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Loki’s leg is bouncing against the chair.
Thor frowns at him. “Loki,” He says, and doesn’t miss the way his brother twitches before turning to him.
“What?” Loki asks, his leg stilling for a moment. His shoulders are coiled as tight as a spring, like he’s fully prepared to fight or fly. The thumb of his right hand is wringing his left palm, and his hair looks a little wild, one curl sticking up out of place compared to the rest.
“Are you sure about this?” Thor presses, although he had said that half an hour ago. And ten minutes before that. And yesterday, when Loki had told him what he had been planning…
Loki chews the inside of his cheek for a moment, his gaze distancing, before he gives a sharp nod and turns back to stare at the wall. Nat is sitting on the opposite couch and she shares a concerned look with Thor. “When will the others get here?”
“Loki, the meeting isn’t for another ten minutes,” Thor reminds him. “I’d assume many would be out getting ready, or on their way over from the rest of the Compound.”
“Right. Right,” Loki rubs his hands together and wipes them down his thigh, letting out an explosive breath. He closes his eyes slightly too long to be a blink, his knee still bouncing against the couch cushion. “Right,” He murmurs under his breath.
“Do you want some water?” Thor asks, but he almost immediately shakes his head. “No? Any coffee? Tea?” He prods, hoping to give Loki something to lure him out of his own head.
Loki twitches again, an odd little movement that Thor can’t remember ever seeing him do before yesterday, and then shakes his head again. “No. No, thank you.” His leg continues to bounce.
“I think….” Loki is sitting on a nearly identical couch in Thor’s room, a mug of lukewarm coffee on his knee.
“You think what?” Thor asks, coming over to sit next to him, and starting to notice the wide, windblown look to Loki’s eyes.
He swallows twice, and takes a long breath that shakes slightly. “I think we don’t have much more time. They’re rallying. The Tree is weakening.”
Thor isn’t sure how much of that makes sense to him. “The World Tree? Who’s rallying? What could be weakening it?”
Loki pinches the back of his hand hard enough to make a welt, looking up and not quite meeting Thor’s eyes. “You know the Scepter was not of this world.”
Thor nods, carefully eyeing his brother. Loki is like a rubber band pulled too tight, about to snap. He’s clearly terrified of what he is about to say, much more terrified than Thor has ever seen him. “Aye.”
“You asked me once, I believe,” Loki licks his lips and sort of…shrinks a little into the couch, as if he is trading his physical strength for mental as he gags with his words. “Who controls the would-be king?”
Thor says nothing, prompting him.
“I…” Loki tries to say it, but then he pulls his hands back and shakes his head erratically, murmuring something under his breath. “No, no. I can’t—I have to say this in one go. I don’t think I can repeat myself.”
“Loki…” Thor hesitates, trying to understand. He feels like he is prodding at debatably dead roadkill. Loki massages the side of his head, running his fingers through his curls and yanking at an imaginary knot. He takes another breath.
“Can you…” He almost meets Thor’s gaze. “Can you call a meeting? Please. Tomorrow would be fine, if not today. It’s…it’s of grave importance. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.” He almost sounds like he’s pleading.
“Of course,” Thor says. He doesn’t think the other Avengers would mind. Tony has called a complete Assembly for him missing one of his socks and blaming Vision for it, who was literally the only person who didn’t wear socks. Thor has a feeling this is much more serious. His neck hairs prickle in warning.
“Thank you.” Loki’s eyes drift to the window and Thor doesn’t think he mishears the gasping, practically hyperventilating breath he takes.
“Elrond.” Tony says from the doorway.
The others turn to look at him. Thor, Nat and Steve are the only three people in the room at the moment, Clint having just stepped out for either a very strong drink, or a Starbucks run. They are basically the same in his eyes. “What?” Thor asks.
