this takes place after Loki season one ends. it's from post-Infinity War Loki's perspective, so Loki 2.0 refers to 2012 post-Loki Loki

Loki lies down on the couch, his head on his mother's lap. It's not very comfortable, but he likes being close to her. He looks up at her, and she smiles. He smiles back.

Not too far away, Thor is talking to their father on the throne. About what, he's not sure, but just hearing their faint voices makes him feel better. There was a time he would have been annoyed to see Odin taking such an interest in Thor at all times, but now, it's nice. It's normal.

"You miss them, too."

Loki sits up, and the illusion falls apart. His family disappears, the throne room flickers out, and all that's left is rock. Lots and lots of rock.

He looks over his shoulder to see who it was talking to him. Just hearing another voice on this long-abandoned planet was enough to put him on edge, so seeing that the new visitor is just himself makes him really wary.

Loki slowly climbs to his feet, never taking his eyes off of this new Loki. The second Loki just stands there, a small smile on his lips.

"Who are you?" Loki asks cautiously.

"You," Loki 2.0 says simply.

"Well, yes, I see that..."

Loki eyes him up and down. He seems very well-put-together, with his slightly-wrinkled dress shirt and near-perfect hair. It almost makes the real Loki (and he's fairly certain there's only one) a little self-conscious. He hasn't looked in a mirror in a long time, but he's sure he looks like a mess. Living on a rock thousands of miles from any living being for however-long-it's-been tends to do that to a guy.

"Who sent you?" Loki asks.

"No one; you and I both know that we don't work for anyone," Loki 2.0 says with a playful smirk.

Yeah, right. "Thanos?" Loki guesses. "Did he finally realize I'm not that easy to kill? Decided to finish the job?"

Loki 2.0 shakes his head. "Thanos is gone. You don't have to worry about him."

"Sounds like something Thanos would say," Loki remarks.

"If Thanos knew where you were, he would have killed you himself," Loki 2.0 says darkly. "He died with no idea that you hadn't."

"Really," Loki says, and he doesn't believe it for a second.

"Really," Loki 2 says. "Thor made sure of it when he cut off that overgrown grapefruit's head."

Loki doesn't believe that. Not for a second. But it still brings a small smile to his face. If anyone was going to kill Thanos while Loki was hiding out on a deserted planet, he's glad it was Thor. "If you're not some sick game from Thanos, what are you?"

"We have too long a list of enemies for you to stop guessing after Thanos," Loki 2.0 remarks, seeming way too amused by that. "But no one sent me. I'm just here to take you home."

"This is my home," Loki says.

"This is a prison of your own choosing," Loki 2.0 says. "Your home is —"

"If you say 'Asgard,' I will throw a rock at you," Loki deadpans. Asgard is gone. He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to think about it.

"Your home is with Thor," Loki 2.0 says.

Loki lolls his head back, exasperated. "Is that what this is? A hallucination? My conscience telling me what I already know?" He sighs and mutters, "This is going to be a long few thousand years."

Loki 2.0 chuckles. "No, I'm not a hallucination. I'm you from another timeline."

Loki just raises an eyebrow.

"It's a long story," Loki 2.0 says. "I just took down an authoritarian time regime, so that's how my day is going."

"Right..." Loki pinches the bridge of his nose. "Alright, sure. Fine. I'm just gonna..." He throws his hands up in exasperation. "I'm just going to go with it. Anything to keep me occupied."

"Yeah, you know..." Loki 2.0 glances around. "I don't know how you survived three years here."

Loki gapes at him. "It's only been three years?" It feels like a lifetime — like a lot of lifetimes.

It looks like Loki 2.0 is trying not to laugh at that, and Loki narrows his eyes. Rude.

"It's been a long three years for everyone," Loki 2.0 tells him. "Half the planet disappeared. Right now, Thor is on Midgard feuding with a 10-year-old he met online through a video game."

Loki chuckles. "I think I'm going to like hallucinating. I didn't know my subconscious was this entertaining." That was far too stupid of a remark to be made by one of his many, many enemies, so it has to be his imagination.

"You're not hallucinating," Loki 2.0 repeats, which is exactly what a hallucination would say. "Look, do you want to see Thor again or not? Because I can leave you here to rot if you want, but I think you both could really use the company."

Loki furrows his brows. "What are you talking about?"

"I can take you to Thor," Loki 2.0 says. "Or I can leave you here and let the timeline continue like it's supposed to. Believe it or not, the worst years of your life and the worst years of Thor's have yet to come."

