#alligator!loki

“How do you plead?” The woman's voice echoed, sharp and annoyed, as you looked up to meet her gaze. No compassion, no empathy. Despite not having seen anyone else and you having a feeling you were already considered guilty - this whole court thing was probably very boring.

“Not guilty.” But maybe it would be better if you were. Erased, sent to nothingness or heaven or Valhalla or whatever existed after, if anything.

“Mrs Laufeyson, you killed Thanos.”

Your grip tightened as you remembered reaching inside of him for every molecule of water and holding it, freezing it. Can’t click if your hands are frozen, can’t do anything when all the water in your body is frozen. His water content hadn’t been that much different from a human.

And then you’d torn him apart.

“Yeah, I stopped him from killing half of Earth, half of the universe!” Anger rose up in you as it had done then. As it had when you had seen Thor come to the battlefield with only a raccoon and a tree.

Because grief would’ve gotten you ripped apart by those aliens in Wakanda and when Thor didn’t strike a death blow? You knew deep down he was out for revenge.

And Loki must’ve fallen.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” the woman answered and your mind went back to the cartoon explanation of the Time-Keepers.

“Then what was supposed to happen?! Thanos killed my husband! If he snapped his fingers, he’d half life across your stupid ‘Sacred Timeline,’ but I’m wrong for killing him?”

“Oh, he’ll be stopped, but not by you.” She banged the gavel. “The court finds you guilty of violating the sacred timeline. Your sentence is to be reset. Next case.”

And just like that, they pulled you from the stand. Like your victory meant nothing, your anger and grief pointless in the face of how time was supposed to flow.

That you were supposed to lose Loki.

“Reset? What does that mean?” A guard held you as the other pulled their stick from their belt, it clicking ominously as it lit up.

“Wait, wait-” You nearly missed the man who jogged to the front of the courtroom. “She could help us find the variant-”

“She was married to one, even if the variant looks different. How do you know she won’t fall for this one too?” The conversation floated above your head, but that got your attention immediately.

“You want me to help you… find Loki?”

The old man turned to you with a gentle smile. “A Loki. There’s a variant causing some trouble, so I thought maybe you could help us find them?”

You watched him, like you were thinking about it. The guard relaxed their grip on you, that gave you an opportunity. “Like hell I’d betray Loki-” you snarled, grabbing at the stick and pulling it into you.

Losing him was bad enough, betraying him was completely out of the question.

You didn’t see their faces or the reaction to your suicide. You just hoped that this would be enough of a battle to take you to Valhalla.

Your eyes snapped open to an overcast sky. Wind rustled the dry grass beneath you as you slowly sat up.

This seemed far from the golden halls of Valhalla.

Failed, you’d failed again. You pushed yourself to your feet and surveyed the long abandoned buildings and debris. A dumping ground it looked like. Was this really what came after?

You trudged steadily across the vast fields, moving further away from the rumbling cloud - much to your relief. The last thing you needed was a storm above you.

You’d passed an Avengers Tower at some point, the building dull and power long-gone. You missed it or rather you missed those peaceful days, coming to live with all the Avengers, drawn to Loki and his cooler aura.

You should’ve known he loved the ice as much as you. Your ice mutation, his true heritage as a Frost Giant - maybe that was what had eventually drawn the two of you to one another. There was always something so quiet about the ice rink and it had become your secret place. Snowball fights, skating, certain activities that weren’t entirely designed to happen on ice.

Tears misted your eyes as you kept going, not sure if you would even find another person - human, alien or anything else - in this realm. Just buildings and places that you did or didn’t know from time gone or time to come.

It seemed like there was no day or night here, just endless clouds. A place that time had forgotten, a place outside of time? You wondered if it sat somewhere on Yggdrasil or if one of those Sorcerers, the ones Bruce had met, could come here.

But if it was a different time and not just a different space… A semi-sphere sticking out of the ground caught your attention. Some kind of wheel on it that reminded you of the way bank vault doors always looked in movies.

It probably couldn’t hurt to open it and see what lay beneath - if anything. You grunted and pushed and pulled at the thing until you found the right way to open it. It creaked in protest, moving slowly before you heard a loud clunk and you began to pull.

