345Memento Mori
Summary: Of the many people capable of carrying the fate of the universe on their shoulders by travelling back in time, Loki would have been the first choice of exactly nobody. With no allies, no plan and nobody on his side, Loki will just have to wing it.
Or: That awkward moment when you've completed your redemption arc, but nobody else got the memo.
Chapter 23
There was a minor argument about whether or not Strange was going to keep his amulet during battle. Loki was against it – it had given him the chance to go back and change history, and it was capable of allowing Thanos to do the same thing – but he was overruled.
"The stone doesn't leave my side," Strange said, daring anyone to try and convince him otherwise. "I've sworn to protect it with my life, and I will."
"From what you told us, this is our one shot at this," Stark agreed. "If we fail now, we're screwed anyway. Might as well go in with everything we have."
Loathe as Loki was to admit it, they had a point. If they lost, Thanos would have free reign over the universe. It wouldn't matter if he had all of the stones or none: without Loki and his allies, nothing stood in between him and the decimation of worlds.
They needed to give it their all – and their all now included the might of all six of the infinity stones.
"See that you hold onto it," Loki said, grudgingly giving Strange his blessing.
"Haven't we as good as won with that thing?" Barton nodded towards the amulet. "It can manipulate time, right? Just hit rewind and try again until we've made it."
Strange's urge to roll his eyes seemed almost as big as Loki's own. "Reality isn't a DVD. I can't 'rewind' it whenever I feel like it. The fabric of time tears easily."
"So you can't use it?" Barton asked, sounding disappointed.
"It means it will be a last resort I will not use unless given absolutely no other option." Strange paused. "Even then, it might tear apart reality instead of giving us a second chance."
"So we've got one try." Roger set his brows in a firm line. "One go at this."
"And only the fate of the world depends on it," Stark added. "Lovely."
"What about the Aether?" Jane rubbed her fingers in a nervous tick. Her eyes flickered from Thor to Loki and back. "I won't be much help to you."
"You helped in Sokovia," Stark pointed out.
"Not like this. Not on this scale. I'm not a fighter." She turned to look at Thor, an apology in her eyes. "This seems… so much bigger. I don't think– I can't help you with this."
"Then the reality stone will be wasted on you," Loki said. He'd wanted to destroy the stones, but it was too late for that. Even if they managed to come up with a way to do it, Loki had no time to convince everybody else to go along with it.
"We do have a way of separating them, right?" Barton pointed out. "Strange did it before."
"And it didn't exactly go as planned," Stark said dryly.
"It did, though. For the most part." Jane's eyes strayed to Stark's chest and examined the arc reactor. Its yellow glow still looked strange to the eye. "We'd need a host for it. Something it can hold onto, afterwards."
"Ideally not another living one," Strange added.
Thor paused. "Jane? It is your choice."
"I was willing to take the risk from the start," Jane said quickly. "Please, I... I don't want to be the reason that all this would have been for nothing."
Thor held her gaze, seeming to gauge the sincerity of her words. "We can ask Mother and Father for help, once we return," he suggested, giving her a nod. "They will have plenty of weaponry to choose from."
It felt hard to believe that after all the trouble they'd been through to avoid their parents, asking them for help was now a viable option.
The team did not take long to prepare, and neither did Strange and Jane. The evacuation had proceeded far by the time they returned – only a small group of civilians was left to step through the portals. The soldiers – most of them, but likely not all – were standing back, waiting to aid them and defend their home.
"– have no authority over me."
Odin's voice drifted towards them as they approached. "I am not telling you as your king. I am telling you as your husband."
"As I said," Frigga replied icily, "you cannot command me."
"I am not attempting to order you." Frustration bled into Odin's voice. "I am asking you to consider what is best for our people – and for me."
"I have considered it. And I've decided that I am of more use here than I am on Midgard."
"Well, this is awkward," Stark muttered.
Odin and Frigga fell silent and turned to face the interruption.
"... This is worse." Stark cleared his throat and tried hard not to catch either of their gazes. "Wow. Uh."
"Are these your allies?" Odin asked, facing Loki and Thor. He did not grace their entourage with his attention.
"They're my friends." Thor presented his team proudly to his parents despite the dire circumstances that had led them here.
The team tore their eyes away from the empty city with effort. Loki remembered that this was their first visit to another planet. It wasn't their sky they were looking up to, and it wasn't their sun they saw shining in the distance. Upon nightfall, it wouldn't be their stars glowing in the foreign sky.
