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In every universe that spirals out from the sacred timeline, Loki loves you.
He has watched himself fall a thousand times, across a thousand variations of existence. In timelines where he conquers Earth. In timelines where he never leaves Asgard. In timelines where he dies on that desolate moon, and ones where he lives to see the stars go dark. Always, inevitably, his heart bends toward you like a compass seeking true north.
And in every single one, you hate him.
Or perhaps hate is too simple a word. You tolerate him. You avoid him. You look at him with that particular weariness reserved for those who have disappointed you beyond repair. Sometimes you rage at him. Sometimes you simply turn away. But never, not once in the infinite branching paths he monitors from his throne at the End of Time, do you love him back.
Except.
Loki finds it on a Tuesday, if Tuesdays still mean anything in a place beyond time. A timeline tucked so far beneath the luminous branches of Yggdrasil that he almost misses it entirely, nestled under layers of golden leaves as if the World Tree itself is trying to keep it secret. As if even an entity as ancient as Yggdrasil knows this universe is precious.
His fingers hesitate over the temporal loom’s controls. He shouldn’t look. He has work to do, infinite timelines to maintain, cosmic balance to preserve. He is the God of Stories now, the burden-bearer, the lonely watchman. He doesn’t have time for this.
He looks anyway.
The TemPad screen flickers to life, and Loki watches himself- another him, a him that could have been- stride into the Avengers compound with that same defensive arrogance he knows too well.
This universe diverges shortly after the Battle of New York. In the sacred timeline, you had been assigned to guard him, a task you’d accepted with professional coldness that had frozen him more thoroughly than any Jotun ice. You had watched him with contempt barely concealed behind protocol.
But here, something is different.
“You’re the war criminal, then,” you say, leaning against the doorframe of his cell. But there’s no venom in it. Curiosity, maybe. A strange sort of amusement.
The Loki on screen tilts his head, studying you. “I prefer ‘misunderstood visionary,’ but yes, I suppose that’s the general consensus.”
Loki- the real Loki, the one watching from outside time- leans closer to the screen. He remembers this conversation. He’d said almost exactly the same thing. But when he’d said it, you’d simply walked away.
Here, you laugh. Actually laugh. “Points for creativity, at least.”
“Wait,” Loki breathes to the empty air around him. “Wait, why did you- ”
He rewinds. Watches it again. And again.
It takes him seventeen viewings to catch it.
When this Loki delivers his quip, there’s the briefest moment, a fraction of a second, where uncertainty flickers across his face. A tiny crack in the mask. It’s so subtle that even Loki himself, watching from beyond, almost misses it. But you don’t. He can see it in the way your expression softens, just slightly.
His other self had been vulnerable for half a heartbeat, and somehow, that changed everything.
Loki watches months unspool in hours. He watches this other, luckier self slowly lower his defenses. Not in grand gestures but in tiny, almost imperceptible degrees.
When you bring him books to ease the tedium of confinement, this Loki says “thank you” instead of making a cutting remark about your taste in literature. When you ask about Asgard, he tells you true stories instead of elaborate lies designed to impress or unsettle.
“Why are you being honest with me?” you ask him one evening, three months into his captivity.
This Loki is silent for a long moment. “I’m not entirely sure,” he finally admits. “Perhaps because you asked.”
Loki, watching from his throne, feels something crack in his chest. It sounds so simple. So unbearably simple.
In the sacred timeline, you’d asked him the same question. He’d responded with a beautiful, ornate lie about the nature of truth and perception. You’d never asked him anything personal again.
The divergence grows wider as he watches.
When this Loki escapes (because of course he escapes, that’s what Lokis do) you’re the one who finds him. Not to drag him back, but because he’s sitting on the roof of the compound at three in the morning, and you couldn’t sleep either.
“Are you going to sound the alarm?” he asks without looking at you.
“Probably should.” You sit down beside him, legs dangling over the edge. “But you’re not actually leaving, are you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re still here.”
This Loki huffs a laugh that sounds almost real. “Perhaps I’m merely waiting for the opportune moment.”
“You’ve had two hours of opportune moments. I’ve been watching you from my window.”
Loki, the one outside time, watches his other self turn to look at you, genuinely startled. There’s something raw in that expression, something young and uncertain that he’d buried so deep he’d almost forgotten it existed.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” this Loki asks quietly.
“I guess…” You draw your knees up, wrapping your arms around them. “I wanted to see what you’d choose. If you’d choose.”
“And what if I choose to leave?”
You’re quiet for a moment, looking out at the pre-dawn sky. “Then I’d be disappointed. But I’d understand.”
This Loki doesn’t leave.
Loki stops the playback. His hands are shaking; a strange thing, for hands that hold the threads of infinity.
In the sacred timeline, he’d escaped that same night. You’d activated the alarm without hesitation. He’d made it three blocks before Thor tackled him through a building. You’d never trusted him again, the little trust there had been evaporated like morning dew.
But here, this Loki stays. And you see him choose it.
He skips forward. Watches the trust build in slow increments, like stalactites forming over centuries. This Loki is still sharp tongued, still dramatic, still innately himself. But there’s something different in the way he wields those qualities. Not as weapons or armor, but as ornaments. Decoration rather than defense.
When you’re injured on a mission, this Loki’s composure shatters in a way that’s almost painful to witness. He carries you to the med bay himself, magic flickering frantically around you, healing spells tangling in his desperation.
“I’m okay,” you keep telling him. “Loki, I’m okay.”
“You’re not.” His voice breaks. “You’re bleeding, you’re- why would you do that? Why would you shield me?”
