A/N: This fic was inspired by a post I saw on Tumblr that poked holes in the Infinity War and Endgame plot is my attempt at fixing some of those holes by following the logic established in earlier movies and just a tiny part from the comics. Also, Loki lives because he is a badass magic user and not an idiot with a butterknife.

Now without further ado, enjoy~

The vast expanse of space stretched out before them as Loki came to join his brother at the viewing bay. His gut no longer twisted at the thought of once again calling the oaf his brother. Loki had spent a millennium with the idiot. Despite not being related by blood they had been brought up as siblings and Loki could finally admit it to himself. Odin may have damaged their relationship with his lies but that was one crime Thor had had no part in. And yet, for years, Loki had taken his anger out on Thor, pushing him away and rebuffing any attempts he made to reconnect with Loki. Loki had pushed and pushed and pushed and on Sakaar, Thor seemed to have finally reached his limit.

Loki had refused to examine his feelings on the matter until Thor had oh so magnanimously decided to give Loki what the idiot thought he wanted and given up. Which was problematic for Loki because he wanted the idiot to keep on chasing him. He wanted to hear Thor declare them brothers for all eternity. He needed Thor to repeatedly tell him that nothing had changed between them. Because Thor was the eternal optimist. This was not how being brothers worked.

I suppose I will have to remind Thor that he is not allowed to give up, Loki had decided. Besides, he still needed to pay Thor back for leaving him behind, convulsing under the effects of the obedience disk. That had hurt. Never mind the fact that the electric shock hadn't been that strong and Loki had suffered worst injuries over the ages. The pain had been nothing compared to what he'd been put through in the year under the Mad Titan's control but that was beside the point. The point was the Thor left him behind! Thor had seen what the Grandmaster had done to his 'cousin' with the melt stick. Did the idiot even think about what the man would have done to Loki had he found him?

Of course not. In spite of Thor's claims of having grown wiser, his oaf of a brother had not thought through the consequences of his actions. He'd only sought to get even with Loki for his 'perceived' betrayal. The fact that Loki might have been planning on giving Thor up to the Grandmaster was, once again, beside the point. He'd only been trying to save the idiot's life. Facing Hela without Mjolnir and no control over his abilities, Thor had been headed straight into death's jaws. Hela, the goddess of Death who had singlehandedly defeated the entirety of the Valkyrior and torn through Asgard's warriors as though they were nothing more than untrained Midgardians. Loki was certain he would have been able to convince the Grandmaster to keep Thor alive and once enough time had passed, Loki would have found a way to get Thor his freedom. Instead, Thor had decided to yet again derail Loki's plan. And fine, maybe Loki was a little annoyed that Thor had managed to pull one over him.

But in what realm was going off to fight the literal goddess of Death with only the Hulk and Valkyrie by his side enough back up?

In the end, Loki had had to do all the hard work and bring the actual help. And the means to escape Asgard. As usual. If Loki hadn't thought ahead and brought the ship to evacuate the civilians, there was no way Thor's insane plan to have Hela and Surtur destroy each other would have worked.

So really, Thor would be quite lost without Loki by his side. Which was the major reason why Loki was sticking around. He was, obviously, the brains of the duo and really, he only wanted what was best for their people. The people of Asgard had adored him as he had ruled over them as a benevolent king. He may have gone a little overboard with the promotion of arts and cultures in place of military funding but the people had been happy and Asgard had been prospering before Hela decided to escape from her prison and kill everyone. Besides, Loki had been trying to arrange treaties with the other realms which would have, had he succeeded, been a good way to counter the growing threat that was Thanos. It was a tragedy that Asgard had been destroyed before he could have made things official.

However, what was done was done and Loki needed to focus his energies on the future and their long term plans. The Statesman's course had already been set for Midgard, or Earth as Thor seemed to prefer calling it now, and Loki was a little worried about how the people on that backwater planet would react to a ship full of Asgardian refugees. Not to mention Loki himself. Last he'd checked, they still believed him to be dead.

Without tearing his gaze away from the starry sky outside the window, Loki broke the silence. "Do you really think it's a good idea to go back to earth?"

