bright burn and shadows
———————————————————
It’s a scaling problem.
Doesn’t matter how many times they do it.
Doesn’t matter how fast they do it.
It doesn’t matter.
They can never keep up with the branches and the split-offs, they can never keep up with how many new timelines keep emerging with each and every second that passes. It was arrogant of them to even try—it was arrogant of them to even /believe/ they could.
Nothing can contain the universe unleashed.
Loki wasted centuries—/millennia/—slipping through time to gain as much knowledge as he could to stop this, only for everything to be…
Inevitable.
God, he hates that word.
If he thought he couldn’t stand to hear it coming from Thanos every ten minutes when he was living under the titan’s wing, it’s even worse now.
Inevitable.
Loki digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and tries not to weep.
He is /exhausted/.
He has all the time in the cosmos, and yet he has no time at all.
The others clamor around him, but Loki already knows what he has to do. But by the Norns, he is /scared/. He doesn’t /want/ to. He isn’t the hero, he isn’t the one known to make the sacrifice, he isn’t the one with the boundless optimism.
He’d told Sylvie that hope is hard.
He hadn’t been lying.
Loki wonders if this is what Thor always had to carry around—his stupid, oafish, bright burning brother. He was always meant to be the shadow to Thor’s light.
He was always destined to lose.
Except… except Mobius doesn’t think so.
Sylvie, despite the chaos she carries with her, has decided to put her trust in him.
The others…
He remembers Mobius’ words, about how purpose was usually more burden than glory. Sylvie’s own fierce declaration bounces around in his head too—who gets to decide that they can’t die fighting? He hears the echo of another lecture—seems so long ago now—Thor’s words playing out on a screen, because he never got to that point in his life to actually remember them firsthand.
About how life is about growth.
Is about change.
How he thought Loki resisted that.
“You’ll always be the god of mischief,” the projection of his brother had been saying, “but you could be more.”
—————————————————————
He slips in just in time to catch the stopper.
“I’m here.”
The slow smile that appears on Thor’s face makes Loki’s heavy heart just a little easier to carry. His brother doesn’t come over to give him the hug Loki knows he’d just been offering, and he very nearly breaks then and there.
“Now give us a kiss.”
Thor shakes his head and chuckles, pouring another glass of whatever he’d found and offering it up. Loki accepts it, looking down at the swirling liquid.
He’s stalling.
Soon enough, this will fade too.
“How do you do it?”
“How do I do what?”
Loki sets the drink down, prompting Thor to do the same, a frown on his face. His expression has become guarded, as though he’s expecting Loki to deliver some terrible news.
“Be a hero. How do you know you’re making the right choice?”
Now that the words are out, he can’t take them back—can’t stop himself from asking more.
“How do you live with any of it knowing you could’ve done something else, something more? How do you know you’ve done enough—exhausted all other options? How do you know you aren’t just making things /worse/?”
He’s spiraling.
He’s spiraling.
Loki can’t stop, and now Thor is right in front of him, hands on his shoulders. He hadn’t even meant to come here—not /here/—of all places, where he isn’t even sure if his brother trusts him or would sooner throw him out the garbage chutes.
“What are you talking about?”
“How do I know I’m not going to destroy everything?”
“Loki… tell me what you’re talking about. Right now. What’s happening? Why are you so—“
“I’m afraid,” Loki admits, breaths trembling, voice a whisper. A tear slips down his cheek and more follow to join it. “I’m /terrified/. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Do what?” Thor asks, shaking him as he does, more than just a little alarmed now. Loki grabs fistfuls of his brother’s tattered cape, breaths harsh. “Hey, Loki, sshh. It’s okay. We’re okay. Whatever it is, we’ll do it together.”
“We can’t. I’ll be alone.”
The hand settling at the nape of his neck grounds him, and he’s pulled forward onto a broad chest, his forehead tucked under his brother’s chin. He isn’t short enough anymore for Thor to pull it off, but it works anyways. The deep rumble of his older brother’s voice is pure resolve.
“Never,” Thor grunts. “/Never/, little brother.”
Such a simpleton.
If only he knew.
If only Loki could tell him.
“Tell me what’s happening. Whatever it is, we’ll face it together,” Thor declares. “You are my brother. My /younger/ brother. No matter how many times you stab me, or trick me, or stand against me, I will always stand between you and anything that would harm you.”
He hasn’t even noticed that the Loki that stands before him now is entirely different from the one that was just here.
The thought alone drives the knife in his chest even deeper.
“You asked how I do any of it? How I know if I’m making the right choice? I /don’t/, Loki. I don’t,” Thor says, pulling away and grabbing his face between both hands. “But if I know it will protect the ones I am responsible for, if I know you came to me and asked me for help, whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
“Anything?”
Loki wonders if, had he opened up to his brother before now, he would’ve gotten the same reassurance.
“Anything. So tell me what it is, Loki. I will bear any burden for you.”
No.
No.
No.
That’s just it, isn’t it?
Thor can’t carry this burden.
No one else can—and Loki has been trying to pass it off, trying to delay in the hopes that someone would /step up/.
And now someone has, and Loki finds that he can’t. He doesn’t want to let anyone else bear the brunt of this disaster, let alone his brother, who Loki knows already has too much on his shoulders.
He steps away, his choice made.
“No.”
“Loki—“
“Thank you, brother,” he takes a breath, and then another. Loki feels only two things then—resignation, and a calm that settles over him at the conclusion he reaches. “I’ll make all of you proud.”
“Loki—“
—————————————————————
The burden is his, and Loki will carry it for as long as he needs to.
————————————————————
“I know what I want, what kind of god I need to be — for you, for all of us.”
—Fin—