A/N: I DID NOT FORGET THIS WEEK. I've just been staring at the second half of this for hours. And I am... I still don't know if I'm happy with it. But I gotta post, so, hope you enjoy it!
Loki gasped as he found himself back in the white place, but Mother was there to steady him. "Well done, sweetheart," she congratulated him. "One down, two to go."
"Lovely," Loki muttered, checking his face for fallen tears. Beside him, the black hole still existed, but it had shrunk a little, and the pain within no longer reached out to drag him in and suffocate him. Still, he backed off, taking Mother's hand again.
After a couple more minutes of wandering, he stopped in front of another. This one filled him with rage, but beneath it, he was screaming. Battle echoed around it, the general screams more distant, but Thor's pain was close.
Steadying himself, he stepped inside.
-MCU-
Midgardian sunlight shone around him, surrounding him with a warmth Loki hadn't felt in a year. He stalked out of the tower's interior, golden light encapsulating him as he built his armor for all to see. The scepter lengthened, its wicked tip sharpening; his armor settled around him, shielding him. And finally, his helmet manifested on his head, its familiar weight comforting, its enlarged horns bold and ready to terrify. For the first time in a long, long year, Loki finally felt like a prince again.
No, he told himself. I am a king.
He had only a moment to bask in it before, predictably, Thor crashed down to yell at him. "Loki! Turn off the Tesseract, or I'll destroy it!"
"You can't!" Loki retorted. And he heard the desperation in his voice, heard the person he used to be trying to let on to his thickheaded older brother that there was more at stake here than his own desires, but the person he had become rushed on, hardening his voice. "There is no stopping it. There is only the war."
"So be it," Thor said, the warrior he was seeing only the threat of the scepter pointed at him, hearing only the surface truth.
Loki leapt at him with a roar, slamming the scepter down towards him. The blow went wide, and Thor dodged easily, hitting back with nothing fatal. The person he once was screamed at him that this was wrong, that he shouldn't be fighting his own brother, who would've died to catch him, to fall with him, had Odin not shown up. That old sentiment kept his blows swinging wide, where Thor could dodge or block or walk away if he was hit.
You fool, he hissed at himself as the battle went nowhere, the two brothers locked in a stalemate. This is how you die.
Loki gritted his teeth, but before he could decide to fight harder, the quinjet appeared. He shoved Thor aside, and whether that was to get him clear of the firepower or just to leave himself clear to shoot, Loki couldn't tell. But when he took it down with a shot to the wing, that was the final straw for his brother.
Thor lunged at him with a cry of fury, a sound Loki had never before heard directed at him. He faltered under the new vigor in Thor's attacks, the rage for his human friends finally adding that near-lethal level Thor had been holding back from. Loki's grunts of effort turned to grunts of pain, and maybe that's what snapped Thor out of the haze of vengeance.
"Look at this!" he tried, pushing against Loki as they locked into a stalemate again moments later. "Look around you!"
And Loki did. He looked around at the chaos, the destruction, flashing lights and bright explosions and soaring Chitauri. Humans ran below, screaming, uniformed ones doing their futile best to fire back, some clutching children, using their bodies to shield them from the battle they were suddenly embroiled in.
I caused this.
He had never seen what happened to Jotunheim. He assumed it hadn't been destroyed, but sometimes, in those darkest, loneliest moments where his hatred didn't exist, he had found himself wondering. Had he had any siblings there? Aunts? Uncles? A mother? Had he killed them all?
And I'm doing it all over again. To other families.
"You think this madness will end with your rule?" Thor demanded.
And Loki looked back at his brother, caught the pleading in his eyes. And the person he had once been, the one who protected his friends and family, surged back to the surface. "It's too late," he gasped. "It's too late to stop it."
"No," Thor said, his grip softening, hope flooding into his voice. "We can. Together."
Loki stared back at him, yearning to feel that hope, that emotion that had eluded him for so, so long. Together, he repeated silently, the word echoing in his head.
If you fail – if the Tesseract is kept from us… There will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you! You think you know pain? He will make you long for something sweet as pain.
Hope is a dangerous thing, snarled the man he had been twisted into. A foolish thing. There is only one way out of this. And it does not involve this arrogant fool.
With a hint of a pained smirk, Loki plunged his tiny blade into Thor's side.
"Well, that was a dick move," Rocket observed.
Loki jumped back as the memory froze, whirling around to see Rocket watching Thor, head cocked and arms crossed. Loki pinched the bridge of his nose. "How are you supposed to be helpful in this? You don't seem like the therapist type."
"I dunno man, you're the one who picked me," Rocket said.
"That is entirely unhelpful."
