this takes place post-Loki and during that one Avengers 1 scene in Endgame but without Tony and Scott traveling back in time

Loki stumbles through his Time Portal and into the ground floor of Stark Tower circa 2012. Part of him feels like he was just here a few days ago. Part of him feels like it's been a lifetime. He's not quite sure which is more accurate. It's been a very confusing unspecified length of time.

He's returned to just before he left; before someone made the mistake of practically handing him the Tesseract and letting him escape. He doesn't think that's going to happen in this timeline, but, in all honesty, he's not even sure what this timeline is. Everything looks the same so far, at least. Thor and Tony Stark are walking another Loki down the lobby surrounded by agents that he could easily have killed if he'd wanted to, even with the handcuffs on.

Another group of men in suits is approaching them. If Loki remembers correctly, they're some human agency with an overinflated sense of importance. It doesn't matter; they're not the ones Loki is here to see.

Loki pushes his way through the crowd of agents and pulls his brother into a hug, clinging to him like he's going to disappear at any moment. "Thor, oh, thank god," he breathes. "I've never been so happy to see you in my life."

Thor gives him a harsh shove, pushing him off. "What type of game are you playing at, Loki?"

"I messed up," Loki spits out.

"We noticed," Tony remarks.

"Shut it, Stark," Loki snaps, not even sparing him a glance. "I'm not talking about New York. I'm not talking about Asgard. This is —" He gestures vaguely, trying to find the words in his panic. "It's cosmic."

"I'm sorry," Alexander Pierce says, "what is happening right now?"

Thor turns to the prisoner Loki, who had been watching TVA Loki with a very interested look on his face, but he looks up at Thor attently when he realizes he's going to speak to him. "This isn't funny, Loki. It's childish."

The prisoner Loki just shrugs.

"I swear on my life, this isn't a trick," TVA Loki says quickly.

"Everything is a trick with you," Thor says darkly.

"Thor, please," Loki pleads. "I know we're not on good terms right now, but I need your help."

Thor just crosses his arms.

"I just lost every other friend I've ever had," Loki says. "You're all I have left." He can feel the tears welling up in his eyes, and he blinks them away. He's so desperate right now — desperate for his help, desperate for his companionship. If this doesn't work, he doesn't know what he'll do. He can't go at this alone. He wouldn't want to.

Thor furrows his brows slightly, and Loki feels just a little sliver of hope. This is something. It's not much, but it's something. It's not a "no." It's not a "go away" or an "I'm taking you to prison." It looks like genuine thoughtfulness.

"Don't tell me you're considering this," Alexander Pierce mutters. "If you're not going to take this seriously, I'm going to take him — them — and"

"Oh, shut up," Loki says, and with the flick of his hand, he tosses Pierce and his agents through the door. He doesn't even look at them as he does it. Oh, the benefits of telekinesis. He'll never get tired of it. It occurs to him that they'll just come back if he leaves this as is, so he uses his telekinesis to hold the door closed, the illusion of a "Go Away" sign appearing on the front.

It looks like he loses Thor with that move (which, in hindsight, he probably should have expected), but to his surprise, it just seems to entertain Tony. Stifling a laugh, he calls out to the agents, "Patience, guys. There's enough Loki to go around."

Loki ignores that, if only because he has a feeling Thor would be even more upset if he threw his new friend into a wall. "Thor, listen to me. I just broke the timeline, and I need your help to set it right."

"Oh, I'm sure you did," Thor says sarcastically.

"I did," Loki insists. "I'm from another timeline and I stole the Tesseract -- you know, again -- and I got arrested by this Time Variance Authority and a lot of things happened and I don't have time to explain it all but basically I got sent to the Void at the end of time but we found the man beyond the Void and he's seen everything and he knows everything and there's one of him in every timeline and --" Loki pauses to take a deep breath before he passes out, then continues," apparently by destroying the other timelines, he was holding the universe together, but then we killed him -- well, I didn't kill him but I couldn't stop her from killing him so I might as well have killed him myself -- and now the timeline is fracturing and creating new timelines and they're going to go to war and we're all going to die unless we can set the timelines right but I don't know where to begin with that or if it's even possible so I need --"

"Do I need to put a muzzle on you, too?" Thor interrupts.