Tony waltzes in, and spills himself into a chair, which is right next to Loki. The god doesn’t move, his eyes planted firmly on the wall with the intensity of a two-thousand-yard stare. Stark is holding a cup of coffee. “The Council of Elrond. Lord of the Rings. All the magic elf dudes had a meeting together to determine the fate of the One Ring. This gives the same vibe, although I’m pretty sure the only one here who is an elf is our darling dearest Reindeer Games.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Thor says dryly.
“Look at him,” Tony points at Loki, who swallows and says nothing. “He’s got the magic prince-y elf vibe already, only now he looks like Pepper when she’s about to walk out and give some SI speech about me.”
Loki has his elbows on his knees, and he bends forward, rubbing his face with his hands. He doesn’t respond to Tony’s flimsy joke, which makes the man frown over at Thor.
Is he okay? Tony mouths, pointing discreetly at Loki.
Thor makes a wincing face.
“Loki?” He asks, and Loki jolts up, his face freezing.
“What?” He snaps, flinching when it comes out almost venomous.
At that moment, the door clicks open again, and about three more people walk in: Banner (in a pair of gray sweatpants and a matching shirt), followed by Wanda and Bucky Barnes, the latter of which looks like he has literally just rolled out of bed, his hair sticking up like the irritating blond kid from the Incredibles.
Vision phases in through a wall, dressed in slacks and an argyle sweater like an English professor from the East Coast. Nearly everyone jumps.
“That’s not everyone, is it?” Natasha counts people with her fingers. “Who’s missing?”
Clint arrives with impeccable timing, ending a phone call with one hand and carrying a full pot of coffee under his other elbow. It’s a mark of how good of an assassin he is that he doesn’t drop it. “T’Challa can’t make it, some family emergency involving another crazy cousin seeking revenge. Can we fill him in later?”
“Yes, yes, that’s fine.” Loki says, but his brain is clearly somewhere else.
He stands up, abruptly, and walks to the other side of the room, his hand back in his hair and pulling on strands of it. His other hand rests on his hip and he sharply swivels once he reaches the wall. He’s pacing, Thor realizes. This isn’t going to go well.
The rest of the Avengers apprehensively find their seats, and they watch Loki go back and forth like an audience at a tennis match. Then Loki stops in the middle of the room and takes a very long, very shaky breath, putting both hands on his hips. He’s about to say something when Clint speaks up.
“Oh, wait, it’s not a crazy cousin, his sister is arguing about instituting a Starbucks in Wakanda—“
“Most of you don’t know where the Scepter came from.” Loki says, his voice as monotone as possible. Clint shuts up.
They wait, not wanting to touch the surface of the pond that is Loki, which feels solid but will very clearly break if they try it.
Loki bites the nail of his thumb, before forcing his hand back down. “I mean—I’d assume. I think hardly any of you know much about your own galaxy, and even outside your own planet until a few years ago.”
He glances at Thor, and quickly looks away, betraying nothing. He’s addressing the wall. “And some of you, while knowing the universe, have little knowledge of what lies outside it. Outside the World Tree, in the place known as Ginnungagap, or the Void.”
Oh. Oh. So that’s what he’s on about. Thor stiffens. He’s ashamed of himself for his ears perking up, but he’s aware that Loki has mentioned nothing of his year after falling from the Bifrost. All he knows is that it was very, very bad.
“When—on the Bifrost,” Loki runs a hand down his face. Thor is closest, and he thinks he can see it shaking. “In 2011, before I came to Midgard—no. No. I’m doing this all wrong.” His movements are jerky and his hand fidgets with his palm, the hem of his shirt, a coil of hair. He glances up at the ceiling for help, and takes another very horrible gasp of air.
“Let me…” Loki moves back to the couch, and yanks a Starkpad from one of the cushions, one he had borrowed from Tony that morning. He swallows, typing on it and swiping across the screen.
The rest of the room look around at each other uncomfortably. Most of them have never even seen Loki in casual clothing, much less as emotionally ragged as right now. Vision is staring directly at him, his expression steady.
Loki looks up, glancing at the crowd, and makes a gesture on the screen of the Starkpad. A large holographic diorama of a very familiar-looking cube floats into the center of the room.
