Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters. All rights belong to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong.
No matter how fast light travels,
it finds the darkness has always got there first,
and is waiting for it.

~ Terry Pratchett

You never lose your demons.
You can only learn to live above them.

~ The Ancient One (Dr. Strange)

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lonely.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Chapter One - Darkness

"This is the Asgardian refugee vessel Statesman," the young man, whose name Loki could not remember and did not care to remember anyway, gasped into the ship's communication system, releasing a crackling plea for help into the vastness of the universe. A plea for help that Loki knew was never going to come.

We are under assault. I repeat we are under assault. Engines are dead, life support failing. We have very few soldiers here. This is not a Warcraft. I repeat this is not a Warcraft …

His entire body had begun to tremble as soon as the shadow of the Sanctuary had loomed over the Grandmaster's ship and no matter how intently he tried to calm himself down, Loki failed. He stood frozen in terror, his heart feeling like a heavy physical object wedged into this chest.

A seismic blast of energy tore through the ship in a fierce purple glow and the disciples of the Black Order began to pour into their vessel.

"Loki!" Valkyrie was shouting at him from a few feet away where she was guiding women and children into the only rescue vessel that the ship possessed, the annoyingly talkative Kronan and his unsightly insectoid companion by her side. "Stop brooding, will you? I could really use some help here."

Loki's eyes slid towards Thor, who began to fight off the disciples of the Black Order flanked by Heimdall, the Hulk and a few remaining Asgardian warriors.

"All the help I could give you would be in vain," murmured Loki, his voice a trembling whisper. He reached for his magic and released a gleaming burst of green energy from his fingertips that burned a hole through the other wall of the ship. "You must fly them out of here now. Save as many as you can."

The Valkyrie's lips opened in protest.

"Go now!" Loki shouted when he sensed the presence of Thanos and ice began pouring down his back. "This is an order!"

Valkyrie gave a curt nod and swung herself into the cockpit with one swift, elegant motion. The Kronan pulled one last woman into the rescue vessel before he closed its doors and the sound of engines powering up drowned out Loki's frantic heartbeat. He had always known that his day of reckoning would come. He had always known that he was living on borrowed time. What he had not known was that he would reconcile with his brother before Thanos found him and that this would make it that much harder to face up to his previous transgressions.

Before he could think anything else, his greatest nightmare appeared in the opening of the ship's wall in the flesh and Loki's stomach churned with dread. He had to close his eyes to fight the wave of nausea washing through him.

Thanos lifted his enormous, golden-gloved hand and released a blast of treacherously shimmering Power Stone energy at Thor, who instantly crumbled to his knees. Screams of horror filled the ship. The smell of fear and death streamed into Loki's nose, the metallic tang of blood biting into his throat.

"I know what it is like to lose," Thanos growled and as soon as Loki heard the titan's voice, he felt his mind yield to the darkness he had fought so hard to renounce those past years. "To feel so desperately that you are right yet to fail, nonetheless."

Loki watched in horror as the titan grabbed Thor by the neck and pulled him up from the ground as if he was nothing but a child. "It is frightening," Thanos continued over Thor's groaning, "turns the legs to jelly."

Loki squirmed to fight it, but the darkness began to gnaw at the edges of his sanity. It was so powerful and so menacing that he could almost feel it touching his skin. Not again. He knew he would not be able to endure it a second time. He did not remember much from its first encounter with it but he remembered the powerlessness against that darkness. It was like a bottomless ocean that had kept him it its grip, swirling him around until he was seeing stars. He had struggled at first, as everyone would, but you soon get tired of fighting against so mighty a force. His mind and body had grown weak and he had drowned in that darkness, its evil shadows filling his thoughts like water streaming into a drowning man's lungs. There was no stopping it. You fight, but fighting against water is useless because you gasp for breath but the very reflex that has kept you alive is now killing you and the tighter you hold on to life, the sooner you lose it.

