Loki let the doorway swing behind him. It slammed back into place with a thud loud enough to shake the walls, making the silence it left in its wake all the heavier for the contrast it conjured.

He sighed. It wasn't that he despised his new accommodation. This was far better than the cells of the Sanctuary or the cell Loki had enjoyed back on Asgard when his father had sentenced him to a lifetime of imprisonment.

It was the silence of this windowless cube, punctuated by the creak of the mattress when he sat down on the bed, that left him itching to put a hole through the walls. Spending time with Nebula, knowing that he had to keep up the pretence at all times, only made the itch worse. At least before he had Brunnhilde to share the madness with - someone to trade jokes with and to acknowledge the insanity of the world around them. Now only echoes of his internal thoughts remained. Never quite silent, always on edge. And every day he crept closer towards re-treading his original path and the reason he had come to the Sanctuary seemed further out of his grasp.

What if I go through with it? If I can wield the mind stone and the soul stone, while Thanos has none, surely that's a fight Thanos cannot win?

Loki gulped down a breath in an effort to quell his rebellious stomach. He was afraid, plain and simple. The thought of pitting himself openly against Thanos left him nauseous. But even if he ignored the bile building in the back of his mouth, it wasn't easy to come up with a scenario where he could challenge Thanos successfully. A spear to the throat? A spear afforded Loki longer reach than a knife, but Thor had practically cleaved Thanos' chest in two back in Wakanda and Thanos just about laughed in his face. A pitched force with the full might of the Einherjar at his back? Loki snorted. The Einherjar had fared so well against the Dark Elves and Hela. Meanwhile, Thanos had obliterated the famed Corps of the Nova Empire to the man.

'Cut his throat when he's least expecting it,' Loki muttered under his breath. 'I've always done my best work from the shadows. There's no reason not to work on my strengths when it comes to this.'

So, full steam ahead with the current plan and look out for the opportune moment, all else be damned.

Yet the conclusion did nothing to settle Loki's unease. He pulled off the rough cord holding his hair in place and walked over to the washbasin in the corner of the room. These quarters had communal bathrooms and showers, so the sink and the mirror above it were the sole instruments of personal hygiene to be found in the room. Loki washed the days' grime off his face and stared at himself in the mirror. The blue skin, the red eyes, the markings identifying him as the son of a father who had deemed him unworthy of living. The father Loki had killed twice.

If only Thanos were so easy to kill.

Loki's magic rolled over his skin, as much instinct as his own conscious choice. His eyes flicked back to the mirror. A more familiar, less intimidating face had peered back at him. But there were signs of his exploits in the Sanctuary if you looked. In many ways, his pale pseudo-Asgardian skin revealed what the blue did not: the shadows around his eyes from persistent insomnia, bruises from Nebula along the edge of his jaw, a scratch disappearing into his hairline from a stray Exian strike. The bruises and the scratch would heal by the morning, but undoubtedly, he would collect more scrapes and bruises tomorrow.

'Heimdall,' Loki said before he could give himself a chance to think better of what he was doing. Movement behind him. Loki swivelled around to meet Heimdall's eyes. It was only a projection, but Loki breathed easier nevertheless. He supposed it said something about the state of his mind that he was glad to see Heimdall. 'That was quick. Watching me, were you?'

'Your family worry about you.' The corner of Heimdall's lip twitched. 'And, you have taken a peculiar path; I am curious where it will lead.'

'Home, I hope.'

'Your mother and brother hold the same hope.'

Loki raised an eyebrow. 'But not my father?'

'I cannot know the mind of an unconscious man. He has yet to wake,' Heimdall said, his words slipping out quicker than was typical for him.

'He's still in Odinsleep?' Loki said and immediately felt ridiculous for having uttered the question. Heimdall had just told him as much. He slid his tongue over the back of his teeth a few times, then shook his head. This wasn't what he had anticipated hearing from Heimdall. 'What are the healers saying? This is miles out of the bounds of the ordinary by now. Is there anything being done?'

'A remedy is being sought. The king has even reached out to one of your half-sister's, the new ruler of Jotunheim, asking if the Jotnar would negotiate for the information of the poison the arrow was coated with. No reply came from Jotunheim.'

