Standing by the back porch of Skark's Alpine lodge, Loki let the bitter wind roar over him and through him. It pulled at the knots in his hair and tore the heat off his bones, which was almost soothing.

Ever since he had arrived on Midgard, his days had been filled with frenetic activity or travel. Back on Sakaar, he had feasted on the grand mania of the place — a madhouse where the patients revolted and lived in a state of perpetual celebration. And the Sanctuary, stuck between Thanos and his miserable children, who clung onto a barely habitable chunk of asteroid, had merely been a madhouse of a different kind. Here, now that they had finished the bulk of the preparations, the uneasy quiet of anticipation ruled their days. Loki didn't care for this limbo. It left too much breadth for his thoughts to prosper and his mind was bursting with dangerous thoughts.

He had tried to re-focus, to occupy himself as others had done. Rogers had found the Stark's library collection. Romanoff was relentless in trying to talk her way into Loki's confidence and it was becoming more inventive. It became more difficult for Loki to foresee her traps, so it was easier to avoid her entirely. Thor was barely better. Loki would have ventured in the work room, where Stark had sequestered himself to tinker with his suits – the tactile act of hammering something to destruction did hold some appeal, but Loki couldn't deal with Stark's self-satisfied word vomit for more than five minutes at a time.

'Sir?' came an uncertain, almost-familiar voice. Loki turned to see Agent Antoinette Concannon at the top of the steps to the lodge's back door. 'You shouldn't wander too far by yourself.'

'I'm not by myself, am I? Nor am I wandering. I'm standing here, planted quite firmly to one spot,' Loki replied. He didn't know the exact setup, but SHIELD was supposed to be swarming the area with agents. He wouldn't have been surprised if half a dozen people had eyes on him at every moment.

Antoinette's eyes flickered to the tree-line behind Loki. 'Still, you should be inside,' she said and pulled a bundle of dark-coloured cloth out of the messenger bag slung off her left shoulder. 'And you should definitely have these with you.'

'Should I?' Loki said as he pulled the fabric aside and revealed the two knives he had left behind in San Francisco. 'Ah, indeed I should. Thank you for recovering these.'

'It's no problem. See you around, Loki.'

Loki waited until she had gone back inside, then examined the knives more closely. He had no reservations about using other weapons if he needed to, but he was fond of this pair. They were elven smith-work and had additional spells on them to fortify their edge and durability. Nothing seemed amiss. The leather handles sat perfectly in his hands; the blades reflected the wisp of the waxing moon without a single blemish to mar the reflection. With a melancholy smile Loki slid the knives into their allotted places on his person.

If it came to it, he could use one to cut Ebony Maw's throat and the other on his own. He had to be realistic about it. His mind was a ticking bomb, there needed to be a way to defuse it. The knives were one way out. The supplies he had pilfered from Stark's stash of dangerous chemicals in the work room was another. The booby trap in his mind was a third. But the more dangerous the situation was, the more precautions needed to be taken.

Contingencies upon contingencies. Well, there's only one thing left now.

Thor would hate him for it, Loki knew. He ran his fingers through his hair and winced as he caught a tangle of knots. Or he could still back out. All Loki had to do was call on Heimdall and bully him into dumping Loki somewhere obscure. He could also disappear into the wormholes between the worlds that the coming Convergence was tearing open further every day. He could even just hide on Midgard.

Be realistic. There's no hiding from them forever. Better to choose where to make a stand, when it's still possible to make a difference.

A bird hooted angrily in the trees as Loki clenched his teeth and willed himself to climb up the four steps to the back door.

----------------------------------------

'Where is my brother?' Loki asked the air as he returned to the heat of the house.

'He is in the games room,' the disembodied voice of Stark's butler replied. 'Shall I relay a message to him?'

'No.'

The lodge's exterior looked typical of the region — stone foundations, timber walls and a steeply slanted roof to limit the snow build-up on the roof. The lodge's interior, as with anything Stark lay his hands on, was grandiose, slick and over-engineered. Loki strode across the polished, well-heated floors and ignored the lights that flickered on when the sensors registered Loki's presence. He passed also on the glass elevator, heading instead for the wooden stairs — one of the few original features left in the building. Stark was clearly more at home amid concrete, glass and steel than surrounded by hardwood and the crackle of a well-tended fireplace. What that said about the man Loki could only guess.

Loki had been up in the attic before; they had worked through every room in the four-storey building when they first arrived and needed to review the security plan they had put together off Stark's archived blueprints of the lodge. There hasn't been time, however, to explore it any depth, so Loki wasn't immediately clear on what Thor was doing with a garishly coloured cardboard box in his hands.

