Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It hits him when he’s still.  A crippling hopelessness, and a regret so concentrated that it chokes him.

It becomes harder and harder to ignore with every branch he jumps to.  Every Mobius that isn’t quite right, or doesn’t exist at all.  Every time Loki has to use the blade the Child gave him to hack his way through the vines in the desperate hope that he’ll find some fruit he knows.

He has the TemPad, of course.  On the surface it seems like a simple device, but he knows nothing that carves paths through space and time is simple.  He’d gotten a taste with the Tesseract.  It’s not the same, though.  The Tesseract speaks and listens; the TemPad just asks.  

Where?  When? 

There are so many more axes for both, now.  Dimensions upon dimensions.

There has to be a way to pinpoint things, to travel with direction , but he doesn’t know where to begin.  He isn’t stupid, not intellectually, but he isn’t a scientist, either.  An alchemist, maybe, but not a scientist or physicist or whatever it is one must be to understand such things. 

He does understand numbers, though.  And they run through his mind over and over, staggering in their scope.  He can admit he knows next to nothing about what he really is - a Frost Giant - but like Asgardians, he knows they are born, and they die.  The span of years in between is almost meaningless, because no amount would be enough to search every timeline for the things he wants.     

Loki sits down.  He knows, objectively, that he should eat.  Sleep.  Those little wisps of time are nothing to the whole, and at least his body might feel a little better.

He tries.  This timeline is peaceful and pleasant, if only because neither He Who Remains nor Loki himself has arrived in it yet.  He is no one; a regular person.  A soul entitled to the surface politeness of everyday interactions.  There’s no demand in it, though he knows he could make more of his time in this place if he wanted.  He’s capable of friendship.  Even love.  But Gods , what both had taken from him.

He lays down in a hammock on a beach and does not move.

He knows what universal law says.

All systems move toward entropy .

He’s been restless all his life, mad with an endless itch of there must be more, I must be more , what would happen if…?   And that had carried him through a privileged childhood and young adulthood, when mischief could be understood and forgiven, through the worst and most painful realizations of his life, and onward into an ever-increasing chain of bad decisions and losses.  All of which landed him here, now.  And for what?

For what ?  To be lost in an eternal thicket of timelines, searching for one man, having damned himself and everyone else?

It wasn’t you , Mobius would say if he were here.  You tried to stop her .  And he had, but he had also laid every stone on her path, walked them next to her, even wanted what she wanted.  Because they were the same, after all.

It’s still so painful.  More painful than Odin’s lies and rejection, Thanos’s torture and mind control, his mother’s death.  He didn’t really think anything could be worse than that, even though it hadn’t yet happened to this version of him.  Seeing it at the TVA, knowing it was the fate that had been decided for him without any of his consent, if nonetheless enacted by his own selfish whims—that was enough.  And it still didn’t touch Sylvie’s betrayal.

A part of him loves her.  It’s confusing.  He had never loved anyone that fully.  Least of all himself.  So to see something positive in her...strength where he could find only weakness in himself...it was a revelation.  Because they were the same .

But much like he once thought he had to kill Laufey to prove his worth to the man who had stolen and scorned him, Sylvie thought the only way to quell the relentlessness of their nature was to have her revenge.  It was the only thing she knew; the only thing that kept her going.  A gambit for free will that, in the end, caged her into a single path with no other options.  A path that brought out the best in him, and the worst in her, because they had taught one another their own extremes.

And he still loves her.  That’s the terrible part.  He turns it over and over in his head, trying to understand, but he just can’t.  It’s the same thing, perhaps, that keeps hope in Thor’s eyes even though he knows Loki will fail him again and again and again .

Why does anyone entertain such intimate pain? It’s so foolish.

He lays in the hammock and listens to the sound of the ocean.  The irony of his current situation is not lost on him.  Sylvie spent most of her life jumping from place to place, apocalypse to apocalypse, waiting until the moment when she could bring it all down.  This isn’t an apocalypse, not yet, but now he’s stuck doing the same thing because he wants to put it back together.  To fix it.  Or at the very least to make sure Mobius is okay.

I just want you to be okay , he said to her.  He wants that for Mobius, too, and…

He swallows.  More .  He wants more.  Exactly what that more entails, he can’t begin to define.

But what are the odds he’ll ever find him again?  He’s almost certain Sylvie didn’t send him to a different timeline intentionally—she isn’t cruel like him, or at least not in the same ways—but that was what happened.  Either way, the sheer number of universes that now exist (and will continue to multiply) is beyond even the comprehension of a god.

The choking feeling comes on again, and there’s nothing to do but weather it.

He could stay here, in this strange, effortless timeline.  It would be easy.

It would hurt, but it would be a hurt of his choosing.   

Every time he’s tried , he’s lost.  

What if he just...doesn’t?

He sleeps, and he eats.  Sometimes he drinks (too much) and cries so hard he thinks it might kill him.  Never does, though.  Even when he wishes it would.

After a few weeks, he isn’t even ashamed of it anymore.  It’s centuries of grief pouring out of him, things he didn’t even know he carried.  Hurts large and small, old and new.  It could be said, rightly, that he’d brought much of it on himself, but at last he can admit that there were also many things he had no control over and didn’t deserve.  

There’s no image to uphold here; no soft belly to protect.  His innards have all been cut out of him already.  A few more weeks, and that starts to feel... liberating .

He knows, oh, he knows how dangerous it is to feel like there’s nothing left to lose.  That was how he felt after falling into the abyss below the rainbow road.  That was the desperation Thanos and his bloodhounds scented on him.  He was so wrong, then. 

He can’t fall into the same trap.  He has to learn from his mistakes.  Otherwise he’s doomed to repeat it, this cycle of chaos and pain.  That was what the TVA said he existed to do, and for all that he knows what he and Sylvie unleashed is wrong , he still resents that predestination down to his bones.

It might have been better, he reflects, if Alioth ate him.

The weather cools down.  The sea gets rougher.  He wades into it one day and the cold is shocking.  Every instinct screams to get out before his muscles lock up and he goes under.  But it calls to him, too, in a way he never let himself acknowledge before.

Under steel gray skies, the waves rock him and the cold seeps into him, and for the first time in a long time, he feels alive.

He’s not going to stay.

This place has nothing for a being made for mischief.  It’s too perfect, the rare timeline where everything coalesced just right.  The longer he stays, the higher the chance that he will somehow fuck it up.  And these poor, simple souls that live here without any idea how lucky they are don’t deserve that.

In the back of his mind, he knows this will be the first kind of timeline that falls to He Who Remains, when he comes to conquer.  Those who aren’t conditioned to expect the worst never see it coming, and are ill-equipped to fight it.  It’s bittersweet; although the timeline is all wrong for him, it has given him a quiet, safe place to fall apart.  He’s never had that.  Not once.

It’s cold enough for snow now.  Against it the water seems black and fathomless.  It churns on, though.  As he must.

He has a plan, of sorts.  His jumps with the TemPad will still be blind, but when he gets wherever he’s going, what he needs to do is seek two things: information and help .  He doesn’t have the knowledge to navigate the infinite threads of the multiverse, but someone out there does.  And there’s no chance of finding Mobius without knowing more about him.  He needs to know where he’s from, who he is, when the TVA took him.  There are bound to be some commonalities, even if there are now as many versions of Mobius as there are of Loki himself.

He wondered why there were so many Lokis assailing one single timeline.  As much as he chafes at his designation of chaos bringer, it seems both obvious and inevitable now; all systems move toward entropy.  The Sacred Timeline tried, time and time again, to do that.  He...no, they were the manifestation of that.

It’s funny.  All this time he thought himself so powerless.  Now he knows that change is the most powerful force in the cosmos.  And what is he, but the embodiment of change?  A Frost Giant and an Asgardian, a prince and a hostage.  A villain, but perhaps also a hero.  

You can be whatever you want to be .

He can, and he will.  Predestination be damned.  The most chaotic thing he can imagine is refusing to be what and who the universe demands.

Loki takes a breath and walks through the portal.

He jumps 186 times before he finds anything other than trouble or dead ends.  In roughly half of the worlds, Mobius doesn’t exist or is dead.  The other half yields version after version of the man who isn’t the one he wants.  There’s one with red hair, one who’s a Kree, one who has a perfectly straight nose.  Three try to kill him.  A few are kind and helpful like his Mobius.  But by and large, most have no interest in helping him, or don’t understand that anything is wrong. 

He expected all of it, but somehow it never gets less disappointing.  But on he goes, because he’s getting close to some sort of usable list of people who might be able to help him.  There are the two Avengers who are supposedly geniuses, someone called the Sorcerer Supreme, and several others.  He’s not sure yet how he’s supposed to get to them, or convince them to listen to him, all while avoiding being killed or imprisoned, but...there’s still time to solve those problems.

The next jump brings him to yet another TVA in shambles.  That in itself is not surprising; the very thing it was created to stop has now happened.  There’s no possible way to maintain an orderly timeline.  Millions of Nexus Events are happening every minute.  They’ve given up on catching variants and resetting timelines.  But there’s some other sort of purpose in the air, the exact nature of which Loki can’t immediately decipher.

He’s become good at harvesting information without being noticed.  The invisibility tech he picked up in timeline #37 is very helpful in that regard.  He sips a cup of coffee in Renslayer’s office as he looks for what he needs.  Ah, there it is.

Here, Mobius never became a hunter.  He was pruned without a second thought.  There’s a file on him, much like there had been for Loki.  It’s short and comically benign.  This Mobius is from Midgard.  Most of the hunters are, he’s discovered; the Midgardian mind is easily manipulated, and they crave meaning that the TVA is only too happy to give.  He lets his fingers stray over the picture in the file.  This one looks just like his; the only thing missing is the mustache.

He was born in a place called California in the year 1960.  As near as Loki can tell, his Nexus Event was avoiding a fatal jet ski accident in 1994.  The gall of him, deciding not to die when the Timeline deemed it so.  A real sin.

Loki sighs. What about their original timeline made the TVA decide to make a hunter out of this gentle man?  He puts down his coffee and rides out the familiar ache.  At the very least, it no longer feels like being caught in an undertow.  It’s...well, once he might have called it purpose.  He’s not fond of that word anymore.

More digging, and he starts to figure it out.  This timeline has already suffered an incursion by another universe.  The thing that moves the people all around him is a desperate need to either close their world down to all the others, or be more prepared when the overlap happens again.

It’s exactly what He Who Remains warned them about.

Loki pauses at the next bit of information he finds, mind humming.  This version of the TVA has prisoners.  Why, when they could just prune people?  Are the prisoners from that other universe?  If so, he might be able to talk to some of them and try to get an idea of how to control his jumps through timelines.  Incursions happened for a reason; these people didn’t jump to a random timeline without intent.  There had to be something they wanted.  That meant they had a way to pinpoint and control where they landed.