“The Tesseract,” Loki declares to no one’s surprise. What does make Thor react is how he immediately adds: “Also known as the Space Stone.”
Thor is starting to see where this is going. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it at all.
Another complicated stream of tapping, and something round and yellow spins into the air next to the Tesseract. They orbit each other like a solar system. “The Mind Stone. Also known as the shiny rock currently implanted in the head of a certain person in this room.”
Everyone’s eyes turn to Vision. The android frowns at the image of the Stone, and reaches a hand to feel the yellow gem embedded in his own forehead. “I had wondered what it was called.” He notes, his voice light.
Loki stares at him for a moment too long, before reaching back to the Starkpad. “Yes. Well. There are six of these.”
He stops, frowning vaguely like he realizes how indirect that is. “Six of these Stones—I mean. Gems of unimaginable power that contain the original singularities of the universe and have existed since the beginning of time. There are three on Earth at the moment.”
“Three?” Thor repeats in surprise. “Where?”
“One is in this room. Another—the Time Stone—is in the hands of a vaguely irritating Midgardian sorcerer who I’m ashamed to admit, actually seems capable of welding it. For now.” Loki takes a step towards the holograms of the two stones, stops, and takes a step back. His knuckles are white on the side of the Starkpad, but he forces his attention back to it and draws out a very crude oval shape, color-coded bright emerald green. He swipes it, and it floats into the air, following the Space and Mind stone spinning over the rug.
Loki glances over at Stark, much to Thor’s confusion. They lock eyes, and Tony looks almost guilty.
“What’s the third?” Natasha asks, and the others drag back to Loki, who stiffens.
“I may have,” He clears his throat. “I may have procured the Tesseract before my brother and I had to evacuate our people out of Asgard.”
Thor groans. “Loki.” Loki winces.
“What?” Clint yelps, looking alarmed. “Where is it? What do you mean? Wasn’t that thing, like, your estranged lover back in 2012? And now you just have it on hand?”
“No,” Loki scowls, his hackles raising. “I gave it to Stark. It’s safe now, somewhere where no one can hopefully stumble upon it, like you fools did with my Scepter in 2014.” He’s clearly still sore about that.
“And that is?” Steve cocks an eyebrow coolly.
Loki locks up, his back tense. “Not…” He meets Tony’s gaze again, and his face flashes with an almost apologetic expression. “Not somewhere the two of us feel safe disclosing.”
“Loki…” Steve warns, but Tony holds up a hand.
“He’s right,” Stark says, and takes a disturbingly large chug of coffee. “If there’s less people who know about it, there's less of a risk of it being discovered.”
“Exactly.” Loki points at him. “Less of a chance of him finding—“ Immediately, he goes white, and his mouth snaps closed like a clam.
“Who?” Thor asks when Loki doesn’t elaborate. “Who is he?”
Loki gives an involuntary shudder, and multiple people freeze up, now realizing how high-strung Loki really is. His gaze lands on Thor, his eyes wide and terrified, before it pulls away and he sucks in a breath through his nose.
“Loki.” Vision says to garner his attention, noticing the silence of the room.
Thor watches as Loki starts rubbing at the bridge of his nose, and can just barely hear him mutter “Oh, Norns,” under his breath in a feeble voice. Thor is getting a very bad sense in his stomach, something screaming wrong wrong wrong at the whole situation.
“There is more than just ether in the Void,” Loki starts, and it takes him a moment of silently trying to control his breathing before he continues. “There are beings there, things that fester outside the eyes of the Nine. Things that have their eyes on these Stones.” His voice is slightly rougher now. His breathing is quicker. This feels like the rising action to a story, the lead-up to a big confession. “These things have been biding their time, and the Earth is their primary target. Three…three of the most powerful objects in the universe, up for grabs.”
“So why haven’t they come yet?” Clint asks, his voice harsh. He’s still glaring saltily at the Tesseract projection.