'I doubt it's edible,' Loki said. 'A better bet would be the kitchen downstairs.'

Thor let the comment pass without reply and set down the box, only to pick up another one. There were two entire shelves of these, Loki realised. Different sizes, different designs. The cardboard on some seemed decades old, others seemed to be brand new and wrapped in a thin layer of clear plastic. There were all stacked haphazardly on a bookshelf shoved between an over-stuffed couch and a television that looked to be wider than Thor's arm span.

'What are you doing, Thor? Can't sleep?'

'All this waiting about. How can anyone sleep?' Thor replied. Mjolnir sat neatly on the floor by the door to the room, while Thor ran his fingers along the sides of the boxes and read aloud the text printed on the lids. 'Monopoly Star Trek edition. Risk. The game of global domination. Hungry hungry hippos? Have you come across any of this before, Loki?'

'I think these are just children's toys. Rather like we used to play Hetlu or Ragnar's Jest.'

'You always cheated,' Thor said, stepping back from the shelf that housed the boxes.

Loki snorted. 'And then you always got furious and tried to whack me over the head with anything heavy that might be nearby. I think we're even on that count.'

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'Neither of us liked to lose.' Thor rested against the rectangular wooden table that stood in the centre of the room and looked dubiously over his shoulder at its recessed tabletop, which was lined with green felt. 'Loki, is something troubling you?'

Loki bit down on the inside of his cheek. Thor had been trying to have a deep and meaningful conversation with him ever since the San Francisco debacle. Loki had gone to a great deal of effort, and no doubt frustration to them both, to slip away every time. He would have greatly preferred to extricate himself out of this one too, but that couldn't be done. He needed Thor.

'What do you mean?' Loki asked, making sure his voice was perfectly even.

Thor, for whom words had never been a strength, was immediately flustered. 'I suppose you're not quite yourself lately, ever since you returned from your travels, I mean. For instance, it's clear you don't care for Tony Stark, yet I've yet to see any insects crawl out of his cup or hear of snakes in his bed.'

'We're not children anymore, Thor. And we are the man's guests here.'

'Bad example perhaps.' Thor reached out to pick up a ball out of the cluster someone had set up to form a triangle amid the table's field of green felt. He rolled the ball, purple and with the number four printed on its side, in his palm. 'Very bad example actually. And it goes back further, I think. I have no idea how to phrase it, other than to ask you straight out, so I might as well. Do you have a death wish, brother?'

Loki stifled an unhinged chuckle and squared his shoulder so he stood straighter. 'What in all the realms above are you talking about?'

'This ludicrous decision to offer yourself up as bait.'

'How is it ridiculous? We used a very similar set up back in the Green Wood campaign back on Alfheim. Twice. What about the Sapphire King escapade? Same thing there. And you were the bait when we needed to raze that nest of Zmej.'

'Except back then you didn't look like you were ready to tie a noose around your own neck. And let's not forget about Jotunheim.'

At this point, Loki was genuinely lost. 'What does Jotunheim have to do with all of this?'

'I was hoping you'd enlighten me, because I have no idea what's going on inside your head lately. Are you feigning this or do you genuinely don't recount you were ready to trade yourself and the entirety of Jotunheim for my sake?'

'It was a bluff.'

'I don't believe you,' Thor replied so sharply the room's two narrow windows reverberated.

Loki skirted around a couch and came to stand by the recessed table where his brother kept his hands busy by inspecting the coloured balls resting on the felt. 'You're my brother, Thor. I couldn't see another way to get you out of there.'

'What about the Jotnar?' Thor pressed. 'And don't spew the same venom Tyr would. They're your kin.'

You're my kin.

Loki refused to voice the obvious answer, however. This conversation wasn't going in the direction he needed it to, in fact, it was going precisely in the opposite direction. Here was perhaps an opportunity to bring it on track. But sentimentality wasn't going to cut it, not yet, he needed to get a rise out of Thor first. 'Since when do you care about the plight of a few frost giants?'

'You're a frost giant too, Loki,' Thor said. To Loki's frustration, there was little anger to be found in his brother's words. He was about to respond, but Thor motioned for Loki to wait his turn. 'Jotunheim taught me a lesson I should've learned at a much younger age. When they first captured me, I couldn't see anything and only heard snippets. Once they brought me to Utgard, however, Sigran gave me back my sight and hearing. During the time they kept me in Laufey's Hall, I was witness to all the comings and goings in that house. It didn't take long to see how similar life there was to life inside the palace on Asgard, although the Jotnar were poorer and more desperate. They aren't beasts we read about in our storybooks, just people like any other.'