That’s it, then.  He has to talk to some of the prisoners.  Maybe they’ll give him the information he seeks if he frees them.

There are no names.  Only designations, like the hunters.  He takes a deep breath outside the cell of A-01.  Hopefully these people are cooperative.  He wasn’t lying to Mobius when he told him he didn’t enjoy hurting people, but if it’s the only path to what he needs, he will do it.

He dislikes not being able to use magic.  But, as the timelines have shown him, technology often emulates magic.  He has a device to scramble their surveillance so they won’t see anything out of the ordinary, and a very handy lock disabler.  It’s not difficult to gain access to the prison wing, or the cells.  Somehow, though, this feels more criminal than just doing it with magic.

He lets himself into the cell.  The prisoner is a lumpy shape against the far wall.  It— he?—is lying on the floor, and—

“You guys trying to fuck with my head again?” the prisoner calls out, voice hoarse but defiant.  “Come on, do better.  Loki is dead.  I know that.  Thor told us.”

This...is not possible.

Of course it is, you fool .

Loki has to laugh.  The man in the cell—Prisoner A-01—is Thor’s friend Captain America.

“What in the Hel did you do to end up here?” he demands.  The Captain is...well, he looks like shit.  He’s been in this cell for a long time.  Long enough for his hair and beard to have grown in, and his cheeks to have gone a bit hollow underneath.  It’s a far cry from that pillar of righteousness Loki was briefly and annoyingly acquainted with.

“Same thing as you, I’d imagine,” he murmurs.  “But you’re not real, so.”

“I am,” Loki says, stepping closer, cautious.  No matter the shape he’s in, this man is strong enough to be dangerous.  “You said your timeline’s Loki is dead?”

“Yeah.  Murdered by Thanos.”

Murder is a term reserved for victims that people like.  Perhaps that courtesy is only granted now because of Thor.

“By any chance, did you time travel back to 2012 to retrieve several Infinity Stones?” Loki asks.  He can’t be this lucky.  He can’t.

The Captain finally sits up.

“Yes,” he says, eyeing Loki up and down.  “I did.”

“I’m that Loki,” he says.  “2012 Loki.  The one who escaped with the Tesseract.”

For two solid minutes, the Captain stares at him, unreadable.  Then he says, in a voice both hard and resigned,

“What do you want?”

His body is tense.  He expects pain.  He expects everything Loki was, back then.  

All Father help him, he knows nothing about how to put a person at ease.  He knows how to intimidate, to degrade, to charm, but not to comfort.  It’s doubtful the Captain would accept it, anyhow, but he needs him to trust him.

Good luck with that.  Sylvie didn’t even trust you.  You don’t trust yourself.

He exhales.  What would Mobius do?

A moment later, Loki slowly lowers himself to the floor.  Mobius had never towered over him; he had always placed himself on Loki’s level, as an equal, even in the times when the balance of power was not equal at all.  It’s an interrogation tactic; that much Loki knows.  But it’s also just how Mobius treats people.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, as gently as he can, hands up where the Captain can see them.

“Then what are you here for?” the Captain returns.

“I know,” he starts, “that you and the other Avengers harvested the Infinity Stones from other times to recreate the Infinity Gauntlet and undo the damage Thanos wrought.  They told me that the TVA didn’t interfere because it was meant to happen.”  He looks up, catches the Captain’s eyes.  “How?  How did that not create branches to the timeline?”

“I returned the stones to the exact moment they were taken from when it was done.  I closed the loop.”

Loki processes that.  Of course.  It makes perfect sense.  He was the only branch, and the TVA had shown up to prune him only seconds after he woke up in the desert, Tesseract in hand.

“Then why are you here?” he asks again, baffled.

“I couldn’t resist the chance to make things right.”

Loki leans forward, deeply interested in spite of himself.  “What things?”

The Captain smiles, and he looks tired.  “I tried to change my best friend’s fate.  I tried to make it so that he and a lot of other people wouldn’t have to suffer.”  

Incredible.  He never would have thought this man would do something so selfish.  But as selfish abuses of power go, this is the most selfless one he’s ever heard of.

“I’m sure they didn’t like that,” Loki says darkly.  Neither of them needs to clarify who they are.

“No,” the Captain agrees.  “They did not.”  He shakes his head, and anger creeps into his face.  “They told me the only reason he existed was to suffer.  That it was the only role he would ever play.”

How familiar that sounds.  Loki’s jaw clenches.  He has a lot more questions, but they can wait.

“Captain,” he says, energized, “how would you like to get out of here?”

“Oh, I'd love it,” he nods.  “But my Mama and Thor told me not to make deals with the devil.”

Loki leans forward on the palms of his hands.  This man is not at all as expected, and he likes it.  “Do you see any horns?”

“Just ‘cause you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

That’s true enough.

“What’s more dangerous?” he asks.  “Staying here with them, or leaving with me?”

“Hard to say.  I don’t even know if you’re real.  You might just be another thing they’re trying to scramble my brains.”  He tilts his head back, addressing the ceiling.  “It won’t work!  I’m never going to give you what you want!”

He’s not going to win this with words.  The Captain won’t trust anything he says.  But actions always carry more weight than words, don’t they?

Loki sighs and stands up. He takes out the TemPad and readies it.  The one good thing about all the jumping is that he can map where he’s already been, and choose to go back to those timelines if he needs to.  If the Captain follows him, he’ll need a calm place.  And frankly, Loki needs a break, too.  

“The portal will stay open for thirty seconds,” he says.  “It’s your choice to step through or not.  Give Thor my love, if you ever escape this place.”

He believes that the Captain could, even without his help.  Loki taps the TemPad and the gateway opens, orange-gold.  Then, without hesitation, he steps through.

Twenty-two seconds.  That’s how long it takes for the Captain to decide to follow him.  He takes it in warily—the beach, the hammock, the little house.  It’s the cold season here, and Loki watches him suppress the urge to shiver.  The rags they furnished him do little to dull the teeth of the wind that by now just feels invigorating to Loki.

“I would’ve thought you would say to give your regards,” he says at last.

“What?”

“To Thor.  But you said love .”

Loki blinks.  “I do love him,” he replies, and it is absurdly easy to admit that all of a sudden.  “He’s my brother.”

Of all things, it’s that that wins him over.  The Captain limps toward the house and collapses onto the divan.  He doesn’t sleep—not at first—but he doesn’t speak, either.  He just lays there, and Loki moves around him, lighting a fire, making food, squashing the overwhelming desire to press him for more answers.

They eat in awkward silence.  It has been a long time since Loki made food for more than one person, and he’s glad he overdoes it; the Captain is ravenous.  When he scrapes the bottom of the pot, he looks up and has the grace to be embarrassed.

“Sorry.  I…”  A frown creases his brow.  Loki can see him decide not to continue, and to change the subject to something else.  “Thank you.  I was skeptical because Thor can’t cook for shit, but that was very good.”

Loki chuckles.  That might be true in every universe.

“I am aware of his deficiency in that area, believe me.”

The silence descends again.  The Captain is, he realizes, even worse off than he initially seemed, and it’s not physical.  

“Do you have a name?” Loki asks.  “Or should I just call you Captain America?”

“God, no.  My name is Steve.  Steve Rogers.”

“Loki Laufeyson.”

“Not Odinson?” Steve asks.  He’s back on the divan, and his eyes are beginning to droop.

“Odin isn’t my father.”  Not in any sense of the word...not when he needed it.  Not that Laufey was, either.  Come to think of it, does he really need a surname?  No.  Just Loki from now on, he thinks.  Or maybe...maybe he ought to go by Friggason.  Much to ponder.

“Hm.  That’s right.  Thor did say you were adopted.”

He snorts.  “Adopted is a kind word for it.”

Steve cracks an eye open.  “What does that mean?”

Loki shakes his head.  This level of openness is still new to him, and it remains uncomfortable.  He has a feeling honesty will go a long way in earning Steve’s trust, but he has to pace himself or he’ll feel too exposed, and that never ends well.  It’s his turn to change the subject.

“Do you want new clothing?” he asks.  “I can conjure some for you.”

Steve looks down at himself, like he’s barely aware of his garments.  “Uh.  If it’s not too much trouble.” 

Loki conjures something warm, and soft, because that’s what it looks like he needs.

Steve sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps.

It’s killing Loki to not be able to ask his questions.  Objectively, he knows that timeline wasn’t the one he came from originally.  If it was, Mobius would have been there.  But how is it that Steve, who is also from the original timeline, wound up in that one?  A prisoner of the TVA in a universe he didn’t inhabit?

And how had he time traveled without the Time Stone or a TemPad?

And what was the TVA doing to him?  With what goal?  

Patience, Loki.  Patience.

Yes.  Patience.

Just like Loki needed his time to fall apart, the Captain needs time to remember how to be a free man.  He doesn’t cry or drink or lay in a hammock.  He sleeps, and when he’s done sleeping, he runs.  When he’s not running or sleeping, he stares into the fire a lot, lost in thought.  Once, he looks up at Loki and asks to fight.

It’s been a while since he had a good scrap, so he says yes.

It could have been a recipe for disaster; Loki is competitive to a fault, and Rogers is tireless and stubborn.  Not to mention the river of bad blood between them.  But neither of them are the people that fought those old fights anymore.

Steve is without his shield, and any thought that it would weaken him is quickly dashed.  The years Steve has lived beyond Loki cured him of the reliance on his weapon, though Loki can tell he misses it.  His body is his weapon now.  His mind, too; he doesn’t fall for illusion nearly as much as Loki would like him to.

Loki doesn’t try to enchant him.  He knows that would fracture any trust or goodwill they’ve managed to build.

It’s a solid draw.  They’re both sweating and bloody when a combination of nightfall and growling stomachs brings them to a halt. 

“You were holding back,” Steve says.  He knows Loki didn’t lay all his cards on the table.

“Did you want me to actually kill you?” he drawls, pushing wet curls from his face.  He’s caked in sand, and more than ready to let the sea wash it from his body.

“No,” he says, but it isn’t terribly convincing.

Loki doesn’t know what kind of comfort Rogers needs, and even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to provide it.

“If you want to die,” he offers, “try the purple stuff in the bottle on the top shelf.  I can’t promise you won’t go blind.”

A startled laugh punches its way out of Steve for the first time.  “I’ll pass,” he says, a ghost of a smile lingering on his lips.  He sits down and wraps his arms about his knees, and then he tilts his face up to the moonrise.

Loki is used to the three moons by now, but they were quite the sight when he first arrived.  At least Rogers is staring at something other than the fire tonight.  He shakes his head and walks to the water, shedding clothes as he goes.  

By the time he leaves the water, Steve is gone.  But there’s light in the cottage windows, and he can smell food when he approaches. 