Rocket let out a ragged sigh. "Fine, Cow Lord. Whatcha thinkin' about here?"
Loki pursed his lips but cooperated, shrugging at his frozen brother clutching at where Loki's wrist should have been. "I… don't know, honestly. I had one goal walking into this invasion: Survive. And I had one plan to do that, and I wasn't going to let anyone interfere with it."
"This is right after the torture, right?"
Loki winced. "Yes."
He produced an apple from nowhere and bit into it. "What were you like before that, anyway?" he asked through the mouthful.
"Gentler, I suppose," Loki replied. "I was ready to kill, but only defensively."
"Didn't you stab Thor all the time?"
"For fun!" Loki said defensively. "He could always walk it off."
"…Right," Rocket said skeptically. "Anyways, you weren't a coldblooded killer until Thanos got his hands on you, and suddenly you were willing to conquer an entire planet, putting even your own brother at risk to accomplish your own entirely selfish goal."
"That sounds about right," Loki said, ducking his head.
"Ah," Rocket said, lowering the apple. "That explains it."
At Loki's glance, Rocket dropped his gaze, shuffling his feet awkwardly. "I was born a normal raccoon, ya know. Even had a family. 'Til I got experimented on, torn apart and put back together into… whatever I am now. A thief. A kidnapper. An arsonist."
"A Guardian."
"Yeah, I guess so," Rocket agreed. "But then, so are you."
Loki snorted. "Maybe now. But not here," he said, jerking his head at Thor.
"No," Rocket agreed again. "But you ain't a monster here, either."
"I attacked my own brother!" Loki protested.
"Yep, ya did. But, I'll ask again: What were you thinking?"
Loki shrugged, throwing his hands to the sides. "I don't know. I guess I was hesitating, in a way-"
"Bingo, Cow Lord."
Loki stopped, confused. "…What?"
"Has anyone ever told you that you're really, really thick?" Rocket said in exasperation.
"Maybe," Loki muttered.
"Look, you moron," Rocket ordered, waving his tail to rewind. It resumed from the moment the fight started, and Rocket gave a blow-by-blow commentary of every near-miss, everything Thor escaped with little more than a bruise. And finally, it stopped as Thor urged him to help the Avengers, the single tear that had escaped Loki's façade shimmering in the sunlight.
"So? I already knew I was hesitating."
"That's the point," Rocket said. "You know what monsters do, Loki? They go for the kill. They swing their scepters at the opponent's throat, not the edge of his shoulder. They summon a much larger blade and stab it into a more fatal spot. And maybe you were manipulating him at the end there, but even you ain't good enough an actor to summon that single perfect tear that I doubt Thor even noticed."
"But I still invaded an entire planet," Loki protested.
"Because of Thanos," Rocket insisted. "Just like the experimenters tore me apart to put me back together how they wanted, Thanos tore you apart to make you how he wanted."
"And it worked."
"No, it didn't." Rocket gestured around. "Thor ain't dead, and Earth is fine. In fact, he and it are fine because you helped end Thanos once and for all. Thanos never got the monster he wanted, Loki."
"Then how do you explain this?" Loki demanded, gesturing at the flames, the chaos, the death surrounding them.
"You were scared and alone," Rocket answered. "Just like I was when I escaped. No friends, a family who's literally not evolved enough to care about me, and no idea what my place in the universe was. Sound familiar?"
Laufey's son?
I'm not your brother. I never was.
So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me?
What, because I-I-I am the monster parents tell their children about at night?
No, Loki.
Loki crossed his arms. "Yes," he admitted.
"You're finally getting it," Rocket said, smothering the hint of pride with gruff relief. "I turned to crime. You turned to fighting for a throne. But I found Groot, and you got Thor and Valkyrie, and then we both found the rest of the team. And when it counted, Loki, we fought for what was right."
"And monsters don't do that," Loki murmured, moving to Thor's side.
"No," Rocket agreed, gradually fading away. "They don't."
Carefully, Loki pulled the knife from Thor's side. "Thank you for seeing that even when I didn't," he murmured, glancing up at his brother.
Cape billowing behind him, Loki spun on his heel and flung the knife far, far away, watching it tumble and twirl until it disappeared from sight.
-MCU-
For a moment, Loki huddled on the floor, held upright only by Mother's arms. Sheer exhaustion, stronger than anything he'd felt before, weighed him down. He trembled, panting, struggling even to keep his eyes open.
"I know you're tired," Mother whispered, rubbing his aching arm, "but you must keep fighting, love."
"It's comfortable here," he mumbled, letting his eyes drift shut. "And… safe."
