A/N: this is a meant to be AU type thing I guess, I've wanted to write it for a while and so here it is! I'm thinking about maybe turning this into a series, comment what you think and we'll see what happens! i hope you enjoy<3

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"The Tesseract or your brother's head. I assume you have a preference?"

In the second after Thanos speaks these words, your life changes forever.

What should transpire immediately after he speaks is this: you should mouth the word 'no', stepping forward towards Loki, who is stood before Thanos. Ebony Maw should discover your presence, bringing you before his master. Thanos should torture you, and then Loki should give him the Tesseract. You and Hulk should be sent by Heimdall to Midgard, to safety.

These events make up the Scared Timeline. They should come to pass.

Instead, for a reason unbeknownst to anyone, you manage to keep your mouth shut. You don't step forward, ignoring your screaming instincts, remembering Loki's words.

Promise me you'll stay hidden. Even if things get bad.

So you stay hidden, and Ebony Maw doesn't see you. Your Nexus Event begins, and you're none the wiser.

"Oh I do. Kill away." Loki smiles.

You feel his turmoil as though it's your own, burning your insides; searing your heart as Thanos looks momentarily surprised. Then he lifts the gauntlet containing the Power stone to Thor's temple, whom he is easily holding aloft by the breastplate of his armour in his other hand.

The stone glows brightly as it meets flesh, and Thor screams hoarsely, his body convulsing violently. Tiny pricks of pain erupt across your palms; Loki is clenching his fists so hard that he must be drawing blood with his nails.

Your head and your heart engage in a furious internal battle. Your heart screams for Thor, for Loki, for the three of you to be together and safe, somewhere far from here. Your head tells you no, this has to happen. It's this or half of the universe.

Half of the universe.

You can almost see the same thought process running through Loki's head. His face, usually so emotionless, shut off to everyone except you, begins to change as his resolve wavers and then cracks.

His determination to stay emotionless, calm, unafraid before the Titan dissolves within seconds. You feel it as it shatters, falling away in an instant, leaving only fear.

"Alright, STOP!" Loki shouts, and your heart breaks along with his voice. Still you remain quiet, invisible, hidden.

Even if things get bad.

"We don't have the Tesseract. It was destroyed on Asgard." Thor tells Thanos, his voice cracking with the effort of speaking. Guilt, not yours, courses through you.

The Titan turns to look at Loki, and Loki lowers his gaze before holding up a hand and letting the Tesseract reveal itself in his palm.

You can feel your heartbeat in your throat, and have to remind yourself to breathe, fighting the urge to talk to Loki through your mind. He told you that one of Thanos' minions is a telepath. It's the one who keeps glancing in your direction, you're sure of it.

"Brother, no-" Thor starts, but Loki cuts across him, beginning to walk towards Thanos. Stop it, stop it, stop it¸ you think, but don't allow the thought to travel further than your own mind. It's torture.

"I assure you brother, the sun will shine on us again." Loki tells Thor, still stepping calmly towards the Titan.

"Your optimism is misplaced, Asgardian." Thanos tells Loki dismissively.

"Well, for one thing: I'm not Asgardian." Loki says, and your heart leaps. You can't read his thoughts, but you can read his body language, his words, his tone of voice. He has a plan. Thanos frowns, his beady eyes narrowing as he watches your fiancé.

"And for another... we have a Hulk."

After that, everything happens very quickly.

Bruce, Hulk, explodes from somewhere to your right, slamming into Thanos with a furious roar. Loki dives for Thor, dropping the Tesseract in order to tackle him out of harms way.

The Tesseract lies on the floor, abandoned. Without thinking, you teleport to it, picking it up swiftly before teleporting back to your hiding spot. Your heart pounding, you look down at the object you hold in your hands. The power it holds is immense, surely you can use it to...

"What are you doing?!" Loki is before you, whispering furiously, grabbing you by the shoulders. The awful sounds of Hulk getting beaten to the ground by Thanos makes you turn, but Loki shakes you slightly.

"We can't let him have it." you whisper back loudly, moving the Tesseract behind your back as Loki tries to grab it.

"He almost killed Thor. I won't let the same happen to you." he argues angrily.

"It won't. We can use it to escape. Where's Thor?"

Your question is answered for you as there is a loud, anguished bellow from behind you. You spin around to see Thanos stood over Heimdall, a glaive buried in the latter's chest. A gasp escapes you, and Loki pulls you back further, away from it all, his hands tight around your arms.

"You're going to die for that!" Thor yells, his voice angry but broken. The alien seals Thor's mouth with a metal contraption, whispering "shhh".