Steve is preparing dinner—strings of plump mussels that he must have pulled up while Loki was swimming, the unleavened bread sold by the woman a quarter hour’s walk down the beach, the starchy root vegetables that grow in the sand and have a faintly fishy taste.  There’s so much salt in the air here that it accumulates on the windows like hoarfrost when the wind blows just right; Steve scrapes some from the pane, like he’s seen Loki do, and tosses it in.

“Which—” he says, pointing at the unfamiliar herbs without making eye contact.  This arrangement is just as strange for him as it is for Loki.  He knows that Rogers has been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and Loki can’t pretend he doesn’t wait for Steve to fall asleep first, and sleep with the TemPad in his hand and a knife under the pillow.

Nonetheless, he knows an attempt at reciprocation and thanks when he sees it.

Loki shows him the right ones to use, and his stomach cramps with how good it smells.  And up close, he can see that the blows he managed to land on Rogers are already fading.  Perhaps the marks of the TVA are, too.

Sleep comes easy that night for both of them, but it’s short-lived.  A few hours after dropping off, Loki comes awake in a rush because someone is touching him .

He has the blade at Steve’s throat in a second, a snarl on his lips.  It takes him a long moment to realize that Rogers isn’t trying to harm him, or steal the TemPad.  Another second, and the look in the other man’s eyes brings the understanding that something is wrong. 

Steve tilts his head slightly, eyes indicating the window.  A peal of light strobes past and Loki stifles a curse.  He knows before fully hearing the voices that it’s the TVA.

“His temporal aura is all over this beach,” a voice says.  “He’s been here.”

Steve gestures at the TemPad in his hand.  He doesn’t speak, but Loki knows what he’s saying: We have to go .

Shit.  He’s an idiot.  Loki learned, during highly troublesome jump number 76, that he had to obscure his temporal aura or he could be tracked.  Sure, they had the collars for that, but if push came to shove, the TVA could also use a known temporal aura to track a person.  That was why they scanned every variant that came through the doors.  

It was easy for him to adjust; Loki spent every day of his life hiding something.  It was automatic to maintain his Asgardian appearance by now.  All he had to do was push that illusion a little bit further.  There’s no way they’re here for him; they’re after Steve. Whose temporal aura he should have thought to conceal all along.

There’s a good chance that’s how they found Rogers in the first place.  He had already traveled through time before daring to step outside his designated path.  He was in the system.

“ Loki ,” Steve hisses, in a whisper that’s barely a sound.  They’re coming closer to the house now.

He doesn’t really know how to conceal someone else’s aura.  But meeting the other Loki variants, especially the elder one, made him realize that his only limits were the ones he placed on himself.  He takes hold of Steve’s wrist and wills his magic to make it so.

“Commander?  It’s gone,” another voice says, too close.  “I’m not picking it up anymore.”

“Damn it.  Must be residual. He already jumped.”  That sounds an awful lot like B-15.  Something muffled, then: “Check the house.  See if he left anything that’ll give us a clue where he’s going.”

Steve’s muscles tense, but Loki holds him still.  He’s got this.

Steve is motionless next to him when the door flies open, kicked in with entirely unnecessary force.  The lights dance across the room.  They won’t see anything but an empty, neglected shack, and a pile of rags in one corner.

It is B-15.  This timeline’s version of her is diminutive, but no less intimidating.

She and the other three hunters poke around, their irritation growing.

“He hasn’t been here in a while,” one of the others says, running a hand through a thick coating of dust that exists nowhere but in Loki’s illusion.  “No one has.”

B-15 nods.  “He must have stopped here right after escaping, and moved on.”

One of the hunters by the door surveys the view to the beach.  “Nice place for a little R&R.”

Something protective flares in Loki’s chest.  Not this timeline.  They can’t have it.

... wherever I went, pain followed…

He knew this would happen, that he’d be the ruination of this place–

But B-15 dispels his worry.  “There’s nothing of value in this timeline,” she says, brusque and a little threatening.  “Let’s go.”

Rogers doesn’t breathe until the gateways close behind them, and there is no more sleep that night.

“You’re different,” Steve says, when morning comes.

Loki’s hand freezes, poised above his breakfast preparations.  He wants it to be true.  Badly, in fact.  But no one is more unsure of him than him .

Steve senses his abject discomfort, and reverses course.

“I mean, you haven’t told me to kneel even once.”

Every muscle that had tensed relaxes.  This, he can do.

“There’s still time.”  And if he wasn’t so hung up on Mobius, it would have been easy to turn to innuendo.  Rogers is an attractive man, after all.  Loki doesn’t have the heart for it right now, though.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs.  “That’s all we got.”

Steve’s eyes are far away when Loki looks up.  He considers.  His mother had given him magic, but she had also given him a sliver of her intuition.  It whispers now that it’s finally the right time to put down one blade and pick up another, more metaphorical one.

He stops what he’s doing, and after a moment, he asks, “How long were you there?”

“I don’t know,” Rogers answers, forlorn.  “I tried to keep track at first, but…” he trails off.

“Time is different there,” Loki murmurs.

Steve nods.

“And...what...what were they doing to you?  What did they want?”

His face darkens.  “The same thing people always want from a soldier.  Obedience.”

“They wanted to turn you into a hunter?”

“What do you mean?” Steve frowns.

“The hunters...they’re all variants like us.  The TVA erases and reprograms them.  Makes them believe they were created by the TVA and that their life’s purpose is to preserve and protect it.”

That information does not land well.  To say Steve looks horrified is an understatement.

“I...they...they picked me up, put me through their farce of a trial, and were about to prune me.  And then the others came.  They looked the same, had the same weapons, so I didn’t know...I still don’t know.  But they took me and put me in that cell, and ever since then they’ve been trying to make me forget.  I told them over and over again that it doesn’t work , it never sticks.  We always remember.  Always.  But they kept trying, and—” he cuts himself off, biting down the obvious emotions.  His chest rises and falls a little too quickly.

“You can call it what it is,” Loki says softly.  “Torture.”

“I guess so,” Steve allows, in a raw voice.

Wordlessly, even though the sun’s barely up, Loki pours him a drink.

When Rogers is out, put down by alien booze and a surreptitious sleeping spell, Loki goes back. A little more poking around makes it crystal clear.  It wasn’t this timeline that had been attacked; they were the aggressor.  The TVA in this timeline was stealing the great fighters and protectors of other timelines, not only to protect themselves, but to conquer others.  The war had already begun, and they tried their damnedest to turn the Captain into one of their drones.

We always remember, he said.

Who was we?   Were there more like him? 

Loki sits in the TVA library and stews.  Of course B-15 thought there was nothing of value in that perfect timeline; there are no people with exceptional abilities there.  Just regular people living ordinary lives kissed by probability’s favor.  The beach is in no danger from this timeline, but the same can’t be said for everyone else.

Figuring out how to go home isn't enough.  Home is in peril.  He helped bring this on; now he has to do anything and everything he can to impede the progress of this timeline.  

He’s confident that he can release their heroes; less so that he’ll be able to enchant their memories back into them.  But if he manages it, and deciphers their pinpointing system, he can send everyone home.  But what’s to stop this timeline from doing it again, the moment he leaves?  Or something worse?  No.  No, just freeing the heroes isn’t enough.  He has to take this whole place down.

Burn it to the ground, a voice whispers.

Oh, no.

The itch flares in him, dangerous and seductive.  It’s been a while.  He’s been holding back, exercising patience and tolerance and self-control, but now the mischief needs out.  It makes his skin feel too tight, his mind too small.  He aches to destroy.  It makes his hands tremble.

You can do it.  Make them sorry they were ever born.

He stumbles back through the portal, fighting the ravening thing that’s come alive in his chest.  He can’t breathe.  It’s his own nature, he knows, but it’s also everything Thanos and the Mind Stone did to him.  The golden jewel tore his mind apart, twisting the things he wanted, the things he was.   There’s no Infinity Stone controlling him now, but he wants to give in.  The pain always ended when he gave in.

And there is pain; so much of it.  He loves Mobius but the things he said in their first meeting cut Loki to the bone, and filled him with a deep sense of futility.  And for a moment there, with Sylvie and Mobius both, he felt like he was doing something important, something helpful, but it was just more of the same.  What’s the use in fighting?  Even when he thinks he’s doing good, defying the script written for him by the TVA, he’s wrong.  It’s all for nothing.

He collapses on the sand.  He wants to let go.  He needs it.  He can’t live like this, denying who he is, what he is—pretending it won’t all end the same—

“Loki?”

It’s Rogers, and he’s too close.

“Don’t,” he chokes out.  “I’m not—”

He can’t finish.  But he’s not safe.  He’s never been safe for anyone.

Steve understands, somehow.  He backs off a little.  He doesn’t leave, though.  Why doesn’t he leave?

Oh, but where would he go?  They’re both trying to get back to the same place, and if Loki fucks up now, they’ll never make it.  Never. 

They must burn!  

Yes.  Yes.  Those people, that TVA, they must burn before they kill and subjugate countless others.  He has to prune them.

Then go!  Make them pay!

He can hear the screams.  Taste the ashes.  It makes him salivate.  He wants it, and not for any sense of justice or noble protection, no matter what he tells himself.

He’s a monster.

The monster parents tell their children about at night.

A monster who is all of a sudden not on the ground anymore.  He’s in Steve’s arms, and Steve is carrying him toward the water.  The maddened part of him fights and hisses, but Steve is strong, and twists the blade from his hand before Loki can plunge it into his back.  He wrestles him right into the sea.

The second the icy water touches him, it’s better.   The madness starts to ebb.  He gasps the cold salt air as the urge for violence slowly dies to an ember, and then nothing at all.  

As he comes back to himself, he realizes he’s wrapped around Rogers like a cephalopod, clinging on for dear life.  It’s too cold for the Midgardian, but he just bears it.  Loki is acutely aware of how little he deserves that.

“Let me-—float,” he stammers out, in a voice that sounds like he’s been screaming for hours.   

“You sure?”

He is sure of nothing, as usual.  But Steve lets him disengage, and he goes weightless in the grip of the water.  He’s tired.  So tired.

Later, when they’re back in the warm little house, Loki watches the other man through fuzzy, half-drunk eyes.

“How did you know?” he asks.

“You go out there every day,” Steve replies.  “And you’re calmer when you come back.”  He looks up from one of the books Loki had swiped from another timeline, which, so far, are absolute rubbish.  “This is the first time you turned blue, though.”

He had.  And he’s still.  It makes him feel naked, but he’s too tired to care.

“There you have it.  Thor’s weird, blue, adopted brother.”

“You said adopted was a kind word for it.”  

Ah.  Rogers hasn’t forgotten.

“I was stolen from my people as a baby,” Loki says.  “I was the son of a king, and Odin kept me as a means to ensure peace.  A pretty hostage dressed in green and gold.”

The other man digests that for a while.  It’s clear that Thor has never told them the whole truth.

He asks, “Were they cruel to you?”

