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Loki sat.
He couldn’t feel the shapeless robes that had formed on his body like moss growing on a rock, nor could he feel the unyielding gold-shot granite of the crude throne now beneath him. He couldn’t feel that same granite pressed against his forehead in a cruel mockery of his beloved helm, nor the gentle give of the leather wrapped around his feet. He couldn’t even feel the raw power of each timeline that he held in either hand, infused with his own seiðr. If he could feel anything, he thought it would be that; his own magick, his own blood and soul and life force sustaining a truly countless number of timelines, a vastly infinite number of other lives.
No, Loki felt only two things as he sat there, continuously managing the flow of his seiðr into the timelines: there was the ever-present stiff ache in his shoulders as he held both arms and hands out to steady said timelines endlessly. With each twitch of movement came icy-hot needles that shot down his spine, nerves and muscles and tendons screaming out in indignation. Loki was a god, yes, and immortal (to a point), but even his body had limits.
That pain was nothing, though, when compared to the shattered remains of his heart.
Mobius. Mobius, Mobius, Mobius.
Every time Loki closed his eyes, Mobius’s face stared back at him in horror through the small porthole in the thick metal door that had separated them so long ago—no, that wasn’t quite right. Or maybe it was? Such a thing was hard to tell at the End of Time. The air was still, with no beginning nor end to shift it, yet time still moved between Loki’s fingertips, stretching forwards and backwards as it expanded forevermore. And while it moved and wavered and grew, Loki stagnated, trying his hardest not to move to spare him his bodily pains. But he would take those burnt nerve endings and screaming muscles a hundred times over if it meant that it could numb the broken yearning that never seemed to cease in his chest.
The one person who saw Loki—truly saw him and all that he was capable of, rather than the illusion that everyone else was perfectly satisfied with; the perfect villain, the ideal trickster. Mobius had seen through all that from the beginning, and yet wasn’t content to simply leave the façade as it stood. No, he’d chosen to tear it away, bit by bit. It didn’t matter that Mobius had no powers nor special abilities. He was nothing more than an innocuous variant ripped from his own boring timeline.
And yet—and yet. Maybe that was all it took.
For he had ruined Loki’s faux persona with little more than the words from his own tongue and his glacial blue eyes, piercing through the cracks that Loki himself hadn’t known were there. Even then, Mobius hadn’t forced his way through like Loki was terrified of; no, Mobius had coaxed Loki out like a wounded (yet incorrigible) animal, encouraging him to shed the skin he’d so carefully woven for himself. Mobius’s hands had gently moulded Loki into something he barely recognised: himself.
Leaving him, leaving Mobius, for something far greater than the two of them was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Loki had always put on a selfish front, desperate to secure his own legacy, and if there was anything true in that façade that Mobius had so helpfully ruined, it was that. Loki desperately wanted to covet Mobius, to hold him close and be held in return. If he could have nothing else in this timeline (or lack of one), he would still be content to simply have Mobius beside him.
The truth is that he would lose Mobius no matter what he did.
If he didn’t journey out into the End of Time, there would be no Mobius to hold dearly to himself.
If he did… well, Mobius was alive somewhere in some timeline, but Loki was still alone.
The truth brought him no comfort. It was simply a reality, and an unfairly awful one at that. Of course his legacy, his glorious purpose, would come at such a cost: his heart. What a cruel joke: for his heart to finally emerge out of its centuries-worn shell only to be swallowed whole by something unspeakable, lying in wait. All that was left was a shallow cavity picked clean, as if nothing of worth had ever lived there in the first place.
As the thoughts swirled through his head, Loki felt, for the first time, his resolve shudder. His body began to prickle unpleasantly as the numbness left him and feeling started trickling in; the coarseness of the robes, the sharp edge of the granite throne, the heaviness of the new helm that felt more like a manacle. Perhaps most of all, the crackle of his own seiðr and the unlimited potential of each timeline his flesh touched burned, angrily licking at his skin with razorblade tongues. There was no reprieve, only raw sensation, and it stung and corroded like a brand.
He didn’t feel like a god. He was little more than a prisoner.
Despite no one to see it, a lone tear managed to push itself down Loki’s cheek, lazily rolling down the weathered plane until it landed with a soundless drop against the granite base of the throne he already resented.
