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He knows the truth even before he takes the first step onto the gangway. Perhaps he has known it for some time, and simply found it too unbelievable. Perhaps, like Sylvie, he wanted to do what was easy. And easy, this choice is not.
Time, whether it unravels or holds, cannot touch him. Whether it was caused by his first steps at the end of time, or the time-slipping and the methods used to temporarily end it, or something else, he knows not. But he saw the truth, before he learned how to control the slipping. Saw how everyone and everything unraveled around him, while he remained.
And whether he knew it or not, intended it or not, He Who Remains taught him other things as well. How to fine-tune his time-slipping. How to stop time. How to focus his will to touch and manipulate the threads of time, and timelines.
He Who Remains taught him the power of time, and all the many ways to use it. But others taught him all the reasons why he should do so now. All the whys and all the wisdom, drawn from the words and actions of those he once scorned and now calls comrades. Friends. Respected and perhaps even beloved companions.
Mobius taught him to choose his burden, because not all choices offer a tidy resolution or an end to the weight of responsibility.
Sylvie taught him it was all right to destroy something, if you have a hope of something better.
B-15 and others taught him it was possible for them to be better, despite all possible obstacles.
OB – Ouroboros – taught him that science is how, and fiction is why, and that if one impossible thing is true, all of them can be.
Victor Timely taught him about being brave and what it means to contain infinity – impossible, save for someone for whom the impossible has become almost commonplace.
He has learned all these lessons and taken them to heart, even as he has learned what it means to have friends, to love, to care, to be willing to sacrifice. And he has learned what it is he truly wants. Not a throne, not a position – just to be seen and valued and trusted to the point that he can see and love and value in turn.
Here in this place that he once thought of as a prison and a means to an end, he has found a true purpose, and a cause that he will not surrender, a reason for which he will give everything he has, though attempting to fulfill the destiny he has chosen may rip him from existence.
He closes the hatch on two who care enough to follow him, and turns back to them with soft words of respect, and farewell. "I know what I want. And I know what kind of god I must be, for you."
This too, Mobius taught him, that sometimes it takes the God of Lies and Tricks and Mischief to bring the truth to light. Or to set something free and change the course of fate and time.
He steps into the howling maelstrom of temporal energy, braces himself for dissolution – and it does not come. He was right. Time's fury cannot touch him.
One step, then two, then another until he is striding down the gangway at a steady, deliberate pace. The temporal radiation cannot touch him, he who is beyond time, who has discovered the impossible, but it can touch his TVA issued clothing. The fabric begins to shred away in the powers of the vortex, and he weaves something new to take its place.
Simple black fabric, pants and shirt and tunic and a cloak spun of space-time energies. Shoes to protect his feet, but not boots. Just the simple shoes he might wear if he were back in his rooms in the Asgard that no longer exists.
A horned crown, not of gold, but of the midnight hue of the void, for in this he is Loki, God of Mischief and Lies and Chaos. The Trickster God, who offers choices and changes and, in this one moment...hope. Hope for every life and every timeline ever birthed.
Here and now, he must be himself and nothing else, for nothing else will withstand the decision he has made, and the steps he must take. He cannot be Loki of Asgard, or Loki the abandoned Frost Giant – not Laufeyson or Odinson – or Loki, brother of Thor. He is not the Avenger's enemy or Thanos' tool, or even the agent of the TVA.
As he told five people in an abandoned warehouse in a branch of time, it is not about what, where or why. It is all about who. Who he values, who he cares for, and who he sees himself as, when all the connections, and all the definitions based on others are stripped away, like the clothing shredded from his body in the rage of temporal radiation.
He sees the Loom begin to fail, the catastrophic tidal wave of energies that will rip everyone from where and when they ought to be and fling them through space and time. And he reacts. He brings up his hands, gathers every single scrap of magic he can summon, and releases it all with a scream of defiance, a wordless roar that holds everything he has vowed unto himself.
I will not let them be undone. I will not lose this fight. I will not let them die.
I will find a way to save them all. I will find a better way. I will pave the way for something better to be born – in TVA and in all of time and space.
It is enough. The Loom explodes into nothingness, and the ropes of time scatter around him like a tapestry unraveled. But those he cares for are safe, shielded from the explosion of temporal energy by the strength he wields in their defense.
Of course now...now is the hard part, the part he has had no time to practice, for it can be done only once. Even if it were possible to make the attempt over, he is not sure he would have the strength, for this will take everything he is and everything he has.
He draws on what he has learned of time, and reaches for the first rope in his path. It is solid, crackling with temporal energy, and he responds by sending a pulse of his own power through it, watching the shimmering green light travel through the thread and through the branches of it. He forces it into the position he wants, then steps forward, to the next rope of time and space that does not yet bear the green sparks of his power running through it.
Another rope, then another, winding about his shoulders, his wrists, his hands. The strands of time, weaving about him, a cloak of shadow and space-time, of void and light.
He reaches the end of the gangway, and feels a moment of uncertainty, for if he is wrong, he will step into the void and fall.
No. I know what I am doing. The path is there, as I will it so.