Loki is panicking behind you. Loki never panics. You turn to look at him, and see your fear reflected back at you in his eyes. After a few seconds he pulls you close to him, wrapping his arms around you almost as though in defeat.

Your hands grow limp around the Tesseract as you press yourself against him, closing your eyes.

Loki-

He tenses, and a split second later has disappeared. In the next instant, the telepath alien is before you. You blanch, your mind freezing.

"Why hello." Ebony Maw says, sliding a cold hand around your wrist. Then you are before the Titan. He looks surprised. You think you might have forgotten how to breathe. Seconds, or perhaps minutes, maybe years pass, before he speaks.

"I believe that belongs to me." Thanos says slowly, holding out a massive, purple hand for the Tesseract. You don't move. You can't.

Until suddenly you are, but not by your own choice. You try to resist Maw's magic, but he is too strong for you forcing your limbs to move according to his will.

"No-" you whisper, as you watch your hand extend to pass Thanos the Tesseract.

"Good girl." he murmurs as he takes it from you. The Maw releases his magical hold over you, and you drop to your knees, defeated.

He then exchanges a few words with Thanos, but you don't pay attention. You're going to die. Thor is going to die, Loki is – you can't bring yourself to think of it.

A pulse of energy rushes past you and you raise your head to watch as Thanos wields a gauntlet which now contains two Infinity stones... and it's all your fault.

"There are two more stones on Earth." Thanos says, "Find them, my children, and bring them to me on Titan."

Hope; foolish, stupid hope, sparks in your chest. Is he going to spare your life?

One of the aliens, another one, kneels behind you.

"Father, we will not fail you."

Then Thanos turns to you, and any hope which you had previous felt wilts and dies in an instant.

"As for you..."

"If I might interject..." Loki's voice, chipper and upbeat, reaches your ears, and you turn quickly to look at him. What is Hel's name is he doing?

"...if you're going to Earth, you might want a guide. I do have a bit of... experience in that arena." he tells Thanos, who looks incredulously back him. You stand, slowly, the panic coursing through you creating adrenaline, adrenaline telling you to move, move, move now...

Ebony Maw stops you in your tracks with a mere wave of his hand. You're frozen; completely paralysed where you stand. Red hot anger sweeps through you, so strong that Loki's eyes flicker in your direction for the briefest moment.

"If you consider failure experience." Thanos replies to Loki, unimpressed.

"I consider experience, experience." Loki says. You can see his hands shaking from where he stands, close to you but not close enough, never close enough. You push and strain and fight against the magic which binds you, holding you still, but to no avail. Tears of frustration prick at your eyes.

"I, Loki, Prince of Asgard... Odinson..." here he pauses to look over at Thor. You follow his gaze; tears are pouring down Thor's face as he struggles fruitlessly against his restraints.

"...the rightful king of Jotunheim, God of Mischief, do hereby pledge to you, my undying fidelity..."

So caught up are you in trying to escape your magical bindings, you don't immediately notice the dagger which Loki conjures behind his back. You only notice as he suddenly lunges towards Thanos' neck, and is frozen in place, his hand surrounded by blue magic.

You thought you'd been scared before. You'd been wrong. That hadn't been fear. This was fear, white hot and burning and clawing at your insides as you watch Thanos smile coldly down at Loki.

"'Undying'? You should choose your words more carefully." Thanos says pleasantly, and with those words, and the look on Loki's face as he says them, you lose all control. Something, somewhere inside of you, snaps.

Your gaze flicks to Maw, holding you with his magic, and you see he is trembling with the effort of holding you in place. You see Loki's dagger fall to the ground, see his feet rise from the ground and let your overwhelming, all-consuming, raging fear take over.

Y/N- help-

Loki's plea pushes you over the edge. You break free, a scream ripping its way from your throat, around which you can feel the mad Titan's fingers tightening, even though it's not you he is strangling. Your magic explodes from you in all directions, knocking the alien backwards into a large pile of debris.

He quickly rights himself, but you don't see, you're preparing to launch yourself at Thanos and rip his oversized ungainly head from his shoulders, how dare he hurt Loki... but something is holding you back.

Maw, injured as he is, pulls you back, away from Loki who is dying, he can't breathe, you can't breathe, he's dying...

Y/N...

You scream his name, desperation enveloping you, and your magic swells within you again, sending the alien flying away from you once more. This time he doesn't rise again. The pain around your throat is so intense that it's making your eyes water, Loki, Loki, Loki-

Crack.

The pain around your throat vanishes. Everything is suddenly very quiet. You see Loki, your fiancé, your soulmate, hanging limply in Thanos' grip, his neck clearly broken, his feet hanging limply, his cloak swaying around his ankles.