Thor glanced at him. "Yes of course. The people of earth love me. I'm very popular."

Yes of course. Rub that in my face why don't you brother? Biting the inside of his cheek, Loki wisely kept that thought to himself. "Let me rephrase that. Do you really think it's a good idea to bring me back to earth?"

"Probably not, to be honest." Thor admitted and Loki couldn't help but smile, not at the response itself but the optimistic tone in which Thor had spoken. Loki used to find it annoying once upon a time but having spent the last few weeks in the company of a Thor who seemed to have lost all hope, it was a relief to hear his brother speak the way he used to. "I wouldn't worry brother. I feel like everything is going to work out fine."

Loki dared allow himself to feel hope. Thor's optimism was infectious and for once, Loki wasn't opposed to sharing in his brother's sentiments. Their realm may have been destroyed but their people were still there. Thor would lead them to Earth and there, they would begin anew, with Loki by his side. Smiling to himself, Loki looked on ahead to the stars.

Which was when everything went wrong. The space before them warped as a jump point activated and out came a ship Loki had hoped never to see again. The fluttering of hope turned to shards of ice in his chest as the Sanctuary II rose above the Statesman. Blades of steel wrapped around his heart and found himself unable to draw a proper breath. The beginning of panic clawing up his throat made it hard for him to think. He was paralyzed, rooted to the spot as phantom hooks tore into his flesh. They peeled back his skin to expose what lay beneath as burning acid was poured on him and then he was screaming and screaming and begging and oh Norns please no. Save me. Save me! Don't let me be unmade. Thor, brother, please. Mother. Father. Heimdall! Anyone. Someone please save me. Savemesavemesavem—

"Thor!" Valkyrie's voice pierced the veil of terror that had settled over Loki's mind, drawing him back to the present. Loki pushed back the panic, forcing himself to breath and tamp down on the fear that the ship looming above them invoked. He turned with his brother to face Valkyrie, surprised to see that her face was nearly as pale as the armor she wore. "We need to evacuate, now!"

Thor frowned. "Is there something wrong with the ship?"

"There will be as soon as we're boarded." Valkyrie nodded at the Sanctuary II and Thor glanced back at the behemoth of a ship that was nearly upon them.

"Who are they? Pirates? Ravagers?"

"You really don't know who that ship belongs to?" For a moment, Valkyrie appeared to be shocked at his brother's ignorance. It was a novelty that had worn off for Loki long ago. Thor only ever paid attention to things that caught his interest. The Mad Titan, had not been one of those things. And whose fault is that? A voice hissed in Loki's mind that sounded just like Odin's. Maybe if you had told him the truth about what happened after you fell, Thor wouldn't have—

Wouldn't have what? Loki snarled back. He would have seen me as a weakling who couldn't even last a year under torture. He would have laughed at me with Sif and the Warrior's Three. They never saw me as a real warrior. Telling Thor about Thanos would only have cemented in their minds that I am not a warrior.

"That is the Sanctuary II, stronghold of the Mad Titan, Thanos." Loki wasn't even aware he'd spoken until both Thor and Valkyrie had shifted their attention on him.

"How would you know that?" Valkyrie's gaze had turned accusing. Loki had no doubt, some of the other warriors had been filling her head with tales of his treachery.

"I had the pleasure of spending some time on board that ship after I fell from the Bifrost," Loki replied, keeping his eyes fixed on Valkyrie and very carefully not looking at Thor.

"After you fell from the— Loki, was this Mad Titan the one who gave you the Chitauri and the scepter?"

Loki ignored Thor's question, watching the way understanding softened the harshness in Valkyrie's eyes.

"Never mind that now, Thor. Valkyrie is right." Loki moved away from the viewport, walking the way Valkyrie had come. "We need to evacuate. Preferably before the Black Order and the Outriders begin boarding our ship."

"Surely, we can fight them." Thor insisted as he joined Loki as they moved to the cargo hold where most of the Asgardian families had taken shelter.

"Only if you want us all to die," Valkyrie said. "Setting the Statesman to self-destruct would be faster."

