Whumptober Day #1: Swooning


Loki looks down at his hands. They do not shake like he had been expecting. He clenches them into fists, just to prepare for the possibility, but when he loosens them again, his hands remain relatively still.

"Loki?" Thor asks cautiously. Loki looks up and spots the concerned glint in his eyes. He isn't frightened like Loki feels he should be.

Of course Thor isn't frightened.

He knows nothing.

He knows absolutely nothing.

"What is that ship, Brother?" Thor asks, like that title is not a lie. "Who is in there?"

Loki could say many things. Thanos, the destroyer of worlds or Thanos, the Mad Titan. He could say, the harbinger of my doom or the one who promised me something worse than death, and I still don't know what exactly that is. He could even say, the one who destroyed me and tried to build me back up in his image.

But Loki still has invisible cracks that only he can feel, and he doesn't think he will ever completely heal.

Thor doesn't need to know any of this, though. All Thor needs to know is how to survive this, how to escape death, and Loki will help him get there.

Despite this and the sense of urgency he feels, Loki takes the time to close his eyes to make it easier for him to speak. He had been called Asgard's Silver Tongue, once, a very long time ago, and Loki has never felt so far removed from that.

"Thanos is a Titan looking to collect all of the Infinity Stones," he murmurs.

Loki had been expecting some kind of outburst, but when no obvious reaction occurs, he opens his eyes to glance at Thor.

Thor, somehow, has seemed to put the pieces together. "You have the Tesseract," he says.

"I do," Loki confirms. "I'm sorry. I brought this upon us." He sucks in some air and lets it out slowly. It might be the fullest breath of air he'll get in a while. (It might be one of the last breaths of air he'll ever get, if he does this right.) "I'll fix it, Thor. It's my fault after all. I'll try my very best." Even though his very best, most of the time, isn't at all good enough.

Thor clasps his shoulder, and Loki stares at him, utterly confused. "We'll figure this out together," Thor says, voice firm. He leans closer to Loki's face. "Alright?"

"Alright," Loki manages to say, eyes wide.

"Do you have a plan?" Thor asks, finally jumping into action, used to seeing how Loki looks when intricate thoughts are swirling through his mind.

Loki does, but it isn't necessarily a good one.

It involves using the Tesseract to open a portal to Midgard. It involves sending off the escape pods to serve as a distraction and stall for time. It involves shielding the entire ship to protect against cannon blasts.

(It involves staying behind, though Thor does not yet know about this part.)

The problem with all of this is that it is incredibly taxing. One isn't meant to directly use the Tesseract for an extended amount of time, let alone do other magical things on top of it.

Loki is, however, the only mage left on the ship. It will have to do.

Banner goes through first, to hopefully serve as some sort of mediator between the Midgardians and the Asgardians. Most of them send half-grateful and half-accusing looks at Loki, and in response he can only smile thinly and wave them into the swirling blue. He tries not to sway too obviously, already feeling more than a little lightheaded. Valkyrie, who takes up the rear, eyes Thor and Loki both and says, "Don't do anything stupid," before walking through the portal.

Now, the hard part.

The ship is shaking. It won't be long now until Thanos boards, and Loki needs to get Thor the hell away from here before that happens.

"Aren't you going to go through?" he asks tightly, ignoring how Thor just stands there, looking at Loki sadly, like he understands anything that Loki had gone through and will go through at the hands of Thanos.

Thor swears in Aesir, and now there is lightning flashing about his limbs, across his eyes. "Loki, what do you plan to do?" he asks.

He can read Loki far too easily now.

Or, perhaps, deceiving him has just become an expected thing.

Loki feels, all of a sudden, oh so weary. He is tired of putting up a front, tired of pretending, tired of keeping his magic from fraying because things aren't going to plan and Thor won't step into the portal. Thor won't let Loki save him.

(Thanos had promised him a fate worse than death, and now, he thinks he knows how it will be done.)

"I plan to save your life, you dumb oaf," Loki says, the insult falling from his tongue like it always has, because if Thor loses his temper, if Thor gets angry, then he will be distracted by the heat of his own emotion, and Loki will be able to best him.

Except Thor has changed. He doesn't anger as easily. He actually uses his head now.

Being king has changed him.

Loki has changed him.

"But what about you?" Thor asks, stepping closer, face creased with concern. For Loki? How can this be?