He had surrendered himself to the darkness once and it had twisted everything. Thoughts. Memories. Emotions. It had made everything that he had thought was real seem unreal and everything that he had considered unreal seem terrifyingly, grotesquely genuine; and those things he remembered that had, in reality, never transpired, at least not in that way, had seemed realer to him than any other memory of his entire life. His brother grabbing him by the hand, both of their lives hanging by a thread as they were holding on to the collapsing rainbow bridge; the sight of his boots with nothing under them but the bottomlessness of space; their father appearing out of nowhere, telling him that he was wasting his time trying to make him proud because the Allfather would never be proud of a monster's offspring; his brother's face breaking into a sneer; hissing, "Monsters have no place in Asgard, Loki," before hurling him into the void.

The darkness had fabricated memories that were to this day pulsating through his brain like strobe lights on bad days.

"But I ask you, to what end?" asked Thanos.

That is a very good question.

"Dread from it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same. And now, it's here. Or should I say 'I am'?" Thanos exhaled and raised the Infinity Gauntlet for emphasis, the Power Stone's purple glint piercing Loki's eye.

"You talk too much," gurgled Thor, his mouth filled with his own blood.

Stop talking, brother, Loki pleaded silently and mentally whispered a spell to protect his mind from the intrusion he knew was coming. We need to think. We need to—

But he was too slow and too nervous and his mind was too quaky, his thoughts slipping away from his conscious like slick fish.

"The Tesseract," Thanos ordered in his deep, bloodcurdling voice. "Or your brother's head. I assume you have a preference."

"Oh, I do," replied Loki in a voice that was not entirely his own. "Kill away."

Yes, torture him, kill him, snarled a dark voice inside his mind that sometimes filled his head with morbid thoughts. It wanted to see Thor suffer and it rejoiced when Thor began to squirm in the titan's powerful grasp, screaming in anguish.

Loki's eye twitched when his brother's cries tore right through his very soul and chased off the hateful thoughts. "Alright, stop!" Loki shouted. Don't you dare hurting him as you hurt me.

"We don't have the Tesseract," Thor gasped, his breath hitching with pain and exhaustion. "It was destroyed on Asgard."

Well, not quite, you gullible nitwit. Loki did not know what exactly the consequences would have been, had he let the Space Stone disintegrate with the Realm Eternal, but he could at least envision that they would be far-reaching and so he had sealed the Tesseract away.

Loki looked at Thanos and winced at the soulless determination in his face, then glanced down at Thor, who cowered knee-deep in debris, his face a grimace of pain covered in dirt and blood and tears. Loki knew that Thanos would not spare his brother's life and so he reached into the pocket dimension, pulled out the glowing Tesseract and presented it to the titan, his heart stumbling like a drunk inside his chest.

By all the Realms, what are you doing, you volatile imbecile? The dark voice cackled into his ear. Do you think the cube will be enough to pay your debt? To save your brother? Have you gone entirely mad?

"You really are the worst brother," grumbled Thor and Loki's heart gave a painful lurch when he heard those words.

He is not worth it, you foolish varmint. Why would you want to save him, anyway? So he can continue to torment you?

Loki tried to force a deep breath into his lungs and briefly closed his eyes against the menace lurking deep inside his own mind. You need to be aware of the moment, Loki, Frigga had told him when she had begun to teach him in magic. You need to focus on every fiber of your being in order to feel the energy streaming through your body, all of it, and then you need to channel its powers. He thought of his mother's voice, warm and soft as the first rays of spring sunshine after a long, cold winter. He thought of how he had loved her with his entire heart and how she had filled his with light where Odin had instilled darkness.

"I assure you, brother," said Loki, suddenly suffering from the hero's curse of hope that everything would still turn out just fine, "the sun will shine on us again."

Thanos huffed a laugh. "Your optimism is misplaced, Asgardian."

All that time he spent twisting your memories and he does not even bother to remember that the focal point of your agony is that you are a putrid Frost Giant.

