Sometimes the End is Just the End (but not Yet)
He had decided to find Thor.
He didn’t know how or if freedom from the TVA was even possible – but he was going to find him.
One way or another.
“He’s not going to forgive you,” Mobius said, memory wiped, their friendship snapped into non-existence - The pattern of Loki’s not-life of late. “I’m tellin’ ya, Loki. You’ve truly used your last chance with him.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe not.
Thor’s rath would be better than this. Better than trying to prove to Mobius the Loki he had been wasn’t the Loki he would always be. He would come back. If he could find his way back to Thor – He could find his way back to Mobius. But too much time – er, not time had passed.
He needed to find Thor.
“And say what?” Thor: Light dying out of his eyes and disappointment splashing across his face like cast-away watercolors. “You’ll change? This time will be different?”
“And round and round we go.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Better do it quickly.”
“Are ya even payn’ attention, Loki? All the pain and destruction you’ve caused – all the people you’ve killed. Do you -” Thor smirked, leaning back with elbows stretched above his head to enjoy Mobius giving the ever-present Loki lashing.
“Enjoy hurting people?” He glanced at Thor. Board. Annoyed.
“Ah. Um. Do you?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
“Evidence would suggest otherwise.”
“Then I shall not bother to unconvince you.” Mobius huffed in frustration and continued his monologue of Loki’s destiny: What it should have been, what it would never be. What it was.
“You see, all Lokis have the same path.”
“They die.”
“Exactly.”
After Mobius left, Thor accounted the centuries of Loki’s betrayal, “Even after we finally caught that Sea Monster, the one I had been stalking for months, you told father you captured it.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“How do you remember it?”
How did he remember it? Seafoam clinging to his lashes. Sun glinting off their armor. The taste of salt on his lips. Thor’s laughter echoing off the coves as he tackled Loki into the sea. And he wondered. When was the exact moment he stopped being happy, and Thor’s shadow stole the sun.
He rubbed his face wearily. This was no place for childish memories. “We never did catch that bloody sea monster.”
A sigh. Deep and hollow. “So, you re-write history now as well?”
“Do you truly think so little of me, brother?”
“Not every moment we lived was tarnished by cheap illusions. Besides, I can change.”
“So, you’ve told me.”
Even in the TVA, where time was nonexistent, he felt it slipping and pulling him into eternal damnation.
It was the marks of age on the illusion that bothered him. The nagging feeling of time ceasing to remain endless for Gods and their Villains.
The thought plagued him. Hovering at the back of his mind as he plotted his escape. Gnawing at him through repetitive reminders of his betrayal playing obnoxiously across gold screens. In the rare moments between Thor’s illusions, he studied the scares of age edged in Thor’s frame and tried to piece together memories of a life he would have lived.
“Are you worried your time is finally running out?” When did the lines creep into the corners of Thor’s eyes? The silver streak into his hair? “That by the time you finally come to rescue me, the sand will have slipped through the hourglass?”
“You’re more than capable of rescuing yourself,” He sighed, eyes averted, hardly glancing at the God’s hand curled around his side or acknowledging his ever-halting breath. “And we do die eventually. Our immortality isn’t infinite.”
“Give or take 5,000 years.”
He blinked. The phrase negged at him as if he’d said it before. Had he? It pulled him towards a memory he couldn’t place. Even after seeing the greatest hits of his life, the pieces of thousands of years wouldn’t come back. He tried to pull them from the corners of his brain and remember the life Mobius swore he lived. To understand. If his destiny was only betrayal and death, why had the Gods called him into existence in the first place?
We don’t control our destiny.
And yet.
He would find a way. If he had to find the gods themselves and make them change his path, he would do it.
Quickly wasn’t a word that held meaning in the TVA. He created plans to reach the rift, earn Mobius's trust, dodge TVA s, and escape haunted time loops desperate to suck him in.
Yet while he plotted, he couldn’t escape the feeling Illusion Thor was a depiction of the real Thor. Illusion Thor was slipping away. Slowly. If Loki hadn’t spent every non-existing hour with him, he would have missed it.
“Is he okay?” It sounded stupid. Pathetic. Insanity clinging around the edges.
“Who?”
“Thor.”
“Oh. How would I know?”
“You’re connected to him. I feel his energy in your eyes.”
“I am only what you create me to be.”
“And if what I created you to be is an exact illusion of my brother’s current self?”
“Only you know the extent of your magic.”
“Tell me.”
A pause. Graying skin and soulless eyes stared through him. No mark of the God he once was. “Don’t you know?”
“I assure you, brother, I haven't the faintest.”
“He’s lost, Loki. Utterly lost.”
“I’m going to get back to him. I’ve devised a plan.” He preferred the illusion now. Thor’s constant mockery spurred him into defiance, making him determined to prove time nor destiny could choose the path of a would-be God. “The TVA has a rift. I found it. I just need to land in the right timeline.”
Thor nodded. Eyes glazed over, fingers clutching the space between his ribs and protruding hip bone. “Not today, Loki. I grow weary of your constant lies.”
“Trust me.”
“Do you see me a fool?”