“No.”  Loki closes his eyes.  Never cruel, especially not Frigga.  But he had always known, no matter what words were spoken, that he was not Thor’s equal.  Not in Odin’s eyes.  “Not until I discovered who I really was.  But I was cruel then, too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You had no part in it.”

“No,” he agrees.  “But I know what it’s like when something you trust absolutely turns out to be a lie, and people you loved and respected were in on it.”  He sets the book down, and his eyes are too perceptive.  “I also know what it looks like when someone who’s been traumatized gets spooked.  What happened, Loki?”

He can’t.  He can’t talk about, or think about it, or it will come back.  The itch.

It punches him in the gut with the old hopelessness, and he’s had enough alcohol to let the tears well in his eyes.

“Mobius said I could be good,” he whispers, as pathetic as he’s ever been, and Gods, it hurts.  Through the tears he can see his Asgardian skin creeping back to the surface, painting him alabaster.  “But he was wrong.  I’m not good.  I can play at it, but eventually, one day, I’m going to ruin everything.  That’s all I ever do.”

It’s quiet for a long time.  Just the crackle of the fire, and wind at the windows.

“I don’t know Mobius,” Steve says at last, “but I don’t think he’s wrong.”

You don’t know.  You don’t have any idea what I am, what I’m capable of…

“I don’t think you know those things, either.”

Loki rolls onto his side, unable to bear the eyes on him.  He’s starting to understand.  It irked him that his brother would cede leadership to a man so inferior, but he’s not inferior at all.  He’s good, and he’s unshakeable.  Everything Loki is not.

“What helps?” Steve asks.  “Besides the water.”

“Not so eager for another swim?” Loki can’t help but say into his pile of blankets.

“I spent seventy years frozen in the Arctic Ocean.  Can’t say I enjoyed it.” 

“I don’t need your help.”

“Sure,” Steve says easily.  “I used to think I didn’t need anyone’s help, too.”

“I don’t deserve your help.”

“Nice try.  I’m the one who gets to decide that.”

“You’re the one recovering from torture.”

“And you’re the one pretending he hasn’t also been tortured.”

He’s tired.  He can’t be faulted for resorting to, “Fuck off.”

“I will.  When you tell me what else helps you calm down.”  Steve knows how close he was to a complete breakdown, if not the reason for it, or the things it made him want to do.

“Mobius,” he says immediately.

“Okay.  How do I find him?”

“He’s in your original timeline.  Can’t find him until we know how to get there.”

What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?

He hears Steve blow out a sigh.  “Okay, so no Mobius.  What else?”

“Stabbing people.”

Steve laughs.  “My God.  You should meet Bucky.”

He does not know who Bucky is, or how he’s relevant.  Does this Bucky person also like to stab people?  Steve is, maybe, a little too tolerant of insanity in the company he keeps.

“I take it you don’t want me to let you stab people?” he asks.

“No,” Loki mumbles.  “Unless they deserve it.”

“Noted,” Steve says, still with a trace of humor in his voice.  “Anything else?”

Loki curls himself into a ball and makes an honest attempt to think.  He had always been this way, but in the peaceful days, before he had so much to be angry about, it just felt like restlessness.  And when he was restless, he…

Took a lover.

“Sex,” he says miserably, expecting Steve to laugh again.

He doesn’t.  He’s silent for a minute, and then he says, “I might be able to help with that.”

Loki rolls over, staring at him in disbelief.  Is he hallucinating?  He didn't drink that much of the purple stuff.  Steve meets his eyes, steady.  Willing.

“Have you lost your mind?" Loki demands.  "If you were worried about making deals with the devil, you definitely shouldn’t be fucking him!”

“I don’t know.  Might be fun.”

It takes Loki a moment to realize that he’s just masking the seriousness of the offer with humor and bravado.  A lot like Thor might, were he ever in this ludicrous situation.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Loki grumbles, and rolls back over, retreating into his nest of blankets.

Sleep is elusive.  He’s tired, but his mind refuses to rest.  It’s everywhere.  But mostly, it’s across the room with Steve’s muscular body and foolishly altruistic nature.

It’s Mobius he wants.  He knows that.  But he’ll never make it to Mobius if he can’t control himself.  Sex always took the edge off in the old days; kept him from doing stupid, needless things.  The stakes are higher now than they ever were, back then.

Beyond that, he knows that Steve’s offer is subject to change.  Right now he’s receptive, but it’s very possible that he might come to his senses and take it back.

Loki frowns.  Is Rogers stable enough to make good decisions?  Heaven knows Loki has never made one in his life, but at least he knows he’s at his baseline.  He has no idea whether Steve is thinking clearly.

“Tell me about your friend,” he says, not even trying to pretend like either of them are sleeping.  “The one you want to save.”

“Bucky?  Well...he’s my best friend.  My first friend.”

“And?” Loki prompts, after a minute passes with nothing else.

“I wasn’t like this, when I was a kid.  I was small and sickly, and I resented it like hell.  The only thing that got me through a couple winters was spite, I think.  And it was just me and my Ma; we didn’t have much money. I wasn’t exactly a catch, is what I’m saying.” 

“And Bucky?”

“Bucky didn’t care about any of it.  He stuck with me.  Pulled me out of fights I couldn’t win and wiped the blood off my face.  And when we were sixteen, he kissed me.”

“Your first friend, and your first love?”

“Yeah,” Steve sighs, with obvious longing.  “It’s...Look.  Long story short, I lost him in the war.  He fell from a train.  He shouldn’t have survived, except they’d experimented on him while he was a prisoner, and made him like me.  So he lived.  And the bad guys took him and did exactly what the TVA does to the hunters.  They tortured him and erased his memories, and turned him into a killer.”

That explains Steve’s horror at that bit of information, and the we.  

We always remember.

“I was frozen for those seventy years.  All that time Hydra had him and forced him to do terrible things.”  Grief is creeping into his voice.  “He isn’t like that.  He’s a good man.  Kind.  He would never have chosen it.” 

Loki doesn’t know what it’s like to be the kind of person that people speak of in this way. The compliments he’d been paid in his life revolved around his cunning, or his magic, or his charm.  No one would describe him the way Steve describes his Bucky.

Steve shakes his head.  “The first time I saw him again—realized he was alive —he didn’t know me.  That was one of the worst moments of my life.”

Loki almost regrets dredging it up, if only because he knows how that feels.  If Sylvie’s betrayal was the dagger, Mobius not knowing him was the twist of the blade.  And he’s lived that over and over, in timeline after timeline.

“But he remembered?” Loki asks, a little breathless.  He needs to know that it’s possible—that one day he’ll look into the eyes of a Mobius that knows him.

“Yes.  In 2014.  He almost killed me, but he remembered.”

“And you love him, still.”

“So much,” Steve confirms.  It radiates from him.

Now—now he’s just confused.  “Then why are you–”

“When Thanos arrived, I asked Bucky to do the one thing he said he never wanted to do again.  Then he was dead for five years.  And now he’s back, but we had no time to really talk or figure anything out before I ended up in that TVA cell for God knows how long.”  He’s quiet, and Loki can see how the lost time haunts him.  “I’m sure he’s moved on.”  The words are bitter shapes in his mouth.  “Besides, who knows if we’ll even make it back.”

Loki sits up, suddenly so irritated that he wants to crawl out of his skin.  This idiot.  “So you’re just giving up.”

“No,” Steve says, a tad defensive.

“It sounds like giving up to me,” he growls.

Steve blinks, taken aback.  “Why are you angry at me?”

“Because you’re sitting there offering me sex when you love someone else!”

“And you’re sitting there thinking about accepting when you love someone else!”

For a brief second, Loki wants to strangle him.  It passes without any real threat, but he has to move.  He paces the small house, unreasonably riled.  “You are infuriating,” he informs Steve.

“I was just trying to help,” Steve says, sincere and a little wounded.  He shakes his head, eyes going hard.  “Believe me, I’d rather be with Bucky.”  Steve rises to his feet, temper loosed in a way Loki hasn’t yet seen.  “And you know what?  Don’t think for one second that I don’t know you had something to do with this.  I’m not stupid.  All of a sudden there’s a multiverse and then a repentant God of Mischief shows up in my cell?  Too much of a coincidence.  What did you do, Loki?”

Those words are sharper than any knife he’s ever wielded.  His vision wobbles and Loki has to hold on to the table to keep his knees from going out.

“I tried to stop her!” he shouts, loud, anguished, everything welling back up to tear at him again.  It feels good to scream, so he does it again.  “I wasn’t strong enough!  Is that what you want to hear?”

“Loki—” Steve tries, startled at the outburst.

“Would you like a list of every other way I’ve ever failed?  Because it’s long!”

Steve’s face says he knows he went too far, and that he regrets the harm done.  “I’m sorry,” he says, moving closer, even though they both know it would be wiser to move away.  “That was uncalled for.”   

So help him, he wants to hurt this man, not in the least because what he said was true.  All of a sudden there’s a blade made of ice in his hand.  Loki stares at it, startled.  Even though he should be able to do this, by nature of what he is, he’s never managed it.  Until now.

“Please don’t stab me,” Steve hazards.  “I really don’t enjoy it.”

“You do deserve it,” he snaps.  But the wonder of the blade in his hand has made him forget some of his rage.

“Is that ice?”

“Yes,” he says, and promptly drops it down Steve’s pants.  It’s childish and petty, but it makes him feel better to watch Midgard’s cold-hating golden boy squirm around trying to get it out without making a eunuch of himself.

Loki doesn’t sleep.

He’s honestly not sure what bothers him more; Steve’s uncertainty that the love of his life will still want him when they get back, or Steve’s doubt that they’ll make it back at all.  They’re going to make it back.  There is no other option.  And if this Bucky has even one brain cell in his head, he’ll welcome Steve with open arms.  Loki has to believe that.

He has to, because he’s already been rejected by one person he loves.  More than one, actually.  He won’t make it if the only thing at the end of this quest is another rejection.

The fact that it’s a possibility, however slim, keeps him ornery long past daybreak.  

Steve gives him a wide berth for a few days, and that’s just as well.  Every time Loki looks at him, he gets annoyed all over again.  Annoyed that he lost control like that, annoyed that he was so vulnerable in front of him, annoyed that Rogers placed doubt in a part of his mind where it didn’t exist before.  The equation used to be simple: I will find Mobius, and he will love me.   But like Steve, he had no time to actually talk to Mobius before everything spiraled out of control.  So now, in addition to worrying about everything else, he has to worry that the things he feels might not be reciprocated.

That said, he is very aware of the fact that Steve saved him from doing things he would have regretted.  Had he been alone, he might have given in to the fevered desire for violence.  At best it would have been marginally satisfying to wreak havoc on the TVA, and at the worst, he would have gotten himself pruned or killed.  Neither road led to home.

They’re even now, he and Steve.  Loki freed him from that prison, and Steve saved Loki from himself.  It’s an advantage lost, but he thinks that even in the absence of a debt, Steve would have acted the same.   