If Thanos had personally come, it only meant one thing. Word of Asgard's destruction must have reached him and now that the Tesseract was no longer hidden behind powerful defenses, the Mad Titan had come to lay claim on his prize. And if he managed to deliver his brand of 'balance' along the way, all the better for him. It wouldn't matter to him that more than two thirds of the Asgardian population had already perished at Hela's hands. He would still kill half of those on board. And if he saw the two princes of Asgard in one place, Loki had no doubt that Thanos would kill one of them. Well too bad for Thanos, but losing his own life or Thor was not an option for Loki. And losing another fifty percent of his people was… Loki refused to let that happen.

"How many escape vessels do we have?" Loki asked.

Valkyrie's answering tone was grim. "Not enough."

Ice crept up his spine as the beginnings of panic set in. He couldn't draw in a deep enough breath past the barbed wires wrapped around his lungs as Thanos loomed above him. Ebony Maw held down Loki as the remaining Black Order tore through the Asgardians. At the Mad Titan's feet lay Thor, silent and unmoving in death.

"Even if we did have enough pods to get everyone to earth, Thanos would have shot down half of them before they made it to the jump point," Valkyrie said, shattering the waking nightmare that had enveloped Loki's vision and he forced himself to focus on the sound of her voice. What she said was true. Evacuating via escape pods would still condemn half of the surviving Asgardians. But there was still time. The Sanctuary II was not yet in boarding distance of the Statesman so Loki could still do something to save his people.

"In that case, I say we stand and fight," Thor declared. "Surely this Mad Titan has never faced the might of Asgard's finest."

"Asgard's finest won't be enough to defeat him," Valkyrie said and Loki was suddenly very glad to have her there. Coming from him, Loki was certain, Thor would have dismissed the warning and insisted on fighting Thanos head on. But coming from a Valkyrie… that changed things. And if it stung a little to see the alarm finally register on his brother's face at Valkyrie's words, Loki tried not to let that bother him. Really. After centuries of having his advice disregarded unless it suited Thor, Loki should be used to the oaf listening to everyone else but him. I was a fool to believe things would be different.

Pushing aside the hurt, Loki focused instead on the problem at hand and the bare bones of a plan began to form in his mind. To make it work, however, he would have to reveal his hand and lay most of his cards down.

Thor won't be happy about this. Just then the Sanctuary II opened fire, rocking the ship and nearly sending Loki crashing to the ground. In the cargo hold, someone let out a scream and the children began to cry. Never mind Thor. I need to act.

Loki grabbed hold of the wall to steady himself as another shot shook the Statesman and turned to his companions. "I have an idea but I'm warning you now, Thor. Don't be alarmed."

"Loki, what did you do?" Thor stopped just before they entered the cargo hold, forcing Loki and Valkyrie to stop with him. "Did you bring this Mad Titan upon us?"

"Always so quick to jump to conclusions, Thor."

"After everything you've done, Brother, can you really blame me?"

After everything I've done? What about everything that you've done? Loki gave Thor a bland smile, refusing to let his bitterness show. "My mistake for thinking you knew me better. I meant that I have something that will help us save our people." Ignoring the way Thor's expression transformed to that of a kicked puppy, Loki held out his hand and reached for the Tesseract stored away in his pocket dimension.

Thor looked between Loki and Tesseract. When he spoke, he sounded equal parts resigned and exasperated. "You… really are the worst brother."

"Yes well, I couldn't let a priceless artifact be destroyed with Asgard." Loki doubted even the destruction of Asgard could have damaged a stone that had survived the creation of the universe itself but Thor didn't need to know that.

As soon as word of Asgard's destruction got out, scavengers from all over the universe would have flocked towards the rubble to collect whatever they could get their hands on. So Loki had done the sensible thing and grabbed everything out of the vault that he could safely move to his pocket dimension. If left behind, sooner or later, the Tesseract would have found its way to Thanos. So Loki took it first.

"Banter later, plan now," Valkyrie interrupted before Thor could say something disparaging and they both sobered.