'Who's surprised about that. Well, I'd make a suggestion of my own, but honestly, I have nothing to suggest that mother wouldn't have thought of already. Let me know if his condition changes, whether in one direction or the other. Please?'

'Of course.'

Loki expected his mother would demand he return to Asgard should Odin take a turn for the worse, but it calmed him to have Heimdall's reassurance that he would be kept in the loop. 'So my brother continues to rule without our father's aid. How goes that?'

'He has selected replacements for the vacant positions on the council. Outside the council and the ranks of the Einherjar, there is little change to be noticed. When the king's thoughts are not on you or on your father, they are focused on the trials underway for the participants in the coup d'etat against your regency.'

You and your. Loki caught what Heimdall was attempting to achieve in his quiet way. He was uncertain whether Heimdall acted of his own accord or if responding to request from Loki's family, but it didn't matter. Loki couldn't give them what they wanted.

He forced a smile. 'Will you tell mother and Thor that I miss them. I miss them terribly, but I'm not ready to return. Not yet.'

'I will, your highness,' Heimdall replied.

A moment later his projection had dissolved and Loki was left staring at empty space. He sighed. He should have known better. Whether in this timeline or the previous, Loki had never had a conversation with Heimdall that resulted in an improvement to Loki's mood.

Ebony Maw met Loki at the entrance to the Palisade and was uncharacteristically quiet as he took Loki down to the research laboratories, breaking his silence only once they reached the lift.

'I trust you understand the value of circumspection on this matter,' he said as he input the security code and scanned in his fingerprints. 'It is an honour to be entrusted with this knowledge.'

Loki nodded solemnly. 'I think I would be no less disappointed than the Great Titan would be if he finds my conduct wanting.'

The Maw's smile at that response wasn't dissimilar to that of a teacher who had finally received a palatable answer from a habitually mischievous child. The lift had reached its destination, which allowed Loki to ignore the Maw's condescension and make a show of surveying the research facility.

The laboratory was wide pentagonal room illuminated with harsh off-white lights and so crowded with equipment that Loki could barely make out where the back wall was. Machines beeped rhythmically and the fans in the circulation system hissed as they whipped around. Despite the fans, it was impossible to miss the fact they were deep underground. The air here had an earthy, slightly wet under-taste to it. Although the path here began in the Palisade, the laboratories weren't situated within the complex, but were connected via a series of tunnels. Should something go wrong with an experiment, you didn't want it to take out half of your headquarters at the same time.

'Here.' Ebony Maw crept toward a great steel rig set up away from the host of computers on one end of the room. There was another security pad on the rig - this one too needed fingerprints as well as a code. Once the Maw provided both, however, the lid of the rig split into two pieces and slid aside, revealing the sceptre.

Loki leaned forward to get a better vantage angle and feigned confusion. 'The sceptre holds one of the infinity stones. Do I have this right?'

'Yes.'

Ebony Maw seemed about to begin pontificating but the rumble of the lift interrupted him. By the time the lift doors opened, he had sunk into a deep bow, which Loki hurried to imitate.

'Have you begun already?' Thanos said, striding into the laboratory. 'Go on then.'

'We haven't gotten far, my lord. Not beyond the revelation that you already possess an infinity stone.' Loki's gaze lingered on the mind stone. He had wielded it, he had endured it being wielded against him - he couldn't dismiss it as another trinket in a universe full of powerful artefacts. 'What is your next move then? Do you...'

Thanos' eyebrows drew together. 'If you worry I intend to use the stone against you once more, that fear is unfounded.'

'Thank you, my lord. Knowing now that it was an infinity stone that was used, I am just glad I survived the trial.' He took a step back from the rig and glanced up at Thanos. 'If not that. How can I be of assistance?'

'This stone emits a strong energy signature. We have made the assumption that the other stones will have signatures of their own and thus can be tracked. We just haven't been able to move much past the hypothesis. You are a fresh set of eyes, perhaps you can offer some new ideas.'

A flick of Ebony Maw's hand woke the computer screens from slumber. Soon every screen in the room was alight with metrics of the stone's pulsation patterns and ambient aura. Loki moved between the various datasets, trying to make sense of what Thanos and Ebony Maw were attempting to capture in each one. His memory was no help here. Back then, he hadn't received an invitation into the laboratory until a good four months further down in the timeline and by the looks of it, Thanos and Ebony Maw had either made a breakthrough in those months or had rearranged the monitoring equipment set up.

