Blacking Out
—oki
The Space Stone shone bright in Thanos's gauntlet and the knife Loki had aimed for the Titan's throat froze inches before reaching its target. Loki was petrified in fear as The Mad Titan grinned and grabbed him by the throat, effortlessly lifting him into the air. Around them, the statesman burned, and in death, Heimdall's sightless gaze turned on the wreckage of what little had remained of their home.
Brothe—
Banner had been sent away to Norns knew where. Ebony Maw had Thor trapped in metal beams, his screams muffled by the gag around his mouth and for once, Loki had no clever trick, no last minute plan to save them. Thanos squeezed his throat and the knife fell from Loki's nerveless fingers.
Lok—
His lungs burned with the need to breathe as Thanos strangled him. A choked gurgle escaped Loki's lips as the pressure increased and the world faded. Loki fell away into the darkness. Eldritch horrors from the void between worlds reached out for him with their gaping maws. Adorned with far too many teeth, they swallowed him whole. Their poisonous breath seared the flesh from his bones, tearing into his soul, wrenching it to pieces.
Please…I’m begging you…
He fell through the Yggdrasil, through the nine realms until he was tangled in the roots of the world tree. And then, when he was truly immobilized, demons descended upon him with knives they scored from his bones. They sliced him apart and put him back together only to repeat it all over again until agony was all he knew. It was only when he started having trouble recalling his own name that the Mad Titan approached, smiling at the handiwork of his children.
Wake up.
Wake up? He was awake. How he wished he wasn’t but he was. He was. The demons had grown bored with the knives and his screams so they sewed his lips together using seidr and dwarven thread. Then they brought out the fire, relishing in the way he lurched in his bindings as they pressed scorching brands into his flesh, his cries frozen in his throat.
—oki!This isn't funny...
Oh really? He hadn't noticed. He was in agony and Norns he wanted to die. They had moved on from the brands to something more inventive because he wasn’t yet broken to the Mad Titan’s liking. They pumped him full of drugs that turned his blood to acid and burned him from the inside out. Drugs that brought his worst nightmares to life though what could they possibly bring forth when his entire existence was a never-ending nightmare? Drugs that left him puking and convulsing for hours and when he surrendered to the sweet release of oblivion, they gave him drugs that brought him back, only to begin again.
Loki! Brother, I swear on Father’s name if you don’t—
...Thor? That was Thor! His brother had finally heard his pleas. He came! He'd come for Loki. Thor, please, I don't want to be alone. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ruined your coronation. I'm sorry I tried to destroy Jotunheim. I'm sorry I let go. I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I don’t want to be alone. Save me, please! Savemesavemesavem—
I don’t understand. There is nothing physically wrong with him.
That wasn't Thor so who...? Of course. Why would the All-Father send his true son to retrieve his pet Frost Giant? Loki was dispensable. Why would he think that Thor would come? The All-Father would never risk his precious heir for a stolen relic that had outlived its purpose. Bitterness welled up in his chest, spreading like poison through his veins though Loki refused to cry.
…Eir were here. She was the Royal Medic who treated Loki on Asgard, you know. She would…
Loki also refused to believe that it was Thor's voice he heard as he gave in to the call of darkness and drifted off.
It was quiet the next time his consciousness returned. He groaned, struggling to crack open eyelids that were weighed down by lead. Something heavy rested on his chest and when he finally succeeded in opening his eyes, the weight resolved into a fleshy blob. Blinking a few times brought the world into focus and realized that it was Thor’s arm, clutching at him as his oafish brother slept, his other hand gripping tightly on Loki’s wrist. It was almost as though Thor was afraid Loki might float away if he did not hold on strongly enough.
Something like a smile cracked across Loki’s lips as he watched his brother sleep. He smoothed his expression when there was a knock on the door but it slid open before Loki could give them permission to enter. Banner walked inside, bearing a tray loaded with food.
“Oh, you’re finally awake,” Banner said just when Loki’s stomach rumbled in a manner reminiscent of Volstagg. Heat rose to Loki’s cheeks as Thor began to stir.
“How long has it been?” Loki asked, glancing around the cottage on Sarab, a moon orbiting a binary star system halfway to Midgard. Loki had discovered the distant moon during one of his trips through the dark paths. The people of Sarab were used to the occasional alien making landfall though they personally did not seem to possess interstellar technology nor were they interested in acquiring any. After sending Odin to Midgard as an old man, Loki had purchased a cottage on Sarab’s northern hemisphere and hired some locals to keep it fully stocked with food and other basic amenities all year round. Mostly because Loki like having contingency plans and seeing how no one on Asgard even knew about the little moon, Loki had felt confident about using it as a secret base of operations slash hideout in case things went south. Which they had, just not in the way Loki had been expecting.
