Chapter 2
There was no sound but the air rushing past him, the wind so cold and thick it was nearly tangible, like shards of ice pelting his skin. This isn’t right, Loki thought. Space is supposed to be a vacuum. There shouldn’t be air here.
But the Void seemed to follow its own rules. There should not have been gravity in space either, and yet he continued to fall.
Down, down, down. Had it been hours, days, years? Time lost all meaning. There was little use for such a construct when nothing ever changed to mark its passage. No matter how far he fell, the world remained cold and dark and empty.
He grew numb, so gradually he barely noticed it, first unable to feel his arms and legs, and then unable to feel anything at all. Was he just a pair of floating eyes and nothing more? But it was still so dark, he couldn’t see anything. Maybe his body had been torn apart by the Void and all that was left were his thoughts. Maybe he was already dead.
Eventually, he lost consciousness. Perhaps the air ran out after all, or else his brain just saw no point in recording his free fall through eternity. A small mercy.
The next time Loki was aware of anything, he was lying face down on cold, solid ground, and there were unfamiliar voices speaking above him, their words slowly penetrating the fog in his head. He kept his eyes closed and remained immobile as he tried to make sense of the conversation.
“Definitely Asgardian.” A deep, guttural voice, not likely human or humanoid. Obviously talking about him, trying to figure out where he had come from. Loki wanted to laugh — they could join the club.
“You’re certain?” This voice was high, sneering. He was dealing with at least two potential adversaries then. He could handle that. If he could summon the will to stand.
The first voice grunted in affirmation. “We’ve fought their kind before, centuries ago,” he said. “I recognize the armor.”
It’s a costume, Loki thought bitterly. A mask, a charade, an elaborate pageantry meant to hide the monster that lies within. Glad to know I’m not the only one who was fooled by it.
Loki briefly tuned out the voices overhead and took stock of his current state. So he was alive. That was…something. Disappointing? A relief? He didn’t know.
The left side of his face felt raw, like it had been flayed, and he could taste blood in his mouth, but apart from that nothing seemed to be too terribly damaged. A bubble of hysteria rose into his throat. Alright, so he could add suicide attempt to his list of monumental failures. Not only had he failed to die, but he had actually crash landed face first onto a seemingly hostile planet. This day really could not get any worse.
“Is it alive?” the sneering voice asked.
In response, the other figure kicked Loki onto his back and held a sword to his throat.
Okay, maybe there was a chance it still could.
Not seeing any way around it, Loki opened his eyes and stared up at the figures standing over him. The one holding the sword was hooded so Loki couldn’t make out its face, but he could see enough to tell that he was correct in his assumption that it was nowhere near human. The other figure was slightly more humanoid, except for its corpselike gray pallor and the alarming lack of a nose. They were definitely not natives of any of the Nine Realms.
Loki glanced behind them to survey his surroundings for the first time and saw immediately that he had been generous in calling this place a planet. It was more of a barren chuck of rock, cast in darkness, floating aimlessly in space. A fitting destination for his exile.
Although the tip of a sword was still pressed into the hollow at the base of his throat, Loki felt no fear. Not long ago, he had stared into an abyss and let himself fall, forsaking everything he had ever known — his home, his family, the pervasive lie that was his entire existence. He had welcomed death gladly, his life was already forfeit. So really, what more did he have to lose?
“If you’re going to kill me,” Loki said tonelessly, barely needing to feign his disinterest, “by all means, just get on with it.” He propped himself up onto his elbows and looked at his foes with disdain.
For the briefest of moments, the noseless figure looked surprised by his defiance. Then his face broke into a grotesque smile. “That is not for us to decide,” he said in his high, sinister voice. “Rejoice, child, for your fate is now in the hands of the mighty Thanos.”
*******
“Thanos?” Thor interrupted, his brow furrowed. He had been quiet until now, listening to Loki with rapt attention, hanging onto every syllable.
“You know of him?” Loki asked carefully, refusing to let the waver that wanted to creep into his voice betray his fear. Part of him was still afraid to speak Thanos’ name aloud, believing it would somehow reveal Loki's location to him. A silly superstition.