Loki swims toward the shore and then stands in the cold air, staring at the endless waves.  If he was right about anything in his addled state, it’s that the hero-snatching TVA has to be stopped.  They didn’t succeed in turning Steve into one of their drones, but if anyone like him or the other Avengers is converted, there’s little hope for the timelines they mean to conquer.  He Who Remains warned them that this would happen.  It has to stop now, before they have their full strength.

He looks up at the house.  The odds are always better with two.  Another mind, another sword…another chance.

It’s time to reopen the lines of communication.

Steve says yes before Loki is even finished explaining.  He has every reason to want that timeline brought to its knees, but it’s more than personal vengeance that drives his answer.  The thought of multiversal war horrifies him.  As it should. 

“Who else do they have?” he asks.

“I don’t know.  There were no names on the prisoner manifest.  Just numbers.”

“Numbers,” Steve repeats.  He looks faintly ill.

“Yes.  Like the hunters.  You were A-01.”

“We have to find names.  Or pictures.  We have to know who they’ve taken.”

It’s a reasonable first step.  Before they can free them, they might have to fight them.

“I’ll start in the morning,” Loki says.

It takes two days of digging, but he finds names and images.  Steve’s reaction is not encouraging.  He looks pained as he sorts through them.  He stops at one in particular, sighing deeply.  It’s a woman with long dark hair.  Someone he cares about.

Steve doesn’t say anything.  He just keeps sorting, separating the ones he knows from the ones he doesn’t.  Loki knows he’s looking for his Bucky, and they’re both relieved when he doesn’t show up.  Thor doesn’t, either.  Small mercies.

It is perhaps not surprising that Steve jerks awake from a nightmare that night.  It isn’t the first time for either of them. That’s the trouble with this small house; they can’t hide from one another.

He listens as Steve spends several minutes just trying to breathe evenly.  It’s not working.  Loki remembers that feeling of hysteria backing up in the throat; there aren’t many people he’d wish it on.

Rogers needs someone better than him.  That’s a given.  But Loki is the one who’s here, and the least he can do after Steve’s heroics the other day is try.  He gets up, pours a glass of water, and settles across from Steve.  Steve doesn’t look at him, at first.  

Loki holds the glass out like a peace offering and says, “What helps?”

That does the trick; Steve makes eye contact and eventually reaches for the water.

“Punching things,” he mutters, cradling the glass in both hands.

He might have guessed.  That request to fight early on makes more sense now.  

“I’m right here.  But I do punch back.  Hard.”

If he thought that would be a deterrent, he was very wrong.

It’s different this time; Steve is angry.  That makes him, in turns, more and less difficult to handle.  He’s fast and tireless and his swings aren’t just to warn—they hurt.  But the anger makes him less perceptive, the tiniest bit careless, and easier to maneuver into a trap.

There’s no time like the present to experiment with his newfound abilities.  If he can produce ice daggers, he ought to be able to use ice in other ways.  Loki manages to lay some down over the sand without Steve noticing, and it’s too easy to lead him right into it.  On his next advance, Steve loses his footing, and Loki, stinging in several places from Rogers’ fists, elbows, and feet, helps him to the ground with his fist.

Steve lands hard enough to be momentarily stunned.  Loki doesn’t feel bad about it; this is the agreement.  Give as good as you get without seriously injuring or killing one another.  In a real fight, this would be the time for the killing blow.  He imagines they’ve both doled out a lot of those.

Steve drags himself back to his feet and nods.  He’s smiling and wincing at the same time.  Loki thinks that might be it, but no; he settles back into a fighting stance.  The rage seems to have departed, but still, there’s something hot in his eyes.  Loki gets the feeling that he’s in for trouble.

He’s right.  A few volleys in, he realizes Steve’s attacks aren’t random.  He forgot about his own trap, and Steve has him penned in.  Backwards means no footing, forwards means Steve’s fists.  There’s a boulder to the left and water to the right.  He chooses water, but Steve knew he would, and he gets a boot in the chest for his troubles.  The force of it corkscrews him onto the ice, which propels him directly into the boulder.

Stars burst behind his eyes, and his mouth fills with blood.

“Oh shit,” he hears Steve say.  It’s not because there’s blood; it’s the amount of blood, which Loki will admit is a lot.

Steve kicks sand over the ice (smart) and jogs over.  He reaches out to check Loki’s face, full of needless remorse.  He hasn’t yet realized that he’s trying to examine an illusion.

That’s driven home by the touch of Loki’s blade on the side of his neck.  Steve freezes, then sighs and lifts his hands in surrender.

“It wasn’t even you,” Loki says.  It’s hard to talk with his lip swollen and the blood trickling down his chin, but he doesn’t mind.  “I bit my lip when I hit the rock.”  It’s darkly hilarious, in a way—taken out by his own trap, injured by his own teeth.  Mobius would say it was on-brand.

Steve turns.  “I thought I knocked your teeth out.”

“I’d be much less pleasant if you did that,” Loki promises, tapping the flat of the blade against Steve’s chin, and then withdrawing. 

“Are you trying to imply that you’re pleasant now?” Steve tosses over his shoulder, as he walks toward the boulder to gather some of the snow that still clings to its edges.

“You’re the one who wanted to fight.”

“And you’re the one bleeding all over the place.”  He presses the packed snow against Loki’s mouth, earning a hiss.  The cold feels good, though.

“I won.  Twice.”

“Once,” Steve rebuts.  

“Twice.”

“It’s not a win when the other party has already stopped fighting.”

“Do you always pause mid-battle to provide medical aid to your enemy?”

“Do you always get out of bed in the middle of night to try to help your enemy feel better?”

That’s a clear stalemate, as verbal spars go.  Loki leaves it alone.

“You’re making breakfast,” he announces, and starts the walk back up to the house.  His mouth is beginning to throb.  That’s what he gets for trying to help.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve huffs, and follows.

There’s a moment, when Steve feels the need to inspect his face after he’s done cleaning himself up, that things get weird.  The bleeding has stopped, and it’s not pretty, but Loki has had worse.  It will heal.

Steve is not convinced.  “I’ll stitch it for you if you want.”

Loki looks at him as if he’s gone mad.  “No you most certainly will not.”

“I’m good at it.  Won’t it scar if you don’t?”

“I have been alive for a thousand years and fought more battles than you can comprehend.  I know how to treat a wound.  With magic.  Like civilized people.”

Steve shrugs.  “All right.  Just trying to look out for you.  I know it’s not your charming personality that reels people in.”

Loki opens his mouth to respond—the gall of him, though he does enjoy both the time-honored tradition of shit-talking and a good backhanded compliment—but he’s lost Steve.  The blond seems to be stricken with a thought or a memory, and it’s putting that look back on his face.  The same look that drove them outside to spar in the first place.  That will not do.

Loki grabs his shirtfront and gives him one hard shake.  Steve’s eyes snap back to him.

“We are going to make them pay,” he growls, low and vicious.  “And then we’re going to go home to our people.  Do you hear me?”

Steve nods, face hardening with resolve.  And that should be it, but it’s not.  Loki can’t seem to pull his eyes away from Steve’s, or make his hand release.  In fact, it pulls Steve closer.  There’s some kind of magnetism at work.  A thundering in his blood.  He’s not imagining it; Steve sways forward, and— 

The hiss of water boiling over on the fire snaps Steve out of it.  He steps back and turns automatically to tend to the food, leaving Loki to blink and stare at his hand.  It offers no answers, so he retreats to the divan.  

A few minutes later, Steve hands him his food, and they eat in silence.

It's not an isolated incident.  Later that day, Steve brings him more snow.

"What?" Steve says, at his look.

"I'm not an infant," Loki bristles, restless and moody with pain.  "I can take care of myself."

"Never said you couldn't."  He packs the snow tightly into a rag, and places it gently against Loki's mouth even as Loki bares his teeth at him.  Loki knows he feels guilty, guilty that Loki was hurt in the course of trying to help him, which is absurd and pointless.  But that's why Rogers won't leave him alone.  That, and...this is who he is.  A helper. 

Half of Loki wants to bite him, and the other half wants to suck Steve's cold fingers into his mouth.  And Steve seems almost to be daring him to, though Loki is sure he doesn't know the whole of what he's inviting.

Fools, both.  Alone too long, and broken.

"Do not," Loki growls, because he can see him getting ready to say something else.

Steve lets go and backs off, and Loki is left in merciful solitude.  At least until dinner.

The house is full of new tension now, but that aside, they make a shockingly good team.  With Steve as his very motivated co-conspirator, the planning is fast.  But the implementation—it’s slow work.  It’s not easy to coax what he wants from the TVA’s systems without being noticed.  Miss Minutes is cagey.  If he forgets to erase his proverbial tracks even once, she’ll know something isn’t right.

So it’s slow going—weeks bleeding into a month—and it’s starting to get to him.  Loki is so close to the right timeline (and his Mobius) that he can taste it.  But there are still the minor hurdles of having to trace the last remaining heroes to their timelines, fight their way to central control, drop the magic-dampening field, restore the heroes’ memories, free anyone else who might have been deceived, and take down those who are really in charge.  The level of enchantment he’ll have to do is daunting.  

It’s not like he’s been able to practice.  There were a few times during his jumps between universes that he was able to do it, and it got easier every time.  But those were just regular people with regular minds.  It doesn’t compare to what he needs to do now.  

He keeps telling himself that he’s enchanted Alioth, one of the most powerful beings in the universe.  But he had help then.  Help that had even managed to enchant him.  He doesn’t know if he’s strong enough, on his own.

That thought follows him back to the beach, into the ocean, and to the shore, where he spends time creating ice blades and throwing them at targets Rogers set up, because he’s some sort of crazy whisperer.  He tells himself you’re stronger than you know , over and over again.  None of it brings his agitation down.  

He told Steve he could do it.  Their plan hinges on it.  If he fails…

When he fails…

He can feel himself unraveling, and he can’t let that happen again.

Hel.

He stalks up to Steve, hands fisted at his sides.  Slowly, Steve looks up from his book.  Loki’s teeth clench; how is Steve sitting there reading as if he doesn’t have a care in the world? 

“That book is terrible,” Loki spits.  

“Yes it is,” Steve agrees.  “Hope you didn’t spend money on it.”

“Heavens, no.  I stole it.”

“Should’ve stolen something better.”

Enough talk.  It feels like there is a swarm of bees in his brain.  Loki plucks the book from Steve’s hands and tosses it behind him, where it lands with a thump.

He swallows his pride and says, “I need—” he pauses, hating those words as much as he hates knowing that Steve might have changed his mind.  Loki wouldn’t blame him if he did, even though this thing between them is like a third party in the house now.  He tries again.  “I can either find something to burn, you can try to tie me down until it passes, or...we can try that thing we discussed.” 