“What else could you have to lose?” Gray met green. When did his eyes turn gray?
“Hope.”
“I thought you’d lost that long ago.”
“He has but a fragment.” A breath. Century-old memories playing across his face.
“Thor still has hope?” He felt the air suffocating him - pulling him into the storm of non-existence.
“Yes.” A faint sliver of blue flashed across his eyes.
“In me?” He barely rasped the question - desperate for oxygen to flood back into his lungs. The air was going to drown him; he was certain of it.
“Yes.” A pause. Light flickering in shades of faded blue. “He waits.”
“What do you think, brother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Better hurry.” The portal-slash-rift was smaller than he’d assumed it would be. It was different on Asgard when Heimdall opened the portal to earth. More electric. Dark and stormy as if they had found a tornado’s core. He stepped closer. Swirling darkness, no end in sight. “What if it doesn't work?”
“It has to.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then my destiny will be complete.”
“We could stay here—Thor with your illusion and you with mine. We could find purpose again. We could rule the TVA.”
“Shut up, Thor. It’s madness.”
“Is it?”
He didn’t know.
He fell for eternity, timelines and multiverses clashing and bursting apart. A thousand timelines tearing at his skin, each seeming to want a piece of this so-called God. This could be it, he thought dimly, my inevitable destiny.
It wasn’t the dying that terrified him. It was dying the TVA. With nobody to find his body or understand how he fought against what was set in stone before his birth. If he died now, falling between galaxies, skin burning, arms clutched around himself for a fragment of protection, someone, in some timeline, would find him. He wouldn’t simply be zapped out of time; he would have made it home.
Whatever home that happened to be.
He was thinking about Sea Monsters and Illusions made of spun gold and stardust when the darkness swallowed him.
It was a memory.
It had to be.
Thor, somewhere between boy and man, chasing the sea to and from the shore, his laughter drifting over the waves. Suddenly he was leaning over him, droplets of sea falling into his eyes. “Come, Loki! We shall chase the monster till it surrenders!”
“Thor?”
“Did the wave knocking you off your feet adle your brain?” He reached down and gripped Loki’s forearm, pulling him to his feet. He swayed unsteadily.
“Are we in Asgard?”
“Enough tricks, brother.” But he laughed the phrase instead of tossing it out bitterly, “The monsters don’t wait. Even for Gods!” He forgot. How did he ever forget? The way Thor called him brother? Laughed as if the sun would never set and spent his days chasing sea monsters and spinning tales of gallant adventures of defending Asgard?
How could he have forgotten the simplicity of his childhood?
How could he not?
He watched Thor then. Leaping to the sea, throwing his hammer at the monster. Sun glinting off his gold and tangling in his smile. “Come, Loki, let us catch the monster and make father proud!”
He didn’t know.
Not then, in days of youth and untamed magic. Of a life without nightmares of destiny and aching for purpose.
He could stay here, he thought, pretend to be the Loki he was and replace his past self. He could start over and change his destiny. He could choose a different path.
It would be madness.
But it didn’t matter.
Thor came back, sputtering sea water and cursing the monster. “Don’t worry, brother, we can be heroes another day.”
Loki smiled, tasting salted air and fragments of magic, “They’ll be other monsters, brother, trust me.”
Thor laughed and threw his arm around Loki’s shoulder. He reached out to Thor as if to return the gesture, but when he touched him, he went spinning.
This time he didn’t care if he ever landed in a timeline at all.
The rift tossed him to earth like an alien's vomit.
He instantly regretted leaving the TVA, where he was void of all responsibility and had infinity to pity himself. Earth was too bright. Too real. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, and exhaustion clung to him like wet wool– nothing he’d ever known in his lifetime or the TVA... His skin burned. Raw from hungry timelines and tossed against broken trees and crushed rock. He felt unbalanced – As if he was in danger of disappearing at any moment.
He heard the Avengers were gone. Ironman dead. Captain America missing. Black Widow gone. “What do you mean gone?” he asked the comic store owner, seeing the brightly colored images of his nemesis and taking it as his first clue.
The store owner shrugged, “Some of the conspiracy theorists say she isn’t dead. That she just ran off with Banner to finally find some peace.”
“The Hulk?” Shock. Slight disgust. “Where is he then?”
“Missing too.” The shopkeeper went back to sorting through piles of comics: Littlemore than dusty piles of fiction to prove the existence of earth’s mightiest heroes.
The others were unheard from. They left a new team of clueless armatures to rule the earth while they limped away. Death clinging around the ones who survived. Shattered by the world, they swore to protect.
He didn’t believe the comic store owner. Not at first. Till he stumbled upon a drunken Valkyrie. “It’s true.” She laughed bitterly, “They’ve gone and died and left the world without its heroes.”
“What of Thor?”
“What of him?”
“He lives?”
“I assume so. Not that he let me know.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He was living in new Asgard.” She belched, bitter and uninterested. They’d abandoned her too—Thor most of all.
“And now?”
“Nobody knows. They say he went mad.”
“Mad?”
“Yes.” Another deep drink of her beer. “Haven’t we all?”