And so it is. He steps out from shattered stone into apparent nothingness, and finds a path of shadows like glass, sturdy as marble, and steps he knows will eventually lead to a throne, to a chair at the End of Time.
The end of time and the center of the weaving, for to exist otherwise would be to invite the threads of existence to unravel.
He takes the first step. Then the second. Then the third, reaching out to gather the threads of time around him as he goes.
It is a heavy burden. The weight of time, of all lives in all timelines, is greater than one would believe. The ropes of time and space are both intangible energy and a tangible force that bears down upon his shoulders. And with every rope he gathers, more of his power is spent to bind it to his control, and to weave it into the repairs he is making.
A cloak of space-time, woven about his frame and trailing from his shoulders like a cloak in a high wind. Ropes of space-time wrapped around his hands and his wrists, like shackles he has chosen – though in truth they are the strands he will use to control the entirety of the weaving.
They are heavy, and they drag at him. The final steps to the End of Time are agonizing, as he fights to pull the weight of creation with him. It hurts, and it wears him down. But he has borne pain and weariness before. And this time, he has a goal, a wish, a desire.
This time, he has a purpose, and he will not surrender it for anything – not even to spare his own aching body or the strain on his magic.
One step, then another, and he groans under the weight of his burden – so heavy, and yet lighter than the heartache of what would be lost if he made any other choice. He cries out under the strain, but refuses to surrender.
Another, and then he stands upon a small island of stone amid the void, and before a seat of gold. A throne, some might call it, but for him it is only a place where he might rest. A sign that this portion of his task is almost done. He smiles wearily at the irony, then walks slowly forward to sit.
He has made it to the center. Now all that has to be done is to bring everything into alignment and weave enough power into the threads to hold them there. So simple, and yet so achingly difficult.
He will do it. Because he is Loki, God of Mischief and Chaos and Trickery, and what better trick than to go from the fated loser to the one that holds the fate of everything in place?
He sits, and breathes. Gathers himself. Then he lifts his hands and focuses his will, and calls upon his power to bind everything together.
He has made his choice. He will not build a device to prune time. He will give people their safeguard, and also their choice, as he promised Sylvie.
This is the answer. An answer only Loki could come to, or enact.
The god of Mischief – but what is mischief save the defiance of expectations? Kang expected him to kill Sylvie or let it all fall to ruin, and thought him too weak to find another way. Let Loki's greatest act of mischief be the proof that Kang was wrong, and there was another choice all along.
He is the God of Lies – but in every lie a grain of truth. And those truths, like the lies and the stories that follow, are his to claim and his to weave with his magic and his fabled silver tongue.
He is the Trickster God – and every trick is the reweaving of perceptions, to hide what is behind the cloak of what is expected. This is no different, save that what is seen can become what is real. Reweaving reality is no strange feat for the master of tricks and illusions and magic, even if this is on a far greater scale than he has ever attempted.
He is a god of Chaos – but within Chaos come the chance for changes and choices, so necessary to truly living. There is some irony that he must impose order to allow chaos, change and choice to do their work, but have not Chaos and Order ever worked together and against each other?
Here and now, he is everything he needs to be. But unlike Kang, who made the decisions for his own reasons, and to claim the power of them – for that is what it was in the end, no matter how it started – he has something else. An identity that he will hold to, no matter how the power of space and time call out for him to surrender.
He is Loki, who loves Sylvie. And in doing so, has learned to love himself.
He is Loki, friends with Mobius and Ouroboros and Chester and B-15. And even with Victor Timely, for all that the man is a variant of Kang.
And at long last, he is at peace enough to know and admit that he is Loki, who loves Thor with a brother's love, and loved Odin as well as a son from another realm might. Who loves Frigga deeply and mourned what his folly brought about, in a different place and time.
He is Loki, who respected his brother's companions, and resented their existence less than the fact that he could not be one of them. The Warriors Three never counted him in their number, and the Avengers saw him as an enemy. But now he resents them not at all, for they set his feet upon this path, and toward a destiny that his former self could never have imagined.
Thor and his friends will never know that it is Loki who now safeguards them. Nor will Odin and the rest of Asgard. But that is all right. Here at the center of time, in the center of the choice he has made and the burden he has claimed as his own, he is at peace.
And he knows he is seen. Beyond his sight, but not his awareness, he knows Sylvie and Mobius and the others watched him walk into the storm. Those five know what he has done, what he has chosen. They are his friends, and he knows, even if he cannot see it, that they understand.
He is seen. He is known. And he is cared for. If he doubted it, he no longer does, for he remembers two sets of feet racing down the steps. Two sets of hands hammering at the blast doors behind him. Two voices pleading with him, not to choose what they thought was self-destruction and now must know was self-isolation.
He hears the whispers of voices among the strands of time, and knows Mobius and Sylvie are safe. They have a chance at life.
The whole universe has a chance. Even the branches. That he will make sure of, even if he must remain sequestered for all eternity. Even if he must fight an army of Kang's variants. Even if he must unravel himself to hold time and space together.
That is his choice. For he is Loki, God of Lies, and Mischief, and Chaos, and this is the truth he has chosen.