"The plan is actually quite simple," Loki shrugged, as he walked into the cargo hold and looked around for a suitable spot to set up a portal, "we launch the escape pods towards the jump point as decoys, Thor and the warriors fight and hold off Thanos's forces while I evacuate everyone to Earth through the Tesseract."

Thor was immediately swarmed by the Asgardian citizens, though Valkyrie followed after Loki as he headed for the back of the hold. After the initial two attacks, things had fallen silent which meant that they had been warning shots. But the lull in attacks meant Loki had more time to set everything up.

"And what of Ebony Maw?" she quirked a brow when Loki glanced her way. The set to her jaw led Loki to believe that she might have had a closer encounter with the Mad Titan than he had initially suspected. "Surely he will be able to sense that the escape pods are empty."

Now that he wasn't half-mad, starving and severely debilitated from spending an eternity trapped inside the void, Loki was confident his spells would be more than a match for Ebony Maw's abilities. This would be nothing like the last time. "Don't worry about that. I have something to keep him from suspecting anything."

-0-

Halfway through the actual evacuation, the Statesman's shields were breached. As soon as that happened, they launched the decoy escape pods. Valkyrie along with a few volunteers had chosen to pilot the vessels towards the jump point to keep up the ruse. The volunteers had all known that only half of the pods would ever make it through but Loki truly hoped Valkyrie's was one of the ones that made it.

The alarms blared in warning every time a new chunk of the Statesman was blown into space as shots from Thanos's ship continued. In a moment of brilliance, Thor had suggested they send out a call for help to make their plight seem more authentic. And then he'd taken the warriors, gladiators and the Hulk with him to hold off Thanos and his Black Order. Loki hoped the green beast and Heimdall would be enough to keep Thor alive while Loki evacuated everyone. It would be a pity if his brother died before Loki had a chance to get him back for the obedience disk attack on Sakaar.

Three quarters of the refugees had already made it and the remaining three hundred women and children were quickly filing through the portal to Midgard. Another explosion rocked the Statesman and Loki grit his teeth, splitting his focus in keeping the portal stable and shielding everyone inside the cargo hold. His illusions in the evacuation pods had worked well enough to fool Ebony Maw's psychic probing which was the only reason the Black Order hadn't already torn through the ship to reach them yet.

Unfortunately, while shielding himself and a few others from psychic probes or Heimdall's gaze was something Loki could do in his sleep, keeping people upwards of a thousand completely hidden from discovery was the limit of his abilities. Still, their people were relying on him and Loki refused to let all of their efforts and sacrifices in the past few days be in vain, so Loki poured more seidr into his spells. Ignoring the blood dribbling down his nose, Loki leant against a wall and reminded himself that he only needed to hold on for another minute. His people were almost through.

His head pounded like something awful and Loki could feel himself sliding to the floor. Still he channeled the Tesseract to maintain the portal and motioned for Miek and Korg to slip through once the last of the Asgardians had fled. Wiping off the blood with the back of his hand, Loki let the portal collapse behind the two gladiators. The Tesseract was neither warm nor cold in the palm of his hand as Loki lifted the cube up to his eye level. Such an innocent looking thing and yet it held one of the fundamental forces of the universe inside it. He aborted the motion of dismissing the Tesseract to his pocket dimension halfway as an idea came to him. Letting it rematerialize in his hand, Loki set it down on the floor and drew a series of runic symbols around it with his blood. Channeling seidr into the runes, Loki set the deadman's spell on the Space Stone before finally banishing it to his pocket dimension.

There. Now no one but me can get it.

Pushing off the ground, Loki staggered off in search of his brother. His seidr was nearly depleted and dark spots swam in his vision so Loki thought he could be excused for not cloaking himself. He remembered to cast the spell moments before he stepped into the secondary cargo hold where Thor and the volunteers had chosen to make their last stand against Thanos. The spell he cast was rather weak but with all the commotion, Loki didn't think he would be noticed before he managed to draw energy from all the chaos unfolding before him. The sight that greeted Loki was nothing short of equal parts chilling and awe inspiring.

