Going Under
They crouched behind an upturned car where Strange had taken refuge. Loki took stock of the situation they had arrived in though there was no sign of the Black Order in their immediate vicinity even if all the buildings bore marks of their presence. Next to her, she could hear Stark’s AI murmur updates about the fight that was moving all over the Midgardian city. Loki patiently waited for Stark to be done, knowing it would be better to show her trustworthiness to the mortals by staying put and waiting for their instructions however much it galled her to do so. And so, Loki accepted the tiny communication device that Stark handed out once he was done with his AI’s report. Ignoring the unpleasant feeling of cold metal in her ear canal, Loki put it in.
"All right, so here's the plan," Stark said as he stood up, "Peter and I will go help Witchy and Vision while Houdini and Morgana work on getting the civilians to safety."
"Wouldn't it be better if I helped rescue your construct?"
"Two things, Wicked Witch," Stark shot back "you and Strange can create portals, which will be super useful for evacuation."
"And the second?"
"I trust Underoos a hundred percent more than I'd trust you to watch my back."
Loki bit back her instinctively scathing reply and settled instead for a cold and dignified, "I see."
Turning on her heel, she marched away. It had been naive of her to assume that the mortals would trust her after she saved their lives. Of course they wouldn’t. Unconditional trust was afforded only to Thor, Asgard's golden child, the worthy son of Odin, beloved by all who met him. Loki was the Liesmith, Odin's mistake, never to be trusted. No matter, she had nothing to prove to these insignificant mayflies. Thor could keep them for all she cared.
Only a fool would trust you to watch their backs, Sif spat inside her head.
Wonder what that says about your beloved Thor, Loki shot back at her.
Sooner or later, you will be the one to shove a knife in his back. Sif hissed and Loki grit her teeth.
“Shut up.”
You’re a sickness that eats away at everything it touches, Liesmith!
“I told you to shut up!”
“Is everything okay, Lokes?” Stark’s tinny voice crackled in her ear.
“Focus on your construct and leave me to the evacuation.”
“Try not to burn anything while you’re at it, Morgana.”
Burn? Wha— Loki looked down, surprised to find a fireball glowing in the palm of her hand. Mortification had her ears heating at her loss of control and Loki clenched her fist to dissipate the spell. Calling on her seidr with purpose, she shaped it into a detection spell, reaching for the otherworldy song inside her head that was the Tesseract and drew on a fraction of its power. Melding it with her spell, she let the seidr flow outwards, latching on to every mortal soul inhabiting the buildings around her in a fifty foot radius. With a simple twist, every target of her spell was portalled out to an empty plain well beyond the city’s limits.
“Mr. Stark, remember that ancient flip phone you gave me on the alien ship?” The spider-child’s voice crackled over their communication line as Loki turned and moved down the street and readied her seidr for another spell.
“What about it, kid?” Stark sounded distracted as Loki repeated her earlier motions and cleared the buildings in a fifty foot radius of its inhabitants.
“I just got a call from Captain America. He’s says he’s—”
“Ignore him.” Stark cut-in without any hesitation.
“No, you don’t understand, Mr. Stark. He says he and the Widow are already here. They’re asking where you want them to be.”
“Far away from me.” Deadened silence followed Stark’s declaration on their communication line, broken only when Strange cleared his throat and offered a suggestion.
“Peter, have them help with the evacuation. They can help me clear out these residential apartments.” Loki frowned at the exhaustion that in the wizard’s voice and wondered if perhaps the mortal had been more injured than Loki’s estimates. The other-dimensional energy that these sorcerers drew on should have rejuvenated the so-called Sorcerer Supreme by now. But from the sounds of it, it seemed as if he could barely stand, let alone cast complex magics.
“Fine, kid, get the phone to Houdini,” Stark said as Loki cast her spell for a third time, “he can coordinate the extra help. I’m busy fighting off these two ugly ass aliens and— Shit! Vision just took a hit. I have to go.”
Red lit up the sky somewhere to Loki’s west and the air crackled with an ominous static of magical buildup. Loki turned to face that direction, momentarily debating the pros and cons of abandoning her given mission to intervene in the fight. It was obvious that Stark had bitten off more than he could chew, even with that untrained Witch by his side. After all, the Black Order had all been personally trained by Thanos. Their defeat of Maw could be chalked up to sheer dumb luck, if Loki was being honest. Hoping for another miracle so soon after that first one… Loki shook her head. She almost took a step in the direction she assumed the fight to be taking place but something held her back.