You see, but you do not register. Loki isn't dead. He's not dead, he proposed to you not half an hour ago, you pressed your face against his chest and heard his heart beating less than five minutes ago.

You're not breathing. You need to breathe. You can't remember how. The ground swings suddenly, violently up to meet you, connecting hard with your head. Your vision goes white, the sound of ferocious, rushing wind suddenly loud in your ears.

It can't be. You're dreaming.

Far, far away. You hear a muffled thud.

"No resurrections this time." Thanos says.

The whistling, roaring wind in your ears gets louder, and louder, and louder until you think it's going to burst your ear ducts. Your vision returns; your eyes are open. Everything is purple. You're hollow. Nothing matters.

You want Thanos dead.

Your vision tunnels as you launch yourself at him, tackling him to the ground, this huge mass of armour and purple muscle and skin and bone, you take it all down. Someone is screaming, a high-pitched, animalistic noise of such anguish that it's almost painful to listen to.

The Titan tries to fight back, but you can feel his strength depleting by the second as you hold him down and pummel him with every last ounce of magic and strength that's in you.

You rip the armour from his torso, gritting your teeth as you strip him of protection, he doesn't deserve it, he deserves torture and death and everything bad and awful in the world, you wish it upon his head.

He might be saying something to you, you don't know, you can't hear, you can hardly see as you reach for the glaive he used to kill Heimdall; it flies into your hand without resistance. You hope he's pleading. You hope he's begging for forgiveness. You hope he's scared.

The glaive enters his chest, right where his heart lies. Blood explodes from the wound, Thanos' mouth is open in shock, his eyes meeting yours as you twist the weapon and his face contorts in pain. Good, suffer, die, you think, twisting it further, pressing down harder.

And then he's dead. His head lolls back and his eyes go dull and he's lifeless, he's dead. The sound of roaring wind reduces, fades, until it's nothing.

You stare at him for a few seconds before falling backwards, your back hitting solid ground. The sky spins above you, the stars tiny glittering shards of broken glass against black silk.

It takes you about four and a half seconds of blissful ignorance, induced, you'll later presume, by shock, for you to work out why the world is different. Why you feel empty. Hollow.

Loki.

You jolt upright, swinging around to find him, and there he is, lying on the floor several feet away from you, very clearly dead.

A noise escapes you, you feel the vibration in your throat, against your lips, but you don't hear any sound leave you. Your limbs fail you. You need to get to him, you need to, but you can't move.

There's a pain in your heart so intense that you think you might pass out. You curl in on yourself, trying to protect yourself from the pain but it's everywhere, assaulting you from all directions, mental, physical, horrific directions.

There is sudden pressure beneath each of your arms, and then you're being lifted, and Thor is there, holding you against him while you shake and sob, covered in Thanos' blood. He cries too, great ungainly sobs which rock his body violently.

"Loki." you rasp. You don't know how long you've been crying, holding on to each other, but you want to be with Loki.

His skin is blue, his eyes crimson red. Blood leaks from the corners of both of his eye sockets, dark blue against his lighter blue skin. His neck is bent at an odd angle, his eyes staring past you unseeingly. You'll never see him as an Asgardian again.

You sob so hard you think you might die along with him, holding his icy cold lifeless body to you, letting the frostbite set in, not caring, not feeling it.

Wake up, wake up, don't leave me here. I love you.

Your thoughts meet nothingness, fading away uselessly into the void with no one to receive them.

When the glowing orange door appears and the strange, armoured men step through it, you feel an overwhelming sense of relief. This is a dream.

The one at the front – who happens to be a woman – says some things into a tiny, beeping device, and then steps forward towards you. You get in front of Loki protectively, even though this is a dream. Even though he's dead.

"On behalf of the Time Variance Authority, I hereby arrest you for crimes against the Sacred Timeline. Hands up."

Is she talking to you? She's looking at you, at the very least.

"What?" Thor says.

The armoured, helmeted men around her raise their weapons.

"You're coming with us." the woman says.

This is without a doubt the strangest and most real dream you've ever had. But the emptiness in your chest... all the pain. You know this isn't really a dream. Tears fill your eyes again as you turn and look at the corpse on the ground behind you.

Two of the armed guards behind you grab your arms and handcuff you, pulling you backwards, away from Thor and Loki.

"No!" you exclaim, struggling weakly, completely drained from your earlier endeavours. Thor tries to come after you, but then he's falling backwards in slow motion. You blink, utterly confounded.

"Reset the timeline." the woman commands, and then you're dragged through the orange door.