Well. All I'll say here is that we had to catch up to canon eventually.

Here is my take on just what led up to Loki landing on Earth...and what he wound up leaving behind in the bargain.

Being assembled all together for a meeting was nothing unusual. The only difference now was that Thanos wanted to speak directly to them, rather than permitting them to overhear while one of his subordinates or associates outlined what he needed destroyed, stolen, or killed. So rather than sitting at his feet, Thanos' three children stood before him. They stood in identical poses, hands held open and empty before them, heads bowed and eyes downcast before their master and father. It wasn't even habit by now to do so. It was something closer to instinct instead.

The Mad Titan sat before them on his throne. The Other was not present in body, but as always, they could feel it in their heads, watching, listening, waiting.

"We have a new target this day," said Thanos, without further preamble once he had satisfied himself of their attentions. "My spies have at long last located another of the Infinity Gems."

That was certainly noteworthy news. Though they all knew better than to look up, the three exchanged the briefest flickers of sidelong glances with one another. Thanos had been hunting for the Infinity Gems for longer than any of them had been in his service, even Gamora. While they were frequently employed in other tasks to help the warlord keep his grip on this galaxy and beyond, this was a job that was always in the back of their minds, and not just because the Other kept it there. To acquire all the gems and the gauntlet that held them was not Thanos' ultimate goal, but it was what he sought in favor of that goal, perhaps the one thing that might help him achieve it. Whenever he found a lead, a real lead, one of them would be sent chasing after it. Failure to at least bring back additional reliable information was one of the worst offenses they could commit as his children.

So they knew without asking what would be required of them. All that mattered now was what would be involved in carrying out these orders.

"Where, father?" asked Gamora, speaking for all three of them.

With a flick of his fingers, Thanos activated the hologram display set into the floor between them. Once the model of their target galaxy flashed into being before their eyes, the three assassins knew they had permission to look up.

No one else would have seen the flash of shock on Loki's face, betrayed in the most subtle signs – the way his eyes widened a fraction, the way he swallowed. But Nebula did, and she had Gamora standing between them. Thanos doubtlessly did as well.

But their father continued on as though he hadn't. He rattled off the galaxy's coordinates, and gave the planet's name – Earth. A tiny, insignificant world full of tiny, insignificant beings, so technologically backward that they had only mastered short-distance, slower-than-light space travel within the past century.

"Father, may I speak?" asked Loki quietly.

Thanos settled back onto his throne with a self-satisfied sort of smile. "Yes, I thought you might ask. Speak, boy."

"One of us will not be sufficient to infiltrate this world."

"Please," Nebula snorted. "It sounds like just one of us would be overkill."

"For Earth itself, perhaps. But while this planet might be otherwise backwards on its own, it has powerful protectors. They will notice the second we arrive in their territories, and they have no small amount of experience repelling invaders even if they have not yet reached beyond the boundaries of that galaxy themselves. We will be found wherever we try to hide there, and we will be stopped."

"A grim assessment. And just what alternatives do you propose, child? You must have some, to have dare spoken up."

"We do not hide. We do not sneak. We take the Chitauri and conquer Earth for ourselves instead, and any other world around them that does not fall into line. We take it from Asgard." Here he smiled, that smile that always reminded Nebula of broken glass, glittering and sharp. "Perhaps we take Asgard as well."

Oh. Nebula felt as though she'd just been punched in the stomach. She stared at Loki openly, and Gamora could not chastise her for doing so because Gamora was doing the same.

They tried not to talk very much about their pasts, where they'd come from, who they had been before this because none of that mattered in Thanos' service. But Loki, as the newest to their little "family", and the only one of the three who hadn't had their previous family messily slaughtered first, had the most to let slip. One of the things he had certainly let slip even to them was the name of his former home.

Nebula wasn't sure whether to be impressed or alarmed. Once upon a time, she'd offered to kill Loki's family herself when the day inevitably came for that to be done, to spare him the pain of having to do so. It was a pain that even she believed no one should ever have to suffer.

Her brother had clearly come a very long way since then.

"And why would I care about these worlds?" Thanos asked, though the fact that he asked at all meant that he was intrigued.

"For a start, Asgard has been holding on to the Infinity Gauntlet since time immemorial. I assume you will need to acquire that at some point. Why not now? And second of all…" He held his hands before him, palm up, and summoned a shimmer of green sparks without so much as a twitch. "I believe you hold some curiosity with my own magical talents, do you not?"

"'Curiosity', yes…that is an acceptable turn of phrase."

