Loki oneshots

Kissed You Atop The Ferris Wheel (S2 Finale Lokius)

A/N this takes place during the Loki season two finale, so beware of spoilers!

He doesn't know how long he's been doing this.

It has to be centuries now – millenia, even. He's been doing this for so, so long.

And he has nothing to show for it.

He just needs a break. He just needs a few minutes to stop and rest. No more problem-solving. No more time-skipping. No more time, even. He's pausing everything. He just needs a break.

He's back at the beginning. He'd only been at the TVA a matter of hours at this point. Now, he feels as though he's been in the TVA longer than he lived in Asgard. It may be true. It's hard to calculate time in a place with no time, especially while skipping back and forth through this non-existent time.

And that's why he needs this break. Because not only is this exhausting, but it doesn't make sense. The hundreds, thousands, millions of times he, OB, and Timely talked through math and science and physics and reality didn't prepare him for this. It helped him make sense of the Loom – fat lot of good that did for them – but it didn't help him make sense of his situation.

Right now, the TVA is on high alert. Mobius had left him in the Time Theater for no more than five minutes, and Loki disappeared without a trace. It would be a while until they find him regardless, but still, he pauses time, just in case. He doesn't know how long he's going to need, but he does know he's going to need this time alone.

He lowers himself down onto the steps and buries his head in his hands. This is a mess. This whole thing is a mess. And it's a mess without a single half-decent solution, which may be the worst part. He could kill Sylvie and let He Who Remains continue his tyranny, or he could let Sylvie kill him and watch the whole multiverse fall to ruin and take the TVA down with it.

But he can't bring himself to do either. He doesn't want anybody to get hurt. He just wants everyone to be okay. He wants the timelines to be okay. He wants his friends to be okay. He wants to be okay. And that doesn't seem possible.

He could keep living through this, he supposes. He could just continue to relive his time in the TVA. He could relive his childhood, even; his life in Asgard. He could just relive his life, over and over and over, making different choices and seeing how it all turns out. But in the end, everybody will still die. He'll have his friends in his little bubble of self-fulfillment, but they'll still die, whether he's there to watch it or not.

He hates this.

And he's sure that's a stupid thing to say, but he does. He hates this. He hates that he has to be the one who was chosen for this. Of all the Lokis in all the branched timelines, why did it have to be him?

He just wants to go home. He wants to go back to Asgard. He wants to wake up in his bed and realize that this was all a ridiculous dream; that he isn't destined to carry the weight of the multiverse on his shoulders.

"Why did it have to be me?" he mumbles to himself.

He can feel that all-too-familiar stinging in his eyes. He's cried a fair amount while working on this – from exasperation, from exhaustion, from loneliness – but this may be the first time he's felt tears of helplessness creeping up on him.

He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to find out what to do. He doesn't even know how to find out how he could possibly find out what to do. He's used all his resources. He's exhausted every possible avenue. He's been at this for so, so long, and he's accomplished nothing.