Loki sighs, and blinks away the spots in his tunneling vision. "You've always been so unnecessarily sentimental," he says, and then tries one last time. "I will follow behind you. You know I'm the one who needs to close the portal."

He isn't as good a liar now as he once was.

"No, you won't," Thor says stubbornly. "You won't, and I don't understand why."

"There are some things you can never understand," Loki spits out. "Now step into the portal before danger meets us."

"No." Thor shakes his head.

"No?"

"If you're going to stay behind like a self-sacrificing, idiotic lamb for slaughter, then I will stay with you. I am willing to take my final stand by your side." Which is heroic and all, but not exactly what Loki has in mind.

Loki swipes away the blood that has started to fall from his nose. He stares at the redness painting the back of his hand, and decides that he doesn't want to see Thor's blood on his hands, too.

He glances up at Thor. "Goodbye, Brother," he says with no remorse.

Thor frowns, starting to look slightly panicked. "What—?"

Loki swipes a hand through the air, and the mass of swirling blue rushes towards Thor before swallowing him whole. Loki closes the portal and promptly collapses to the ground, pulling his magic back to himself. He places the Tesseract into his dimensional pocket, and waits.

He doesn't register that he had closed his eyes until he opens them again. He groans and rolls his head languidly towards the side to watch the growing shadow on the wall beside him. He can hear voices that he vaguely recognizes, and he can feel the rhythm of footsteps getting closer and closer, like a drumbeat, like a premonition.

He lies there on the ground, limbs askew, and feels as if he can barely move. He tries to reach up to swipe at the moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes, but his fingers only give a feeble twitch. He must have—no, he had definitely overexerted himself.

And his hands still do not shake.

"Where are the Asgardians, little god?" Thanos asks. He does not crouch down and simply looms over Loki's limp form. Loki, in lieu of an answer, turns his head and spits at Thanos's feet. He tastes the sharp tang of copper on his tongue.

Not long now, he thinks, hopes.

Thanos chuckles, very unamused by Loki's antics. They've been through this song and dance before. To Loki, it had been almost like a game; now, it means everything. "You have the Space Stone," Thanos says. It is not a question.

Loki sucks in a breath and lets it out shakily. "I do," he says, voice weaker than he'd like.

"And what of the Asgardians?" Thanos asks, stepping closer, his shadow growing on the blurry wall that Loki can see out of the corner of his eye. "What about Thor?"

"Damn you," Loki spits out. His eyes sting, and despite his best efforts, a tear escapes and drips down his cheek, mingling with the blood and grime on his face. "I will tell you nothing."

"You will," Thanos says simply. Perhaps it is simple, to him. "You did before."

Loki would like to not think about before.

He would very much like to forget.

"If you will tell me nothing, then will you at least give me what I require of you now?" Thanos asks. "Or must I torture it out of you? I feel that I must remind you that you are years overdue."

The Tesseract is safe and sound in Loki's dimensional pocket, and will hopefully stay there until his timely death, after which no one will be able to retrieve it. "I will give you nothing," he says, feeling like he is floating away from his body—preparing for the inevitable.

"Where are the Asgardians?" Thanos asks again, because he is searching for Thor. Thor, who is likely the only person, if threatened, that Loki would give up everything for.

But Thor is not here, and Loki is alone.

"Why do you ask?" Loki says with a lazy smile. He stares up at Thanos and tries not to feel small. He is done feeling out of control. "Do you need a population to cleave in half? Would you like to cleave me in half in lieu of that?" It would certainly be preferable to the alternative.

"I will break you," Thanos tells him with such certainty that Loki almost believes him.

Almost.

His vision fades quickly, and he hears, as if from a far distance, Thanos shout commands at the Black Order.

He will certainly be held captive, which is not ideal, but...Thor isn't here. His own suffering is a fair price to pay for that.

After all, without Thor, there is nothing Thanos can do to Loki that hasn't been done to him before.


I have definitely written Loki teleporting the Asgardians to Earth and then staying behind on the ship several times before, but apparently I'll never get tired of it, and I do try to add something different every time. It's kind of nice to see the ways my writing has evolved.

Anyways, it's that time of the year again! Here's to yet another Whumptober!

I can't believe it's my fourth year participating (and hopefully my third year as a completionist).

I'll be back tomorrow for a second chapter. Hope you guys enjoyed this first one.