The alarm wakes Loki, yanking him from his deep rest. He carefully disentangles himself from Violetta, tucks the blankets around her, and slips to the bathroom. He can't stop thinking about how beautiful the curves of her body are under the sheet, how the cotton drapes over her skin. After a quick shower, he dresses in the soft clothes from Natasha and kneels beside the bed. He brushes back Violetta's hair, marvelling at how lovely she is, even dishevelled in her sleep. He kisses her forehead and whispers goodbye. He grabs his bag. He leaves the apartment before she wakes and flees to the portal in Harlem, hoping he will some day be back.
Violetta wakes alone and it hits her that Loki might never return. She touches her lips and cries into the pillow before she tumbles out of bed to the shower. She stands under the hot water and lets it mix with her tears. She dries. She finds clothes. Black. But her heart isn't into being elegant and she dresses out of obligation to the image she has cultivated as the dark angel appearing in dark, forgotten corners of the citys. She makes breakfast, tries to push memories of the night out of her mind, and gets ready for the next day of work on the streets.
And Loki runs, jumping from world to world as he feels his way along Yggdrasil's branches through tears in the fabric of each realm, falling between them as often as he can. He hides, he steals, he does what he has to for survival, trading illusion, skills, sex, lies for food and shelter when he can. And then he hears rumblings that there is a war happening. That Thor has found Thanos and all realms are called to fight alongside Asgard's prince. He creeps to the field of battle- an asteroid field, or series of rocky planets, he isn't sure. But he knows it well. It is where he fell. Where he was tortured and broken. He knows the terrain better than most. He does not fight, but he casts illusions to confuse the battle, hiding as best he can, leading Thor where he needs to be, drawing the armies together with cleverness and sorcery.
It is Jotunheim that reaches Thanos first, their ice something he has so rarely seen at its most powerful. Whomever leads them has the Cask of Ancient Winters. Thanos laughs at it and shatters their warriors one by one. The slaughter has Loki feeling ill. He cannot figure out a way to change the tide of the war. But Thanos does not have every Infinity Stone and the Gauntlet cannot destroy as quickly as he wishes. The powers of the stones he does have make fighting him difficult. Waves of Chitauri kill their opposition indiscriminately.
It ends as suddenly as it started. Mortals with Infinity Stones join forces, their combined powers, even without the Gauntlet, are enough to weaken Thanos, to bring him to his knees. Mjolnir finishes the work. Knowing he will be found when the battle clears, Loki slips away once again and disappears between Yggdrasil's branches.
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Mortal Questions
FanfictionLoki has to return to Asgard with Thor or spend his life on the run. But while they wait on Midgard for him to make this decision, he runs into an intriguing woman in a coffee shop whose day job is rescuing the lost and night job leaves little to he...