“I’ve heard the name,” Thor said hesitantly, “in Father’s stories, maybe? He used to massacre planets, didn’t he? They also called him the —”
“The Mad Titan, yes,” Loki cut in. “And that’s all correct, except for the ‘used to.’ The last time I checked, he was still a genocidal maniac.” Loki laughed without any humor. “Although it takes one to know one, I suppose.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but he couldn’t quite suppress the wince as he reflected on his past deeds.
Thor contemplated him gravely. “You’re not a genocidal maniac,” he said seriously. “You — you were in pain, you weren’t in your right mind.”
Loki sighed. Classic Thor, always wanting to believe the best in people, no matter how many times they proved him wrong. “I wish that were true,” he said. “I guess it sort of is, regarding my attack on Midgard.” Loki ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “As for Jotunheim, I can’t claim that excuse. It’s true I was in pain, but I knew what I was doing.”
“Well, I can’t exactly blame you for that one,” Thor said, with a rueful half-smile. “I was ready to attack Jotunheim too, for far less than you.”
Loki smiled at his brother gratefully. “Yes, I suppose that’s true, isn’t it?” Sometimes he forgot that his brother had not always been this selfless hero, that it had been a long journey for him to get here. The thought gave him some comfort — they were both still works in progress.
They sat in silence for a long moment. Loki took a sip of his drink, taking full advantage of the liquid courage. This story wasn’t going to get any easier to tell from here on out.
“So,” Thor cleared his throat. “So. After that, they took you to see Thanos?”
Loki closed his eyes. He could still remember it all so clearly, like it had been mere days instead of several years. How Ebony Maw had used his telekinesis to bind his hands behind his back with a scrap of metal, giving Loki his first taste of being a prisoner. The feeling of cold dread that had washed over him as he stepped onto Thanos’ ship and realized just how out of his depth he was. But he had been arrogant. He had thought since he had faced death and emerged unscathed, nothing could touch him anymore. He’d been wrong.
“Yes,” Loki whispered. He opened his eyes and found Thor’s gaze endlessly compassionate. It made his voice stronger. “Yes, Ebony Maw — the one without the nose — he took me aboard Thanos’ ship, the Sanctuary. And then I had an audience with the Mad Titan himself.”
Thor seemed unsure what to ask next. He had undoubtedly inferred that Loki’s time with Thanos had not been pleasant. “Well, he obviously decided not to kill you!” he said finally, with an extremely forced attempt at lightness.
“Yes, there is that,” Loki said, giving Thor a tight smile. “I was fortunate that he saw me as an ideal potential ally. A disgraced, nearly immortal god who was skilled in the magical arts AND had already displayed a penchant for mass murder? You can see why he thought he could make use of me.”
Thor nodded automatically, unable to really dispute Loki’s description of himself. “So he told you he wanted you as an ally and you…decided to join him?” he asked. There was no judgement in his voice. He actually sounded almost hopeful that this was how it had happened, that Loki had just decided to join Thanos of his own free will, no coercion required.
“Certainly not,” Loki said, raising his eyebrows. “I had just gotten out from under Odin’s thumb. I had no intention of bowing to another overlord and becoming a pawn in someone else’s grand scheme. I basically told him to go to Hel.” Loki laughed shakily. “He didn’t like that. And Thanos can be - ah - quite persuasive.”
Thor’s expression darkened, and the next question seemed wrought from his throat almost against his will. “What did he do to you?” he asked through clenched teeth, trying and failing to keep his voice steady.
For a few seconds, Loki couldn’t breathe as his mind was bombarded by painful visuals. The Black Order surrounding him, taking turns experimenting with different torture techniques to see what was most effective. Proxima Midnight with her three-pronged spear, electrocuting him. Ebony Maw using his powers to impale him with metal bars from across the room, removing them just long enough for Loki to heal before starting the process all over again. Thanos asking him every day if he had had enough, until one day he finally had.
When he spoke again, his tone was light. Unlike Thor, he had had years to process all of this information. Most of the time it felt like it had happened to someone else, in another life.
“Oh you know, your basic, run-of-the-mill torture,” he said, as unaffected as if he were discussing what he had eaten for dinner the night before. “It was mostly Thanos’ minions doing the actual torturing, rarely Thanos himself. They realized pretty quickly that I didn’t fare well with heat, go figure.” Despite himself, Loki shuddered at the memory of being chained in the Sanctuary’s boiler room for days at a time, until his blood itself was boiling and his vision went black and he was certain that he would die of thirst at any moment.