Loki hesitates. He doesn't like the sound of that, but honestly, he doesn't like the sound of any of this. He doesn't trust this new Loki. He doesn't trust that Thanos is dead. He doesn't trust that Thor is absolutely miserable right now (though he could believe that his brother is feuding with a 10-year-old. He always did have the weirdest Midgard experiences). He doesn't trust anything. This is either a hallucination of a trick, and he doesn't like either option.

But if it is true, Loki can't just leave his brother to suffer through the supposed worst years of his life alone, so finally, he just asks, "How?"

Loki 2.0 seems to figure out what he means pretty easily, because he pulls what looks like a very old school remote-looking thing (a sideways smartphone? It would have to be a very old smartphone, though) and holds it up. "With this." He pauses for dramatic effect (giving a little credence to the fact that he might really be Loki). "It's a TemPad. It can bring you any place, any time."

"Any time?" Loki repeats. "Could I go back to the day after Thor killed Thanos, then?" Once Thanos is dead -- assuming he is dead -- what does he have to worry about? The Titan can't try to kill him and endanger everyone he loves if he's dead. And if Thor's as miserable as it sounds, shouldn't he go see him sooner?

"Technically, yes," Loki 2.0 says. "But also no. Apparently the natural order of things is important and doing that would..." He pauses, looking a little confused. "Honestly, I don't know. I wasn't really listening. But apparently there's a very good reason I'm here now instead of three years ago."

"Listening to whom?" Loki asks cautiously. "I thought you were at this alone."

"Of course not," Loki 2.0 says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm not working for anyone, but I had to get the TemPad from someone."

Loki just looks at him.

"He's just a friend," Loki says 2.0. "Don't worry about it."

"If you were really me," Loki says slowly, "you would know that we don't have friends."

"You might not have friends," Loki 2.0 says, "but I do. You go through enough life-or-death situations with a guy, you really start to get along."

Loki has been through a lot of life-or-death situations (often of his own doing but occasionally he gets stuck in someone else's mess), and he has never once made a friend from them, so he's not sure how he feels about that.

"I'd introduce you," Loki 2.0 adds, "but he gets along with us really well and I'm afraid you'd decide you'd rather stay with him than go back to Midgard."

"Uh huh," Loki hums skeptically. That's the biggest load of bullshit he's ever heard -- and he has heard a lot of bullshit.

"Look, are you coming or not?" Loki 2.0 asks, exasperated. "Or do you just want me to come back in a few decades? Because I can do that. It's just a few extra buttons, and we'll see if you're bored enough to visit Thor then."

Loki narrows his eyes. This whole thing is nothing short of suspicious, but the other him has a point, even if it's probably not one he meant to make. He's bored; he's desperate for something to do. He's desperate for someone to talk to. It's only going to get worse the longer he's here. At this point, what does he have to lose?

"Alright, fine," Loki says finally. "But if you --"