Frigga's irritation washed away with a warm smile. "Thank you for coming."
"Is everything alright?" Thor asked, and the annoyance returned to her eyes.
"It is," she said pointedly. "Why not go ahead while we... settle some differences."
Thor hesitated.
"Take the soldiers with you." Loki nodded towards the army standing at the ready behind them.
Thor took the hint for what it was. He shared a hug with his mother and a respectful nod with his father, and – after Odin gave the command to have them follow his words – took Asgard's soldiers and his team with him.
Only Loki, his parents and Heimdall were left – a prospect that made him feel not half as apprehensive as it once might have.
"Do they stand a chance?" Odin asked.
"Thor would not have brought them here if they didn't."
With that out of the way, his parents seemed ready to pick up their argument.
"I've made up my mind," Frigga said. "Our civilians need guidance, but so do our armies."
"You expect me to stand back while my entire family walks into battle without me?" Odin scowled deeply. "What kind of person do you take me for? What kind of king?"
"One who does not leave his people to fend for themselves because he is so self-centered to put his own ego-driven wishes first."
Loki followed the discussion with morbid fascination. Heimdall, he realized, had gone selectively blind and deaf. The action looked rather well-practiced.
"Do keep going," Loki encouraged. "Not much longer and Thanos will make the decision for you."
Odin's wrath had never succeeded in making Loki cower. His irritation did nothing except make his lips twitch.
His father's eyes swayed to the side, and Loki remembered that he was still holding Gungnir. He turned it in his hand – the weight of it having become oddly familiar – and Odin's eyes lingered.
Once upon a time, Loki would have done anything to hold onto the token of his father's strength. He pressed his lips together, burying petty stubbornness and childish greed. Gungnir had never been his to keep.
"Take it." He turned its hilt towards Odin and fought the urge to snatch it right back.
Odin hesitated, eyeing the golden shaft with an unreadable gaze. Its metal gleamed but couldn't compete with the blinding shine of the space stone. "You have more use of it than me."
Loki grit his teeth and forced himself to hold it closer. "Take it," he insisted, unwilling to let his burst of foolishness go to waste. Odin ought to be thanking him for it, rather than reject it. "Use it to protect our people."
There would hardly be a use in any of what Loki was doing, were there not a people to return to.
Odin accepted the weapon. Loki's hand felt cold, and he resisted the urge to draw a dagger to replace the missing weight.
There was a moment of silence, likely too long considering the threat that was nearing. Finally, Odin gave him a nod.
Heimdall stepped forward, taking the gesture as their signal to go. As their only way to keep informed about the fight (and Thanos' progress), he'd agreed to go with the people. Loki held his gaze, idly wondering what the protocol was to see the former, then thought-dead, then disgraced prince of the crown off into battle. Heimdall settled his musings with a bow and the words, "My prince."
Odin hesitated. His gaze softened, looking both pained and resigned about the decision that was not his to make. "... Be careful," he said, looking at Frigga as though he might not ever see her again.
Odin and Heimdall stepped through the last remaining portal and took Gungnir with them. It closed behind them – cutting off their people from their home for good.
Only Frigga was left. She took a step closer and gave him an intent look, waiting for... what? His permission? Loki didn't– oh.
Loki tensed underneath his mother's arms. Her embrace was firm and warm, so much better than the brief, fleeting hug he'd stolen alongside Gungnir after escaping the dungeons.
"You've grown so much," she whispered, and Loki found himself irrationally glad that he wasn't able to see her face – nor she his.
She let go – hesitantly, reluctantly – and Loki tried blinking his eyes dry before she could see. Frigga had no such reservations. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes, and she gave Loki a tight, bittersweet smile.
Loki let his eyes wander and took in what remained of Asgard. The realm was almost entirely void of people now. All that was left were empty halls of marble and gold, abandoned houses and history and lives.
None of it would survive if they failed. Much of it might be destroyed even if they succeeded.
"Come," he said, tearing his eyes away. "Let us catch up with the others."
Frigga caught his gaze and gave him a firm, determined nod.
The Asgardian soldiers kept their distance from their foreign allies. It had been centuries since Asgardians regularly visited Midgardian soil. Midgardians were remembered as flailing peasants in need of protection, and nobody quite seemed to know what species Rocket was supposed to be. Being told to assist – not to lead, or even to coordinate, but to assist – them in battle did not impress their people.