Go on. Go over there. Save them… and see how fast they turn on you. Hela crooned in her ear. Do you think they will become your friends if you step in to save their pathetic lives?
I don't need them to be my friends in order for them to play their parts. Loki hissed back at her sister before resolutely turning in the other direction and stalking off. She stopped before her next targets and furiously tamped down on the urge to stab something, focusing instead on casting the stupid spell, working on the thankless grunt level task of evacuating civilians. Even if everything else had been a lie in her life, there had been one truth that remained constant for her and those around her. Loki was never to be trusted. No matter where she went, who she met or tried to befriend, there always came a time when she was spurned and turned away, sometimes with weak excuses and others with outright slander. Each time, her revenge had been swift and without mercy, but in the long run, it had only ever cemented that hateful truth. Loki Odinson was not to be trusted. Ever. And now, even in this backwater realm where no one truly knew her, that accursed truth remained.
The buildup of magical static culminated in crimson sparks shooting off of glass and metal alike and Loki only had enough time to cast a wide area shield before the Witch’s magic discharged in a powerful blast of crimson. Far off in the distance, buildings that Loki had only just vacated crumbled to the ground with deafening booms.
“Mr. St-Stark?” the spider-child’s voice crackled over their communications line.
“I’m okay kid, where are you?”
“I’m fine. Are Vision and Miss Wanda alright?”
“Yeah, they’re fine. I think Witchy might have just plastered the Big Ugly—nope, nevermind, he’s getting back up. Damn, these guys are resilient.”
“As I told you earlier, the Black Order is not to be taken lightly, Stark,” Loki couldn’t help but say.
“Yeah, yeah, save the ‘I told you so’s for later, Morgana. How are we on the evacuation front?”
“Things are proceeding.” Loki answered curtly before returning to her task. Strange murmured something on the line but Loki tuned him out as instinct honed from centuries spent mis-adventuring with Thor and his idiots four made Loki glance upwards. The Q-ships that had previously been hovering somewhere in the upper atmosphere of Midgard were accelerating towards the ground.
“—to shit, Loki, can you do something about that?”
“What do you expect me to do about falling spaceships?” Loki hissed back, gleaning the gist of Stark’s demand from the bit she had heard.
“I don’t know! Something? If those things hit the ground, they will take out the entire city and probably the ones around this place too.”
Loki scanned her surroundings once to ensure that the Black Order wasn’t near her position before calling upon the Tesseract. Grabbing it in both hand, Loki drew on its infinite power, the siren’s song once again rising in crescendo inside her head as she directed its power to the skies above Midgard. Picturing the endless nothing of the Void, Loki created a portal big enough to swallow the falling ships. The first of the two went through without any trouble but the second swerved out of the portal’s path at the last possible second. It should not have been possible for an object that size to move in such a manner but somehow, the vessel’s pilot had managed the impossible.
Loki cursed, knowing full well that she wouldn’t be able to create another portal in time. Clenching her teeth, she tried raising back her mental shields to block out the Space Stone’s song, only for the infinite blue to latch on to her shields and claw them open. Tendrils of its power sank into her psyche, burning and freezing and agonizing beyond words. Loki wanted to collapse to the ground in a limbless heap but the power of the stone had such a tight hold on her that she could barely breathe. Spots of darkness danced across her eyes as the Space Stone strengthened its hold on her. A scream was trapped in her throat as the blue enveloped her between a heartbeat and the next. Between one breath and the next, she was transported across the city to where Strange was slumped across a bench, that gaudy necklace open across his chest to reveal the Time Stone within it. Its green power washed across the wizard, reaching out to Loki with shimmering tendrils.
Another song, different in cadence melded with the one already ringing inside Loki’s head and a voice Loki had given up hope of ever hearing again spoke out across the barrier of time and space.
“Loki. Oh, my sweet, sweet child.”
