The rest this time was interrupted by nightmares, and he found himself waking more often than not to the darkness around him. Of course his plan would work. It must work. His plans had a way of working (Thor used to say, 'everything you do either works out perfectly or ends disastrously' and he was forced to agree) but for this, at least, there was no question. It must work. Everything depended on it.

The floor was hard but not rough, as were the walls. It was still warm, still almost too warm, unless his was a changed perception of warmth, and yet that was ridiculous because what would have done that? Unless it was the fall through the void, the constant chill that had begun at last to feel normal, that everything apart from that seemed hot—

Because he had seen his hands only a day ago and they had been perfectly normal then, and they felt perfectly normal now, when he reached out hesitantly as though he might feel thin ridges under his fingertips.

He sat and stared up into the darkness and cursed Thor for pushing him from the bifrost. He cursed Odin for all his many failings, and cursed Thor again, for being such an arrogant fool. And in his mind he turned to his mother in fear and she turned her head away, afraid to touch him, and yet he could not curse her.

This time seemed to last longer. Perhaps it was only that he could not sleep, or perhaps it was true. But he began to fear they had forgotten him, all rational thought saying otherwise, that he would be locked up in here for another eternity unable to die.

So when the door opened finally he could not help the rush of goodwill toward the anonymous guard, and he gave it a thin smile that the guard returned with a blank look.

And once again they traveled to Thanos. And when they were alone Thanos smiled, and once again his smile filled Loki with the most profound terror. Then he said, "you were right." He started to walk, expecting Loki to follow, and Loki followed. They went into the small room, close and hot as the door closed behind them. And Thanos spoke. "As a reward for your services, I will give you what you could never dream of."

Loki bit his tongue, his natural inclination to say that if he had never dreamed of it that probably meant he didn't want it. Thanos reached for the scepter, and held it out, conveying with a dip of his head that he wished Loki to kneel. And so he did, and felt the presence of the scepter as it touched his heart, and it was all the sweeter this time that he could more easily understand it.

Then they were gone, and again, the universe was before him. But this time, instead of seeing from afar, he saw from inside, from inside the warp and weft of the universe, and he was at once the very fabric of reality and the potential to tear it apart, he saw how everything fit, the patterns that flew from his eyes.

And as always, Death strode through, her handiwork littering the ground like so many paintings, arranged with a careless art. And her offerings piled before her feet, and her every smile was worth a world.

And though time was meaningless here, Loki wondered if this had not lasted longer than the last, because he did not think the last time he had learned so much. His lessons were brutal but filled with joy, and he felt like something less than himself. Every time he had a hold on it the world would spin away, and he would be nothing more than a blank slate.

"You are a stubborn one," Thanos whispered, as he pulled him apart once again.

But could he help it that Loki fought for his self at every opportunity? For what else did he have?

"You have this," he answered, it was all before him. And then it was in him, and he was within it, everything he saw and heard so much he felt he would be torn from his moorings like a boat in a terrible storm.

"Let go," Thanos said, and Death came again, carving him into a hollow figure for her amusement, and he had the scepter in his hand, and rewove the universe to please them.

He was a conduit through which water poured endlessly, he was a wire along which electricity flowed. He was nothing, and yet he held everything. He was possibility incarnate.

"Good," Thanos said, and at once he had eyes, and he saw—

he saw truth.

Like the sea that fell from the edge of the earth, outstretched and inexorable, he saw the truth.

And Thanos turned to him. "What do you see?"

And the unnamed spoke with a voice he did not have, but he still had lies, even now. "I see Death," he said. "And it is glorious."

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