Showdown
“Thor was looking for you, on the bridge,” Valkyrie says as she passes.
Loki sets his tablet down, finished with updating the inventory after their departure from their latest supply mission. “Did he say why?” He asks warily.
“He didn’t. Looked serious, but not angry?”
“Well. That’s good. Thanks for passing the message along.” Loki finds Thor staring out at the stars with his arms crossed over his chest, looking thoughtful. “Valkyrie said you were looking for me.”
Thor starts, and turns. “Right, yes, come here, brother.” They stand shoulder to shoulder at the window. “Heimdall and I checked our bearings while we were on-planet. It seems our journey is almost ended. We are a month away from Midgard.”
“Oh.”
“I thought we should start talking about a strategy for negotiations.”
“And prepare ourselves, I assuming that’s why you told me first.” Loki sighs. “I’ll admit I’m a bit apprehensive. Do you really still think it’s a good idea?”
“The people of Earth love me.”
“Let me rephrase. Do you think it’s a good idea to bring me to Earth?”
“Oh, I don’t know, brother,” Thor says, patting his back. “For once, I feel like everything’s going to work out.” Out of the corner of his eye, Loki sees something moving.
The spaceship that rises before them is massive, dark, and jagged. It blots out the light of the stars.
Loki feels his entire world come crashing down around his ears.
He must make a sound, because Thor turns away from the window towards him.
“Loki, what-” He stops when he sees the look of terror on his face. Instinctively, he grabs Loki. “Is that…is that what I think it is?”
“We’re too late,” Loki chokes out. “He’s caught up to us.” Thor’s fingers dig into his arm.
“Okay, Loki, we planned for this, just stay calm. Go get the Tesseract. Go!” Loki manages to wrench himself away, sprinting through the halls to the place they hid the Tesseract. The alarm starts to blare. The Tesseract and its warm blue glow are indifferent to his fear. He shoves it into the inter-dimensional space he hides everything else, then turns.
And falls as the first blow strikes their ship. He stumbles out of the room and runs into a group of civilians, frightened huddled together.
“Go to the escape pods, like we practiced,” He commands. “Now, quickly!” He ushers them along as another staggering blow rocks the ship. He makes it halfway to the command center before their shields fully fail and he’s thrown back. A fire has started in the engines somewhere. It’s getting hot and stifling, the stench of mechanical smoke thickening the air. Then he hears footsteps.
“Hello, Loki,” a familiar voice says. “You’ve been avoiding us.” He stumbles to his feet and runs.
The sounds of screams and death chase him.
No, no, no, no, no, he thinks desperately. Then he hears a very young voice whimper. He stops, turning in the direction of the sound. There’s a child, separated from the group, crying as Proxima Midnight stands over him with her staff. She’s about to bring it down on the child’s head when Loki strikes her with a bolt of magic. She falls but Corvus Glaive was on her flank and his massive form crashes into Loki’s. They go down, Loki summoning a knife to strike into his side. He’s about to put another one through his jugular when there’s a familiar pressure on his mind.
He’s never really recovered from his first time under Thanos, and his mind gives way easily. Ebony Maw is inside him now, like he never left.
“Get up,” Ebony Maw says, and his limbs obey. Glaive points his weapon at his head. “Drop the knives.” His hands release and the blades clatter to the ground. Proxima Midnight gets to her feet, shaking off the residual magic. She looks at him and smiles.
The child has not moved, not run, cowering in the corner.
“Don’t-” But it’s too late. She runs the boy through with her staff and with a final, rattling breath, the Asgardian boy is dead. Loki closes his eyes.
“You’ve been very bad,” Maw says. “Come with us.” He directs Loki into the corridor. “Go ahead of us,” He says to Proxima Midnight. “Tell the master we’ve captured the other one.”
Thanos is waiting in the wide hall they’d used as a gathering place. The ship is already starting to disintegrate around them, burning and groaning. Loki nearly trips a dozen times on their walk to his doom, but he manages to keep his feet. He stops in the center of the room, before Thanos who is standing over a limp form at his feet.
Thor.
Loki keeps his face blank, struggling to control his breathing.
Ebony Maw walks in a circle around them.
“Hear me, and rejoice. You have had the privilege of being save by the great Titan. You may think this is suffering.” This once made sense to Loki. This seemed so true that even well into his prison stay on Asgard he believed in it. It had taken years to make him realize those thoughts were not organic to his own mind.