Thor stood amidst a mound of Outriders, lightning crackling all over his body that split and arched at any Outrider that came close enough. Thanos stood off to one side, watching with the air of a benevolent parent as Ebony Maw and Corvus Glaive cut through the Asgardian Warriors and Sakaaran Gladiators. Heimdall held off Proxima Midnight as he watched Thor's back and the Hulk was thrashing around with Cull Obsidian, knocking down walls and support beams as they wrestled.

Knowing that his mind was still shielded and thus his presence undetected, Loki pushed back on his exhaustion as he stalked closer to Maw. He had kept score of every mental violation he had suffered under Maw and the time had come to pay the creature back in full. Readying a spell that he had imagined using on Maw a thousand times, Loki drew closer. Seidr twisted under his will as Loki drew energy from the chaos and created the curse that would be Ebony Maw's undoing. Once ready, Loki aimed it at his intended target and let go. A fraction of a second before the spell could connect, Maw summoned a sheet of metal between him and the curse, smirking in derision as he searched for Loki. "I know you're here, Asgardian."

His smirk turned to a frown when instead of dissipating, Loki's curse crackled across the surface of the metal and started coalescing into a singularity on the other side. Time slowed down as Maw banished the sheet back at Loki, having finally located him as the cloaking spell failed, and the singularity curse shot at Maw's heart. Loki smirked when the curse connected and burst into tendrils of poisonous green energy that wrapped around Maw's torso and sank beneath his skin. He was still smirking as metal sheet struck Loki in the chest and sent him flying through the air to land right at Thanos's feet.

Loki blinked out the spots from his vision and struggled back to his feet, swaying dangerously from vertigo. To his mounting horror, Thanos smiled at Loki and grabbed hold of his neck. Before he could summon a dagger to stab into the Titan's hand, Loki was hoisted into the air as though he weighed nothing and turned around so that he had a good view of the ongoing fight in the cargo hold.

"I applaud your efforts to save your people, Little Prince." Thanos murmured in his ear, holding Loki in a way so that he had no choice but to watch as the Black Order slaughtered the fighters. Thor's lightning quickly disposed of the Outriders that came at him but the swarm was relentless in its attack. Thor was waist deep in Outrider corpses and more kept on coming. Heimdall was doing his best to defend Thor's unprotected back from Proxima Midnight and hear deadly spear. "Half of them still perished in the cold of space to maintain the balance. Now tell me, since I can only let one of you live, who's life will you choose to spare? Your brother's or your own?"

Loki froze in his attempts to break free from the Titan's hold as his worst fear was confirmed. No...

"Don't be ashamed. I know what it's like to lose, to fear so desperately for your life," Thanos continued to whisper, "It's a frightening thing and you dread it. You've run from it all these years. Destiny arrives all the same, and now that it's here..." Thanos paused and the part of Loki that wasn't half-petrified to death wondered why Thanos felt the need to be so dramatic. "Or should I say I am?"

Thanos held up the hand in which he wore the infinity gauntlet, showing off a gleaming purple gemstone set in place on a knuckle and it took Loki a moment to identify it as the Power Stone. Loki lost the ability to breathe as he realized that Thanos had the most dangerous of the six stones.

"Where is the Tesseract?"

Loki hated feeling so weak in face of the Mad Titan that he couldn't even break free. Hated the way fear curdled in his stomach, paralyzing him in place. Hated how all his planning and scheming came to a halt when faced with Thanos. The Mad Titan had unmade him once before. Torn through all his walls and defenses, shattered what had remained of his sanity and broken him. And then, when Loki had been brought to his lowest, Thanos had sent him to Midgard as a lackey to do his bidding.

The small part of him that had survived the Mad Titan had ensured that Loki created a plan of attack so full of flaws, even a backwater planet like Midgard could defend itself against it. So in a way Loki was the one who brought together the 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' for all the good that did when they destroyed themselves with petty infighting. Loki let himself be branded a villain and a madman just so he could piece back the shattered pieces of himself into a semblance of who he used to be. But there were so many parts of him that were broken beyond repair. So many cracks that still remained. How easy would it be now for Thanos to peel away all those layers and break who Loki was once again?

