It is quiet, at the End of Time.
He is not used to quiet.
Time is malleable in the palm of his hand.
He sits within the branches of Yggdrasil, and he closes his eyes.
"Help me," Loki says with not a small amount of desperation. One could call it begging, if he weren't essentially speaking to himself.
"I've never been very skilled at this kind of thing," Thor says, holding up a book by his thumb and forefinger as if it repulses him.
"What, reading?" Loki murmurs, already skimming through the book in his own hands.
"Learning."
Loki looks up with an unimpressed glare. Thor shrugs unrepentantly. "If you are going to be here bothering me, you might as well help. If we can't get two times as much work done together than apart, then at least we can get to one and a half."
"But then I'll have to explain it to you!"
"Well, not if you're technically me." Loki shrugs a little. "I don't know what to think about all of this."
"Don't think, then," Thor says. "You're always overthinking."
"Better than not thinking at all," Loki shoots back automatically. After a moment, he sighs, returning to the words swimming before his eyes.
This is far too familiar.
"Thor?" Loki calls out in one of the castle gardens. "Thor?"
He walks in between flowers that loom above him. Normally, when he is not alone, they are a comforting and beautiful sight.
Right now, however, he feels suffocated by them, like they are hiding him from view, and if he spends too much time here, he will disappear forever.
"Thor!" Loki yells, stumbling over his clumsy feet and falling to the ground. He catches himself with small hands that have yet to be scarred. His lips wobble from the pain, and he feels watery heat entering his eyes.
"Loki?" a familiar voice calls out, and Loki jumps up, fears immediately forgotten. He runs past the flowers and into his older brother's legs.
"Thor!" he says.
"Where did you go, Loki?" Thor says, running his hands over Loki's clothes to brush the dirt and dust away like he's seen their mother do, except he isn't nearly as successful as her.
"Thor," Loki says happily with a smile spreading his face wide.
Thor shakes his head fondly. He is only a head taller than Loki, and yet he seems so much older, like he holds the entire world in his hands. "I forgot that my name is one of the only things you can say." He takes Loki's hand in his own and starts to lead him out of the garden. "Or maybe you can say other words, but you simply don't want to. Is that right?"
He smiles down at Loki, and Loki starts swinging their arms back and forth, back and forth. He knows he is safe now. He will always be found.
"Are you irritated by my presence?" Thor asks, and damn him. He seems amused, for absolutely no reason at all! (Perhaps annoying Loki is enough of a reason, brothers being brothers.)
"You being here isn't necessarily the problem," Loki snaps, running a hand through his messy hair. "It's the fact that, when you first appeared, I didn't realize anything was wrong."
He misses Thor dearly, but in the end, it is better that he is not here.
Less people for Loki to hurt, to leave behind.
"Who says that it is wrong?" Thor asks him with a curious tilt of his head.
Loki gestures at him helplessly. "You aren't supposed to be here. You would never be here."
"Well," Thor says, leaning against the wall and picking at his nails in a way very unlike Thor but very like Loki, "there are an infinite number of universes. At least one Thor should have made it here already, or will make it here in the future."
Loki sighs. "You would never," he says stubbornly. "You're too noble! You would never stray from your path."
"For you, I would." Thor looks up, and Loki freezes under his gaze, his blue eyes seeming to see everything that Loki is trying to hide, that Loki doesn't even know he's hiding. (He's so used to keeping secrets.) "I've always been a sentimental fool when it came to you."
He is not slipping through time, more like...sifting through memories.
Well, they could be memories, or they could be fragments of other lives. The two tend to merge together in his mind's eye now, one and the same and never enough.
It hardly matters, anyways. Why would it? He's no longer on the same plane as everyone else.
Loki slams a book down on the table in frustration, even though he knows it won't do anything. Is he really going to spend centuries doing this, learning mechanics, physics, and engineering? He is making progress, yes, perhaps less than if he'd actually talk to this past version of OB, but all in all, the same thing, over and over and over again. He doesn't think he was made for this kind of work.