Frigga greeted both Avengers and Guardians as though she had not met them for the first time that very day. She stepped closer towards them than she usually would have and smiled at them just an inkling too wide – and their army's wariness faded at the sight of it.
Frigga had always known their people the best out of all of them.
Greetings were exchanged and conversations were started, and by the time they formed a circle to discuss their strategy, their soldiers had begun establishing a perimeter, spreading out in formations so they would not be cornered like sheep herded together to be slaughtered.
Jane cleared her throat. Her eyes twitched from one person to the next and lingered on the more alien looking of them. "How do we do this?"
Gamora fiddled with a dagger that was too small for her hand. She tossed it back and forth, rolled it over her knuckles and seemed only half-aware of doing it. "It's settled then? We're no longer destroying them?"
Loki pinched his lips. "Not any longer." Thanos had made the decision for them by speeding up his plans. "We have no choice but to improvise."
Gamora's eyes came to rest on Jane. "She's the one who's carrying the reality stone?"
"Strange managed to separate stone and host once before." Loki knit together his brows. "We need a vessel. Another container to take Jane's place."
"Like this one?" Valkyrie nudged Stormbreaker with her arm. "You mean a weapon?"
"Precisely. Though we cannot choose carelessly. The stone will not accept just any weapon." Loki's eyes traveled towards Mjolnir as the easiest solution.
Thor closed his fist around the hammer's hilt. He pressed his lips together. "If there is no other way..."
"How about this?" Gamora reached for a sword strapped to her back. She hesitated, but held it out to Loki after setting her brows in a grim line.
Loki took the weapon and examined it. He did not need to be a blacksmith to recognize its high quality. "Does it have a name?"
Gamora's lip twitched. "It's called Godslayer."
Valkyrie snorted. "Fitting."
"It should suffice." Hopefully the spell would take as little time as it had when Strange had used it on the android. Loki traced the pattern driven into Godslayer's metal. A detachable knife was worked into the hilt additionally to the bigger blade. "Are you willing to use it against your father, once it is done?"
"He is not my family. He never was." Gamora hesitated. The dagger in her hand – the one so small it looked more suited to gut a rabbit than be used in combat – stilled with her movement. She looked at her sister. "You take it."
Nebula raised her eyes. "Me?"
In lieu of an answer, Gamora shoved her sword at her so harshly as though it had burned her. "Take it. And the stone. It was never mine to begin with."
Loki wondered if she'd been given the weapon by Thanos. He also wondered whether she was planning to go up against him with her child-sized pocket knife.
It didn't matter. As long as the stone was used, it would give them an advantage over Thanos. It did not matter which one of them wielded it.
"That leaves one of them." Loki closed his hand around the soul stone and took it out of his pocket. He rubbed one thumb over its cool, gleaming surface.
Gamora's hand stilled. An icy shimmer glinted in her eyes, one that made Loki pause and reevaluate his view on her. He ought not to have doubted her resolve. Once it came down to killing the titan, Gamora would be the last of them to hesitate.
"Is this it?"
Corvus Glaive double-checked their coordinates. The asteroid – so inconspicuous, so puny – made for no fitting location for the act of rightfulness that followed. It was not worthy of even the name it had given itself.
"Yes, my Lord."
If Lord Thanos was angered by the insect of a planetoid tricking him into battle, he did not show it. "No word from Proxima?"
Corvus' mouth curled. "No, my Lord." There had been no message from either her or her crew since she'd set out to aid Maw in his quest. The contact to both of them had been lost just after they'd reached their destination. Now the enemy was here, but Proxima was not.
Corvus gripped the controls of their ship tighter. Proxima wasn't here, or she would have found a way to contact them. She would have come, given even the faintest opportunity. For her not to be, it meant...
"What a surprise," Lord Thanos muttered, following the growing bulk of the asteroid with his eyes.
Asgard, they called it. What arrogance, naming it as though it deserved a name any more than the pebbles scattered beneath their feet.
"Loki Lauf– No." Thanos interrupted himself. He pushed himself up and stepped closer to the glass front, eyes set on the realm that would soon cease to be. "Odinson. Leave him to me."
Lord Thanos did not say more, and he did not need to.
Corvus looked out at the nearing little world. A brittle, joyless smile played around his lips. It was high time for Lord Thanos and his disloyal servant to reunite.
A/N: Two more to go. Next one's gonna be... fun ;)
Big thanks to To Mockingbird, PyrothTenka and Igornerd!