Loki's body seethed with anger but he forced himself to stay calm and to fight back. "Well, for one thing, I am not Asgardian," he corrected Thanos, whose brow furrowed slightly. "And for another," Loki continued with a side-glance at the green beast who had inexplicably held himself back from trying to smashThanos until now, "we have a Hulk."

The Hulk hurtled towards the titan as if on cue and Loki dropped the Tesseract to protect Thor from his companion's uncoordinated movements. Under the dark voice's snarling protest, he flung himself on the ground and pushed his brother out of harm's way.

Before Loki could ask Thor about his state of well-being, Thor narrowed his eyes at him and mumbled, "Why do you always have to fail my expectations?"

Loki's mouth gaped open in surprise, hurt and anger. "Fail your expectations? I was trying to …" Save you, he wanted to say, but the words died on his tongue. He was never going to save anybody, least of all himself.

Thor scrambled to his feet, grabbed a bent pipe and hurled himself back into the fight.

Loki reached for the Tesseract that was momentarily lying unguarded on the floor. The last time Loki had laid hands on the treacherously glowing cube, he had unleashed a wave of wrath and destruction upon Midgard. He had condemned thousands of innocent souls to a gruesome death in his endeavor to seek revenge for something that was, with the benefit of hindsight, almost justifiable. He had caused the death of his beloved mother when he had blindly tried to lash out at this family for imprisoning him after causing these deaths.

You really are the worst brother, Thor's words echoed through his skull. You faked your own death, you stole the throne, stripped Odin of his power, stranded him on Earth to die, releasing the Goddess of Death. See, Loki, life is about, it's about growth. It's about change. But you seem to just wanna stay the same. You'll always be the God of Mischief.

No, that was not true. He wanted to change. He had wanted to change for a while now but, sometimes, change and growth are just too painful.

Why do you always have to fail my expectations?

The Tesseract stirred inside his grasp. "I'm impressed," the titan's deep, raw voice rang out inside Loki's mind while Thanos was physically fighting off the attack of the Hulk.

Loki shuddered. How is this possible? How can he …? Were they still linked through the remnants of Mind Stone magic flowing through him? Had Thanos created a permanent mental connection to his thoughts when he had pried open Loki's mind? Or was it the Space Stone itself that was talking to him, to the magic of the Mind Stone inside of him? Could they all be—

"You have grown stronger since you last betrayed me," Thanos continued in that terrifying yet curiously calming voice that that had planted all the false memories in his head the first time. "But, unfortunately, you are nowhere near strong enough to defeat me."

I don't need to defeat you. I just need to defeat myself, Loki thought but Thanos could hear his thoughts as if the words were spoken aloud.

A condescending snort of laughter reverberated through his skull. "Are you sure you are strong enough to defeat your nature? Are you sure that you will not again bring death and destruction to the ones you claim to love?"

Wherever you go there is war, ruin and death!

"It is who you are, Loki. You are cursed. You carry a darkness inside you that will never leave you unless you fight really hard and you and I both know that you lack the strength and determination to do just that."

That much was true, at least. It would take him years of hard work, years without any trace of recognition, let alone praise, before the actions of his past would be thought undone and his people started trusting him again; if such a time ever came to pass. He would always be the mischievous one, the anti-hero, the wild card that nobody really knew whether or how to trust, the one whose alliances would always be unclear; even to his own people.

If only they could understand what had caused the darkness inside him grow so strong, so independent, so uncontrollable. If only he could understand it himself. At some point, that dark, evil voice that had started to whisper into his ear when he was still young—at first only faintly and easy to ignore but increasingly louder as time wore on—had gained enough strength to overpower him. He didn't understand why or how, he only knew that he could not protect himself or others from this part of himself. He had tried and he had failed countless times. He also knew that this dark voice was feeding on his controversial feelings for Thor and that it hated him. It hated him so much that, at times, Loki had felt the hatred starting to eat away at his sanity and he knew that, even if they survived this attack and rebuilt Asgard and even if he would try to stand by his brother's side because he was the rightful king, it would surface again. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not soon, but eventually it would. If he tried to do right by the Asgardian people, by his family, by Thor, and everyone would still punish him with contempt and distrust while loving Thor just for who he was … He could feel the dark voice stirring awake from a momentary slumber. No, he could not fight this.

