Chapter Text
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Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
— Cassilda's Song in The King in Yellow, Act i, Scene 2.
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Loki Laufeyson lived between breaths.
In. Out.
In the moment between the inception of the thought and the thought itself, he existed.
Between action and reaction, he inhaled.
Between death and rebirth, he exhaled.
Between the story and the telling, he is, was, and always would be.
But outside of time, on the other side of eternity, in his own realm at the end and beginning of everything, Loki Laufeyson, God of Stories, sat alone, motionless on an ice-cold Throne of quantum ore and gold, holding and being upheld by endless strands of space-time. The king of everything and nothing. Universes grew in his grasp, stretching out long beyond where even his eyes could follow, wrapping around him in a lover's embrace until they died and gave birth to new arms. New prisons. New reasons to breathe.
He could see them there--his beating heart and soul: Mobius and Sylvie. They were born. They lived. They died. They were born again. Sometimes they thought of him. Sometimes they sent up whispered prayers to him, asking for answers from a God who could never reply to them in a way they understood. They tried to visit him occasionally, always after inevitably losing him across endless timelines. But he had long ago sealed that door and only he could open it now. And he did open it, again and again.
It was both a balm and a bane to see so many Lokis faced with the same choices and make every possible decision. In a multiverse of free will, there were infinite and inevitable possibilities and infinite and inevitable Lokis and Mobiuses and Lokis who were Sylvies. He watched it in endless loops--a pattern he was so familiar with now that it seemed to be the only way things had ever been for him. Invariably some Loki somewhere in a universe with a TVA and a He Who Remains (or the equivalent thereof) would deviate from the Sacred timeline, become Sylvie (or the equivalent thereof), fight the TVA, meet another Loki, love and hate and hurt and protect one another to varying degrees, and of those possibilities, a slim percentage of times (thousands of times because eternity is endless), the Loom was destroyed, free will reigned, and a God of Stories was born.
They would approach the newly gilded Throne, time ever bound in his/her/their fists, sit, and KNOW. And in the knowing, they BECAME.
There were trillions of Lokis, but only ever one God of Stories. And L1130 had been the first. The Alpha and Omega of their ilk. The One Who Remains. And so those newborn Gods took their thrones and they became One, merging into the First and the Last and the One Who Remains until they became as they were always meant to be--bringing new knowledge and experience and lives into the endless, ageless thing that once been the outcast child of Laufey (and Farbauti) and Odin (and Frigga). But core to that experience, there was ever a Mobius, ever a Sylvie, and ever a Thor.
Thor. The Golden God of Thunder, more often noble than wise, was always an axis around which Loki's of every fate and origin would spin. They circled each other like twin stars in a death spiral--sometimes siblings, sometimes lovers, sometimes enemies, sometimes allies, sometimes all of those things at once--and Loki watched them all (lived them all) again and again and again.
If Sylvie and Mobius were his heart and soul (and they were, they were, they were, they were), then Thor was his very breath. In. Out.
"You're incapable of sincerity."
In. Out.
"I thought the world of you, Loki."
In. Out.
"Do you think that what makes a Loki a Loki is that we're always destined to fail?"
In. Out.
"I need a Loki Who Remains."
In. Out.
"For you. For all of us."
"No!" "Loki!"
In.
Out.
"I just want you to be okay."
In.
Out.
"I want the TVA back."
In.
Out.
This was all as it should be. As it must be.
The TVA continued as it would--his subjects, his worshippers, his gaolers. They guarded the flow of the multiverse from the ever-present threat of war. They guarded him and his eternal grip on the timelines. And when a Loki ascended and joined the One Who Remains, what was outside of time in those multiverses aligned, each variant TVA shifting into the only true TVA. Each new worker joining the fold replaced those who returned to the timelines, growing the legend of the God of Stories. Growing his truth. Growing his power. Tightening his chains. Because, even as the TVA protected him and he protected them, they also kept him bound.
Loki could never leave his Throne.
In.
Out.
Loki could never release the timelines.
In.
Out.
Or all would fall to ruin and their sacrifices would mean nothing.
In.
Out.
"I want my friends back."
In.