Loki almost sobbed at the ghost of a familiar caress that brushed the side of her face. The songs rose in crescendo, the two infinity stones pulsing in sync, glowing brighter and brighter as the heat and the cold assaulting Loki’s senses expanded beyond words. Loki cycled forwards in time, thrown across the universe. She paused briefly, just long enough to catch a glimpse of strange, multi-legged eldritch horrors devouring a star before the stones’ power pulsed and she was jerked in a different direction. Tiny, mouse-like creatures scurried across a sunless world, glowing in an array of colors as they scavenged for food on a dying world. Another pulse and she was floating in the Void.
Pulse.
She saw the birth of a civilization.
Pulse.
A binary star system collapsed into a singular star.
Pulse.
Pulse.
Pulse.
Time shifted directions and she was jerked backwards.
Past the binary stars, past the dying civilization that she had witnessed being born moments before past the bilgesnipe-sized glowing mammoths that roamed a land with a dying red dwarf. Back and back, pulse after pulse, she was pulled almost to before the beginning of the universe itself. But before she could look at what horrors had inhabited reality before the universe existed, she was jerked for a final time.
Loki blinked, gasping in the warm sunlight as birds chirped brightly around her. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest at the sight before here. There, kneeling in the grass before her favorite flowering plant of Vanarian Spring Blossoms was—
Mother…
Realizing that she wasn’t alone, Frigga paused in her motions of tending to the plant before she resumed.
“Will you remain skulking in the shadows, daughter?” Loki nearly took a step towards her mother before realizing that it wasn’t her that Frigga was addressing. Stepping out from behind the shade of an Alfir Birch was Hela. Dressed casually in a flowing dress of green and black, her long hair pulled back in intricate braid, Loki’s adoptive sister smiled at Frigga.
“You appeared so at peace, Step-mother, I did not wish to interrupt.”
“You know you may address me as ‘Mother’ if you wish, Hela,” Frigga said, brushing dirt of the front of her dress as she stood and turned to face the goddess of Death.
Hela’s answer was swallowed by another pulse as Loki was jerked away and into the castle proper. It was night and the sound of battle echoed in the streets of Asgard. Loki frowned, unable to recall a time in her entire lifetime when there had been a battle in the golden realm— apart from that assault by the Dark Elves during the convergence but that had been during the day. This was—
“Mother!” Loki whirled around at the sound of Hela’s voice, her heart stuttering at the familiar sight of her eldest sibling. This was the Hela Loki remembered, the one that haunted not only her dreams but also her waking moments. Horned helmet, billowing cape and that black and poison green armor, necro-swords in both hands as she advanced towards Frigga. There was blood splattered across her face but Loki could tell that none of it was her own. “Mother, you must speak with Father. He went to consult with Mimir and now he has gotten it in his head that I’m—”
“Princess! You must surrender,” Heimdall’s voice boomed across the hallway, his golden eyes pausing briefly at the spot where Loki stood, invisible to everyone else, “Please, step away from the queen.”
“Gatekeeper, return to your post, lest Father decide that you have turned treasonous too,” Hela snapped before purposefully turning her back on Heimdall as she stalked towards Frigga. “Mother, please, speak with Odin. Assure him that I am still loyal to Asgard. This is my home and you are my family. I would never—
“The All-Father does not wish for you to be in this wing of the palace,” Heimdall cut in and Loki saw a familiar spark of irritation in Hela’s eyes.
Without looking back, she threw a conjured sword at the gatekeeper, “Stay out of this.” Hela snapped. “I do not wish my brothers or mother any harm.”
Another pulse and Loki was wrenched away from the confusing scene. Time sped up as days then months and finally years went by until Loki was standing in Frigga’s personal chambers, her mother working at the loom on an elaborate tapestry. She paused between working on the threads to look up and smile.
“Loki,” she opened her arms wide as she stood and walked over to where Loki was. Not the Loki of the past, but present Loki herself, the wretched soul lost across time and space at the mercy of two infinity stones. “Oh my sweet, sweet child.”
Frigga embraced her and Loki collapsed within her strong arms, breathing in the familiar scent of her mother’s favorite perfume, uncaring of how she came to be there.
“Mother… I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Loki gripped on to her mother’s slender frame, her face pressed into the All-Mother’s shoulders as she sobbed.
Home… she was home.