Whumptober #14 - Tear-stained
Loki stood on the ship, transfixed, frozen, horrified. Death drifted everywhere around him, corpses and dying people covering the floor, blood reeking in the air, seizing him at the throat.
This was a nightmare. More precisely, this had been Loki’s nightmare for six years, and he berated himself for his idiocy, his delusion in trying to convince himself it wouldn’t come.
There will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can’t find you.
You think you know pain? He’ll make you long for something sweet as pain.
He had known it was coming. He had denied it, run from it, tried to forget it, but he had always known Thanos would eventually find him.
And now he had doomed all Asgard as well.
It was unfair, some part of him wanted to rage. Just as he had found some kind of truce with Thor again, just as his adoptive home started to accept him once more, it had to be torn from him. Would there never be peace for him?
Of course there couldn’t be any now.
Even so, he had done his best to fight. He had tried to trick Thanos, to avoid giving him the Tesseract, to send the Hulk after him. He had helplessly seen him restrain his brother and vanquish the green beast that was their last hope. Every single effort had been reduced into ashes, as he had known it would be.
Then the Titan had taken the Space Stone, and all remaining hope had left him.
He stood in the shadow of a corner, shaking, more wretched and weak than he ever remembered feeling as he watched Thanos preen in the middle of the bodies. Flashes of memory flared up in his mind, torture and helplessness and humiliation. They came back to him like the tide, inevitable as he stood in the midst of his tormentors once more.
A reckless flame was burning within him, feeding off his despair, rising higher with each passing moment.
He wouldn’t let him win. He wouldn’t cower before this tyrant like a pitiful worm, vanquished and crushed like a coward. He was Loki of Asgard, of Jotunheim, the god of mischief and chaos. He wouldn’t be so easily brought low.
Echoes of pain and pleading, of blood and broken bones, of screams and jeers and insult resounded in his ears, impossible to banish, stirring potent and helpless rage within him. No more, no more, he wouldn’t bear it again, he was stronger than that.
(But he had always been the weakest of the royal family, hadn’t he?)
Loki wanted to live. For the first time in centuries, he longed for life, desperately, truly, completely. And more than anything, that was what cemented in him the certainty that everything was over.
Never in his life had he been granted his heart’s deepest wishes. There would be no exit now, no escape, no respite, no solace.
But if he had to die, let him at least die honourably. If everything had to be torn from him, let him at least keep dignity and purpose. He would strike a last blow to his enemy, bring him down with him, protect those he cared about.
Even if it was too late for him, perhaps he could still save Thor’s life.
He stood motionless in the dark, fury and terror warring in his mind as he weighed his options. Then in a reckless flash, a feverish second of determination, he made his decision.
His heart in his throat, he took a step forward.
He offered words of servitude, his silver tongue clumsy, honeyed vows encumbered with sarcasm and furious hatred he barely managed to conceal. He smoothed his features in a smile, stood mockery and dismissal without a protest, falling back into a role he knew too well.
His thoughts were dampened, slowed down, caught in a creel of suffocating rage. He felt like throwing up.
He advanced still, sustaining Thanos’s gaze without flinching, proudly proclaiming his titles, flaunting a false pledge of allegiance. It was the most blatant lie he had ever told, and wasn’t it fitting, now, at the end?
Then he looked sideways to Thor, and faltered.
His brother was straining against his chains, on his knees. He was gagged and restrained in a way that once would have vindicated Loki, but now only brought him pain. His gaze was fixed on Loki, full of too many things to read from so far, in the dark.
His cheeks were bathed in tears, glistening in the starlight.
It took Loki’s breath away. His heart ached, and once more he was overwhelmed with powerful desire to live, with regret and longing for everything that could have been and never would be. Thor’s sorrow cut him to the core, reached him to the deepest of his being, for he shared it wholeheartedly.
He whispered a last veiled acknowledgement of their bond, hoping his brother would understand the words he couldn’t say. He hated that they were denied real goodbyes, that even their last moments together were desecrated by the Titan who had already destroyed everything.
Then, in a last movement of hatred, he lunged forward with everything he had.
It was a pitiful attack, born of frantic dread and despair, far below the elaborate plans Loki’s mind was able to concoct. Of course, Thanos saw through it. He seized Loki’s wrist in a moment that lasted forever, then slowly twisted his arm and crushed his throat in his fist.
Loki thrashed and struggled for breath, unable to help this last instinct from taking over, excruciating and humiliating as it was. He keenly felt Thor’s horrified eyes on him, heard the scream he was unable to let out.
“You will never be a god,” he managed to rasp out at Thanos, a final remnant of his broken wit as his own tears finally spilled on his cheeks, his vision starting to black out.
His last thought was a silent apology to his brother, his last emotions love and grief and a prayer that Thor would recover and thrive; and perhaps that was a victory at last, in a life where he had scarcely done anything but lose.
He didn’t look away from death as it came for him with a snap of his neck.