"Asgard is where I learned my talents. Asgard is where you might find any number of sorcerers like me, though of far lesser caliber. Asgard is located within the branches of Yggdrasil, known as the World Tree, a localization of so much raw energy that, if you were to turn it to your own designs, none could possibly stand against you. Not that they can now, of course." Loki hastened to add this last, and Nebula let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. He'd been treading dangerous close to suicide. Again. "But the Nova Corps, the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, Badoon and Kree and all of them coming to you with their petty little problems, getting in your way like biting ants…it would become just that much easier to brush them all aside in favor of loftier ambitions worthy of your time. More power is hardly something to scoff at, is it not? Especially when you can simply take it from your enemies."

"Hm…" Thanos rubbed at his chin, and Nebula's heart skipped to see how genuinely thoughtful he looked. She didn't have to look at either of the other two to realize that she was no longer the only one holding her breath. Loki most of all – this was most definitely a life or death matter for him. He had spoken up boldly, and that would either be rewarded handsomely or punished gruesomely.

Thanos' face betrayed nothing of his thoughts, but he beckoned lazily. "Come here, boy."

Loki's hands betrayed the most about him, in that moment. He made to fold them behind his back, to hide the way they trembled. But they were expected to keep their hands where they could be seen at all times in Thanos' presence, so he moved them back around to his front instead. He clenched one in the fabric of his shirt, before folding them together before himself instead, in a way that betrayed how they were shaking quite plainly. But what did it matter? There were no secrets, before the Mad Titan.

Gamora's expression betrayed nothing. She had already returned to staring placidly at her feet until called upon. But she moved one leg just slightly to nudge his foot with hers', urging him on. Loki stumbled half a step, and almost looked back. He didn't, and moved to stand before Thanos instead as ordered.

The entire scene took just a couple of seconds, if that. An outsider might not even have noticed it at all.

But they were family, albeit a twisted and broken one, and family understood.

Loki didn't so much as flinch as Thanos reached down to take hold of his chin, though the warlord's hands were larger than his head. He didn't twitch as his head was tilted up to face his father. Thanos smiled, but that could mean anything.

"Tell me, boy," he said. "Asgard is your home, is it not?"

"It was where I resided before being brought into your service, my lord. Nothing more."

"And if I ordered you to, you would raze it to the foundations?"

"Of course, my lord."

"And you would burn what was left of your family with it?"

"I wouldn't even have to wait until we reached Asgard. Thor favors the Earth. He would come to its defense in a heartbeat. But yes. I will not return until I have driven a knife through all their hearts, if that is what you desire."

For someone of such great size, the delicate control with which Thanos could move might have been surprising to anyone else. It had certainly proven lethal to more than a fair few of his enemies. So it wasn't the least bit surprising to her when Thanos released Loki's chin and instead lightly stroked his head, like one might a favorite dog.

"So eager for the chance to prove yourself. Are you jealous of your sisters, perhaps, the way you always were of your brother? But what does it matter in the end, I suppose? In the end, you are here, and you are mine."

He sat back in his chair, and they knew that this meeting was over. "Very well, Loki. I will offer you this chance. You will take the Chitauri, you will take the Earth, and you will take Asgard. And when I have what I require, perhaps I will leave what is left of those worlds to you to rule. I know how much you have always craved a kingship, after all."

"Thank you, father."

"And if you should fail me, know this. There will be no darkened crevice, no barren moon where I cannot find you and bring you to heel. And when I do..." He reached down once more to tilt Loki's chin up to face him. "...I will make you long for something as sweet as pain."

Nebula wasn't entirely certain what she was hoping to accomplish with what she did next. She just knew that it felt like the rug had been ripped out from under her understanding of the world, and someone had to pay for that.

Loki was both the culprit and the most easily available victim. Not for the first time, but for what would later prove to be the last, she confronted him at his room on the floor he shared with her and Gamora. The door was, predictably, closed. She hammered on it instead, hard enough to dent the metal beneath her metal fist.

Several things happened in very quick succession. Loki opened the door at long last. He recognized her, and before Nebula could do much more than open her mouth, he'd pulled her inside and pulled the door shut behind her.

When he turned to look back at her, he was smiling bright as the sun.

"I had no idea that would actually work."

That certainly wasn't what Nebula had been expecting to hear, and it brought her up short. Only for a moment, however, then she continued on, with far more vehemence in her voice than she'd initially intended to show. "What the hell was that? By the rotting flesh of Knowhere, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Now it was Loki's turn to look taken aback, to look as though she'd just slapped him in the face even if Nebula was still only considering laying him out. A blink, and then he smiled, slow and strange. "Why, Nebula. You seem downright offended."