'I'm afraid I am struggling to grasp what half of these are supposed to be measuring,' Loki conceded. 'Can you start at the beginning?'

And so they did. The more they spoke, the more Loki found himself relieved. It was a rare object indeed that didn't have an energy signature of some kind, but the mind stone emitted energy in just about every measurable frequency. The trouble was, most of these were perfectly common frequencies, making it difficult to isolate from the mundane objects that surrounded it. Thanos and Ebony Maw had yet to isolate the mind stone's unique energy signature. As each variable and each frequency had to be considered in isolation, doing this was tedious, time-consuming work.

'There is no guarantee the other stones will have the same energy profile,' Loki said. In fact, the space stone had a wildly different, and somewhat simpler, energy signature to the mind stone. The reality stone was different again. When he had reached out to it back on Svartalfheim, he found almost no similarities to the space and the mind stones. He had wondered then if being rooted in the body of Thor's idiotic girlfriend had warped the signature, but he had never had an opportunity to pursue that train of thought further.

Thanos hooked his finger over the lip of one of the screens and tilted the screen up. 'There are bound to be similarities.'

'Echoes of the tribulations that brought the stones into existence,' Loki replied.

He failed to add that those same tribulations that forged the stones into six concentrated ingots had also brought the universe in existence. Even the primitive Midgardian technology could pick up those echoes. Instead, he picked a random frequency and made a show of trying to work out how to isolate it. The line he had to stay on was as fine as a tightrope. He could give them the answers they sought in a matter of minutes - the information was burned into his mind, yet he had to keep Thanos and Ebony Maw from figuring out the answer. At the same time, Loki couldn't appear useless or sabotaging the work, otherwise, Thanos would remove him from the laboratory (or worse). He had to make it look like they were making progress, while steering them down the wrong path.

For a long while, Thanos, Ebony Maw and Loki focused on the work, only exchanging clipped observations about their findings or lack thereof. But once Loki set up one of the computers to run a complex set of diagnostics, he had nothing to do until the computer finished its calculations. He leaned on the edge of the rig that held the sceptre and slid his thumb over the newly thickened callouses all across the fingers and the palm of his right hand.

'Is something the matter?' Thanos asked.

Loki shrugged. 'I'm waiting for the computer to finish its work. I got rather lost in the contemplation about what the mind stone might mean for Asgard and Jotunheim.'

'Great change awaits us all,' Ebony Maw said without looking up from his work.

'Just as long as it doesn't come too late.' Loki slid his hand along the rig's smooth surface. 'I shouldn't be so morbid. It's just, you have told me before, Lord Thanos, that your home-world is past saving. It is possible our victory will come too late for other worlds too.'

Thanos seemed to have difficulty finding a response to Loki's words, so Loki seized the opportunity.

'What did happen to your home-planet? If you don't mind me asking, my lord,' he said.

'No, I don't mind the question.' Thanos tilted his head a little. 'It was a typical tale at the beginning: over-population, a shortage of resources, civil war. Then one faction decided to implement a new tactic - a viral disease designed to cripple enemy soldiers. Trouble was, within the year, the virus had mutated. It now spread more easily and became deadlier. Containment efforts kept failing, so they tried to bomb the contaminated regions out of existence. That failed too. They kept bombing and kept getting sick until one day there was no one to send out the bombs anymore.'

'I am sorry,' Loki said. 'I know you're not fond of that word, but I hope in this case you will accept it and the sentiments behind it. No one deserves such a calamity.'

Well, you do, but not the rest of Titan.

Thanos nodded, then drew back to the computers. 'Dwelling on the past is wasteful when we have so much to do in the present.'

Loki took note of the quiet chastisement and also slunk back to the computer he had set himself at. The diagnostics were nearly done anyway. He stared at the screen, waiting for the ping that indicated completion, but his mind was no longer on the infinity stones. He speculated instead on the probability that Thanos would be immune to the virus that brought down the rest of the Titans.

It could be worth a try. Definitely better than just trying to stab him again.