Steve’s lips twitch.  “Screaming into a pillow?”

Loki wants to punch him.  Give him a split lip to match his own, now healed.  This isn’t a joking matter, even if he deserves it for the way he tore into Rogers a few weeks back.  He understands now that people handle trauma and heartache in different ways.  Steve reads, or runs, or fights.  Loki murders people.  

They are not the same.  Why would Steve want to give in for someone so flawed?

“Right.  Guess I’ll be finding the nearest vacant structure—”

“No,” Steve says.  He takes a breath and stands up.  He moves close, and Loki's skin prickles with the proximity.  He's always aware of where Steve is, now.  That little charge.  A pull.

Steve settles tentative hands on Loki’s waist and tugs him in a little.  “I’ve got you.”  

It takes him a moment to comprehend his relief, because it’s coupled with a sudden, precipitous arousal.  He wasn’t rejected.  He doesn’t have to try to fight this alone.  And it doesn’t have to hurt.  

He knows now what Steve was going to say that day, with the snow pressed against Loki's lip.  Steve is looking at his lips now, gaze grown foggy.  There's real desire there, not duty, and that's--that's good.  It won't be a chore for him.  Still, he should tell Steve that he doesn’t have to kiss him; he shouldn’t have to pretend at intimacy he usually reserves for someone else.  But Steve’s already leaning in.  And oh, Rogers can kiss. 

As Steve’s tongue finds his, and hands ruck up his shirt, the bees—they’re still there.  But instead of some creeping ominous thing, it’s the roar of raw desire that fills his mind and feeds his restless limbs.  This he knows.  This he can handle.

He pulls Steve down on top of him, and puts his teeth in every tender place he can find.

It’s not...hate sex, exactly.  But it definitely isn’t love.

It is what Loki needs, though.  It’s been so long since he was touched with care, and when Rogers pins him down and whispers, hot in his ear, “You gonna be good for me?” while he eases inside him, Loki practically dissolves.

Yes.   Yes.  He’s desperate to be good for someone, something, anything.   And Steve tells him he is, over and over, until he’s coming so hard he’s crying.

He is essentially braindead afterwards, which was the desired effect.  The quiet inside his head is...nice.  Even if he’s sticky, and Steve’s body is too warm against his.

“There’s no cuddling requirement,” he mutters.

Steve doesn’t even dignify that with a response.  “Did it help?”

“Yes.  A lot.”  He rolls over, in part because he needs a break from the heat emanating from Steve, but also because he wants to look him in the face for his next question.  “What do you get out of this?”

“Another day without a stab wound?” he ventures.

“Keep making jokes about it and see what happens.”

Steve smiles, an incredibly stupid reaction to the real threat in Loki’s voice.  It fades quickly, though.

“I was in that cell for a long time.  A long time.”  He can’t bring himself to say more, but Loki sees it all over his face.  Fear, loneliness, weariness.  All the strange things a man feels when his reality has shifted and he’s no longer sure of himself or his future.  

It isn’t just about lost time, though.  It’s also about the insidious things that torture plants in the mind.  Loki knows firsthand what it's like when one is made to feel totally alone, and like the lowest, most repulsive thing in the universe.  He also knows how hard it is to shake those feelings, even when the torture is over.  To be wanted after that...to feel pleasure...it's powerful.  Empowering.

Steve needed the sex as much as Loki did, if not for the exact same reasons.

Loki sighs.  There’s nothing to be done for it.  It is his sworn duty, now, to reacquaint this man with every erogenous zone on his body, and then some.  He climbs astride Steve, who looks up at him, a little surprised.

“Again?”

“What?  You can’t?”

“I can,” Steve says.  “I just wasn’t sure you’d want to.”

“They always seem to leave out the part about how mischief includes carnal pleasures.”  He runs his hands down Steve’s admittedly very nice chest, digging his nails in a little.  “It’s not all chaos.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re the god of sex?” Steve smirks.

“You’re insufferable.”  Loki starts to get up, knowing full well that Rogers won’t let him, and he isn’t disappointed.  His strong hands hold Loki’s hips in place as he laughs.  It’s nothing he couldn’t fight off, if he were so inclined, but it’s nice to be desired.

“Don’t go,” Steve says, still grinning.  “Show me your ways.”

“You are nothing like how they present you in the Avengers.”

He shrugs.  “Midgard’s best kept secret.”

"Ugh," Loki says, and kisses him so he doesn't have to hear his dumb voice anymore.

The sex helps.  It really, really helps, and he is not the only one benefitting.  Rogers, he suspects, feels most like himself when he’s helping someone.  And Loki—his mind is clear instead of overrun by the buzz of a thousand thoughts, many of which stem from his own self-doubt.  They fall together every night, and it’s about two things: remembering pleasure, and driving each other ever closer to the people they really want with the power of it.

It's risky.  Steve makes him feel so good, cared for and alive and like he's in some sort of control.  It's intoxicating, but this is not an elixir that's meant to be his.  He has to remember that.  Still, he's going to hold on to it as long as he can, and he's going to give as good as he gets.

That's the agreement.

All told, it makes the remainder of his work at the TVA smooth and easy.  This part of it, anyway.  And now the end is in sight.

Tomorrow’s the day.  It’s no longer a game of numbers, of chance and sheer dumb luck.  Tomorrow they go home.

It’s moments like these that time always chooses to slow down and stretch, so that every second is agonizing.  By now, though, he knows it’s only his own perception.  Time just barrels on, heedless of everyone and everything it pulls with it.

“The waiting is the worst,” Steve murmurs, echoing his thoughts.  He’s got that godawful book in his hands again.

“Are you really still reading that?”

“I like to know how things end.”  A little smile touches his lips.  “At least books give you that.”

It’s a strangely profound thing to say, given the circumstances.   Loki props his chin in his arms and thinks about endings.

Throughout all of this, Rogers has been the more forthcoming of the two of them.  Not really surprising.  Loki has told him enough to understand what’s happening and what they’re up against, but certainly not even close to everything.  Much of it is still too raw and personal.  Beyond that, it’s not necessary for what they’re doing.  But the simple fact is that they could die tomorrow, if things go wrong; this might be the last chance he has to speak things aloud and try to make sense of them.

“They told me,” Loki starts, halting, “that I was born to cause pain and suffering and death, so that others could achieve the best versions of themselves.  And that my fate would always be the same.”  He exhales, hating the little tremor in his voice.  “Pain, and suffering, and death.”   

Steve’s jaw sets. He’s offended by the very idea.

“What did I do?” Loki asks.  “What did I do to deserve that?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, with enviable certainty.  “You don’t deserve it any more than Bucky.”

He knows it’s the height of hypocrisy, given the things that have come out of his mouth in the past, but he has to say it:  

“It’s so callous.  To just...condemn someone to a terrible life from the very beginning.  Why bother to let us feel, or dream, or...”

He breathes through the familiar combination of rage and helplessness that always fills him when his mind strays to his earliest conversations with Mobius.  It’s followed by the same frustrated confusion about what he could have done differently in that castle at the end of time.  What was the right choice?  He’s not sure there is one.

The fear that had filled him when he listened to that strange man talk...he knew he wasn’t lying.  Benevolent intent or not, He Who Remains had murdered trillions, snuffed out untold threads of the universe to create the Sacred Timeline.  He was the last warlord standing.  And as much as Loki loathed what he had built, he recognized, with excruciating clarity, that this was the very definition of better the devil you know.

None of that changes the fact that he wants to live. 

“I know branching the timelines was wrong,” he says, as conflicted as ever.  “But so is dooming people from the start.”  He shakes his head, slides his fingers into his hair and pulls. “How am I supposed to fix it if it means I have to go back to that?  To a life full of mistakes and death?”

He’s so afraid.  The simple fact is that he’s not that altruistic; at some point, the instinct to survive will make him forsake the desire to do good.  He won’t be able to do it, and he’ll disappoint everyone all over again.

Steve is there, unthreading his hands from his hair and holding on to them.

“Let me tell you something,” he says.  “Watching you die did not bring out the best in Thor.  It destroyed him.  So whatever they told you, it’s horseshit.  We’re going to fix it, and we’re going to do it without putting you back in the noose.”

He blinks, unable to look away from the intensity in Steve’s pale eyes.  For the briefest second, he feels... hope ?  

“You’re good,” he says, shaky.  “I understand why they follow you.”

“I mean it.  You’re not going back to that.”

“What if it’s the only way?”

“We’re literally dealing with a multiverse.  It’s not the only way.”

There’s a rush of fondness in his chest, which doesn’t bode well for his heart.

“Your confidence is staggering for a mortal from a tiny planet no one’s ever heard of,” Loki says, because he has to get back to safer ground.

“Oh, all of a sudden the place you were desperate to rule is a tiny planet no one’s ever heard of,” Steve returns. “I see.”

“I hate you,” he hears himself say, but all he wants is to kiss him, and writhe under him, and believe.

Steve’s hand traces up and down his back for a long time after he kisses the hate out of Loki’s mouth, and several other parts of him, besides.  It’s unreasonably comforting, and exactly the sort of thing that doesn’t come naturally to Loki.  Real affection is...difficult.  Always has been.  It always seemed like something to be rationed. 

Steve gives it freely, like he has an endless supply, and like Loki matters to him.

Not for the first time, he thinks that Bucky, his fellow doomed soul, is very, very fortunate to have this man in his life to lessen the sting of inevitability. 

Eventually Steve’s hand slows, then stops altogether.  His hand rests lightly on Loki’s hip.  Somehow, he’s able to sleep.  The same can’t be said for Loki, but he’s relaxed.  At last there will be action instead of just preparation, waiting, and restraint.

He drifts, warm and content.  A rare thing.

Dawn has just begun to break when, like a sore joint finally cracking, something slides into place.  Slowly, Loki sits up.

He knows how to fix it.

Steve doesn’t stir.  He’s a pretty picture like this, loose with slumber, naked, one small shaft of light falling on his blond hair.  For the first time, Loki notices the scar on the swell of his right shoulder.

A knife wound.

He should tell him.  But he knows Steve would say no outright, or try to talk him out of it.  He might be weak enough to let him.

He reaches out and brushes his fingers lightly down his side.  In his sleep, Steve hums and shifts toward the touch.  Loki smiles and lets him be.

May the next touch be your beloved.

The days are growing mild again, and the sea is calm.  It’s likely the last time he’ll ever lay eyes on this beach that had healed him.  If he’s a little sentimental about it, well.  He’s allowed.

A hand falls on his shoulder, and Steve is next to him, outfitted in the combat gear Loki had conjured.  It’s more Asgard than Midgard, and he wears it well.  Still, after so much time spent in less formal clothing, Steve’s armor (and his own) looks incongruous.  Especially in this beautiful place.

“You good?” Steve asks, his glance knowing.

Damn him.  That word, in his voice, is forever branded on Loki now, and it’s enough to make him go a little warm under his layers.  No matter; it’s good to pique the blood before a fight.