“Why must loneliness be the price of purpose?” Loki whispered into Time herself, his voice hoarse and lips chapped from disuse. Another tear escaped him, and another, each one sinking into the granite beneath him in rapid succession. “Why would anyone want this? Norns, why?”
The words were spoken into naught but Time, for nobody but Loki himself. He was not expecting an answer. And yet…
“’Why?’ Thee who finally fills the Urðarbrunnr asks, ‘why?’”
A wizened, feminine voice filled the infinite silence, almost inaudible at first but growing louder with each syllable. Loki flinched in surprise, biting his tongue to muffle the resulting wince as the pain of such a sudden movement ricocheted through the vertices of his body. It wasn’t just the voice that had caused his violent reaction, but the words that had been uttered. Urðarbrunnr—the Wellspring of Urðr. Which meant…
Ha. What a cruel twist of fate, quite literally.
Reaching for the remnants of the façade he’d long relied on, Loki felt his lips twist into an approximation of a smirk, but was likely little more than a shaky smile. “After all this Time, quite literally, is that Urðr that finally graces me with her presence?”
A sharp cackle sounded in reply. “Yet, they still have cheek!” The words were wheezed out between bouts of strangled laughter. “What twofold insolence.”
Out of the depths of Time, weaving between glowing green timelines, not one figure but three began to take shape. They weren’t flesh and blood, nor were they illusions or projections; rather, they were formed from the very threads of the timelines themselves, the same ones they had once spun together. They drew closer, becoming larger and closer as more threads were drawn to them, until three women stood at the foot of Loki’s throne. And yet, Loki did not look down upon them; he looked up. The three women towered above him, imposing and terrifying and downright beautiful. Loki felt highly inadequate before them, but with great effort, he pushed himself up off his throne, deliberately ignoring the way his legs trembled and his knees threatened to give way.
“Forgive me, my Ladies,” Loki bowed his head just so, before making eye contact with each one. “Urðr,” he greeted, locking eyes with the elderly figure he knew like she was his own flesh and blood, though he’d only ever heard of her. But that didn’t matter. Her name was scored into Loki’s very bones, her signature borne into every thread of his being: she was Fate herself, weaver of all things already come to pass, the past embodied in elegant, wizened form. She inclined her head just so, the timelines making up her hair gently falling out of her bun as she did. Though Urðr was as old as Time herself, she was no less breathtaking for it. She held herself straight, unhindered by any mortal casing, and her eyes were as sharp as they were kind.
The figure to her left drew Loki’s attention next, and he greeted her next. “Skuld,” Loki nodded, and the young woman grinned brightly in response, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. She looked a delicate thing, barely past the cusp of adulthood, but Loki knew best that appearances could be deceiving. Beneath that smile and behind those eyes was an endless void that he felt the irresistible pull of; the pull of duty, of obligation, of infinite opportunity—and of the debt that demanded be fulfilled in return. Skuld was the future personified, the exemplification of all things that should come to pass at some point or another. She was potential and promise intertwined in one being, not unlike the timelines that fell under Loki’s care. And while her figure looked painfully young, there was something ancient and haunted in those eyes that even Loki shied away from, too awful for words.
Instead, his eyes darted to the final figure to the right of Urðr. “And Verðandi.” The name rolled off Loki’s lips as he bowed his head once more, and she nodded back. Her form was motherly and rounded, not entirely unlike that of Frigga, and Loki’s heart clenched painfully once more. It couldn’t have been a coincidence; not given the warmth in her eyes that flared momentarily as she raised her head to look at him once more. Verðandi was the present incarnate; a manifestation of the happening, the here, the now, the passage and passing of all things at every point in time. As such, she was made up of multiplicities; old and young, knowing and yet-to-know, empathetic and indifferent. She was every possibility at once, and yet none of them at the same time—not potential, like Skuld, but a collection of possible selves simultaneously encased in one maternal form. It would’ve made Loki’s head spin if he himself had not known just how fluid the changeable the self (himself, herself, themself) could be.
With difficulty, he tore his eyes away from Verðandi’s gaze to take in the three of them at once. “My Norns. To what do I owe the pleasure of finally meeting you all in the flesh?”
Urðr snorted, the sound entirely too mortal to be coming from Fate herself. “‘In the flesh,’ they say,” she shook her head.
“Maybe yours, but not ours,” Verðandi said to Loki kindly, but with a thread of fond humour in her voice.