He briefly contemplates moving to a computer as another means of research in order to break the monotony, but the sound of shuffling interrupts his thoughts.
"Try reading the words. Maybe then you'll actually get somewhere," Thor says from his seat across the table. He's no doubt shoved all of Loki's papers aside to make room for his own useless clutter.
"At least I've picked up a book," Loki mutters back heatedly. He sighs and opens the book to the proper page with far more gentleness than the situation deserves.
His skin itches for action, for something immediate to do, for quick results. For so long, he has fought for freedom, for his own self, for his own sense of identity. And yet, he now longs for someone to tell him what to do. He doesn't mean for someone to control timelines and free will, but for someone to know exactly what he should do, what the best thing to do is.
He wants to do the right thing. He wants to save his friends. (He wants to not be alone.) He worries he's becoming more like Thor, in more ways than one.
Is he really going to do this?
He stares at the page in front of him and blinks until the words come into focus.
Apparently so.
It is perhaps a few minutes later, perhaps a few years later, that he sits up abruptly, back knocking against the chair he is in, spine cracking painfully loud in his ears. He whips his head around to stare at Thor, who sits leant back in his own TVA chair, feet resting on the table. He smiles brightly at Loki, even though Loki is fairly certain he has never stepped foot in the TVA.
"I am going insane," Loki says.
When Thor goes off on another adventure with his friends, Loki stays behind. He does not sleep for most of it, because Thor had both invited and not invited him, had probably only mentioned his trip to Loki out of courtesy, and Loki would rather stay put than be somewhere he isn't wanted.
(He soon learns that being wanted is one of the scariest things one could be.)
(Responsibility is a noose.)
His thoughts keep him awake, without Thor there to soothe him. It is perhaps childish to want his older brother's comfort, but he can't help it. He always feels small compared to Thor.
His brother's presence makes Loki feel simultaneously seen and not seen, like how the moon reflects the light of the sun.
And yet, the moon is always alone, orbiting a planet that doesn't care for its presence.
Loki feels alone when Thor is not here, and also when Thor is here. Mercurial, him.
And also pathetic.
His birthright was to die, abandoned in the cold and snow. He expects it now. It doesn't hurt as much if he expects it.
But then he falls into the Void, he takes the Tesseract and lands in the TVA's grasp. Thor perhaps misses him, perhaps hates him (is perhaps gone).
Loki had always expected to be left behind.
He never thought he would be the one to leave instead.
"Thor, would he be proud of me?" Loki asks. It shouldn't matter, but...despite it all, he has missed his brother.
He doesn't expect a true answer. "Of course," Thor says anyways.
Loki glances up at this ghost, at this figment of his imagination, and says, flatly, "How would you know anything? You're essentially an extension of my conscious."
Thor shrugs. "You can't assume that he wouldn't be proud of you, just because he isn't here."
I wish he were here, Loki thinks. I really wish he were here. He would perhaps know what to do, or at least pretend to know what to do, and his bravado and courage would be enough for Loki to do what is needed.
Loki misses him, deeply and sorely, which is something he would have never admitted before. But his timeline, his branch, his Thor, are gone. They're all gone. Time can heal wounds, but not the convoluted time that his life has become.
"I want," Loki starts, but can't manage to finish. He wants many things, so he doesn't know what he truly wants, but he knows what he does not want.
"Loki," Thor says, very gently, and if Loki closes his eyes or looks away, he could pretend that this is real, that Thor really is here, that his older brother is here to look out for him, for the first time in a very, very long time. He doesn't remember how it feels to be small and safe, and he wants to feel it again. He wants to feel small and safe and utterly protected again, without the weight of several worlds on his struggling shoulders. "Loki, you know what you have to do."
He knows. He'll have to do something about Mobius and Sylvie, because they will try to talk him out of it. But this is something he must do.
And yet, there is also something Thor—the real Thor—is supposed to do as well. They, the two of them, have gone through this song and dance before, time and time again.
"If you were really here," Loki says, voice shaking, hands shaking, shoulders quavering under the weight of the world he had not asked for, "you would try to talk me out of this." It would be bearable if he weren't so alone.
