“It’s kind of inaccurate, isn’t it, mother?”
“What is, dear?”
“Yggdrasil. If what the books say are true, if it truly is /everything/, what about the realms beyond the Nine? What about dreams, and visions, and what’s come to pass, what will happen in the future? I know dabbling with time magic is forbidden, but it’s been /done/. How does a tree represent all of that?”
“Are you ready to accept my answer to that?”
“Not really.”
A laugh.
“I assume you’ll seek those answers out yourself?”
“Of course.”
——————————————————
As soon as the loom is broken, darkness descends, and what’s left are the frayed strands of infinite realities—dying branches.
Loki remembers the conversation from what feels like an infinite lifetimes ago. He’d scoffed, and rolled his eyes at the texts and tomes he’d read through to satiate his curiosity. It’s only now, standing here and staring at all the threads does he realize he hadn’t really found an answer that satisfied him.
Looms.
Threads.
Branches.
Trees.
Timelines.
In the grand scheme of things, everything comes back to this. The universe comes back to this, almost as though it’s self-correcting, whether through He Who Remains or some other entity.
Chaos emerging from order.
Order emerging from chaos.
Perhaps there will be a He Who Comes After.
Loki reaches out and takes one of the threads, and it /pulses/ at his touch, and he /sees/.
A world, an entire universe in a single fiber floating in space—infinite lives and infinite stories. Funnily enough, as though the universe is taunting him, it’s a branch of reality where Odin does not bring him back to Asgard. He sees the story unfold—an ugly one, a short one for the small baby in that temple, left to die.
Cold, hungry, afraid.
Alone.
Loki lets it go.
The threads begin to dim once more.
He grabs another, weaving his magic into it, and lets the stories play out, but really, he only takes a peep at the other version of his own life.
Thor sitting in the throne, all of Asgard adore him, himself at his brother’s side. This timeline, his brother has been tempered, is a wise and noble king that leads them to prosperity. Odin dying, Hela rising. Ragnarok comes to pass, but Asgard has always been a people, not a place.
Another.
Loki is never born.
Thor is never born.
Odin and his executioner are bringing the Nine to their knees.
Another.
The roles have been reversed. He is beloved on Asgard. His brother is the one in the shadows.
Loki lets the realities siphon from his being, lets the threads come to cling on. He gathers more, and a rift opens up, beckoning him. The weight of what little timelines he’s collected is building. It gathers and pools in his eyes, and he looks back once and thinks he sees Sylvie shaking her head. He thinks he sees the disbelief on Mobius’ face.
No more.
Loki smiles.
The first step he takes off the platform feels like it should echo around the hollow that surrounds him, that it should bounce off the nothingness and reverberate all across the cosmos. It doesn’t, of course. He knows this perfectly well—he’s been in the void before, and this feels uncomfortably familiar.
The next step he takes, bright green ripples across on the space where his foot lands. It upsets the stillness, upsets the silence. There is no ground beneath, and yet it comes to life when Loki takes another step, eagerly urging him further in.
He thought he would hesitate at the precipice, but he doesn’t—he doesn’t look back either, because if he does, he knows he will falter.
Loki looks at all the branches, all of them look as though they’re trying to get to him now, all of them desperate to have a chance. He thinks about his own life—all of the chances he’s been given, and yells out as he gathers more.
More.
A reality where Tony Stark gets to raise his daughter.
A reality where Sif has golden hair.
More.
More.
A reality where Steve Rogers dies a heroic death.
Where Bruce Banner doesn’t have the beast.
A reality where Hela is /good/.
More.
More.
More.
One where Jotunheim prospers.
One where a faceless mother—he doesn’t know her, doesn’t even have the first inkling as to who she might be—doesn’t miscarry her child.
One where all manner of tragedies come to pass, and yet the branch still /thrums/ with life.
More.
Realities were his friends… his loved ones….
…
…
…
are happy.
…..
…..
…..
When he finally sits on his gilded throne, when the weight of all those stories settle upon his being, all Loki can do is let it happen.
Once more, there is silence.
…….
…….
Once more, he is alone.
……
……
……
He pulls the very fabrics of the universe together, weaves it as deftly and as surely as he remembers weaving mother’s tapestries in his youth.
She would be proud, Loki thinks.
They all would be.
…..
…..
When it all comes together, Loki finally admits perhaps he was the foolish one, for not believing all of those stories would make a thrumming, pulsing, /living/ tree.
…..
…..
He has his throne, he has his crown.
……
He’d thought it would feel heavy.
……
……
It doesn’t.