Thor struggles to his hands and knees, gasping. Loki glances down at him and quickly looks back up at the Titan, heart racing. “No. It is salvation. Universal scales tipped towards balance because of your sacrifice. Smile, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.”
“You disappoint me, Loki of Asgard.” Loki says nothing. “You were supposed to bring me the Tesseract, and you not only failed, you have also lost my scepter. But at least you’ve brought the Tesseract to me, at long last.”
“We don’t have it,” Thor croaks, spitting blood onto the floor. Loki’s hands fist at his sides.
“Oh, but you do.”
“I can make him give it to us, master.” Ebony Maw extends a greedy hand towards him.
“No, I think he’ll give it up willingly.” Thanos grabs Thor’s head, dragging him up to his knees.
“We don’t have it!” Thor insists.
“I think you do. Last chance, the Tesseract or your brother’s head. Your choice.” Loki says nothing, gritting his teeth. We planned this, you have to let this happen, he repeats to himself, over and over. You can’t give up the Tesseract. Not for anything. Those had been Thor’s words. During their last planning meeting, when they updated and reviewed their plan for this exact situation, Thor had held him back.
“You can’t give up the Tesseract once you have it, not for anything.”
“I won’t,” Loki replied. “They’ve tortured me before, I can withstand it.”
“And if they torture me?” That brought him up short. “Loki, you cannot give up the Tesseract. They will torture me but you can’t.”
“I don’t know if I can,” He admitted. “Watch them torture you.” Thor had just smiled sadly at him.
“You can. You have to.”
He can’t.
Thanos uses the power stone, boring it into the side of Thor’s skull. Thor howls, jaw hanging slack, limbs jerking as the pain overtakes him.
Loki tries to keep his eyes on Thanos.
“I can’t watch,” Loki had said, breathing hard.
“Then don’t watch,” Thor replied calmly. “Keep your eyes on something else.” Loki looks at Thanos. Looks at Thanos and watches the glee in his eye at Thor’s screams, at Loki’s clear terror.
Something in the tenor of Thor’s screams changes, he’s sure of it, and it breaks his concentration. He glances down again, at Thor’s writhing, dying body and-
“Alright, stop!” He shouts, unable to stand it for another second. The screaming dies off and he closes his eyes. He raises his arm and brings forth the Tesseract.
“Good.” Thanos lets go of Thor’s head. He starts to drop to the floor, but twisted metal flies up and binds him in place, on his knees. A final pieces of metal twists around his face, gagging him. He keeps his eye locked on Loki. “Good.” Thanos takes the Tesseract from him and hands it off to Glaive.
He turns back to Loki with a grin on his face. With the hand clad in the gauntlet, he grabs Loki by the throat and lifts him.
Air is sealed off in a second, his throat closed by Thanos’s tight fist. His hands scrabble desperately around the gauntlet as he chokes, legs kicking in the empty air. His lungs burn and there’s a pressure in his head, growing, growing, growing as his chest heaves with no result.
He can’t see anymore, the blackness closing in on his vision as his eyes roll back in his head, but he can hear Thor’s muffled screams from behind the gag.
Then the pressure lifts. The air streams into his lungs as he hits the metal gate of the spaceship, flat on his back. Coughing, writhing. Breathing so hard he thinks he’ll break from the force of it. There’s a screech of metal. Someone talking. A tentative touch to his shoulder, then a heavier one, a weight leaning on his chest.
“Loki.” Thor’s head presses to his shoulder, his hand tightly grasping the front of his shirt.
“Bring them,” Thanos says. They drag Thor off him, then hands are on his shoulders and his legs and he’s being lifted, carried.
To Sanctuary.
___
Thor moves quickly and quietly through the halls, heart pounding. He doesn’t have long, if what Tony told him is true, that the cavalry’s on the way.
He bursts into Loki’s room, startling him. “Thor, what are you-”
He yanks the book out of Loki’s hands and sets it aside. “Loki, put on your boots, we have to go. Now.” Loki complies. “Stark has betrayed us. He called the authorities, I don’t know how much longer we have.”
“If we get outside the walls of this place, I can teleport us away.”
“How far?”
“Not far, not since the Tesseract, but maybe far enough into the woods…” Thor grabs his hand and pulls him out the door. “What did you do to Stark?”
“Shorted out his suit. It will take some time for him to reboot it, but the government - SHIELD, I don’t know - they’re on their way.”
“What will they do to us, should they catch us?”
Thor tightens his grip on Loki’s hand. “I don’t know. This way.” He drags his brother to a stairwell and they run up it. The stairs open out onto the compound’s roof.