Thor's brows drew closer together. He tilted his head back until he peered up at the vaulted ceiling above them.

'Then I returned to Asgard and learned my lesson anew,' he said. 'I'm used to you telling me tall tales. So when you first told me what happened on Asgard during my absence, I thought you exaggerated and assumed it was likely about half of what you said was true. What an unpleasant surprise truth was when the trials began. I was glad you weren't there to hear the bitterness pouring out of Tyr and Agnar.'

'And thus, the frost giants are not wholly evil and the Asgardians are not wholly good? Is that your great revelation?' Loki replied.

'Mock me all you like, brother.'

'It's not half as fun when you are ready to roll over and take it.'

'Ah, so that's the secret?' A shadow of a smile crossed Thor's face, but he forced himself to remain sombre. 'I've answered your question, Loki. You've yet to answer mine.'

'Of course I don't have a death wish. I have a great many books left on my reading list.' Loki took a second to compose himself. 'But Thanos is a grave threat. And my actions on Jotunheim have been weighing on my mind also.'

'Your words don't fill me with confidence.'

Nor me. This is the single most uncomfortable conversation you and I have ever had, in both timelines.

'It was a selfish thing to do. Do you know that Midgardians have codified the rules of armed combat? They would consider the damage I ordered Heimdall to inflict on Utgard a grievous war crime.' Loki reached for one of the balls on the table — solid black, save for a small white circle on one side. 'It can't happen again; our father raised us better than that. So when they come and if there's a chance the Maw will be able to get into my head, I want you to kill me.'

'What?'

'The things I know cannot fall into enemy hands.'

Thor grabbed Loki's shoulder and pulled Loki forward until they stood with no more than an inch between them. 'This isn't my brother talking. Have you utterly lost your wits?'

'Thor, I realise this is the most difficult thing I could ever ask of you,' Loki said. The proximity between them was uncomfortable, all the more so because due to the height difference between them, Loki had to angle his head up sharply. 'But we have to look past the bond between us and remember what our father taught us: seek out not war, but be ready for it. Thor, sometimes people don't come back from a war.'

'Loki —'

'Remember too the oaths you swore when you were crowned,' Loki continued, drowning out Thor's attempt to respond. 'You swore to guard the Nine Realms, to preserve the peace, to pledge yourself only to the good of Asgard. If you allow me to live, you'll let Thanos win and in so doing you'll break every oath you swore that day.'

Thor shook his head, staggering back from Loki until he backed into the corner of the table. 'No, I'm not listening to this. You are my brother!'

'And you're a hypocrite! And not worthy to be king if you would choose me over the fate of the universe.'

Thor clenched his fists and stared at Loki, his jaw slack. For several, painfully slow seconds he tried to force out a response, but it wouldn't come. He sighed and trudged over to a low armchair on the far side of the room, collapsing into it with a weary sigh. 'I'll never be able to look our mother in the eye again. I'm not sure father would even survive this; he's still not fully recovered from that Jotunn spear. And I don't know what I'd do without you. The past months... No, Loki, it disturbs me that you'd even consider asking this.'

'Although our father had only one throne to pass down, he raised us both to be kings. I know what duty means as well as you do.'

Technically, I've actually ruled Asgard longer too.

Loki turned the glossy black ball in his hand. He had all but forgotten he still held onto it. It must be an accessory to another Midgardian game; the people of Midgard had too much free time on their hands. He flung it down onto the green felt and watched it bang against a couple of the other balls then roll into a hole cut into the corner of the table.

His brother still sat brooding, so Loki slid into the armchair opposite him. 'Thor,' he said, prompting his brother to lift up his head. 'We have spent many hours planning and I have confidence in those plans. We're discussing the worst case scenario here, do you understand that?'

'Can you leave me to my own thoughts for a while?' Thor asked. His voice cracked twice before he finished the sentence.

'If you think that'll help.'

Loki left his brother alone in the games room, careful his retreat didn't make too much noise. He couldn't quite pinpoint why, but the thought of his boots thumping against the bare floor seemed obscene at this moment. At the second flight of stairs down, he stopped entirely. Where was he going? There was no chance he would get any sleep this night nor did any other part of the lodge appeal. These stairs were as good a place to while away the hours as any other.

'Intruder alert,' announced the butler from some speaker embedded in the stairway railing. 'It's coming from the south-east boundary.'

It might be that my last hours are already coming to an end.