“Because I- ” You stop. Your eyes are hazy with pain and painkillers. “Because I knew you’d save me. I trust you.”
This Loki looks at you like you’ve reached into his chest and taken his heart directly into your hands.
“No one’s ever said that to me before,” his other self whispers.
Loki pauses the timeline again. He sits back in his throne- a throne that is also a prison, a burden, a sacrifice- and covers his face with his hands.
In the sacred timeline, you’d been injured in front of him too. You’d told him to stay back. “Don’t touch me,” you’d gasped through the pain. “I don’t trust you not to make it worse.”
He’d saved you anyway, but you’d looked at him afterward with something like fear.
The difference is trust. The difference is that in this universe, somehow, he learned to be trustworthy.
The first kiss happens in the aftermath of another battle. You’re both exhausted, leaning against each other in a quinjet, covered in dust and bruises and the particular weariness that comes from fighting for a world that doesn’t always want you.
“I’m glad you’re here,” you murmur against his shoulder.
“Here as in the quinjet, or here as in this realm, or here as in- ”
“All of it.” You lift your head to look at him. “Just… here. With me.”
This Loki searches your face for the lie, the trick, the angle. Loki knows this look; he’s worn it ten thousand times. But all he finds is sincerity.
“I don’t deserve you,” this Loki says, which is perhaps the most honest thing any version of him has ever said.
“That’s not really how it works.” You smile, tired and real. “It’s not about deserving. It’s about choosing. And I choose you. Present tense. Active voice. No conditions.”
When you kiss him, it’s gentle. Certain. Like coming home.
Loki watches from outside time, and something in him breaks completely.
He could stop here. Should stop here. But he’s spent centuries learning discipline, and for once, he abandons it entirely. He watches further.
Watches this Loki integrate into the team not by being perfect but by being genuine. Watches him apologize when he makes mistakes; actual apologies, not the elaborate deflections he usually constructs. Watches him let you see his fears, his doubts, the soft vulnerable places he usually guards with cruelty and chaos.
Watches this Loki be brave enough to be known.
And watches you love him for it. Love him fiercely, completely, with a steadfastness that transcends the timeline’s chaos. You argue with him, challenge him, refuse to let him self destruct in the ornate ways he’s perfected. But you never give up on him.
In one scene, months into the relationship, this Loki relapses into old patterns, lying about something small, testing the boundaries of your trust.
You catch him immediately. “Loki. Truth.”
He looks away, jaw tight. “Why does it matter? It was inconsequential.”
“It matters because you lied to me. It matters because we’ve talked about this. It matters because- ” Your voice cracks slightly. “-because I need to know if you’re here with me or if you’re just pretending while you wait for me to leave.”
The silence stretches. This Loki’s hands are shaking.
“I’m terrified,” he finally whispers. “I’m terrified that if you see all of me- the worst of me- you’ll realize I’m not worth the effort. And if you lie to yourself before others can lie to you, at least you control the narrative of your own disappointment.”
“Loki.” You cup his face in your hands. “I’ve seen the worst of you. I’ve seen you at your most broken and afraid and angry. And I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere. But I can’t stay if you won’t let me in.”
“What if I don’t know how?” His voice is barely audible.
“Then we figure it out together. But you have to try. Actually try.”
This Loki crumbles into you, and you hold him while he shakes apart and reforms himself. When he pulls back, there are tears on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll do better. I want to do better. For you. For… for me.”
“Okay,” you say simply. “Okay.”
And somehow, that’s enough.
Loki stops the playback. He can’t watch anymore.
He sits in the throne for a long time; minutes or decades, it’s hard to say. The timelines glow around him, golden and infinite, each one a story he’s responsible for preserving. The burden of it usually gives him purpose.
Right now it just makes him tired.
“I was afraid,” he tells the empty air. “In the sacred timeline, in my timeline, I was so afraid of being vulnerable that I made myself invulnerable. Untouchable. Alone.”
The timelines hum around him, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. They simply exist.
“That Loki,” he continues, gesturing vaguely at the paused screen, “he chose differently. He took the risk. He let himself be seen, truly seen, and somehow that made all the difference.”
His voice cracks.
“And now I’m here, holding all of time together, and he’s there, being held by you, and I can’t- I can’t even regret it because if I wasn’t here, his timeline wouldn’t exist at all. None of them would.”
It’s the ultimate cruel irony. He has to stay here, alone, to preserve the one universe where he isn’t.
Loki looks down at his hands- hands that hold infinite timelines, that bear the weight of all stories. Hands that, in another life, held yours.
“I hope he knows how lucky he is,” Loki whispers to the variant he’ll never meet. “I hope every version of me in every universe knows. Even the ones you hate.”
Especially the ones you hate.
He takes a breath and releases the timeline, letting it flow back into the great tapestry. He doesn’t delete it. Doesn’t prune it. Lets it exist, precious and hidden beneath Yggdrasil’s leaves.
Some stories, he decides, deserve to have happy endings. Even if they aren’t his own.
Loki, God of Stories, Burden-Bearer, Glorious Purpose, sits on his throne at the End of Time and tends to the timelines. All of them. Including the one where he learned to be loved by being brave enough to be known.
It’s a gift, he tells himself. To know it’s possible. To know that somewhere in the infinite multiverse, some version of him figured it out.
It’s a gift.
(It doesn’t feel like one.)
But Loki has always been good at bearing unbearable things with a smile. So he does. He maintains the timelines, guards the stories, and carries the knowledge of what could have been.