“We weave the flesh, how could we be born of it?” Skuld giggled, the light and airy sound sending a shudder up Loki’s spine.
Loki felt a tick in his jaw. The Norns, the weavers of the threads of Fate, had always been described as tricky beings to deal with—prone to talking in circles, twisting words, and hiding intentions (specifically their own). But while Loki himself was no stranger to such tactics as a former god of chaos, mischief, and general trickery, his tiredness was bone deep; his patience, utterly worn to shreds. The weight of upholding every timeline at once was quickly catching up to him, and he found himself flagging under their bulk.
“Please, my Ladies,” Loki said, unable to hide his grimace. “The question still stands. Forgive my bluntness, but why are you here? And why now?”
Skuld raised a timeline-woven eyebrow. “That’s three questions, in actuality,” she smirked.
Loki’s exasperation must’ve shown on his face, for Urðr snapped, “Be patient, thee who bears the weight of Yggdrasil.”
But it was Verðandi who took pity on him: “All shall be answered here in Time,” she reassured him, her eyes gently sparkling. “Do not mind my sisters. It is not often we get to converse with anyone besides ourselves.”
Loki’s shoulders dropped. “Okay, okay. One question at a time, I get it,” he murmured, more for his benefit than theirs. “Why are you here?”
“I answered thou already, if thine ears worked,” Urðr tilted her head in what seemed to be equal parts annoyance and fondness. “Thou hast reborn Yggdrasil through thine own seiðr infusing the timelines, thus causing the great tree to bloom into life once more.”
“Your tears finally filled the Urðarbrunnr at Yggdrasil’s feet, travelling past your own two feet and through the trunk itself,” Skuld continued, seriously this time, though she looked at his leather-bound slippers with some amount of judgement.
“And so, why are we here, you ask?” Verðandi smiled. “The filling of the Urðarbrunnr signals that we, the Norns, are needed once more. We wove the timelines once, and now we are free to again.”
Loki glanced between the three figures, his brow furrowed in confusion. “’Once more?’ ‘Again?’ But you’ve always been minding the timelines, haven’t you? How come—” he began to ask, but cut himself off as quickly as he started.
“Thou hast already guessed correctly,” Urðr scowled, but the expression wasn’t directed at Loki, but off past his shoulder. Loki turned to look, but of course, no one was there.
“The End of Time has always, and will always be, our domain,” Verðandi said. “Though he tried to banish us permanently, you, our child, are proof that such a foolish plan could never stand the test of Time.”
“But how— how is that even possible? How did Timely even manage it? How does a human subdue not only time, not only fate, but the Fates, the Norns?” Loki asked incredulously, shaking his head. He already held a deep hatred for the dead man who had once called himself He Who Remains for the way he had manipulated not only the timelines, but the TVA and Loki himself. The thought of Timely causing harm—or simply even inconvenience—to such revered beings like the Norns was enough to ignite that hatred tenfold. If Timely wasn’t already dead and gone (several thousand times over by Sylvie’s dagger and the destruction of the Temporal Loom), Loki would have killed him himself without a second thought.
“The same way he killed all other variants of himself. The same way he pruned every other possible timeline beyond the one he deemed Sacred. The same way he made certain he was the only one left to remain,” Skuld answered, the void in her throat leaking through her lips and nose and eyes with every word, each more terrible than the last. She seemed to grow larger, and yet she dimmed, only the shine of her teeth and her eyes continuing to glint brightly—like she was a black hole, consuming all light and life. Loki’s eyes widened as he even felt himself pulled towards her, but then Urðr placed a weathered hand on Skuld’s elbow, and in the next moment, Skuld was simply Skuld again. Loki stumbled back as the pull dissipated, the back of his legs knocking against the granite throne.
“We were swallowed by Alioth. We were blindsided,” Verðandi summarised, speaking into existence the answer Loki had already gleaned from Skuld’s words.
“So, okay, let me get this straight,” Loki started, his hand darting out the balance himself of the hard edge of the throne. “Timely—He Who Remains—had you wiped out of existence by Alioth. Why didn’t you appear back into existence the moment the Temporal Loom broke and the rest of the timelines were released? Why wait until now?”
“We created the timelines; we wove them with little more than our bare hands. We do not belong to the timelines; unlike you, we do not have variants. Throughout time, all Time—what you might call the multiverse—we are all there are. Skuld said it already,” Verðandi explained patiently, looking to Skuld.