“The lesser ones quail, knowing they are nothing in the wake of our…endgame,” His tone is bitter and dry, a tone that Tony knows from people disassociated from their own trauma. Or pretending they are. “There’s someone looming. The very concept of him threatens the Earth’s existence,” Loki’s voice hitches slightly on him, but no one notices besides Wanda and Thor. “He craves the Stones, he craves what he will do with them.”
“And what is that?” Steve asks.
“The total obliteration of half of all life in the universe.” Loki says, looking up into the group.
It freezes the atmosphere like time has stopped. At least two people have their breathing a bit quicker. Thor thinks that he knows who this is, from old Asgardian texts that have long since gone up in flames. The remnants of them are swimming in his head, and he can’t quite remember this ghost’s name.
“Wait, like—like literally?” It’s Barnes who says that, his voice dripping with disbelief. This whole thing seems a bit out of his weight class, seeing as in his old world, the most supernatural thing known to mankind had been Steve.
“Literally,” Loki agrees, his hand scratching at his wrist. He rolls up one of his sleeves halfway, stops, and rolls it back down. “It’s not…it’s not certain why he has this goal in mind, but with the Stones, it’s definitely possible. Some claim he has an infatuation with Death, and the countless worlds he has ravaged and halved are a sick gift to her, a sign of his sadistic devotion. Others…” His voice hitches, and he takes a gulp of air. “Others know it for what he truly thinks.”
Thor watches as Loki seems to run through a mental checklist, his mouth moving along silently to his thoughts, and waits as Loki turns sharply to the side and starts pacing again, pulling his hands close to his stomach as if trying to make himself small.
Steve locks eye contact with Bucky, and they both share a worried glance towards Loki. Natasha’s eyes flicker between him and Thor. The room is chilly with the silence of grave thinkers, waiting for Loki to continue.
Loki stops. He turns, his eyes wide and his mouth set in a determined, thin line. He has made some sort of decision. “Thor once asked me, years ago,” He swallows, and doesn’t glance once at his brother, although an anvil plunges through Thor’s stomach. “Who controls the would be king? Those of you who are wondering where the Scepter had originated, you shall find that answer in this. For the sake of—“
Loki stops and takes a very deep breath, looking completely, completely terrified for a fleeting moment before tamping it poorly down, like duct tape over a leak in a boat.
“For the sake of candor,” He continues. Weak-voiced. “I have not been entirely honest about the Invasion and my role in it. I was not the—the sole instigator.”
“Someone gave you the Scepter,” Steve interprets, his mind gluing the pieces together.
“And this someone is the same Big Bad that is lurking outside the universe and secretly planning to kill us all at any given moment?” Bruce asks, one of the first times he has spoken up since the meeting was called. Loki nods, which is more of a jerk of the head than an assertion. “Right, okay. Just clarifying.”
“He does revere Death,” Loki muses, and his finger is tapping against his thigh. “But he has always been more of a philosopher than a romantic in his soul. He wants to halve the population of…everywhere, for what he claims is our salvation.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Barton complains.
“Think about it,” Loki says, snapping his head up. His eyes are dark and haunted, empty as a sheet from the wash hung up in the wind. About to snap off and blow away. “Fewer people. More resources. In theory, it would work. But in practice…”
“Everyone dies.” Thor finishes for him. Loki gives him a surprised sort of look, but eventually nods. “The Zehoberei,” Thor notes. “They didn’t go extinct, a man came to their planet and massacred half of them to save their overpopulated land, but the rest died off as well. Families separated and hollow-eyed men who were once great leaders, now stumbling through the remains of their homeland until they wither into skeletons. Imagine that, across the entire universe.”
“I am really glad we beat you now,” Clint remarks, to a dry look from Loki.
“So am I,” Loki murmurs, running a hand on top of his head to clear his hair from his face.
Natasha scrutinizes him carefully. “How did you meet this guy?” She asks, the pointed notes in her voice as chill as ice, but Loki still stiffens. “What did he offer you for Earth that made you accept?”