The door opened, though you couldn’t see much inside, but there was a ladder to take you down. Death being the worst that could happen, you climbed in and made your slow descent.

The darkness didn’t last long before the hodge-podge of interior decorating greeted you.. Not that this place seemed to have any furniture stores handy.

“Hello?” you called, reaching for the next rung.

A rung that didn't exist. Your grip slid and the ice you reached for did little to soften your fall as you landed with a smack on the floor. The world turned blissfully black. Finally.

Your head throbbed and you groaned in disappointment - where was death when you needed it?

“Hold still a moment longer.” A hand cradled where the throbbing pulsed from in your head as another hand told the rest of you to stay in place. The pain lessened and soon vanished. “There we are.”

You opened your eyes to question what had been done, to find out why something in it was familiar. Your eyes met before your gaze flickered up to a familiar yet different head piece. You shook your head. “I - I was climbing down the ladder - where am I?”

The older man snorted. “At the bottom of the ladder, my dear.” Your eyes swept over his clothes, but soon returned to the horns.

“Loki…?” you whispered tentatively before staring at his face. But, as you suspected;

“I don’t think I’m the Loki you seek, hmm?”

You dropped your gaze, that familiar lump forming in your throat again as you shook your head. There was no way your Loki could have become this old and you weren’t sure that this was what he would look like if he was older.

He patted your head gently. “I suppose you’re the same as all of us, caught by the TVA?”

You nodded, telling him your name. “They - said something about a Loki - they were looking for, I didn’t want -” You breathed out a sorry before taking deep breaths and trying to force that emotion down again so you could speak. “I used the stick thing, I thought it was how they would ‘reset’ me. But I’m here, I thought I would die but…”

Loki tipped your chin gently and shook his head. “No, there’s no peaceful death for us here, I’m afraid. Come on.” He pulled you easily to your feet, still holding one hand as he carefully helped you down the steps to some seats. It almost reminded you of a bowling alley as you took a seat on the two person couch.

He moved away and you took in the space around you, the large chair that could’ve belonged to a mall Santa, bowling pins, old arcade machines, boxed wine, a paddling pool and an - “An alligator?!”

“Another Loki,” he calmly told you, handing over a glass of water. The alligator made its way closer and accepted your tentative pat on its head. Your fingers ran over the cool scales and it seemed content not to attack you.

You sipped the water and shook your head in silent disbelief. “Sure, why not Loki as an alligator.” You looked up, finding the older Loki looking back. “Are there other… people, Asgardians, aliens here?”

“There’s a much younger version of myself who is here too. There are other Lokis out there.” He nodded up to the ladder you’d come down. “But many of them can’t work together - just backstabbing each other until someone rises to the top.” He rolled his eyes, shaking his head and sipping from his goblet.

“What happened, if you don’t mind my curiosity?”

Your gaze slipped away. “Something happened with Odin and he died. And- and Loki and Thor have a sister? They went to Sakaar and found Bruce but he was Hulk for a long while. And Asgard was destroyed, Ragnarok happened? I only had Bruce to ask and he - wasn’t totally sure. The most important thing was that Thanos was coming.”

“Ah, yes,” Loki murmured in understanding and you fell silent. It all felt too new. “I managed to escape him on that ship. I disguised myself as debris. He didn’t notice and I was able to drift through space until I found somewhere to stay in solitude. As you can see, I spent a long time there, I’ve aged much since then, but I missed everyone. I wondered if Thor missed me, or Sigyn, anyone.” He sighed and sat back in his chair. “As soon as I started to put something into action in regards to leaving? The TVA showed up.”

“I’m sure they did,” you whispered. After all, it had been Thor’s blow, one of revenge not instant death, that had been the nail in the coffin of your hope. “He wanted revenge on Thanos.”

“You came straight from battle?” At your nod, Loki gestured behind you. “It’s not much but you can clean up, I’ll find something for you to sleep on.”

He got to his feet, leaving you alone, and even Alligator Loki slid back into his paddling pool. Perhaps in some sort of effort to give you privacy. You stripped out of the TVA jumpsuit and climbed into the bath, pulling the curtain around you.

You turned on the water and in your first moment of silence, of tentative safeness, you found the ability to mourn the loss of your husband.