Chapter Text
Thor shut the hatch behind him, and when he turned around, he couldn’t help but see the containment room, brightly lit among the darker walkways. As he approached, he inhaled a deep breath to try to settle himself.
The mental transfer meant he would still look the same to Loki, and he was glad to get his eye back. If he could do this without revealing the future, so much the better. He’d had little choice but to reveal the truth to the humans, since the transfer had happened in plain view of the mortals and been rather more visible than he had expected. But he’d bulled his way through the explanations and their doubt to get to this moment, because it was necessary.
There is only one path I see, Strange had told Stark. Loki is the focus to changing the course of time. Someone must go back.
Of course it had to be Thor. It was a one-way trip, and Thor had nothing to lose and everything to gain by inhabiting his past self and trying to create a new timeline.
Finally he stood before the glass, and Loki lifted his head to look back, on the other side. Thor’s eyes roved his face eagerly. He was alive. Perhaps not wholly well, but still… this was before grief and loss, before the pretense of being Odin, before the arrival of Hela and Sakaar, had all left their mark.
How did I ever think this was right? Thor wondered, staring at Loki trapped behind the glass. How did I not stop to think about why?
Loki stared at him, unblinking eyes glittering in the bright light. “So… the spider failed. Now you come to me to...to do what? Warn me that you can’t protect me from them?” he asked. “They intend to hurt me and there is nothing you can do to stop them unless I tell you about the tesseract?”
The silky cold words slid around Thor, unheeded. They didn’t mean anything, because Thor knew the truth this time.
When his accusation found no reaction, a flicker of a frown passed over his face, and Loki stood up to stalk to the glass, directly opposite Thor. His head cocked a little and his frown returned. “There’s something… different about you, brother,” the scathing word dripped from his tongue, but Thor didn’t care because Thor remembered other words,
“I, Loki, prince of Asgard, Odinson…”
He wrenched his thoughts away from that lest his desperate grief overcome him. It was good to note that Loki, even while being suborned by Thanos, was still observant and clever to notice this Thor standing before him had changed.
But bandying words was Loki’s game, and Thor didn’t have time to play it. Time to cut to the end. “I know,” he said abruptly.
Loki twitched before he recovered, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Oh? You know something? Well, that’s a surprise, you usually know so very little.”
“Yes,” Thor agreed steadily, and Loki’s gaze flickered at the admission. “It’s true. There’s much I did not know, Loki, what I never understood about what you felt in Asgard. And I do want to talk about all that and find our way back to being brothers. I missed you when I thought you dead.” And when I knew you were dead. “But I know now where you were. I know about the madman. I know about Thanos.”
Loki flinched and his eyes immediately snapped to the side, as if he expected to find someone there. His posture went rigid, and for a second he didn’t move at all. He let out a sound that probably was supposed to be a careless laugh, but emerged too high-pitched and nervous. He whirled, turning his back. “You know nothing,” he answered and sneered, “As always.”
“This time, brother, I know more than you do,” Thor replied softly. “I know the tesseract is in New York. I know what the scepter is.”
He turned, eyes glinting with an avarice that felt unnatural. “It is power.”
“It’s the Mind Gem,” Thor said.
Loki’s eyes went wide and he staggered back a step. He hadn’t known, Thor realized then; he hadn’t known what he carried.
“You lie,” Loki accused but discarded the idea immediately, knowing it was true. the revelation seemed to hit like Mjolnir, right to his chest, and all the color went out of his face under the bright light. “No. No, that cannot – I – How--” He stumbled blindly backward until his boot caught the wall and he collapsed back on the small bench. “The Mind Gem.” He stared blankly, not seeing Thor or the Helicarrier. “That’s why… I couldn’t stop him. Sifting my memories, finding the worst ones, again and again...” he whispered. He reached up and tugged at his hair. He’d tried to flatten it so hard the ends were curling up in a spiky look he would despise if he could see it, and pushing his fingers through the stiff strands at his temples loosened some to fall across his face. “They changed, I knew they changed, but I don’t remember what they were.”
Thor shut his eyes pained, remembering that, too. I remember you tossing me into an abyss. What Thor had ignored as ‘madness’, had been true, because someone else had twisted his memories.
Loki lowered his hands to look at them as if they belonged to someone else, turning his wrists and flexing his fingers to watch them. “I thought I was strong.” He shook his head once, letting out a laugh that sounded more like a sob caught in his throat.