Out.
This was all as it should be. As it must be.
In.
Out.
Sometimes a Hunter made it through. Past the failed Lokis in the Void. Past Alioth. Past the end of time to the emptiness before the seat of the Throne--the impenetrable warp and weft of swirling timelines at the heart of the Tree. Sometime they remained in endless observation, guarding the God, but never able approach. They watched and waited for any threat or intruder, gently turning away those Mobiuses and Sylvies who came, faithful and terrifying in their devotion.
Miss Minutes was clever in her way. She knew the TVA. She knew He Who Remains. And she knew the One Who Remains. She knew how to slip though the gaps between time and space. The keyhole of the lock. The gap beneath the door. Nothing is as attractive as power and--to her at least--even fewer things are more attractive than power bound. She alone approached the Throne. Not to sit, but to listen. Not to usurp, but to test the links every now again. To lovingly tend to the branches he had so carefully grown.
In.
Out.
"I don't want to be alone."
In.
Out.
Because for all his power, Loki wasn't actually omniscient. He followed the lives of those he cared about on the timelines (Arrested again, Casey? The dark hair looks better, Sif.), but he didn't micromanage all of eternity. An incursion may catch his eye: a ripple through timelines, two branches winding together. It only took a telekinetic nudge to shift them apart. Or little action at all to let them twine together and wither, if that was what the denizens of those timelines chose.
Free will.
It can be a bitch.
The whole of his regard, however, was for the Tree, not a single branch. And every good arborist knew when to let a tree grow, or when to prune or graft it.
As ever, Miss Minutes was integral to that. The TVA did not exist in typical time, but it didn't exist in the same space as Loki either. They were rather adjacent to one another. Neighbors. The God could stretch his mind to the workers there using a combination of seidr and his own low-level psychic abilities (a gentle tap on B-15's proverbial shoulder, a soft whisper of equations across O.B.'s consciousness), but direct intercession was . . . consuming. And distracting the God who literally held all of Time in his hands was exceedingly dangerous. So Miss Minutes bridged the distance.
"You can't give people free will and then just walk away."
In.
Out.
The company, however fleeting, was . . . nice. She carried direct word from the TVA Council to him and he in return could send direct word back to them. The latter occurrence was exceedingly rare though. Loki's own senses of relative time and urgency were not quite understandable to mortals anymore. It was the coming war that guided those rare moments of direct interventions from him. A Kang variant rising too fast too far on a timeline. Too many incursions in one location--whole roots of the tree endangered. He Who Remains rising from within a multiverse to attack like a blight, trying to force his hard-won wood to wold. It would not be sanctioned. The multiverse would be protected and free will preserved. The A.I. gleefully and faithfully discharged this duty as vengeance against the man who broke her heart. And also because--if she did anything less--Loki would rip her from every thread of existence with extreme prejudice.
He was still Loki, after all.
"Either way, we're playing God!"
"We are gods."
This was all as it should be. As it must be.
In.
Out.
Let the universes grow. Let them thrive. Let them be okay.
In.
Out.
Let them be okay.
In.
Out.
"I know what kind of god I need to be."
In.
Out.
No matter the cost.
In.
Out.
"I want my friends back."
In.
Out.
"I don't want to be alone."
In.
Out.
For all time. Always.
In.
Out.
"I don't want to be alone."
In.
Out.
Loki Laufeyson lived between breaths.
In. Out.
In the moment between the triumph and the failure, he existed.
Between order and chaos, he inhaled.
Between reality and illusion (delusion), he exhaled.
Between the lie and the truth, he is, was, and always would be.
But outside of time, on the other side of eternity, in his own realm at the end and beginning of everything, Loki Laufeyson, God of Stories, sat alone, frozen (chosen) and free (bound), motionless on a self-made Throne of hope and sacrifice, holding and being upheld by endless strands of space-time. The king of everything and nothing. Universes grew in his grasp, stretching out long beyond where even his eyes could follow, wrapping around him in a lover's embrace until they died and gave birth to new arms. New prisons. New reasons to breathe.
In.
Out.
"I don't want to be alone."
In.
Out.
And thus he remained.
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