Loki opens his mouth, and closes it again, shrinking into himself. “I was…I was broken. Angered. Driven mad by Asgard and even my own death hadn’t taken. I was starving for something to break. When you fall to the Void, there is little to hide you from any hands that are groping in the dark.”
She clearly doesn’t believe him. “And did you…” Nat watches Loki flatly, who twitches again. “Did you know these ideals before you agreed to the Invasion?”
Tony speaks up from where he had been slouched in the chair and staring at the empty air in front of him in thought. “He gave you the Chitauri too, right?”
Loki nods at Stark, but one of his eyes twitches when he makes eye contact with Natasha. “I…”
“I think we’re missing two very big things here,” Clint announces, his hand outstretched. It touches the fake Tesseract, and pulls back like he’s holding it. It glows almost as it does in life, lighting up his face and making his eyes a terrifying, familiar shade of blue. “What is this guy’s name, and why are you so scared of him?”
And Loki goes very, very still.
He recovers, barely, Thor clearly able to see him dragging himself back from the brink of panic. “Ah,” He says. He clasps his hands, unclasps them, and takes in a gulp of air, looking around the room. They’re all watching him.
He starts forward, and with jerky movements, he drops into the couch next to Thor. From here, his brother can see how Loki’s entire body is minutely quivering, like a plucked chord on a guitar. He puts his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, and wipes his eyes once before pulling his head up.
“He has many names,” Loki starts. Thor wants to put a hand on his back. “One is a nickname that grew from a mock into something far more terrifying, and the other is his true name, one I dare not utter.”
Wanda cocks her head. “Why not?”
“Names have power,” Loki wipes both his hands down his face, and scooches forward an inch. His back is as straight as a rod, but somehow he still looks like he is shrinking into himself like a deflating balloon. “Fine. Fine. Once, I will only say it once.” He opens his mouth, gags, and says the words like he must vomit them or never speak them again.
“Thanos. The Mad Titan.”
Thor’s suspicions are correct. As he looks around, he can see the others mouthing it with puzzled expressions. But Clint is still watching Loki’s shaking body in the chair. “You didn’t finish my question.” He declares.
“I hardly see how that is of relevance,” Loki feebly tries to protest.
“It might be,” The reasoning comes from Steve, who so far had been fairly quiet. “Loki, you’re one of our most powerful allies. Anything that you are wary of, I think we should be too.”
Loki’s eyes travel across the group, but he clearly finds no escape. Everyone is stone-faced, expectant. He starts tightening a little more, and his hands are wringing each other out so tensely all his knuckles are white.
“Well.” He swallows once more, letting out a breath. His body slumps, now he looks defeated. “I might as well tell you everything and let you decide for yourself.”
And he does.
By the end of it, anbout forty minutes later, Loki’s eyes are glazed and he’s more disassociated than in focus. Every part of him is shaking.
Oh, Norns. Oh, Norns, Thor is having trouble wrapping this around his head.
Almost all of the group looks like they want to vomit, scream, or run away and never come back, and Loki awkwardly pulls down the sleeves of his shirt, where he had lifted the glamor to show the lines of scars on his forearms. Thor has a bad feeling about why he keeps itching his back. “Satisfied?”
The room is silent for the third time. Wanda’s eyes are red, and she lets out something akin to a sob as she shoots abruptly to her feet. “I must go,” Her accent is thick, which shows how distressed she is, and she sweeps out the door in three steps. The others watch her leave without any protest.
Tony, who had gone pale once Loki had started on the water torture, now picks up the Starkpad and wipes away the three pictures of the Stone.
“Wait,” Loki says, his throat hoarse from speaking. He doesn’t stand up, his knees are shaking too much for it, but he holds out his hand as Stark is about to stash the tablet away. “We’re not done. I haven’t even….”
“No.” Tony says firmly. “Whatever else you have to say, it’s gonna have to wait until tomorrow. You are going to go back to your room with Thor and take a fucking normal breath.”