Thor knew what Thanos was like from Gamora and Nebula now, though it was enough to see Loki’s distant stare and shaking hands.
Thor put a hand flat on the glass. “Loki, look at me. I’m here. I can help you.”
Loki’s head lifted slowly until his eyes met Thor’s. There was no hope in them. “No. No one can. He’ll come. Without me, he’ll still come. You don’t understand what he is.”
“I do. I’ve learned … a lot, since I saw you last.” Which to Loki was less than a day, but to Thor was years and a lifetime ago. I learned that we can only stop all of it by helping you.
“We can stop him, Loki. We can, I know how. But I need your help.”
The laugh that time was sharp and disbelieving. “You think I can help you? There’s nothing I can do to stop any of it. It’s too late. It was too late when I came to this benighted hellscape of a world. It was too late when Thanos found out it has two Infinity Stones. He will come and burn this world to ash and there is nothing you can do to stop it!”
Thor hated how Loki’s voice turned ragged as it rose. Because it was fear doing that to his brother, and the Loki before Thanos had never showed fear of anything. He was always scrappy with a quip and a grin, before he threw a dagger in the enemy’s face. But not fearful, and not despairing.
If only I had confronted you about the year you were missing the first time around, none of this might have happened.
“Not me alone,” Thor agreed, though he recalled slamming Stormbreaker in Thanos’ chest and thought that had been pretty close to stopping Thanos. Next time, his head. But that wasn’t the goal right now. “You and I together can stop him. With the mortals.” Loki snorted. Thor almost smiled and reassured him, ”They have power, more than you know, but so do you, Loki. So do I. Mother said it best,” his voice broke, remembering she was still alive this time, he would have to make sure he changed that fate also. “You and I work best together, not apart. We can defeat him.”
“You’re a fool,” Loki said, but he sounded weary, not scathing, so Thor thought he could try again.
“We have two Gems; he has none. Surely that gives us the advantage.”
“Advantage? You really are a fool,” Loki snapped back but the clever part of his mind kicked in as he considered the idea. He leaned back, gaze up at the ceiling and tapped his fingers on his trousers. Then his eyes met Thor’s. “You realize what you ask? If he lives through this-- and there is nothing that can kill him that I know of – he promised – he will find me.”
He did, Loki; he will. Which is why he has to die.
Thor remembered crawling to Loki’s body and had to look away so Loki wouldn’t see. He kept his voice as level as he could. “I understand. It won’t come to that.” His hands clenched tightly, and he said, vowing to Loki directly, “I won’t let that happen.”
“Thor.” Loki returned to the glass to look Thor in the eye. “Let me make this clear. I would rather be dead than return there,” he said, voice soft but intense. He meant it. “I will kill myself, I swear.”
Not if he kills you first, Thor thought, heart aching at the memory, but he nodded once. ”I won’t let it happen, Loki, I promise you. We will stop him.”
Loki peered into his face before turning away, folding his arms. “Fine. Here is how I help you: if you know where the tesseract is, then put the scepter into the portal once it’s made. It will collapse.”
“You know about the flaw?” Thor blurted, surprised.
His smile was thin and humorless. “Always put a door into your working, so it can’t be used against you. Basic rule of sorcery. I’m curious how you know about it though?” he gazed at Thor, eyes narrowed suspiciously..
Thor cast around for an explanation. “Selvig.”
“Ah.” Loki accepted the answer and brought his hands together to rub a thumb over his opposite hand. After a moment, he shrugged his shoulders. “If you already knew that, what do you want from me?”
“To fight at my side once more,” Thor declared. “To battle these invaders and Thanos and his minions. To avenge yourself on them.”
Loki lacked enthusiasm for that, merely gazing back at Thor as if he thought there was a snare in Thor’s words. But Thor was confident with Loki revealing the flaw in the portal that his brother was no longer doing Thanos’ bidding. So he turned around, walked straight to the control panel, and found the button to open the cylinder.
The transparent material rotated aside, opening a doorway. Loki eyed it, not moving.
“Come, brother,” Thor entreated, gesturing. “Join us.”
“Am I still on Sanctuary? Is this a test?” he asked, holding up both hands as if to present no threat. “Did I not pass all of these?”