His voice again. "See? You are still weak."

Yes, he was. It was time to stop pretending that there was a way out; that he would ever be able to develop the strength to fight against the darkness inside him for the rest of his life. It did not occur to him that it might get easier over time or that people might actually be willing to help him if he let go of his borderline narcissistic pride and revealed his struggles. The only thing that did occur to him was that there was just one way to protect Thor from having to endure another betrayal, another hysterical outburst of hatred and jealousy and rage and that was to make the dark voice disappear forever.

If he sacrificed himself for his brother, and did it right this time, Thor would finally come to understand that he had grown into something more than the chaotic, mischievous blighter he used to be; that, at heart, he was and had always been his brother, friend and ally.

Loki was so immersed in his own thoughts that he did not notice the projectiles made of debris shooting towards him until they sliced into his armor and flung him onto the ground. He saw Ebony Maw, glowering at him as he walked over to where he was cowering.

Loki's eyes fell on the blue cube in his hands and his mind cast a somersault. The Space Stone granted its wielder the ability to teleport themselves to any place they could possibly picture, regardless of physical distance. He could use it to vanish into another dimension just like that and if he did that, he would forever be free of all this madness.

What are you waiting for? Just do it, snarled the dark voice. Or let me do it but, in the name of all the gods, do something!

The Maw held up his hand, dislodged a piece from the wall and hurled it against Loki's head. His vision exploded into blackness lit with pulsing white pinpricks of light and the Tesseract slipped from his hands. He tried to blink away the stars but felt himself lift off the ground and before he could break free from the spell, the Maw slammed his body headfirst against the wall and rendered him unconscious.

When Loki shook himself awake again, Heimdall was lying dead, a spear sticking out of his chest. The Hulk was gone. Thor was on his knees, immobilized by a girdle made of metal debris, his lips clamped shut by a makeshift muzzle, a trickle of blood running down his forehead. They were defeated. Because of him.

You hopeless failure.

"There are two more stones on Earth," Thanos was saying, the Space Stone glinting on the gauntlet. The Norns be damned. "Find them, my children, and bring them to me on Titan."

But maybe it was not too late. He could still reach the Space Stone and if he found the right spell …

"If I … might interject," Loki said without pausing to think even though he did not entirely trust himself and his motivations. It happened sometimes that a thought or an emotion split off his consciousness and began acting on its own in a way that Loki did not fully understand. All he knew was that it was as if he was changing into his own version of the Hulk, except that he did not turn into a giant green monster. At least not on the outside. On the inside, he was often no less of a monster when he relinquished control of his mind. "If you're going to Earth, you might want a guide. I do have a bit of experience in that arena."

"If you consider failure experience," Thanos mocked him.

"I consider experience experience," Loki snapped back.

The titan rewarded his retort with a contemptuous glare that went miles to define how little he thought of him and made it clear to Loki for the last time that no one would ever think of him as anything more than a nuisance. If he was truly destined to ever make a change, he was going to have to make it from another dimension or from Hel.

"Almighty Thanos. I, Loki, Prince of Asgard," Loki began softly, his voice hitching when he glanced at Thor. "Odinson," Loki breathed almost intimately over the sound of his breaking heart. The universe needed a Thor who did not have to worry about the evil insanities that lurked inside his twisted little brother's mind. Now more than ever. "The rightful king of Jotunheim, God of Mischief," Loki continued, his lungs running out of breath, "do hereby pledge to you my undying fidelity."

Yes, the speech was dramatic, maybe overly so, but Loki wanted Thor to remember it. He mentally reached into the pocket dimension once more, drew out a dagger and, in a fit of sheer and utter madness, thrust it towards the titan's neck.