"Try to kill you, you'll kill me first," Loki 2.0 finishes, sounding bored. "Yes, yes, I know how I work. Now let's go. Thor's waiting for you."

~~~

"This is a nice place," Loki remarks. It looks a little lonely, surrounded by nothing but trees, but sometimes it's nice to be alone. There's a car out front; Thor can leave whenever he wants to if he wants company. It seems like the perfect life, in Loki's opinion. Is Thor really that miserable here?

"That's because you haven't met the people inside," Loki 2.0 says. He gestures to the door. "Go ahead."

Loki hesitates. This all seems too easy. He just stepped through a little orange rectangle, and now he's supposedly outside his brother's little cabin in the woods? And all he has to do is knock on the door and Thor will appear?

Loki 2.0 rolls his eyes. "Look, you're already here. Go." He gestures more emphatically this time.

"And you?" Loki asks. "Where are you going?" It sounds like his "guide" isn't coming with him, which makes Loki wonder what the point of bringing him here was. What does he get out of this?

"1992," Loki 2.0 says with a grin. "I've got a jet ski with my name on it." He pauses. "I actually don't know how to ride a jet ski, so it's going to be interesting."

Loki bites back a laugh. That's too oddly specific to not be true. All of this is so far-fetched, but he's reluctantly gone along with this much and he's still standing. That's a good sign, right? That maybe this is real?

"What are you still waiting for?" Loki 2.0 asks. "Go! Thor is in there, I promise. Go talk to him."

Loki shakes his head to himself. Alright, this is it. He walks up to the door, raises his fist, and...

Hesitates.

Because he wants this to be real. He wants it to be real so badly. But that's why he thinks it's not. He's long since learned that he never gets what he wants.

A rock flies past him, nearly breaking a hole through his skull, and slams against the door. Loki glances over his shoulder, and Loki 2.0 is just standing there with a handful of small rocks, the next one already prepared to be thrown. Well, if he has to choose between knocking with his hands or letting this supposed alternate timeline version of himself "knock" by nearly killing him with rocks, the choice seems pretty obvious to him.

He knocks on the door.

He has to stand there for a while. He glances over his shoulder after the first minute or so, and Loki 2.0 just motions for him to keep waiting. Another minute passes, and he glances over his shoulder again, this time to find himself all alone. That's a little sketchy. He looks around, hoping to find the other him somewhere, but to no avail.

Loki sighs. Maybe this was too good to be true after all.

But then the door opens, thrown to the side with so much careless force that it's almost surprising the wall doesn't break. Loki's eyebrows shoot up at that. That was even more unnecessarily intense than the rock-throwing.

And then he realizes, standing in the doorway is none other than Thor Odinson himself.

"Thor," Loki whispers, a small smile creeping up on his face. He'd been hoping this would happen. He was hoping that other Loki was telling the truth (though, admittedly, it still seems a little far-fetched). But he hadn't really prepared himself for if he was telling the truth. He hadn't prepared himself to see his brother again.

"Loki?" Thor doesn't waste a second; he pulls his brother in for the biggest hug they've ever shared. He's gotten a little big over the last few years; it makes for such a comfortable hug, and one Loki doesn't want to end. "Oh, brother, I thought I'd never see you again."

"You should know by now that that's never going to happen," Loki says playfully.

After a very tight squeeze, Thor lets him go, but he keeps his hands on his little brother's shoulders and he looks down at him in awe. "You were dead. I saw you die."

"You keep falling for that," Loki says with a smile. "Every single time."

Thor smiles back, and Loki swears he sees a tear in his eye.

Loki looks his brother up and down. "And look at you!"

Thor's smile slips at that. "Don't." He sounds so sad; self conscious, even. Loki doesn't get it for a second.

"What are you talking about?" Loki asks, confused. "You look great! Look at you!" He pokes his brother's protruding stomach. "You look like you've been eating well; like you've been able to relax." He reaches up and ruffles Thor's hair. "And look, you're growing your hair out!" With a teasing smile, he adds, "It could stand a brushing or five, but even so, it looks great. You look great."

A single tear slips down Thor's cheek, and, without warning, he pulls his brother back in for another hug. "Thank you, brother. Thank you."

Loki wraps his arms around his brother and squeezes him tight. He'd been so sure he wasn't going to cry. He'd expected this to be an emotional reunion, sure, but he didn't think he was going to cry. But right now, with his head buried in the crook of his brother's neck, he knows there's no stopping his tears.

"Thor, who is it?"

Loki gently pushes his brother away and tries to look over his shoulder. He thinks recognizes the voice. It's certainly a very distinct one. It's just been so long since he's heard another voice that he can't figure out who it belongs to.

Thor puts an arm around Loki's back and leads him into the cabin. Loki looks around, and he realizes pretty quickly that Loki 2.0 was right: it's much nicer from the outside. The place is a disaster, and despite being a god, he's half-convinced that just breathing this air is going to kill him. That's not even to mention the beer bottles all over the floor or the half-empty pizza boxes that have probably been on the tables for at least a week. God, this is disgusting.