Stricken, Thor shook his head. “No, brother, this is real. I’m here.” But he watched carefully – if Loki truly thought this was a test by Thanos, he would strike at Thor to prove his loyalty.
But he was wrong about the attack Loki would choose.
As he passed Thor, leaving the cell, he eyed Thor as warily as Thor was watching him.
“You see, I have a problem,” Loki said in a mild conversational tone. “You know too much.” He struck, hand darting out to Thor’s forehead. “Who are you?”
“Loki – no!”
But it was too late-- the memories struck, pulled ruthlessly from Thor’s mind, a deluge of pain--
… Loki on the balcony of Stark Tower, Loki in muzzle and chains, Frigga dying, Loki dying on Svartalfheim, Odin dying, Hela attacking, Sakaar, Asgard on fire… Thanos on the ship and Loki’s eyes empty in death…
Thor wrenched himself back, breathing hard and shaking.
White-faced, Loki stared at him, lips parted. “I’m dead,” he whispered.
Thor couldn’t take the devastation in his face and threw his arms around him, clutching him to his chest. “No, no, you’re not,” he whispered into Loki’s hair, while Loki stood rigidly in the embrace. “I came back to change it all, Loki, it’s not going to happen. We can stop it. None of it has to happen. I’m sorry you had to see any of that, I didn’t want you to see it, I’m so sorry...” His eyes burned with tears and he kissed Loki’s temple.
“Please, brother,” he murmured, “Now you know the truth. You know all of it that will happen, but we can change it. You and I, together.”
Loki was like a statue in his arms, until he jerked, shoving at Thor to squirm out of his reach. Chest heaving for breath, he held himself still, arms crossed around his body. “You’re from the future,” he said finally, his voice thin and strained. “A future in which not only I’m dead, but millions – billions – of people are gone. Thanos wins.”
Thor looked at his back and didn’t know what to say to make this better. If he could. He’d lived it – there was no ‘better’. “Yes,” he answered finally. “And we – the Avengers in the future - found a way to send me back to undo it.”
“And you came to me,” Loki said, and he started to tremble. Thor thought it was fear or anguish, until it became clear it was with laughter. “The one who proved the most helpless and useless against him, and you came to me.”
Thor grabbed his shoulders and spun him around to face him again, shaking him lightly out of the rising hysteria. “You are none of those things. You are a warrior. A sorcerer. A prince of Asgard." Loki opened his mouth to reject that declaration and Thor shook him again. “Stop that. I know the truth, I’ve seen it. I know who you are better than you do.”
For a moment Loki stared into his eyes, and in case he was still reading Thor’s mind, Thor focused only on that moment when Loki had saved Asgard. He’d made his choice: to save, not to destroy. In a low voice, not letting go of Loki’s shoulders, Thor said, “You are a hero. You are my brother. That’s what matters. Right now, that is all that matters. We can do this. We have to do this. As a friend said, let us go kick names and take ass.”
Loki blinked, frowned, and stirred into amusement with a twist of his lips. “That … doesn’t sound quite right.”
“The sentiment is. Trust me, Loki – please,” he shifted his grip to the base of Loki’s throat and shoulder, where his fingers could smooth the soft skin at his nape, “we can fix it.”
Loki’s lips and throat worked without any words emerging, and his eyes had a sheen of tears, and with a shock Thor recalled that same expression from atop Stark Tower. Loki was about to say the same despairing words: it’s too late.
So Thor got in first. “It’s not too late. That’s why I’m here.”
Loki stared into his eyes, and Thor gave back only his resolve. It couldn’t be too late; for the billions of souls out there stolen in the snap, and for Thor’s family and people, Thor would put it right.
Blinking the wetness away, Loki swallowed hard. “All right,” he whispered. For that instant, Thor saw doubt and fear pass through his eyes and Loki’s fingers dug into Thor’s arms like claws. But then he straightened, cleared his throat and said in a stronger voice, “I like this universe. Let’s kill that bastard before he ruins it.”
Thor smiled with relief and leaned in to kiss Loki’s forehead. “It’s going to be all right.”
Loki twisted away. “You’re wasting time.” He turned to head for the exit.
Thor glanced up to where the camera was, and gave a double-thumbs up gesture with a grin. The mortals were going to be less enthusiastic, but Thor didn’t care. Loki was with them now, and that was all that mattered.