“Yes.”   

“I know.”

The absolute faith that fills his voice when he says that—it’s like a drug.  It should bother him that Rogers knows how to play him like a harp, but it doesn’t, because there’s no ill will in it.  Steve genuinely wants to help, and believes the praise he feeds him.

Loki hopes it’s real.  But, he supposes, he’ll find out soon enough.

“Promise me something?”

Steve offers him a raised eyebrow.

“When we get back, don’t give up on your Bucky.  Go to him and tell him you still love him.  And if you don’t fall into bed ten seconds after that, I’m going to stab you both.”

“Such a romantic.”

“Promise.”

Steve smiles.  “That’s one deal I’m happy to make.” 

There’s a second, when they materialize inside the TVA, that Steve looks like he’s fighting a terror he hadn’t anticipated.  Only a second.  Loki understands.  Intimately.

He reaches out to the other man’s arm and offers a bracing squeeze.  He’s still no expert, but he is beginning to understand this comfort thing, a little.  

“Are you good?” he asks Steve, without judgment.  It had taken him quite a while, and several dozen timelines, to be free of the stomach drop that went along with coming back to this place.  He’s not afraid anymore, but he knows better than to forget to respect the power that exists here.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Just don’t want to end up back in that cell.”

“I’ll kill you first.”  That wouldn’t be much solace for most, but he knows it is for Steve.  Half his resistance to these people had been borne of the refusal to allow his abilities to be used to harm, and he is willing to die for it.

“How sweet,” Steve says, thumbing his chin.  That’s how Loki knows he’s really all right.

“Don’t let it go to your head.” 

Steve considers him.  “You want the same?  If it goes south?”

“No,” Loki answers, without having to think about it.  There are no follow up questions from Rogers, and he’s thankful for that.  It makes him feel like less of a cockroach. 

“Okay,” Steve says, checking his weapons one last time.  “Let’s go home.”

They move silently in the corridors, obscured by timeline 37’s invisibility tech.  They shouldn’t encounter any resistance until they reach central control.  There are scanners outside, much like the ones they both went through to ensure they weren’t robots and to scan their temporal auras.  There’s no way to avoid them.

What they don’t know is what will happen once they go through.  Loki has their auras blocked—that bit of magic still works here, much like the spells that maintain his Asgardian appearance, for reasons he can’t begin to comprehend—so the scanners shouldn’t register their identities, but they will register organic bodies.  They’ll know someone has gone through.  In his experience, many places and people don’t plan for breaches they don’t believe can happen.  He’s hoping they’ll disregard the readings as a glitch.  Even if they don’t, they’ll already be in.

From there, it’s a matter of using Renslayer’s credentials (thank you very much) to drop the magic dampening field.  Steve will stay in central control to ensure it doesn’t go back up while Loki heads down to the prison wing to start freeing the heroes.  He’ll send Steve backup via said heroes as soon as he can.  And once they’re all free, he’s going to try to enchant the memories back into as many of the hunters as he can, the way Sylvie enchanted the people in the hurricane apocalypse.  She didn’t have to touch all of them; if they touched one another, it became a chain.

She made it look easy, but she had been practicing all her life.  If he can’t do it, the hunters will just have to remain unaware.  He won’t sacrifice the mission, or his goal, for them.

What surprised him was that Steve agreed with that, when he brought it up.

Of course I want to free them , he said.  But we need to get home.  That has to be our first priority.  We can always come back.

Loki would never have considered coming back.  Coming back is for people like Steve. But maybe it’s for Loki, too...after he gets what he wants.

He supposes there are levels of good.  No one said he had to achieve the highest one.  He can be...good enough.

Oh, how Mobius would laugh at his thoughts.  He misses him so much.

Soon.

They pass through, and what happens is precisely nothing.  At first.

There isn’t time to worry about what that means.  Steve takes out the two analysts that have the misfortune of being in their way.  He is brutally efficient, which Loki appreciates.  Two minutes more, and the magic dampening field is down.

The scanners may not have alarmed, but the sirens that wail when the field drops could wake the dead.  Some little part of him always thrills at alarms.  Alarms mean danger and confusion and, yes, chaos .  He’s smiling when he opens his palms and green energy dances across his fingers.

“Loki,” Steve says, exasperated.  “Quit navel-gazing and go!”

He has to laugh.  It feels good to laugh.  But Steve is the one assuming more risk here, at least for the first part of this plan, so he better get going and find him some backup.  He opens the gateway to the prison wing and hustles through.

There are guards this time, but they don’t know how to fight magic.  Gap in their training, for certain.  If they were planning to take over other timelines, didn’t they know they would face magic in some of them?

Speaking of...he tries to prepare himself outside of W-10’s cell.  Steve told him this one might be the hardest to enchant, but the most useful for them once she was free.  She might even be able to help Loki free the hunters.

He may not need to enchant her at all; the records are inconclusive on whether they were actually able to erase and reprogram her.

I hope not, Steve said, grim. No telling the shape she’s in, though, if they’ve treated her anything like they treated him.

One glance tells him that they have.  She registers him when he enters the cell, but there’s a dead quality to her eyes, and she doesn’t react at all.

“Wanda,” he says softly.  That’s her name.

Something flickers in her eyes.  She’s paying attention.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do until now.  His gut says she’s in there.  Not erased...just hiding.

“I’m Loki,” he says, making himself as non-threatening as possible.  It is still not his forte, after a life of the opposite.  “I don’t know if there’s a me in your timeline.  If there is, he’s probably an asshole.  But I’m not him, and I’m not here to hurt you.  I want to show you something.  I have to touch you, just a little.  That’s it.”

There’s no outward response.  He moves closer, slowly.  Steve warned him.  She’s strong , and more than capable of harming him.  It’s foolish, then, to tell her that her magic will work now, yet he thinks that is the one thing that will win her over.  

“I took down the magic dampening field.  Your magic will work.  You can stop me at any time.  Please don’t kill me, though.  I’m trying to bring this place down.”

He’s close enough, now.  He touches his fingers lightly to her wrist.  Her skin jumps; she watches as his hand glows green.  He has to be gentle. 

Her mind isn’t like Alioth’s.  That felt like...a tempest.  An unscalable wall.  Hers is more like a maze; doors upon doors, dead ends, trick mirrors.  This is what she put up to keep them out.  They haven’t erased her.

“I can show you,” he says.  “Or you can look inside me.”

There’s a beat.  Then she lifts her head, and her eyes glow scarlet, and she’s in .  She’s reading him like a book, touching every corner of his brain, and it feels too much like---

She lets go, and he falls back, gasping. He’s broken out in a cold sweat.  That was a bad idea.  Sometimes bad ideas work, though.   

“The stone,” she says, and her voice is gravelly.  “It’s touched you, too.”

The Midgardian capacity for understatement is boggling.  He manages to right himself and fights an urge to vomit that is, thankfully, brief. 

“Help us,” he recovers.  “Help me free them.”  

She moves her arms, placing her palms against the floor.  They glow red, and before him, she rises up with her magic.  “How?”

“Undo what the TVA put in their minds.  Make them remember.”

“Even if they’re bad memories?” she asks.

It’s never occurred to him that some people’s lives at the TVA might be better than the ones that were stolen from them.  But without ever knowing they once had something else—had been someone else—how was it any better than benevolent enslavement?

He’s had a lot of time to think about the nature of choice.  It isn’t inherently good or bad.  It’s complicated, often ugly.  The wrong ones lead to pain and suffering and hurts that can’t be taken back.  But without choice, there’s no capacity for change.  No growth.

“Yes,” he says.  Some of the newly liberated might choose to stay with the TVA and fight for it.  He doesn’t think there will be many of them.  Regardless, they deserve the chance to choose what they want to die for.

Who am I, he thinks, offhand.  Not anyone the Loki of a few years ago would recognize.  He once believed removing choice was a kindness, a blessing to people who toiled with the weight of it.  They would accept it once they got used to it, and realized how much easier things were.  Myopic, of course; the minute someone stripped it all from him, he realized it was no favor at all.

Always so perceptive about everyone but yourself.

Wanda is watching him.  She is in turns beautiful and absolutely terrifying.

“All right,” she says.  “Who’s next?”

It takes both of them to free the two—yes, two —Hulks that are here.  One to subdue, and the other to enchant.  The female version returns faster.  The male—Banner—is much, much more difficult to pull back.

He thought the Hulk a mindless brute.  But his mind is deeply intelligent, if overrun and completely controlled by the need for self-preservation.  Loki has been closer to that in the past than he’d care to admit. 

He’s sweating from the effort when he finally breaks through.  This is hard .  Of course it had been challenging when he and Sylvie enchanted Alioth, but he felt it less.  She had a way of making it seem like he could do anything.

Banner blinks at him.  Wherever he’s from, they’ve obviously met.

“Thank...you…?” he says, confused and a little repulsed.

Loki steps back to gather himself, hands on his knees.  “Rogers needs you.  The gateway will take you to him.”

“Steve Rogers?” Banner asks, surprise in his voice.

“Yes.”  Loki frowns at the look on his face.  “What?”

“He’s dead where I’m from.  Thanos decapitated him.”

“Fuck Thanos,” Loki growls, from the depths of his soul.

“Couldn’t agree more.”  Banner pulls a face.  “So weird.”

“I’ve seen weirder,” the She-Hulk, whose name is Jennifer, says.  “Let’s go, nerd.”

It gets easier after that.  The minds aren’t as strong.  But when he gets to the twenty-seventh person that has been snatched from their timeline, brainwashed, and forced to commit atrocities for this one, he is exhausted.

Wanda barely seems fazed.  She’s aglow with—there’s that word again—purpose.  And why not?  She’s been biding her time in this prison, enduring horrors; now she can finally fight back.

“That’s all of them?” she asks.

Loki nods.  Does Sylvie get this tired when she enchants people?  Or is she so good at it by now that it’s nothing?

You’ll never know .

Probably not.  She’s not afraid to be alone.

“Now the hunters,” he breathes.  “I want to try a chain reaction.  I touch one of them, and they pass the enchantment on by touching someone else, and so on.  Then we rendezvous with Rogers.”

Her brow furrows.  “He’s...Hydra.  Where I’m from.”

It’s oddly comforting to hear that.  If some timeline exists where Rogers can be bad, even evil, then surely there must be one where he, Loki, can be a force for good.  

“It will be good for you to meet this version,” he says.

The chain works, but it’s even more draining than plain enchantment.  The further the magic travels, the less control he has over it.  He can get through three people, occasionally four, and then it wears off.

It’s strange, glimpsing snippets of so many lives.  Most of them seemed happy.  There are a few, though, who were taken from something awful.  He understands Wanda’s hesitation now.  He would want to forget those things, too.

But ignorance isn’t bliss.