"Thor --"

"Do gods need to breathe?" Tony asks, looking up at Thor for an answer.

"Asgardians do," Thor says. "Right now, though, I'm not so sure about Frost Giants."

Loki rolls his eyes. He could deal with the anger and he could deal with the jests, but he's not going to stand here and let Thor make him feel like more of an outsider than he already does. "Okay, fine," he says, because clearly this is all he's going to get from him. He should have realized before he came here that he'd already burned this bridge. "If you don't want to help me, I'll..." He runs a hand down his face. "I'll find someone else. I'm sure there's..." He shakes his head to himself. Thor was his only chance. What the hell is he supposed to do now?

Loki pulls out his TemPad, only to realize he doesn't even know where to set it. He needs a destination before he can leave. After a moment's hesitation, he sets it for the first escape he can think of: Lamentis-1. If nothing else, the TVA won't be able to find him there — assuming there is an apocalypse on Lamentis in this timeline. He's still not sure what the Nexus event is here. Hell, he may be on the Sacred Timeline. He has absolutely no idea.

Loki turns around and opens a Time Portal, this little orange rectangle appearing where Pierce and his agents once stood. He can still see them slamming on the door, and, had he been in a slightly better mood, he might have found that entertaining.

"What's that?" Thor asks cautiously.

"My exit," Loki says simply.

"But what is it?" Tony asks. "I've never seen anything like that."

Loki glances over his shoulder at him. "It's a Time Portal."

"How does it work?" Tony asks, looking at the portal curiously.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Loki admits. "I stole it from the Time Variance Authority."

Tony scoffs, an amused look on his face. "I wanna see what types of toys they have."

Loki grips the TemPad just a little bit tighter. He's not letting anyone take this, especially someone as obnoxious and arrogant as Anthony Stark.

"You still need a hand with this multiverse thing?" Tony asks. "'Cause, you know, I got two of 'em." He does little jazz hands to emphasize that.

Loki hesitates. He doesn't know much about Tony Stark, but he does know that he seems unbearably annoying. He's just sarcastic remark after sarcastic remark with his holier-than-thou attitude (at least according to what he learned in Clint Barton's mind). He could not deal with him for any extended period of time.

But he also can't undo the mess he made alone, so what choice does he have?

He sighs. "I don't need a little metal man for a weapon or a shield, but you seem like a decently intelligent person. I guess your help is better than none."

"Really?" Tony looks surprised at that. "Because I was totally joking. I wasn't actually expecting you to go for that."

"Of course you were," Loki mutters under his breath. He turns back to the Time Portal. Now he's really leaving. He'll figure something out on Lamentis. Clearly he's not going to find the help he needs here.

"Wait."

Loki there's his head back and turns back around. In an overly polite tone to mask his frustration, he asks, "Yes, brother?"

"You were going to accept Stark's help," Thor observes.

"Yes, well, desperate times and all that," Loki says.

The prisoner Loki hums and raises his hand just a little.

"But not that desperate," Loki tells him. "It was befriending another me that got me into this mess; I don't trust it to get me out."

Prisoner Loki just shrugs, seeming mostly unphased by that.

"This really isn't a trick," Thor says slowly, "is it?"

"No, it's not," Loki says. He has a feeling he won't be making his exit within the next minute or two, so he closes the Time Portal. "I would do many things for a trick. Begging is not one of them."

Thor eyes him skeptically for a long few moments, and Loki waits nervously for his response. "The Loki of this timeline will face justice in Asgard regardless," Thor tells him."If you would still like my help after that—"

"Yes," Loki says quickly. "Yes, please, I need your help — preferably soon, before the beginning of this multiversal war."