So it was this little cottage Loki had thought of when he’d conjured the last portal out of the Statesman as Thanos had lain waste to everything. The cottage was also stocked with a fully updated library, one that Loki had bespelled to have copies of everything he possessed in his chambers on Asgard. So even though the originals might have been destroyed along with Asgard, Loki still had access to his personal collection here on Sarab.
“It’s a little hard to estimate the passage of time with the dual sunrises and sunsets but I would say it has been somewhere around four to five days since we escaped.”
Which translated to around seven days of Asgard’s time. Thor chose that moment to awaken, keeping Loki from contemplating the implications of staying asleep for a week.
"Loki! You're awake!" He exclaimed.
"An astute observation, Thor."
"You were asleep for so long that I worried..." Thor trailed off before clearing his throat to try again. "I was afraid that you may not awaken again."
"Just a bit of magical exhaustion, Brother." Loki said, carefully trying to extricate his fingers from Thor's grasp, secretly pleased when Thor refused to let go. With a huff, he crossed his arms and looked to Banner, a tiny flutter of something like giddiness blossoming in his chest when Thor tightened his grip. “There is no need to be so dramatic, Thor. I only overexerted myself a little. I’ve never had cause to shield upwards a thousand people from psychic probing while maintaining a portal across such vast distances that is all.”
“That is all?” Thor’s voice rose with each word and Loki flinched, momentarily wondering if the oaf’s usual violence would follow. “That is all, he says. Loki, this is twice that you’ve saved our people in less than a week. First with having the forethought to bring the Statesman to Asgard and now with— Brother, I know I haven’t said this to you often enough— no— I haven’t said it to you at all, lately, but I am sorry.”
Loki turned back so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. “I bed your pardon?”
“I am sorry I haven’t been a good brother to you.” Thor said, his expression earnest. Banner mumbled a half excuse before setting the food down next to Thor and retreating. All the while, Loki felt like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Thor was sorry? Thor was sorry? And also, Thor was sorry? “I am sorry that I took father’s word and did not investigate deeper as to what led you to that moment upon the shattered Bifrost where you felt the need to let go. He was our father and he did grieve for you, but we’ve both seen proof in Hela that father doesn’t seem to have the best track record when it comes to being a good parent. I never—”
“Is this a dream?” Loki cut off Thor’s rambling. Since when did Thor of all people speak against Odin?
“What? Loki, no this is not—”
“Am I dead, then?”
“No!” Thor stood up, towering above him as the chair slammed into the floor and suddenly, it was Thanos standing over him, grabbing Loki by the back of his neck and holding him in place. The yellow of the mind stone filled his vision and Loki flinched, shrinking into himself. The soft pillows behind his back were at odds with Thanos’s usual methods of persuasion and it was that which drew Loki back into the present to find Thor watching him with concern in his blue eyes. It took Loki a moment longer to realize that it was Thor’s hand resting at the nape of his neck. When Thor spoke, for when he spoke, it was with conviction but for an entirely different matter. “You’re alive, Brother. You are here with me.”
Loki cleared his throat, shoving the memory of Thanos from his mind as he focused on the conversation. Words still escaped him as he looked down on his fingers, grasped tightly in Thor’s other hand. “Then why— how can— how can you speak against Odin? What changed? Why would you— I don’t understand…”
“I grew up, Loki.” Thor’s voice turned soft. “And in doing so, I realized that our father wasn’t as perfect as I believed him to be. He, too, had flaws. I am sorry it took me so long to see the truth.”
“A few years ago, I would have given up anything to hear you say those words,” Loki admitted. “Now, I’m not so sure I wanted to hear them.”
Liar! Whispered a voice in his head and Loki pushed it away.
“I-I… I’m sorry if you think it’s too late,” Thor said. Loki knew Thor would be wearing that kicked puppy expression on his face, so he didn’t look up. “But I’m not going to give up. I don’t know how, yet, but I will make it up to you brother. I swear it.”
Loki said nothing to that, wondering if this was all some hallucination brought forth by his mind after the ordeal he’d just been through. After what Thor had said to him on that lift in Sakaar, about going their separate ways, this sudden change of heart was… unsettling and Loki did not like feeling unsettled.
Thor cleared his throat and awkwardly reached for the tray Banner had brought. “Ah, the good people from the farm down the hill delivered some ripened Tikifru today,” Thor exclaimed as he held up a purple fleshy fruit almost as big as his fist.
Loki refused to acknowledge the sense of loss he felt at not having the assuring weight of Thor’s hand on his back. It had helped ground Loki to reality but he was not going to stoop so low so as to ask Thor to hold him again. Instead, he focused his attention on the fruit in Thor’s hand.