"Promise me you'll never leave," Loki whispers to Thor one night as they lie on the balcony that bridges both of their chambers. The stars twinkle above him, as if mocking him, because celestial beings tend to be more everlasting than even Asgardians.
Loki feels the weight of Thor's gaze against the side of his face, but he does not bring his gaze down. "Never," Thor swears quietly after a few moments of scrutinizing him. For what, Loki doesn't know. Even he has trouble reading himself.
"Even after death?" Loki murmurs nonsensically.
"Even after death," Thor says. "I will be here."
Loki hopes he won't spend too long in life without Thor. The silence would be unbearable, though he'd never admit that to him.
(Thor's death seems so far away at the moment. Loki doesn't know how close it truly is.)
For now, Loki leans ever so slightly closer to Thor, close enough that he can feel his brother's warmth. Loki himself is perpetually cold, fingers long and lean, skin pale. He allows himself this one moment of vulnerability.
He hasn't yet considered the possibility that he could die first.
Or leave first. There isn't much of a difference, after all.
The truth is this: Loki tells stories. Most people think of them as fabrications, but they are both fictional and real, from a certain point of view.
"I never missed you until you were gone," Thor says, or at least it sounds like him. Loki sits slumped in one of the TVA's wheeled chairs. Occasionally, he spins himself around in circles to disorient himself from their bland surroundings.
"I'm not sure if that's what Thor would actually say, or if it's just my wishful thinking," Loki drawls out. When he had decided to take a short break from decades of research, he hadn't expected to be bothered by his brother, but he's getting the sense that he should start expecting it by now. He is, after all, supposed to be prepared for Thor's antics.
He used to be prepared, at least, before he lost control of everything and especially his own life.
"It could be both," Thor says, casually leant back against a nearby desk. Loki wishes he could collapse the desk and topple Thor over, but alas, he is too exhausted to use magic at the moment.
Eventually, Loki murmurs, "I never missed you until I was gone, too. How selfish of me." Because he hadn't missed Thor for Thor, exactly. He'd missed him because he'd been undergoing far worse under Thanos, and anything and anyone would have been an improvement to his situation at the time. He'd imagined Thor far too many times, then, hallucinated his dramatic rescue, his warmth, his voice, his humor.
Not unlike now, actually.
"There is a version of you who dies on Svartalfheim in my arms," Thor says.
Loki groans. "Please don't remind me of that."
"I think that would have been the first time in several years that I had held you in my arms."
Loki decides not to point out the odd use of past tense. "Your point?" he asks bitterly. He closes his eyes and rests his head against the chair. When was the last time he slept?
It feels like he has all the time in the world and yet not enough.
He hears Thor sigh and shift. He walks towards Loki, and Loki does not have the heart to push him away, not anymore. "Now, with your time slipping," he says, "it has been much longer. Several centuries, in fact."
"Has it been?" Loki murmurs, opening his eyes slowly. He's lost track.
"Loki," Thor says fervently, and Loki hates it when he uses that tone of voice. It still makes his traitorous heart constrict, even after all this time. Though, all this time is still nothing compared to the life they have shared.
"Yes, Thor?"
"Loki, can I give you a hug?"
Loki frowns. "For your benefit or mine?"
Thor frowns, too, but Loki is more inclined to call it a pout. "Both," he says stubbornly.
Loki sighs, gives in because he's apparently weak, and stands up. They wrap their arms around each other. Thor grips him tightly like he has always done, like he never wants to let Loki go. Loki does the same, because this is an illusion, and he wants to make it count.
"You're not even real," he whispers into Thor's shoulder.
"I am both real and not real, both your Thor and not, both a figment of your imagination and not," Thor murmurs in response. "All of those can be true here, where timelines are breaking apart at the seams."
And now, even this Thor, whatever he is, is gone too.
He thought he had known what being lonely meant.
He was wrong.
It is lonelier than that.
Decided there wasn't enough Thor in the Loki show and came up with this. Thanks for reading!