Now back to her original stature, Skuld blinked. “We weave the flesh, how could we be born of it?” She repeated, though this time without giggling. Somehow, it was even more eerie the second time.
“We exist to care for Yggdrasil, to nourish it using the Urðarbrunnr. We could not do that until the Well was no longer empty. And thou hast replenished it at last,” Urðr said, still cradling Skuld’s elbow in her hand. “Thus, we exist once more. ‘twas always meant to be this way. ‘twas why we did not fight harder against the cage of Alioth’s teeth.”
Loki’s head swam. If he wasn’t already sitting, he would’ve stumbled once more. “You keep talking about Yggdrasil, the World’s Tree” he said weakly. “But Yggdrasil existed in my own timeline—it has to exist in every timeline that Asgard exists in, then, connecting the Nine Realms to one another. So what is this ‘reborn’ Yggdrasil you’re talking about?”
“The Yggdrasil in each timeline, including thine, is made of little more than pure matter—space dust and magick,” Urðr explained.
“Those Yggdrasil are more figurative than literal,” Verðandi summarised. “Like you said, they exist for the purpose of connecting the Nine Realms in those timelines that Asgard lives and breathes.”
“The true Yggdrasil connects more than just the Nine Realms; it connects every timeline together. It exists outside of time, and was ought to exist for all time,” Skuld continued, that haunted look back in her eyes. “But He Who Remains saw to its destruction. There was death,” she said, and a tear rolled down her face in a strange parody of the way that Loki had been crying previously. “So much death.”
“But thou saw to Yggdrasil’s rebirth, even if thou did it unintentionally,” Urðr said, shooting Loki a sly look as Verðandi caught Skuld’s errant tear with a single fingertip.
“And the Urðarbrunnr? The Well?” Loki asked, holding his head in his hands. The weight of the horned granite helm felt too immense in that moment.
“It exists wherever Yggdrasil dwells. And now, between your tears,” Verðandi paused, nodding at the granite at Loki’s feet, “and ours,” she held up her fingertip, and Skuld’s own tear caught and reflected the green light of the timelines, “it is finally replenished. With He Who Remains truly dead, the End of Time is under our jurisdiction once more.”
Loki’s eyes fell shut, and he ran his fingers through his hair in distress. He opened his eyes and looked directly to Urðr. “You said it was meant to be this way—that Yggdrasil and you three were meant to be destroyed to be reborn. Was it—” Loki paused. The words seemed too enormous, too preposterous to even consider, and he stumbled around the weight of them in his throat. “Was it always meant to be me?” He asked, impossibly quiet.
There was a pause after the words left his mouth, pregnant with implication, and Loki wished he’d never asked the question in the first place. Urðr seemed content to let him suffer in silence for she continued to make steady eye contact with him, her gaze never wavering. But slowly, painfully, a smile began to unfurl across her lips.
“He Who Remains could not see beyond the End of Time, for he could never exist beyond it—not like us, not like thee,” Urðr said conspiratorially. “If he could, he would’ve fed thee to Alioth until thee ceased to exist.”
“What Timely didn’t take into consideration was Skuld,” Verðandi said, laying a hand on the youngest Norn’s shoulder. “Skuld is debt personified. Urðr prescribes a destiny, I guide you towards it, and Skuld comes to collect at the end.”
Skuld, who had been looking off somewhere over Loki’s shoulder, looked back to him. Her eyes seemed a little less haunted, a little more in control. “When we helped grow Yggdrasil the first time, we foresaw what He Who Remains would do. We saw the sole timeline he deemed Sacred, and we saw the branching timelines that could be created as a result of it. But the only branching timelines we knew would certainly be created was those that resulted from the removing of the Infinity Stones,” she said.
“Thus, Loki, I imbued thee with the most Glorious Purpose of all—not to be a god of trickery, nor a god of stories, nor a king on a lonely throne,” Urðr said, her voice gentle now, a genuine smile on her lips. “But to bring the great Yggdrasil back to life. No more, no less.”
“And thus, you have,” Verðandi said, gesturing with her other hand to the timelines that surrounded the four of them, before gesturing to herself and the other two Norns and their bodies, also made up of the timelines.
Skuld stepped forward, and both Verðandi and Urðr’s respective hands fell from her. She drew closer and yet shrunk in size, so she was a regular Midgardian height, standing right in front of Loki. “And here I am to collect,” she whispered.