There's a couch in the living room, not far from the door, and it only takes Loki a moment to place where he knows the voice from. It's Thor's friend from Sakaar. There are two of them here; he can't remember for the life of him what their names are, though.

"You remember my brother," Thor says to them.

"Oh, yes, it's Loki!" the rock man says, and he seems much too happy for someone who doesn't even really know Loki. "You know, you don't look dead."

"Well, he kind of does," Thor remarks, and Loki punches him on the shoulder.

With a little bit of magic, Loki changes his outfit into something less wrinkled and neatens his hair up. "Do I look better now?"

"Much," Thor says. "You remember my friends Korg and Miek, don't you?" He gestures to the two beings on the couch.

"Of course," Loki says, lying through his teeth. He knows he's met them, however briefly it was. Korg was the rock, right? God, he hopes Korg was the rock. "So, what, you all live together, or...?"

"We do," Korg says. "Miek found this new game, Fortnite, and we've been playing it all week. Do you want a turn?"

"Um, no, thank you," Loki says uncomfortably. What the hell is Fortnite?

"You should try it," Thor says eagerly. "It's a lot of fun -- but if noobmaster69 bothers you--"

"Please," Loki interrupts, "stop that sentence right there." That has to be the 10-year-old he's supposedly feuding with and he doesn't want to hear it. He'd like to pretend this noobmaster doesn't exist before he loses all faith in his brother.

Thor frowns at that, but he gets over it pretty quickly and gestures for him to sit down on the couch. "Go ahead, take a seat. Korg, will you give him the remote?"

"Of course," Korg says, already holding it out to him.

Loki cannot overstate how much he does not want to play that game, so he quickly changes the subject. "When was the last time you went outside?"

Thor glances over at his friends, and Korg shrugs. After a pause, the god says uncertainly, "I bought more beer at the grocery store last week."

Loki shakes his head to himself. God, he really is leading a miserable life. "You know, it looks like it's getting late. I think the sun is going to set soon."

Thor stares at him. "... Okay?"

"Let's go outside," Loki says. "Let's watch the sunset together." He glances at the two aliens on the couch. "All four of us." He might as well include these little guys if he's going to be hanging out with them for a while.

"Why?" Thor asks.

"Because it will be fun," Loki says with a shrug. "Come on. Outside. Do you have a blanket? We can lie down on a blanket." Whatever it takes to get them out of the house and into the real world. If they're going to live in such a beautiful place, they might as well enjoy it.

Korg stands up and pulls a large blanket out from underneath him. He tosses it to Loki, and it lands right over his face, slowly sliding down and taking his hair with it. So much for trying to look put-together.

"Perfect," Loki says. "Come on, outside. All of you. Let's go." He gestures for them all to go to the door.

"You're so bossy," Thor mutters.

"You're so boring," Loki counters, and Thor crosses his arms. "Look, I've just spent the last three years alone on a barren wasteland of a planet. Will you please just come watch the sunset with me?"

Thor sighs dramatically. "Fine, we can watch the sunset -- but then you have to play a round of Fortnite."

"Deal," Loki says immediately. It's a small price to pay. "Come on, up and at 'em." He gestures for them to follow, then heads to the door. This blanket is too big for him to sneak a hand out and open the door, so he uses his telekinesis instead.

It does seem to be getting a little darker, which confirms Loki's theory that it is around sunset. He looks around for the perfect place to set the blanket down without the trees getting in the way.

And then he catches sight of two figures off in the distance.

Loki takes a few steps towards him and squints, trying to get a better look. There are two men in the forest, both with small smiles on their faces. One of them is unmistakably the other Loki, which must make the other man his mysterious friend that Loki wasn't allowed to meet. He cocks his head to the side. What are they doing here? He'd assumed the other Loki was gone; that he'd just dropped him off here and moved on. He definitely hadn't expected him to bring a visitor.

Loki 2.0 gives him a small wave. The other man -- the one holding the TemPad, Loki notices -- opens up a portal much like the one they came through to get here, and, with one last smile sent Loki's way, they head through the portal, which disappears in the blink of an eye.

"What is it?" Thor asks.

"Um..." Loki shakes his head. "Nothing. I thought I saw something, but... it was nothing." He steps outside and gently lays the blanket on the grass just outside the door. This is good enough. "Here, lie down. I'm sure the sun will set soon."

It's Korg who lies down first, Miek lying down immediately afterwards. Loki gives his brother a small smile. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for him, right? Thor shakes his head to himself but lies down anyway, and Loki settles down by his side.

Thor gently nudges his brother, who looks over at him. "Are you staying long?"

"Do you want me to?" Loki asks.

"Well, you don't have to," Thor says. "But, you know, if you want to..." Thor smiles awkwardly. He clearly wants his brother to stay, even if he won't flat-out ask. It works well; Loki wasn't going to admit he wants to stay here more than anything, either.

Loki chuckles. "I'll stay, but under one condition."

"Which is?" Thor asks warily.

"We're cleaning up all the shit on the floor tonight," Loki says. "I really don't know how you live like that."

Thor gives a small, sheepish shrug. "I just never had the energy to, you know... clean up."

"Well, don't worry," Loki says. "That's what you have me for."

Thor smiles. "Thank you," he says quietly. "For coming back."

"Always."