And onto three helicopters, pointing their lights at them and Secretary Ross standing before them.
“It’s no use,” He says over the noise of the rotary blades. “We have this place surrounded. There are snipers in these choppers ready to take a shot. There’s no where to go, your majesty.” The title is dripping with disdain.
“Do not let go of my hand,” Thor says to Loki, who nods tightly. “Secretary, this is hardly necessary. Let’s just go inside and the four of us can talk about your concerns.”
“My concerns are we’ve been allowing two aliens - one of whom is known to be hostile to this planet - roam around one of our most secure compounds. Live here, with a population center not 200 miles away. My concerns are to protect our people by eliminating threats.”
“And we assured Stark, we are not threats, we bring warning-”
“Yes, that cockamamy story about some Titan looking for rocks. You didn’t think we’d believe that bullshit, did you?”
“It is the truth and to ignore it-”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that the two of you are going to come with us, now. You will be held somewhere where it is safe, where you can be contained.” Loki’s hand has gone cold in his.
He squeezes. “When I say when,” He whispers. “As far as you can.” Loki squeezes back to show he’s understood. Thor feels magic gathering around them.
“Things are different now, Thor. You can’t just run around doing as you please. There are rules now. There is finally a command structure. You will do as we say, when we say, and there isn’t any room for interpretation.”
“And what will you do with my brother?”
“To be frank, we hadn’t decided yet. There are some that think he still could be useful. If you ask me, a swift execution is the more appropriate-”
“Now!” Reality bends, but Loki’s hand is tight on his. They collapse into a pile of leaves in the forest.
“Damn you,” Loki gasps, landing flat on his back.
“Did it work?”
“Not as well as you hoped. Provoking me to fear to get a shot of adrenaline, just to get us a few meters farther? That’s low, brother.”
“I’m sorry,” He says, and means it. He helps Loki to his feet and gives him a rough kiss to the forehead. “I’m just trying to get us out of here. We have to move, and quickly.” They cut through the underbrush, their only light Loki’s faint green conjured witchlight. A helicopter flies overhead and Thor quickly motions Loki to extinguish the light. They duck down, huddled together in the brush until it passes.
“Come on,” Thor says when it is quiet again. He will not let go of Loki’s hand.
They move away from the compound and Thor almost thinks they might make it before he hears a familiar sound of propulsion. Thunder rolls in the sky.
“Loki, move,” He yanks his brother’s hand harder, egging him on. They’re too slow. The blast strikes at their feet and Thor only has just enough time to grab Loki and roll with him. They struggle to their feet and make it a few more meters before he strikes again. Again, they get back up, unwilling to surrender yet. But Tony gets ahead of them.
He lands in their path, mask flipping up to reveal his face.
“I thought we were friends,” He says.
“I thought so too,” Thor says.
“Come on, Thor, I’m not the bad guy here. The one clinging to your hand and putting stuff in your head is the bad guy.”
“I am not doing either of those things,” Loki says darkly.
“Loki, say nothing.” Thor snaps. “Stark, this is ridiculous. You’ve gone mad since I’ve been away.”
“I’m not the one who’s crazy. I’ve done what has to be done. Who cleaned up the fallout from Sokovia, huh? Me. You were off God knows where, Steve was up here ignoring the world, and I was the one in Washington, and at the Hague, and helping to resettle refugees. The same with New York. You hang out, what, two days into cleanup before vanishing back to Asgard with the Tesseract and our culprit? Assuring us that Asgardian justice would do the right thing. Well, pal, looks like us and Asgard have pretty different ideas of justice.”
“So what? You want a trial then? A show conviction?”
“That’s what I want. Jury of his peers and whatever. But all this shit? That’s assured us there will be no trials, not for people like us. Just the Raft.” Ah. The mysterious Raft.
“And what is the Raft?” Thor sneers.
“You’re going to find out.” The helicopters approach. “Now surrender, or they’ll shoot you both down on the spot.”
Thor looks at Loki.
“I don’t have another jump in me,” Loki says quietly. “And you don’t have enough of a storm to take them all out and get us out of here. I’ve no idea what this…Raft is,” Thor hasn’t had time to tell him. He had neglected to tell Loki about all of this and now his brother is going in blind. A pulse of guilt. “But I don’t see any other options.”
“I suppose we’ll have to surrender then.”
“Get on your knees, hands on your heads.” Stark sounds profoundly miserable about the whole thing. “I wish things could have been different.”
“So do I,” Thor says.
It takes effort to make himself let go of Loki’s hand.