“Honestly,” Loki hisses. “We haven’t breached anything about the other stones. And he is still at large. You know nothing about the Titan—“
“You’re shaking. You can’t stop, can you?” Tony arches an eyebrow when Loki doesn’t respond. “I know all I need to know about this sadistic psychopath. You’re going to take a hot shower and put on a shitty movie from the 90s. And I’m getting you a session or eight with my therapist.”
“It’s not that big of a deal, it’s behind us,” Loki massages his brow, and Thor reels with his flippancy. Loki had been strung by his wrists for weeks, long enough to pass out from blood loss. He had been muzzled until he couldn’t breath from the choking of blood and saliva in his ruined throat. Ripped, torn, drawn and quartered, his back sliced to ribbons and his mind pulled apart until he forgot how to scream. And he said it all in the same tone of voice, cool and matter-of-fact. Like a radio talk show host describing the music for the day. “What we need to do is work on a plan of action—“
“Loki,” It’s Clint who stands up next. Natasha is walking away, silent and stiff as a wooden soldier. “No. Just go back to your room. It’s not just you—I just found out that the guy we fought and smashed into the ground with the Hulk had actually been tortured to less than a millimeter of his life. I wouldn’t even be surprised if you were fucking being controlled by the Scepter as well.”
Loki stiffens. Clint’s eyes go wide. It's the answer within itself. “Shit. You’re not serious.”
“It’s all fairly blurry,” Loki feebly protests. “I suspect that was on the part of your green beast, when he had left me with several fractures and a concussion in the floor of Stark’s penthouse.”
Banner winces in the corner, and he gets up and leaves the room in a matter of seconds. He looks positively green.
Clint walks forward, and stops in front of Loki, who twitches again. He clearly expects Clint to hit him, or yell at him, and just seeing that makes Barton stop still. He falters, and sighs, before sweeping out of the room with his fists clenched.
The others are going too. Barnes stands up, he’s shaking nearly as bad as Loki, and Steve gives him a worried look before they both disappear down the hall.
Going…gone. It’s just the two brothers left.
And now Thor is struck by just how young Loki is. His face, lined with stress and creases, is still somewhat youthful. He had just barely become of age before Thor’s coronation, and his thin limbs are lanky like a child. He’s the little brother, the small one, the one Thor should have protected.
He’s filled with a hot feeling in his chest. He wants to pick up Loki in his arms, wrap him in a multitude of blankets, and carry him somewhere far away, where he can set him down and start fixing all the little things that went wrong, one by one.
Loki still hasn’t met Thor’s eyes. He stares at nothing, hollow, like all the words he had spent in the meeting had suctioned the life out of him.
Thor moves forward, and reaches out a hand. It touches Loki’s shoulder, and Loki jolts, flinching wildly before his eyes lock on Thor and he loosens up. His eyes are wet, and he wipes them, his expression bleak as he finally darts his gaze up to his brother and away again.
Loki swallows, his breath starting to shake. “Thor…”
Thor moves before he can finish, and sweeps Loki up in an engulfing hug, tucking Loki’s head into his shoulder. The rest of him, small and thin (he’s still tall, but the weight loss from the more recent years—no wonder—disbalances it) fits into the crevices between Thor’s limbs, tucking right into the niches. He’s still shaking, and Thor can practically feel every injury he had heard about, the scars on his back from being whipped until his spine was showing, the broken shoulder blades. They had performed the Blood Eagle on him. They had performed the Blood Eagle on Thor’s little brother.
Thor wants to rip off Thanos’s head and watch it roll, roll, roll away. He wants to break down into a heap and cry. He wants to never let go of Loki ever again.
Loki makes a choking noise. It’s a sob, much too late. He folds even deeper into Thor, clutching at his shirt, almost desperate with his intensity. Thor lets him.
Maybe, just maybe, after all this is over, he can go back with Loki and find those small, broken things, and start to patch them up, and start to build that something back, that something that had cracked centuries ago.
Maybe he can be a big brother again, and mean it.
Maybe he can be a big brother again, and deserve it.