Tikifru had been considered something of a rarity and a delicacy on Asgard since the fruit could only be grown, harvested and consumed within a small a window of time, which shouldn’t have been a problem given the Bifrost but someone disliked the fruit enough to ban use of the Bifrost for its trade with Sarab and its surrounding systems that grew Tikifru. “We used to love this stuff as kids, remember?”
Thor rambled on for a bit, until Loki decided to ask the question that had been bugging him. “Why the change of heart?”
“—and then mother was… what?”
“Why the sudden change of heart, Thor?” Loki asked hotly, feeling upset by the situation at hand and refusing to show any more emotions to Thor until he had some answers. “One moment you’re more than willing to let me go my separate way and now you’re refusing to even let go of my hand.” Loki tried shaking him off but Thor held on firmly to his fingers. Not hard enough to cut off circulation but enough to make it difficult for Loki to free himself without prying him off. Which was something Loki refused to do.
“I saw your Jotun form for the first time as you fell through the portal after Banner and I,” Thor’s words sent a chill skittering up Loki’s spine as an irrational fear took root in his heart. I will slay all Frost Giants! “To be honest, you looked no different in that form than you do in this. Did you know when I picked you up, your skin did not burn me? You remained that skin for almost a day and I was right here,” Thor pointed to the spot he stood on, “I haven’t left your side for the past five days brother. And as I waited for you to wake up, I had nothing but time to think and reevaluate every choice that I’ve made over the past millennium. I-I… I couldn’t bring myself to let go. I still can’t because I’m…” Thor trailed off before shaking his head and starting again. “You came close to dying three times since then. I can’t let go because I’m afraid if I do, you will slip away and I will have no one. I can’t lose you too, brother. You’re all I have left.”
“You’d still have Asgard, you oaf.”
“Asgard could never equate to you, Loki.”
His words chased away the vestiges of terror that had clung to Loki’s heart and he suppressed the urge to smile like an idiot. “You are a sentimental fool.”
“I know.” Thor had no such compunctions and smiled brightly when Loki squeezed his fingers.
And I might be one too.
The silence stretched between them but it was a comfortable one as Loki used Thor’s solid presence to ground himself in the now. It was dark outside by the time Banner reappeared in the doorway, this time, bearing three bowls of brother with chunks of meat and vegetables.
“I figured we could all have dinner here tonight.”
“An excellent idea, Bruce.” Thor grabbed a bowl off the tray and offered it to Loki, waiting until Loki had it settled in his lap before getting one for himself.
“So, I was wondering if maybe we should discuss what we’re going to do next, now that Loki is finally awake again. I mean, how do we stop Thanos?”
“You wish to fight him again?” Loki couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. “He is a plague that invades planets, wiping out half of all life he encounters, all in the name of maintaining some form of balance.”
“He was the one who sent you to New York, wasn’t he?” Bruce asked, and Loki bristled at the hint of pity in his voice.
“The past does not matter.”
“Brother, please, tell us the truth.”
“Alright, fine! Yes!” Loki snapped. “He sent me. The Mad Titan used the mind stone and bent me to his will. He let his children entertain themselves with me as they broke me. When he was certain of my compliance he gave me the staff and sent me to Midgard.”
“You kept that inside all these years. Why did you not say anything?”
“What difference would that have made?”
“I would have protected you.” And there Thor went again, acting like a kicked puppy.
“Oh really?” Loki scoffed, crossing his arms as he glared at the oaf. “Just like you protected me when I was given that farce of a trial and locked away for life?”
“Loki, I—”
“You never once tried to look any deeper, choosing to believe that which was brought to light in my trial. After the Kursed killed mother, you broke me out of the cell and promised to put me back there the moment I had done as you bid. Why, then, should I have trusted you? How were you any different than the rest?”
“I am sorry, Brother. I was a fool and I chose the path that was the easiest. But I swear to you, Loki. I have changed. Give me a chance to prove it. Please.”
“
Breathing heavily, Loki turned away, no longer hungry as he pushed the bowl of soup away. A few minutes passed before Banner awkwardly cleared his throat.
“So, ahem, are we going to discuss what we should do next?”
“What is there to discuss? Thanos has the Power Stone. He most assuredly knows the locations of the other five. Once I have you two safely back on Midgard, I run with the Tesseract and hope that I may be able to keep away from him for as long as I live.”
“I do not like that plan.” Thor declared.
“Yeah, me neither.” Bruce, on the other hand was a surprise.
“And what,” Loki narrowed his eyes, “do you propose we do?”
“We stop him from getting to the other stones.” Bruce declared as though it were that simple and Loki wanted to laugh at the man’s naiveté. Thor, on the other hand, looked interested enough so Loki decided to give the man a chance to speak.