Loki chanced a look at Thor and saw his brother had gone quite pale. One of his fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly, and Loki was certain he would be summoning Mjolnir if he could. Perhaps he had said enough…but he had come this far, and Loki knew if he didn’t keep going now, he would never bring any of this up again.
“The worst, though, was when they turned my own tricks against me,” Loki said quietly, looking down again, “and cast illusions. To make me think I was being rescued.”
Loki didn’t say any more than that. He didn’t say that nine times out of ten, the illusions were of him being rescued by Thor. That more than once, when he was at his most desperate, he had cried out in his cell for his brother to save him. That he had prayed for weeks that Thor would somehow hear him, that Heimdall would see him, that anyone would come to help him, before he finally gave up all hope. He could tell from the haunted expression on Thor’s face that he didn’t need to. Thor knew exactly what he wasn’t saying.
“Loki…,” Thor said brokenly, leaning forward and dropping his head into his hands. For a minute, he seemed unable to speak, overcome by the horrors his little brother had faced without his knowledge. When he looked back up, his bright blue eye was swimming with tears. “Loki, I can’t…I don’t…I —” he cut off abruptly, his voice failing him.
“You don’t need to say anything,” Loki said, still staring at his hands. “I know it’s a lot.”
Thor shook his head in response. “I want to say I’m sorry,” he began again, “but I know that it’s not enough, not even close.” He looked at Loki miserably. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Loki met Thor’s gaze. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said without hesitation. “You thought I was dead, of course you didn’t come looking for me.”
“No, not that.” Thor shook his head again. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t destroyed the Bifrost, none of this would have happened. You never would have fallen into the hands of that madman.”
Loki blinked at Thor. He had suspected that his brother would blame himself, but this degree of self-recrimination was beyond anything he’d imagined. “Are you serious?” he asked incredulously. “Have you forgotten that you destroyed the Bifrost to stop me from destroying an entire planet?”
“There must have been another way,” Thor said stubbornly. “If I had just stopped to think —”
“There wasn’t,” Loki interrupted. “You knew that then and you know it now. Besides, even if you had found another way, who’s to say I wouldn’t have taken my failure and leapt off the edge anyway? I wasn’t exactly in a good place.”
Thor blanched at the casual mention of Loki’s suicide attempt, but he set his jaw with determination. “Fine,” he said, “maybe it wasn’t my fault that you fell. But you’re wrong, I should have gone looking for you. Heimdall said he couldn’t see you, and I just gave up. I just accepted you were gone without considering any alternative.” Thor looked more ashamed than Loki had ever seen him before. “Maybe a part of me thought that would be easier.”
That hit Loki like a punch in the stomach. “Well,” he said, desperately trying to sound more indifferent than he felt, “I suppose I can’t blame you for that. It probably would have been.”
“No,” Thor argued. “I should have made absolutely certain that you were dead. In the Void and on Svartalfheim. Instead, I cast you aside as soon as I could and abandoned you to whatever fate would find you.” Thor closed his eye and let out an empty laugh. “I really am the worst brother.”
Loki shook his head fervently. “There’s no way you could have known,” he said insistently. “No one survives falling into the Void. I don’t know why I did, but it wasn’t so you could beat yourself up about it years later.”
Thor looked at Loki guiltily. “All the same,” he said, “I’m s—”
“Do not say you are sorry,” Loki hissed, his patience wearing thin. He had thought Thor’s remorse might leave him feeling gratified, but instead it just left a bad taste in his mouth. “It all happened a long time ago, and you feeling guilty won’t change anything. Besides, that’s not why I am telling you all of this.”
“Why are you telling me this, then?” Thor asked.
Loki paused. Why was he again? He had gotten a little lost in his reminiscence. Oh, right. “To explain why I faked my death the second time, you needed to understand how I cheated it the first time.”
“Okay…” Thor said. “So you faking your death on Svartalfheim had something to do with Thanos?”
“No,” Loki said. “It had everything to do with Thanos.”