Availing himself to the powers of the Space Stone, the titan paralyzed him mid-attack and magically altered the distance between his throat and the dagger. "Undying?" Thanos snorted, his tone a hybrid of amusement and annoyance. "You should choose your words more carefully," he advised and grabbed Loki by the wrist.

Loki groaned as the touch brought back the same darkness that had sucked him in when he had let go of his brother's hand because it had seemed easier to just let go than to face the painful truth that their father would never be as proud of him as he was of Thor. Thanos increased the pressure until Loki released his grip on the dagger and sent it clattering to the floor. Next to him, he heard Thor choking on his own blood.

Thanos raised the hand wearing the Infinity Gauntlet and Loki felt a wave of dread and longing wash through him. He glanced upwards, the fearful beating of his own heart thundering in his ears, but, curiously, he felt his body almost leaning into the touch.

The Gauntlet closed around his neck and yanked him off his feet. The titan was full of rage but that was just as well. Thanos had sworn to kill him a long time ago and, deep inside him, Loki had always known that he would never escape. Sometimes, he had almost waited for it to happen.

Yes, he was a coward. He was a coward and a trickster and he had spent fifteen-hundred years taking the easy way out whenever there had been trouble, running away from his true nature and from taking any responsibility for his actions. He had staged his own death in front of Thor's very eyes and had exiled his father to Midgard with a spell so that he could take his place on the throne of Asgard and hide from Thanos and the entire universe in plain sight.

But this was different. This time, Loki was doing the right thing. He was protecting his brother from future madness, future worry, future heartbreak.

This time, he would not come back. This time, he would leave Thor alone forever because that was what his brother deserved. No more failed expectations, no more schemes, no more tricks.

Loki panted for breath as he tried to focus on the Space Stone but the pressure around his neck tightened, disrupting his ability to concentrate. "I would really like to see you try to be a hero," Thanos murmured far too intimately, "like to see you fail miserably because of who you are, but, unfortunately, I just don't think you deserve another chance. You have had too many of those as it is."

Thanos increased the pressure to a point where Loki's vision blurred at the edges. He felt a sweeping sense of panic rise up inside of him when he realized that his plan was going awry. The magic of the Space Stone remained out of reach and he was running out of air, choking to death, dangling from the grip of the Mad Titan. He realized that he was going to die by his past abuser's hand and he realized too that there was nothing he could do to change that.

That wasn't the plan, Loki thought frantically, his thoughts crashing into one another and tumbling over themselves. I don't want to die. Not like this. Not right now. Not with Thor watching. Brother, I … I am so sorry … Please, help … me …

If he could somehow bind the essence of his spirit to the stone, his magic might survive. He might not have to die permanently. Loki gurgled.

Oh, Loki, make up your mind, snarled the dark voice.

Loki fought for air and tried to focus, to reach for the magic of the Space Stone one last time, but all he could hear was the dark voice's jabbering as his mind went dim. Thor will survive but he will suffer. He will save Asgard's people but he will suffer. He might defeat Thanos but he will suffer. He will be safe but he will suffer.

"Y-you will never be a God," Loki told Thanos on his last breath before he felt his consciousness slipping from his grasp, his mind going blissfully blank for once.

Author's Note:

- Somehow, I feel the need to add that I don't think Loki deserves to suffer any more than he already did, but my mind is actually very dark and twisted, and I had this thought stuck in my head ever since I watched Infinity War that Thanos' presence actually bought all the torture memories back (even though he was not in possession of the mind stone at this point), which might have caused Loki to lose his mind and attack Thanos. I also think that, while Loki seemed to be healing in Ragnarok, madness (depersonalization/dissociative identity disorder/psychosis, whatever it was) never completely subsides and that it can be triggered by pretty much anything. (This will be addressed in subsequent chapters, of course!)
- That being said, feel free to comment/ask questions/get in touch (my twitter is /at/jotunemo).