Chapter 1
This wasn’t how it was meant to go.
Loki raced through the battlefield, leaping over fallen soldiers and trying his very best not to see familiar faces in the broken bodies.
It can't end like this.
He was on Midgard, the sorry excuse for a realm the only thing left standing between Thanos and utter destruction of the entire universe. So many had fallen already - the blonde super-soldier overwhelmed by Thanos’s army, the redhead taken by Ebony Maw, Thor’s head crushed –
nodon’tthinkaboutit
He couldn’t accept it. He refused to.
The time stone.
Thanos already had all the others, but the sorcerer wearing the time stone around his neck was a wily one, managing to evade the titan even now. Loki had to get to it, he just had to. There was no other option, no one could defeat Thanos now, and even if they did, what worth was a victory now? After the destruction left behind Thanos’s every step on his mad search through the cosmos; planets shattered and entire species made extinct all for some fucking rocks?
Loki ran faster, ignoring the burning in his thighs, the gaping hole in the side of his abdomen from the sword of some faceless soldier (now dead), the heartache burning through his chest. He only had one goal now, and he refused to give up, he refused, he just had to getthestonewhereisitpleasedontbelostnotyetfasterfasterfaster-
In the end it was the sorcerer who found him first, appearing before him in a shower of golden sparks and nearly being overrun by Loki as a result.
“Here, take it, quickly, hurry.”
The sorcerer looked far less put together than the last time they’d met, blood running down the side of his face and dirt marring all the rest of him. Yet all this Loki took in only peripherally, focusing instead on the stone the other thrust into his hands.
Power.
Overwhelming, aching power, racing through the very being of Loki, ripping away anything else that might matter, burning and freezing and tearing apart Loki’s very soul, until the only thing left was greengreengreen.
“It was always you, God of Chaos.”
Sorcerer? Where was he? Loki could not see, though he was pretty sure he ought to be able to, considering he had eyes. Wait, did he?
“You’ve seen what happens. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Yes, he did have eyes. He remembered now, as well as he remembered the citizens of Asgard scorning the colour, as green as the envy in his heart, they'd said.
“It will take you back, to the perfect moment.”
Loki hadn’t held any envy in his heart at all, though. Perhaps it grew afterwards, like bad luck brought into being only after it was jinxed.
“Don’t mess this up, Loki. You’ve got only one chance.”
Loki was quite fond of the colour of his eyes. Perhaps, instead of looking outwards, he was now looking inwards, finally getting to experience the envious colour of his bitter, worthless heart firsthand.
“Loki?”
Without a warning, his vision cleared as quickly as his mind did.
His first thought was this: Of course you have eyes, you fucking idiot.
His second thought: What upon the Norns was that two-bit sorcerer blabbering on about?
And his third thought was as follows: What the fuck.
For before him lay not the battlefield of fallen comrades, but his brother, two-eyed and full of righteous indignation, kneeling before the All-Father. There was no more green, no more power coursing through his soul, and only his arm radiated any pain.
His left arm.
The one that the First Giant grabbed when Thor had dragged him to Jotunheim.
When his brother was banished to Midgard, right here in this very observatory.
…
Oh, shit.