Chapter Text
Being the God of Stories was not what he had planned to be. He was good at it anyway.
Loki leaned back, his head gently bumping against the backrest of the loom. The timelines were swirling around him like angry snakes, stitching themselves together and untangling and ever-branching.
Looking back, Loki couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t yearned for a throne. His mother had warned him of the weight that a crown would carry. He had ignored her like all teenagers did. Power was alluring. Power was desirable. More than that, though, he had craved Odin’s affection. It had been a rare commodity in his childhood. Rarer than metal from Nidavellir.
Odin had been a king so great that even the Mad Titan had feared him enough to wait out his death before attacking the universe.
But he had been a terrible father nonetheless.
Loki closed his eyes. His body was tired, and so was his mind. Yet he was certain that he could protect the multiverse for millennia, if not eternity. He had entered a state of almost non-being. It reminded him of Odin Sleep.
Sometimes he missed Mobius. They would talk to him through the speaker. He still recognized their voices.
On even rarer occasions, he would remember blond hair and how he ran his hand through it in stolen moments at the End of Time. Oh, Sylvie. She had never come back to the TVA. She was with him, though, in one of those universes that he was protecting at the cost of his own being.
Those memories of his previous life grew further apart with each passing day. Weeks. Months. However long he had already been sitting on this throne. Maybe even years. The TVA existed outside of time. He wouldn’t age, and he was certain that he would not die, no matter how long he would be bound to the multiverse. Instead, it was his mind that he felt slipping. On the one hand, he was living millions of lives. He was hearing all their conversations at the same time, and he was experiencing falling in love with strangers and the joy of becoming a parent, and the devastation as he lost loved ones, but those feelings were never his own, instead they belonged to some human or alien or god or –
He was losing himself in their stories.
And that was okay.
He had known …
Yes.
He had known this would happen.
It was like when he had been a child and Frigga had read bedtime stories to him and Thor. It was that moment between sleep and consciousness when all you could do was take in the voice surrounding you like cotton. And that was enough.
***
The story of the world tree? Be glad Thor is already asleep. He would tease you so for choosing this book, Loki. Okay. Here we go. Once before kings wore crowns and before the realms had even names, there grew a tree at the center of all things.
A great tree?
The greatest, Frigga had assured him. Its branches stretched farther than any eye could see. Upon its limbs rested worlds beyond counting. Some bright, some dark. Some peaceful. Some wild.
And all of them grew from the same tree?
Yes. We all come from the same place.
How could a single stem support so many worlds? That’s impossible!
Maybe. But so long as the stem stands tall, the branches can grow wherever they want.
What if the stem falls? Would the worlds fall, too?
Frigga’s smile had been kind as she had stroked his hair, her other hand resting on Thor, who had already fallen asleep. Eventually, they will.
***
Loki’s eyes snapped open. One of the strands had slipped through his hands. With sluggish movements, he caught the wayward timeline before it could shrivel up like a torn sapling and die.
Curious.
He eyed the wispy green strand that finally behaved and let itself be woven back into the fold.
There had been so many disruptions lately. Offshoots were growing from the sacred timeline like weeds, and it seemed to infect the surrounding areas as well. Every change would vibrate in his hands, forcing him to clutch harder and harder. Soon, he would draw blood. His nails were already digging deep into his palm.
That damn Scarlet Witch. And Strange was no better. Those wannabe magic practitioners had been dreamwalking of all things. They were messing with universes that weren’t their own. The TVA of the past would have sentenced them to death already. In his ire, Loki almost regretted the restructuring. All he could do these days was shout at the air and curse their names. It was quite a one-sided argument.
616 had gained another branch. Of course. What fresh annoyance were those two unleashing on him now?
Loki gathered all the consciousness he could muster and forced himself to his feet. These days, it was rare for him to rise. His legs felt almost foreign. Well. His body did. Quite unlike the universe strands, which felt almost like a part of him now.
Expertly, he twisted his arm, securing the sluggish wisps in a half-loop so that he could freely move his hand for a moment. Then he reached through the sea of timelines until his finger touched 616.
The wispy strand yielded, bending to the side, and he followed the movement, tracing its flow until the point where the new branch was rapidly growing off it.
Then Loki went in.