Wanda watches him work while fending off the inevitable attacks.  She is a force to be reckoned with.  There’s no way he would have been able to do this without her help; the amount of effort and concentration required would have led to him getting pruned in short order, or to him being forced to leave the hunters in the grip of the TVA’s lies.  Steve knew that, of course, and crafted their plan so that Loki wouldn’t actually have to ask for the help he needed.

It’s really sort of unfair, all that good being concentrated in one person.

“Are you all right?” Wanda asks when the onslaught slows.  

He... is swaying on his feet a bit.  But it will pass.  He just needs to take a break.

“Just need to catch my breath.”

Wanda looks over at the group of confused hunters.  They’re huddled together, trying to comfort one another and make sense of what’s happened.  “I’m going to talk to them.”

He nods.  Prime idea.  As is that break.

This is when he should do it.  Wanda is distracted, Steve isn’t here to see through him, and he knows where they keep the stones.  Maybe there’s even a Casey here.

As tired as he is, though, he’s not sure he can maintain a convincing illusion.  That’s a sobering thought.  So is the fact that he stops thinking the second he’s still.

He wakes up to Wanda shaking him.  It feels like hours have passed, but he doesn’t think that’s the case. Most of the hunters are still close by, and the grief and confusion on their faces is still fresh.

“We have to go.  Steve sent Jennifer to tell us that Miss Minutes is trying to initiate a shutdown.”

It’s what they want to happen. Those few defenseless minutes when all security shuts down is when they’ll really gut them.  Loki spent weeks planting neutralizing tech borrowed from various timelines (and good old explosives) all over this place, and they’ll only work when the shields are down.  But the minute the system reboots, the magic dampening field will go back up.  He and Wanda won’t be able to free anyone else, and he’ll be back to knives to defend himself.  More importantly, he won’t be able to carry out the rest of the plan.  

Jennifer hauls him to his feet.  His legs aren’t shaky anymore.  It’s not the strongest he’s ever felt, but if this most recent portion of his life has taught him anything, it’s that it takes more strength to be vulnerable than anything else. 

He turns to face the group of hunters.  They look lost.  

“If you want to go home…” he says, voice cracking a little from how badly he does, “or you just want to get away from this place...come with us.” 

And most—all but four or five—do.

Central control becomes a transport hub.  Loki can admit—easily now—that had he done this alone, it would not have been nearly as smooth.  They’re not done yet, but so far things are mostly going according to plan.  A lot of that is due to Steve.  Steve, who knew who to select for what purpose, how to shift the focus from destroying to crippling in order to minimize loss of life, and how to get people on his side with nothing more than an earnest glance and a few perfect words.  That is a magic Loki has never had.  He’s persuasive, yes.  But charismatic?  No, that had always been Thor.

His growing admiration for Steve doesn’t make it easier to think about the way his face will change when he realizes what Loki has done.

It’s done, though.  He has them; the stones, the gauntlet.  With his energy renewed, it was easy to send an illusion along with Wanda and the hunters while he slipped away to get what he needed.  He rejoined them only about five minutes ago.

All of the heroes except Wanda and Banner are gone, sent on their way by Steve.  Wanda is sorting the hunters.  Those who don’t want to return to their homes, or have nothing to return to, will go to the beach under the three moons.  It’s the right place.  The people there had accepted him without a second glance, even though he looked different and couldn’t speak their language—not at first.  It was the same with Steve, the one time he accompanied Loki down the long coastline for a meal and a drink, because the fish evaded them that day.  Loki is fairly certain they thought Steve was his significant other, and that they were pleased that he wasn’t alone.

Gods, so was he.  And soon he’ll be back with Mobius, who believes in him, who gave him permission to be something, someone else.  The thought gives him the strength to do what he needs to do.

“She’s breaking through,” Banner says.  He’s been trying to hold Miss Minutes off, manipulating tech he’s never seen until today.  “I can’t bypass it anymore.  We’re about to go down.”

“Go,” Steve says, pulling him away from the workstation and opening the portal for him.  “Now.”

Banner blinks at him.  He swallows heavily, fighting obvious emotion.  “Captain’s orders?”

Steve smiles, and it’s a little sad.  “Captain’s orders.”

“It was good to see you, Steve.”

Steve knows about his fate in Bruce’s world.  He looks down at his feet, and then back up at Banner, and Loki knows he’s about to do that thing—where he masks a bad situation with humor, like Thor.  He wonders if that’s where he learned it.

“Hey, you could try sewing my head back on.  Have Thor zap me with lightning.  Maybe I’ll wake up.”

Banner actually laughs.  “Oh, God.  That’s what Tony said.”

“He would,” Steve murmurs, a little wistful.

“Nat punched him so hard that he had vertigo for a week.”

“Bruce,” he says gently.  “Go.”

The man who is The Hulk sighs, collects himself, and steps through the portal.  Then it’s Wanda’s turn.  Steve opens the portal for her and then starts preparing their detonators; it’s almost time.

“Wait,” Loki says to her.  She turns, and he steps close, lowering his voice.  “Is there someone named Bucky in your timeline?”

She tilts her head, a curious expression on her face.  “No.  Not that I know of.”

“If he exists, find him.”

“Why?  Who is he?”

“The one person that man will do anything for,” he says, indicating Steve.  “It might break the hold of the Hydra.” 

Her brow creases slightly.  He can tell that she doesn’t quite believe that’s possible, but...time will tell.  

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

She looks like she wants to say something else.  But she doesn’t.  She takes in the portal, and then, with a nod, she glides through on tendrils of red energy.

Just like that, it’s down to the two of them again.  He meets Steve’s eyes, and that’s the moment when a new alarm starts to blare.

System shutdown.  System shutdown.  System shutdown.

“Hope they’re ready for some fireworks,” Steve says, a little savage.

The lights blink out, and the room grows very, very quiet.  Loki gives them some illumination with the Child’s fire blade.  Mobius forgive him, but Steve is beautiful in the flame’s radiance as he activates his detonator, his eyes without remorse.

The line between justice and vengeance is a thin one.

The air shivers, and Loki feels the vibration in his feet.

They can’t see it, not with the monitors off, but he knows their cache of weapons, armor, collars, and TemPads just got blown to Hel.  Now...now the tech.  Everything that enables them to trace, track, and reset timelines, monitor temporal auras, and recalibrate minds.  This timeline focused on offense, on conquering, but others drew inward, developing technology to protect themselves and neutralize threat.  Today, they meet.

Loki hits his detonator, and he feels powerful for the first time in a long time.

“Come on,” Steve says, suddenly next to him.  “Let’s go home.”

And he could...they could just…

“Sorry you can’t see it,” Steve says.  “I know you wanted to.”

“I can feel it,” he replies, and it’s true.  The chaos is in the air.  It scrapes light, seductive fingers along his skin.  He’s stopped asking why he’s like this; he just has to accept that he is, and find ways to temper it.  “You don’t like to look back on the rubble after victory?”

“No.”  Steve’s gone far away again.  “The rubble is a million sacrifices, all piled up.  In the end you can’t tell which were yours and which were your enemy’s.  Everybody loses.”

And it’s...it’s something Odin would have said, a hundred years past, when he was trying to instill restraint in Thor.  But it sounds far wiser coming from Steve Rogers.

“They can’t write songs and great tales about that.”

“I guess not.”

There’s pounding at the door.  They can’t use the TemPads to get in because Loki is holding the only one that still works.  Eventually the doors will give, though, and they’ll be badly outnumbered.  It really is time.

“Don’t forget what you promised me,” Loki says.

“It’s all I’ve thought about.”

“Good.”  Loki takes a breath.  “Safe travels, Steve.”

Steve turns after a moment, confusion on his face.  “What’s wrong?  Where’s the gateway?”

Loki raises his left hand.  The gauntlet is sleek and beautiful, an articulating glove like dragon scales, and the stones glimmer in the dark.  He doesn’t look at Steve.  He can’t bear to see his faith drain away into disappointment.

“Don’t need one,” he says, and snaps.

It knocks the wind out of him.

The stones—they dig greedy fingers into him and devour him by the fistful.

He’s hollowed out, a deer gutted by wolves, when he comes to.

Loki gasps.  He can’t move.  His limbs are impossible weights; the gauntlet nails him to the ground.  His right hand is clumsy as he tries to remove it, but it won’t let go.  It feels fused to him, and the stones continue to glow.

Feeding.

The Tesseract never felt like this.  Not even the Mind Stone.  But together, all six of them, they take and take.

He lays there, chest heaving, tears leaking from his eyes.

It’s done.  It’s done.  The stones obeyed.  He’s good.  He fixed it.  

Now all that’s left is to make it to Mobius.  Nothing will stop him.  He’ll cut his arm off; he still has the blade.  The fire will cauterize the wound.

But when he tries, his body won’t let him.  The Infinity Stones won’t let him.

You’re weak, the yellow gem whispers.  You serve us now.

No.  No.  

Scared little boy.

“No!” he moans, near hysteria.

This is the price.

“Not this!” he begs.  “Please!”

You must lose that which you love.

How many times, how many —

He screams.  With every ounce of pain and loss and rage that exists within him, he screams.

And that’s when the lights go on.  The magic dampening field goes back up, and the stones flicker out, dull chips of nothing.

Paperweights.

He rips the gauntlet from his hand, breath hitching with sobs.  He can barely think.  He feels like he’s dying. 

Not yet.  Not yet.  

Loki’s hands shake so badly that it takes him four attempts to open a portal and banish the gauntlet to timeline number 86.  It’s a true void; the worst possible outcome, the destruction of everything.  Even he sees no beauty in it.

A million sacrifices, all piled up.

He closes that gateway.  He has to get to Mobius.  If he’s going to die he can at least die happy in his arms.

“You,” a voice says, and something hits him.

He recognizes, with absolute dread, the time flux.  There’s no collar on him, but whatever hit him slowed him down.  His thumb is a half inch from the activator of the TemPad.  A half inch from Mobius.

Ravonna Renslayer swims into focus.  She’s a little disheveled and vibrating with hate.

“My other self warned me about you,” she says.  “About Lokis.  I had never heard of you.  Do you want to know why?  The Loki in this timeline died as a baby.  Odin left him on that frozen rock.”  She crouches down, touches his cheek with false pity.  His skin crawls at the contact, agonizingly slow, forever .  “You were torn apart by wolves in the cold, cold night.”  She stands up, and there’s a crackle as she activates her pruning stick.  With a twist, it turns from an orange ember’s glow to bright, dangerous red.  “I’m going to enjoy watching you die.”

There’s nothing he can do; he’s held fast by the time flux, and even if he wasn’t, his limbs are barely obeying his commands.  The stones took everything.  He’s helpless.

Of course.  Of course this is how it ends.  

This was always how it was going to end.

Free will or not...good or not...his life has never been about getting what he wanted.

He can’t even cry.

Renslayer brings the pruning stick down, and everything goes dark.