She pressed a kiss to his head, lingering over the contact. "I know. But you can't stay here, sweetheart." She rested her fingertips over his temple, and at the contact, voices rippled through his mind. They were hazy, individual words and conversations melting together, but he recognized the eight voices, their laughs echoing throughout alongside his own.
"Home."
The word escaped him, such was the warmth that filled him at the memories. Mother seemed almost cold all of a sudden. Because it's not her. Not really.
"One more memory," she urged, helping him up.
Loki groaned but rose, clinging to those laughs, to those conversations he could almost remember. He limped forward, hoping, praying that the next memory would be easy, and quick, and not confusing at all-
The one that caught his attention was different from all the others. Light grey smoke swirled around its center, hardly more than a handful of wisps, but they stood out like a bilgesnipe in a palace. He reached for it, but a sort of… bubble stopped his hand, preventing him from getting more than a vague sense of confusion.
"What is this?" he asked, pushing experimentally against it.
She touched it too, her own fingers meeting the same wall. "I… don't know."
Loki looked at her in surprise. "I thought you remembered what I don't?"
"I thought so as well."
Loki sighed. So much for simple.
She grabbed his hand, stretching up for one last reassuring kiss on the cheek. "Good luck, sweetheart."
With every ounce of remaining strength he had, Loki kicked the wall down.
-MCU-
He crashed into a dark, icy abyss. Stony ground held him, his body sprawled out, but he couldn't open his eyes more than a crack, his eyelashes blurring and darkening what little he could see. Agony ricocheted through him at every breath. A twitch of his finger took almost more energy than he had.
Movement caught his eye, but outside of a single spiked heartbeat that felt like a stab to the chest, he couldn't react. A door closed, softly, as if someone was trying not to be noticed. The movement came closer, the shadows coalescing into leather boots. The person knelt, and a green hand set down a cloth bag.
Green? he thought sluggishly. I have only seen one green person here. And that cannot… that cannot be her.
The hand disappeared into the bag. "I know it's not real sunlight, but it's the best I can do," a woman's voice whispered. She withdrew a small orb. Upon shaking it, it glowed a warm yellow. Loki couldn't hold back a groan as the rays touched his skin, reaching down to caress his aching muscles, reintroducing him to a warmth he had almost forgotten existed.
She reached into the bag again, producing a bottle of water. "You should drink," she advised, slipping her hand beneath his head to hold him up. Her hair swung down between her and the orb, casting her face into deep shadow. He twitched, responding to the instinct to struggle, but then the cool liquid was sliding down his throat, soothing its scream-induced rawness, and he closed his eyes at the simple bliss.
"Easy, easy," she warned, pulling it back. "Not too fast, Prince."
Loki moaned but didn't try to struggle again as she set him back down. She rummaged in the bag. "Stitching you up would be too obvious, but I can clean you up a little," she said. "It will sting, so I'm going to put this in your mouth to bite down on, all right? I promise I'm not gagging you."
Loki balked, but she had been gentle, and if she left, she would take that wonderful little orb with her. So he nodded. She slipped a soft, fluffy bit of cloth into his mouth that tasted like chocolate. And the moment she set to work, disinfectant burning despite her light touch, he found himself grateful for it, his jaw clamping down with a strength he didn't realize he still had.
"Shh, shh," she soothed, holding him down with one hand where he wasn't injured. "Please, for both our sakes."
He tried, clenching his eyes shut tight as he tensed his entire body to fight the pain. She worked steadily onward, working up his torso to his face. When she finally stopped, pulling the cloth from his mouth, he fell limp, panting.
She gave him a few moments to rest, stuffing the used supplies back into her bag. Then she picked up his head again, placing a single pill on his tongue and bringing the water back. "To help you sleep without dreams," she told him. At that, he swallowed eagerly.
As he settled back down, infinitely more comfortable than he had been, she draped a new tunic over him. "Rest now," she murmured, collecting her bag and stepping towards the door.
"Wait," Loki managed to croak, forcing his eyes to open. "Who…?"
She turned back slightly, hand resting on the door handle. "You know my name," she murmured. "And when you wake, you won't know who I am."
With that, she slipped outside, but Loki had gotten the confirmation he had needed from the tilt of her head.
Gamora.
Loki bolted upright, pain disappearing as he remembered he was in a memory. She helped me.
She didn't know me, and she risked her life to help me.
"Why wouldn't you tell me that?" he asked aloud, looking around. But no one showed up.
The memory shifted, the images swirling together, coalescing into somewhere new. The ashen skies of Svartalfheim stretched up above him, its rocky ground beneath him. With a start, he noticed his own limp body. Thor was walking away, red cape billowing in a brewing storm, and Loki couldn't tell if he was leaning on or shielding the person he walked with.
