MCU Previews
Icy Diplomacy
“There are matters that I must attend to, and they cannot wait. When I am able, I will give you all the answers you seek; I know I owe them to you. Until then, know this: Whatever else you are, you are still Loki, first and foremost.”
Glad to See You're Not Dead, Then (Now What?)
For long minutes he held her tightly; she clutched at his body, as if to reassure herself of its solidity, and he marveled at how far she had come since the dead-eyed assassin that Clint had inexplicably chosen not to take out, but to bring in.
A Stray Parrot in Queens
“In ten minutes, he showed more concern for my person and my feelings than I’ve ever gotten from the man I once called ‘Father’. If there is anything I can do to aid him, in any capacity, that boy has my loyalty, for the rest of his short life.”
To the Victor, by Consent of the Spoils
“I must admit to some confusion; were you not the one who explained how greatly humans value their freedom to choose? And yet now you beg me not to allow the choice. You ask me to surrender every possible pleasure of victory; is my offer so unreasonable? No, my dear lady, I fear that in this, I cannot bend.”
Tremble and Serve
I have this in one set of notes, but I'm having trouble finding it in my rough drafts for this fic. But it's still a better clip (less spoilery) than the next best choice, so:
The last time they’d been alone together, Tony had been collapsed at Loki’s feet; Loki had picked him up by the throat and thrown him out a window. He’d barely survived, and not just from the fall; he’d spent over a week with severe neck pain, barely able to lie down, on muscle relaxants and off alcohol (Pepper had confiscated Tony’s entire stash, and then had a Talk with him about how she wasn’t going to clean up his dead body after he suffocated himself by mixing alcohol and prescription pain meds).
A lot of Tony’s nightmares still involved getting tossed around by a guy in too much leather and a self-confident strut.
Before the Norns
Loki has always been good at spotting Thor’s more foolish plans, sometimes even before Thor knows he’s decided upon them. He’s shaking his head frantically, pushing backwards against the unyielding grip of the guards, but there’s nowhere he can really go.
When Thor’s hand finds the juncture of shoulder and neck, Loki squeezes his eyes shut and sobs into the gag.
It hurts like nothing Thor has ever felt before, and Thor instantly wants to pull his hand away; his whole body tenses up. But he can master himself.
Solace on Sakaar
“I don’t think either of them ever grasped the darker side of Sakaar.” Retrieving his own bottle, Loki leans back and idly studies the colorful shaped glass. “Thor wasn’t there long enough, Bruce wasn’t even allowed to experience the place, and the Hulk was too busy enjoying all the adulation he never got back on Midgard.”
The Valkyrie huffs. “You know, I spent…”—she looks up, considering—“far too long on Sakaar, I don’t even know, and I ran across races from all over the Nine Realms and beyond, but… I think you’re the only Aesir I ever ran into, aside from your brother.”
Loki’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t correct her terminology.
“So that makes the two of us, quite possibly, the only Asgardians who have ever experienced the heights—and depths—of the Grandmaster’s tender mercies.”
“That one, I’ll agree with, and may we never cross paths again,” Loki says, and takes a deep draft, enjoying the burn all the way down.
Pass It On
I'm still debating if this'll make it into this fic, or end up getting ported to something else. But it's a detail that bugs me about the Snap and the Unsnap.
“Half the people on Earth just died. That’s not the sort of thing you bounce back from.”
“Half…?” Loki stares at him, mouth hanging open, for a moment, then shakes himself and stands a little straighter. “My dear captain, your numbers seem a bit… off.”
Steve stares back, like he’s waiting for a punchline.
“One snap,” Loki says, “and half the cars on the road suddenly have no drivers. Half the cars on the road simply crash. They kill passengers, bystanders, people in the other cars. Whole families die because Mummy was taken out first, and there was nobody left to protect the children.
“One snap, and half the pilots in the sky are gone. Say that each airplane has a pilot and co-pilot; fully one quarter of the planes have just lost both. Maybe there’s someone on board who could fly the plane, but there’s a fifty-fifty chance that they just died, too. Or perhaps the chaos on the plane ensures that no one even gets a chance to try. There’s, what, ten thousand planes in the sky at any given time? Twenty-five hundred just went down, and it wasn’t a controlled landing; all the passengers and flight crew died.
“One snap, and half the doctors are gone.”
Reclining Butterfly
“You, uh, you never know how much time you’ve got, do you?” Master murmurs. “You think they’re going to be there forever, and then you get to a certain age and you realize that yeah, they’re gonna die—someday—but ‘someday’ ought to be decades in the future, not… they walk out that door and just never come back. The mom and dad who you thought would always protect you can’t even protect themselves.”
The undercurrent of anguish cuts through the fog in Loki’s brain, pulling up memories: The guard informing him of Frigga’s death. Odin turning to stardust right beside him.
This day, the next, a hundred years—it’s nothing! It’s a heartbeat. You’ll never be ready.
Thor, who should have outlived Loki and ruled Asgard for millennia, being torn apart by nanites, reaching out toward a horrified brother who had no way to do anything but watch.
“Right before he died,” Master says, “I was in one of those ‘I don’t even care’ moods. Acted like he wasn’t even in the room. Almost wish I’d said something nastier, anything at all, instead of just… nothing. And then… he was gone.”
Before Loki can stop them, the words spill out, as they hadn’t that day: “I couldn’t… I couldn’t even say anything.”
There was just too much between them, too much to put into words, to hash out in the little time they had left. Loki had felt it long before Thor caught a clue: the waning of a life, the pull of Valhalla on a soul that had overstayed its welcome in the mortal realms.
And then he was gone.
“Your dad?” Master asks softly, and the tears spring to Loki’s eyes.