There were tears in Loki’s eyes—not of defeat, or of sadness, but of pure relief. Skuld’s hands reached forward to him, and though she was made up of nothing but timelines, her hands were warm as they cradled his face. Tears began rolling down his cheeks, but as they hit Skuld’s hands, they disappeared. “It’s over?” he asked incredulously, his voice shaking horribly. “It’s done?”
“It is,” Skuld said, and though her eyes were still voids, they didn’t look so terrifying anymore.
Loki felt a presence shifting behind him. Before he could react, Urðr lifted the helm from his head, and Loki practically melted into the granite cradling him. A weight he had carried for so long finally dissipated, no longer anchoring him to the throne, and he sobbed in relief. But then Verðandi was there, prying the timelines out of each of his hands, and his head snapped to the side to stare at her in terror.
“I can’t let go,” he said, his voice thick with tears. “My seiðr— the timelines—”
But Verðandi shushed him gently, and Skuld firmly turned Loki’s head back to face her. “Your debt has been paid. Your Glorious Purpose has been achieved. Your fate has been fulfilled,” she whispered in a thousand tongues. “You can let go.”
Loki was tired. He was so, so tired.
With a gut-wrenching cry, he finally let go of the timelines, his hands finally releasing his death grip on them. His bones cracked horribly as he did so, and he just about screamed at the sensation when Urðr and Verðandi each wrapped one of his liberated hands in their own grasps, and all the pain went blissfully numb.
“Thou can rest, dear Loki,” Urðr urged, squeezing his hand between her own gnarled ones. “Thou have done enough.” Loki’s eyes slipped closed.
And oh, how badly Loki wanted to rest—to close his eyes and never wake up. Centuries of time loops trying to save the TVA and his friends, followed by a truly endless amount of time keeping the timelines alive left him little more than a husk of a person. He felt hollowed out, only a shell of a person—and he was so, so fucking tired.
But he knew he couldn’t rest. Not yet.
There was someone waiting for him; someone who was still just letting time pass until they could see each other again.
“No,” he said, wrenching his eyes open with so much effort, as if it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. “I can’t.”
Verðandi smoothed a hand over his forehead. “You don’t want to rest?” she asked, almost a little perturbed. “You wish to stay? You don’t want to relinquish the throne?”
“I never wanted a throne,” Loki admitted miserably, his voice wracked with breathless tears. “I only ever wanted to be loved. Is that such a crime?”
And then Skuld smiled. A hint of something blue flashed in those eyes, and her smile grew wider. She looked to Urðr, and then to Verðandi. A silent conversation passed over Loki’s head, and then the three of them stepped back. Loki shivered at the lack of contact after so long without it.
“He’s still waiting for you,” Skuld said knowingly. “He never stopped.”
“I know,” Loki said wistfully. “I know.”
“Is this really your choice, Loki?” Verðandi asked one final time, her head tilted to the side.
Loki sighed, bone-weary. “It is,” he confirmed. “It’s always been him, for all time. Always.”
“Then that—he—is thy new purpose,” Urðr commanded, her words settling into Loki’s skin like an oath. She paused, and smiled once more. “For who are we to meddle in affairs of the heart?”
With that, Urðr stepped forward once more while the other Norns stayed back. She raised her crooked thumbs over Loki’s brow, and he let her urge his eyelids down ever so gently, her touch barely brushing the delicate skin. The last thing he saw reflected in the own green of his seiðr was the barest glint of a tear in Urðr’s own ageless eyes.
“Go to him, my child.”
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then, there was everything.
Sensation erupted everywhere: the almost-sharp feeling of grass beneath his bare feet; a cool breeze brushing his hair across the nape of his neck; the gentle warmth of the sun against his skin; gulls squawking over yonder; leaves upon branches upon trees rustling in the wind; the distant sound of quiet, mindless chatter.
And as Loki opened his eyes, he caught sight of a lone figure on a grassy knoll, overlooking a decidedly Midgardian neighbourhood. His hair was silvery grey, and the line of his shoulders drooped endearingly. His head turned to the side just so, and Loki caught sight of the profile of his nose, his chin, his brow.
He’d never seen someone so beautiful.
Loki allowed himself one more moment to look, and nothing more.
Loki had waited long enough, and so had he.
“Mobius!”