Time crawled by. And suddenly Loki sucked in a gasp, clutching at the wound in his stomach. "Thor?" he rasped weakly. "Thor? J-jane?"
But no one was there to answer.
"They left me to die," his voice said from his left. A third Loki, standing where another Guardian should have stood, glaring in the direction Thor and Jane had gone.
"No," Loki protested, voice wobbling. "Thor- Thor wouldn't…"
His doppelganger gestured sharply at where the memory struggled. "I couldn't get up for hours. I saved them, and Thor thinks it's all a trick!"
Loki stumbled to his feet, facing off against the enraged doppelganger. "Have you given him reason to believe otherwise?" he challenged.
"Why would he believe me if I did?"
"Because he's my brother!"
"You tell him, then," the doppelganger sneered.
Loki balked. How can… how can I convince him of that? I don't even have a scar.
"It's not so simple, is it?" the doppelganger hissed.
The scenery shifted again, plunging him into his bed on the Milano back in those awkward early days. Loki found himself observing again, his memory self curled up on the bed, eyes half open as a hushed argument filtered in from outside.
"You want to befriend him, I know you do, so just tell him, Gam!"
"All I'll ever be to him is his torturer, Peter. We all know that."
"Well, have you given him reason to believe otherwise?" Peter asked.
"Why would he believe me if I did?"
"Because he's our teammate," Peter insisted.
"You tell him, then," Gamora challenged. Silence fell, and after a few moments, she tacked on a bitter, "It's not so simple, is it?"
Is that why you didn't tell me? Because you thought I wouldn't care?
It's the same reason you haven't told Thor you were actually hurt.
Mother's voice echoed in his mind: You must forgive.
Loki buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Gamora," he whispered. "Of course it matters. Of course I forgive you."
The memory didn't shift.
His doppelganger reappeared, laughing. "You really thought it would be that simple? You're a fool."
Loki swiped at the wall, dismayed when it remained solid. "But I… I forgave her. Was that not the point?"
"You truly are a moron."
Loki turned on his doppelganger. "You are not helpful!"
The memory rippled. For half a second, Loki was lying on his back, looking at the ceiling of the log cabin, the other Guardians gathered around him. Watching. Mantis, antennae glowing, gasped a little.
The Milano quarters slammed back into place. His doppelganger came at him with a vicious punch, fist slamming into his jaw and sending him staggering into the wall. "Ow!" he cried out, clutching at his jaw. "What the-"
Rage suddenly surged through him, cutting off his own question. He whirled back on his doppelganger, lashing out and kicking it in the side. The doppelganger staggered, grabbing the nightstand for support, and the memory rippled again. The other Guardians were leaning forward now, faces intent. Gamora was supporting Mantis, and Peter was saying something he couldn't make out.
"You," the doppelganger snarled, "don't get to fight."
Loki scrambled backwards as the doppelganger lunged forward, narrowly dodging him. It attacked again, catching Loki around the waist, sending them crashing through the door. He hit the ground with a gasp, his breath rushing out of him.
The doppelganger wrapped its hands around his throat, squeezing. "You're pathetic. You can't do what it takes to survive. It's my turn to run this meager excuse for a life."
Loki pried at its fingers. "You… you sound like… me after Thanos…"
"We were strong then," it hissed. "We had it all. But now you hide from me."
You must finally accept that they happened, and that you cannot change them. You must forgive.
She never said who. And the first two had one person in common.
This isn't about forgiving Gamora.
Well, not entirely. But I'll deal with that later.
Loki yanked his leg up and kicked, hitting the doppelganger right in the side. He rolled off, the memory flickering. Loki leapt up, picking him up by the shoulders and slamming him into the wall. He pinned his forearm against his throat, silencing him.
"Not anymore," he panted. "I did things. I did terrible, awful things, and I did them to people I love. But that was the past. And now I'm a brother, a husband, a friend, a Guardian. And I will spend my entire life trying to make up for all the pain and death I caused. But I'm done hating myself for it."
The memory melted, patches of the cabin appearing and sticking around this time.
"When we get back to Earth, I'm going to tell Thor. And he's going to believe me. And yes, he might be disappointed that I hid something that significant from him, but you know what? He's still going to love me. Just like I'm going to tell Gamora that anything she does now means more to me than everything she did back then.
"You and I, we're two halves of a whole," Loki went on. "You can't exist without me, and I wouldn't exist without you. That will never change, not after what we did. But for all these years, I've let you enrage me, scare me, shame me into attacking and hiding and pushing everybody away. But now… Now, this is me saying, once and for all, that you will never control me again."
Loki grabbed the doppelganger's hair and punched himself in the face.