Growing impatient with his silence, Thanos pressed the Power Stone against Loki's head and Loki lost control of the energy he had been gathering from the chaos to turn to seidr as agony exploded through his skull. He thrashed in the titan's hold, tasting blood at the back of his throat as he bit down on his cheek to keep from screaming. Thanos dug the stone deeper into his flesh and the purple burned through his skin and bones, reaching down to set his brain aflame.

Loki screamed.

By the time Thanos let up and Loki could gasp for breath, he could hear Thor screaming his name. The sound of fighting had nearly died down as Loki blinked the tears out of his eyes, searching for his brother amongst the bodies that littered the cargo hold. He found Thor on his knees, forced into position by the multitudes of metal bars wrapped around his torso and chaining him to the floor. Three feet away lay Heimdall, his golden eyes unseeing in death as Proxima Midnights spear was buried deep in his chest. The woman in question was missing an arm that lay next to Heimdall's sword.

"You will pay for that!" Thor yelled as he struggled against the bars. The metal groaned as Thor slowly began to rise to his feet. That is, until Maw twisted more of the ship's support beams to force Thor back. "Let him go! Loki! Let my brother go!"

The hulk roared in victory in another part of the ship though Loki doubted anyone else could tell the difference.

"I won't ask again, Little Prince. Where is the Tesseract?"

"It was destroyed along with Asgard," Thor said when Loki stubbornly refused to answer.

"Is that so?"

Loki remained mute, focusing inwards to take stock of his seidr. He'd only gathered enough to create one portal. He wouldn't be able to fight off Thanos and his children, get to Thor and— agony exploded through his skull yet again as Thanos pressed the Power Stone against Loki's temple. Loki screamed and screamed until he was sinking into blissful oblivion.

Cold, psychic fingers wrenched him back to the waking world and Loki gasped for breath. Half of his face felt on fire as Loki pushed off the ground on trembling arms. The stench of ozone and charred flesh was so strong in the air that he nearly gagged. A glance to the right showed Ebony Maw sporting gruesome lightning burns across his arms and neck and although Thor was nearly mummified and gagged with twisted metal Loki couldn't help but smirk at Maw. Loki's curse had taken root and now regardless of what Maw did, he would be dead in less than two days. Something shifted in the shadows and Loki tried to see what it was out of the corner of his eye.

"If you will not speak for your own sake, perhaps you will for your brother." Thanos mused, drawing his attention back to the Titan and a jolt of fear shot through Loki's chest. No!

"Wait..." Loki croaked as the shadows shifted again. "Wait. There's something you need... Need to know."

"Then you have an answer for me?"

"No, but we do have a Hulk."

Right on cue, the roaring green beast exploded from the shadows and straight for Thanos. As the two fought and the Black Order shifted restlessly on whether to intervene or not, Loki reached for the pocket dimension and took a quick stock of the artifacts in his inventory. Just as Thanos began to gain the upper hand against the Hulk, Loki came to a decision. Loath as he was to rely on it, Loki summoned the Casket of Ancient Winters to his hands and unleashed the storm contained within onto Thanos and his children.

With Thanos possessing the Power Stone, Loki knew he only had mere moments before the Titan would be free of thirty foot solid block of ice so he needed to act fast. Switching the Casket with the Tesseract, Loki tried not to think of the unnatural blue hands that held the Space Stone. With his seidr as depleted as it was, Loki did not think he could maintain the portal long enough for them to safely reach Earth, so instead Loki focused on the secret moon that was halfway to there. Summoning the portal directly behind Thor, he slid it across the ground until the portal swallowed his brother and then insensate Hulk. Cracks began to emerge in the ice around Thanos as Loki summoned the portal to himself. Blood dribbled down his nose and darkness danced across his vision as Loki strengthened his hold on the Tesseract.

Moments before Loki was swallowed by the portal, the ice shattered and he saw the furious Titan racing towards him. So Loki did the sensible thing and mimed a rude hand gesture that had originated on Midgard but was now used across the cosmos. "You will never be a god."

And then the portal swallowed him whole and Loki was falling and falling into darkness.