body bent forward as it lengthened, raising him up higher and higher until he looked down on even the Mad Titan.
And the realm shook with a guttural, undulating roar.
Wanda sent all of the rocks and debris she'd collected flying at Thanos at once, immobilizing him. Through the cracks between the boulders pressing against his face, Thanos managed, "This changes nothing. The universe must be balanced. You are throwing your lives away for a futile endeavor."
Strange responded by sacrificing a portion of his energy to Wanda, "The Ancient One sacrificed everything to protect this world." His magic, a dun yellow, was absorbed into her, lightening the color of her psionic aura to a reddish-orange. Thanos groaned, his knees buckling as his density increased tenfold. "What kind of poor excuse for a student would I be if I didn't do at least that much?" And the tyrannosaurus rex charged. Swinging its great head back as forth, it lunged for the titan's neck, but Thanos managed to get his hands in Loki's jaw, keeping the snapping maw at bay long enough for him to lift the dinosaur and throw it in Strange's direction.
Although knowing that his power was weakened due to having expended so much of it on incapacitating the titan, he cast a pair of shields, and braced for impact, only to feel a hard tug at his collar when Wanda grabbed him and pulled him out of harm's way.
Loki's gigantic body slammed against the ground, rolling violently over itself in a tangle of limbs that stopped beyond the fog's edge. Thanos followed, meaning to finish what he'd started… then stopped. His stood as though lost, staring dazedly at a single point in the mist that rolled over his adversary's fallen form. He whispered a single word. A name. "Gamora?"
Above them, another portal appeared. This one, however, was not of Strange's making. It lacked finesse, as though it had been bludgeoned into being with a blunt instrument. Through the opening, winds howled, thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. Lightning streaked through the realm, drawing ever closer to where Thanos stood, and as though carried in by the storm, a man with one white eye fell from the portal, his features twisted in fury. The massive ax he bore sliced through the lightning in his path before burying itself in the titan's chest, and Thanos dropped to his knees, clutching at the handle of the weapon whose blade had plunged so close to his heart.
He took a ragged, shuddering breath. "You should have aimed for the-" Betraying the first sign of life, the tyrannosaurus rex reared up behind him, gripped the titan's head between its jaws, then with a sickening crack, put an end to his twisted dream once and for all.
They returned to Midgard broken, battered, and victorious. Thor, as it turned out, had been rescued by a Xandarian craft that was patrolling the region. They'd helped him reach the planet of the dwarves, where he'd had an ax forged to help him better harness his own power.
With it, he was able to transport the four of them to Central Park, where for the first time in what seemed like days, it wasn't raining. The sky was clear of clouds, and a gentle breeze swept through the trees still standing.
There was no mistaking, however, that a great battle had taken place. Pieces of buildings had collapsed, the streets were evacuated, and trunks pulled out of the ground by their roots lay strewn about the park like the toys of a messy child.
As they made their way down the path, Loki swayed on his feet, his distended jaw, broken and swelling, and depleted energy making it difficult for him to keep pace with the others. Concerned, Strange reached out when he began to list. Thor caught him first, a gentle smile on his face, "You look terrible, brother."
A hysterical laugh bubbled past Loki's lips. Everything had worked out so well, with all of his companions alive and mostly whole, that he couldn't help expecting the rug to be pulled out from underneath him at any moment.
Iron Man found them first, followed by a very human Bruce Banner, and a boy-child dressed as a spider. The last of the trio waved enthusiastically at Wanda, who returned the gesture with a mite less enthusiasm but no less sincerity. While they got acquainted with each other, Loki mentally ran down a list of all the species of humanoid arachnids he knew of. After all, the boy had clearly shot webbing from his wrists, a feat humans, as far as he was aware, were not capable of.
After customary greetings, Thor addressed Stark, "Where are the others?"
Stark's damaged visor lifted to reveal an impressive collection of mottled bruises. "They're with Cap in Wakanda. We had a bit of a falling out," he answered a little too quickly. On the whole, Loki found his discomfort a sufficiently amusing distraction from his pain. "But that's not important. What's important is," and he placed a hand on Thor's shoulder, who looked at it with confusion, as though wondering how it'd gotten there, "it's great to have you back, Point Break."
Strange gave Banner a once-over, taking in the silk navy robe with the S engraved on its front with a bemused frown. "Why are you wearing my robe?"
"You see, there's a very simple explanation behind that, which is," Banner awkwardly scratched his cheek, "...I landed on your house." The sigh that escaped the sorcerer was like that of an exasperated parent, coming home after a long day to find his children had colored on the walls.
Having decided he'd had enough of these pleasantries, Loki made his presence known with a pointed clearing of his throat. "No offenth meanth, of courth," unfortunately, there was nothing to be done about the obstruction to his speech with his jaw like this, so he would just have to make due, "but should any of you try to stick me in a cell right now," and his tongue split in half at the tip. The pupils of his yellowing eyes became narrow, "you may not like what happensss nexth."
A stern swat upside the back of his head from the witchling, followed by a sharper rap from the sorcerer's cloak, promptly ruined his focus, undoing the partial transformation. He rubbed at the sore area, shooting them both a glare without any genuine heat in it.
Though his lack of ire baffled him at first, it would soon become apparent that there were some things a witch, a sorcerer, and a mage couldn't do together without becoming closer in the end, and saving the universe was one of them.
A/N: A huge thank you to everyone who decided to read and follow this year-long project of mine. After watching Infinity War, I made it my mission to save Loki in as many ways I could think of before Endgame came out, and now there's nothing left to do but curl up with a cup of hot cocoa and wait for the end of April to come around.
Hope you all had a good time and maaaybe played Thunderstruck at some point during the final battle~