Tony nudges Thor and asks a quiet, "Are you really going to do this?"

"If he's telling the truth, I feel I have to," Thor says.

"And if he's not telling the truth?" Tony asks.

"Then I'll kill him myself," Thor says darkly.

Loki frowns. "Please don't."

The two Avengers ignore that.

"Can you handle him on your own?" Tony asks. "We made a half-decent team today. If you need a hand, I'm sure we could..."

"He's my problem, not yours," Thor says.

"Hey, it's our universe, too," Tony says with a shrug.

Thor gives a small smile at that. "Then your help would be greatly appreciated."

Loki bites back a groan. "Oh, joy," he deadpans. "Because I really wanted to run through space and time with the Avengers."

"Well, what can you do?" Tony asks mockingly. "Desperate times, and all that."

Loki shoots him a glare. He was right: this is going to be unbearably annoying.

"I will bring my brother to Asgard," Thor says. "He will stand before the Allfather and answer for his crimes."

Prisoner Loki just rolls his eyes.

"I will return shortly," Thor continues. "Stay here. Gather the team — whoever chooses to come. I will meet you back here."

"Hold on," Loki says. "Why are you in charge? You don't even know what happened." He can't make the rules if he doesn't know the whole story.

"Of course I do," Thor says. "You did something stupid and now I have to clean up your mess. This is not an uncommon occurrence, you know."

Loki narrows his eyes. He's right but he didn't have to say it.

Tony hands Thor the briefcase containing the Tesseract. "Don't leave me here too long. I have no idea how to babysit a god."

Thor chuckles. "I don't think he'll be too difficult. He 'needs us,' remember?"

"Well, don't sound too happy about it," Loki mutters irritably.

Thor brings Prisoner Loki to the door, and Loki puts a pause his magic to let the door open when Thor pushes on it. Pierce and his agents flood back in, and Loki decides to let them do that, too, if only because he'd rather deal with them than stand here alone with Tony.

And then Hulk bursts through the door from the stairwell, whining about having had to take the stairs (albeit a little later than he did in Loki's timeline; it seems the Nexus event, whatever it was, has already occured and that's just one of the soon-to-be many changes between this timeline and the Sacred Timeline) and Pierce has something else to focus on instead.

"Alright, let's just..." Loki gestures for Tony to follow him, and, both sheathed by his powers, he leads the Avenger down the hall and away from the angry green man. That sounds like a problem for someone else to deal with.

On the other end of the Stark Tower lobby, they both take a seat on an uncomfortably small couch. Loki props his head up on his hand, gazing outward and doing whatever he can to avoid acknowledging Tony Stark's presence.

It works for a few minutes, but eventually, sitting in silence becomes even more awkward than speaking would be. Loki can be quite the conversationalist when he wants to be, but right now, he has no idea what to say, so he remains silent.

"So," Tony says eventually, "is, uh..." He shrugs awkwardly, clearly as uncomfortable with this small talk as Loki is. "Is this timeline a lot like yours?"

Loki looks over at him. "Mostly."

"You still tried to take over the world?" Tony asks.

"A slight lapse in judgement, I'll admit," Loki says.

"Mm, really," Tony mutters.

They lapse into silence again. Loki opts to entertain himself by watching Hulk smashing up the lobby. It's very chaotic, but the type of chaos that Loki would rather watch from a distance than be directly involved in. It's fun to watch. It's a lot more fun when he's not the one getting slammed over and over through the floor. (Albeit, no one else has experienced that yet, but Loki is still holding out hope).

"Ope." Tony holds up his phone. "Nat's in. Just texted the group chat."

"Yay," Loki says, completely emotionless.

"Oh, cheer up, Loki!" Tony claps him on the back. "You ruined our week. I think it's only fair we returned the favor, don't you think?"

Loki hits his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. This is going to be absolutely miserable.