"Offended? Please." Nebula snorted, in an attempt to hide just how disquieted she was, how she suspected he just might be right. The fact of the matter was that she'd thought she'd come to know Loki, in a way Gamora had never allowed her to get so close. She'd seen something in him, and let him see something in her, that she'd thought had counted for something in this otherwise empty, rigid existence they lived. "You just took me by surprise. I didn't think you had it in you."

There were some things in this cold, cruel universe that should still not be done. Killing your own family was one of them. It was one thing even Nebula and Gamora, for all the horrors they had become inured to, had never had to do. They certainly never would have volunteered for the job.

"Didn't you? But I told you once before, didn't I? They are nothing to me. Asgard is nothing to me. I am so much more than I was, with them, and there is no going back."

"You also begged your mother to bring you home when she found you."

Loki looked as though he'd just been stabbed, and that was a look Nebula was intimately familiar with. When he replied, it was with his voice in a snarl: "Don't you dare speak of her...!"

He looked so angry that Nebula thought for a moment that he might strike her. She moved first, and faster, shoving him hard back against the door and moving to pin his hands over his head. A thought had some of the servos in her mechanical arm whirring a little harder to counteract his strength. They were about the same size, and Nebula with her cybernetics weighed a little more. He could have made her pay for even touching him by scalding her with ice, but of course that would never be his first resort.

They struggled for a few minutes, but it was an ultimately futile effort on Loki's part. He finally subsided, apparently upon realizing that her goal was only to restrain rather than to harm, though that didn't stop him glaring fiercely at her as he panted for breath.

No blow she could ever have dealt could ever have done as much damage as those words. She only remembered that day in this moment, when before it was something they'd both tried to forget. She was a little surprised Loki remembered it at all, as for a while Nebula had wondered if he'd been made to forget it. But she remembered it now, and understood in a flash yet another reason why that entire scene had rung so very false. More than that, his reaction had betrayed everything – even now, the thought of his mother, of the life she represented, could dig at old wounds even he couldn't entirely hide.

He'd tipped his hand, and she understood.

"And don't you dare lie to me," Nebula growled. Still, making people angry, making it so they made mistakes, that was a specialty of Loki's. She couldn't succumb to that, not now, and so Nebula took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. She deliberately forced the grip in her fingers to ease just enough that bones wouldn't be broken. "I think you've figured out how to lie to Thanos. Maybe even that cowled nightmare he keeps on a leash. But you don't get to lie to me, Loki."

"Have you told him?" Loki's voice was cautious, and his eyes were dark.

"Do I need to? They'll figure it out eventually. I still can't believe they haven't already. And when they do..."

"'Something as sweet as pain'," Loki said, his lips turning up in the faintest of smiles. "Yes. I heard him quite clearly. But it's not as though I need to go against him, do I?"

"You just need to get caught. You just need to get home. And then, what? You'll run to your brother to protect you?"

"And tell him what, Nebula? We hardly parted under friendly terms. In fact, we parted when he threw me into the abyss of space after he thought I was attempting to usurp Asgard's throne."

"Then what, Loki? Just what are you hoping to accomplish here? Deign to share with the rest of us mortals before I beat it out of you."

He did not look remotely perturbed at her threat. They knew one another too well by now. That didn't mean he didn't believe that she really would, of course - quite the opposite. Just that he knew it was coming now.

Yet his expression fell, some of the tension bleeding from him. He looked away from her, and she let him when it became clear that he was only trying to find the words.

"I don't know," he said at last, with as much of a shrug as he could manage when she had his hands pinned. "I only knew that…whatever might happen, whatever this might lead to, I saw a chance. I had to take it. All I knew, in that moment, was that this was my chance to get away from Thanos."

Silence hung between them for several long seconds, a silence as heavy as the words themselves and all they meant, all they might, maybe, possibly mean. Nebula was the first to break it. With a deliberate effort, she forced her fingers to uncurl, forced herself to step back, letting out a long sigh and forcing herself to exhale tension in muscle and metal with it.

She should stop this right now. She should go to Thanos and tell him all of this. Even if the Other could somehow no longer see into Loki's mind, it could see into hers', it could read her memories of these past few moments and know that Loki was planning to betray them all. It was the only safe, sensible outcome to this insanity.

Yet…they were here. They were talking, and Nebula had long ago forgotten how to tell the difference between the Other's presence in her head and her own forcibly trained obedience.

"How are you doing it?" she asked. "Shielding your thoughts. Are you doing the same for me?"

"In a way."

"Do you know its working? For all you know, they're just waiting for us to hand over enough rope to hang ourselves with."

"If so, I believe we've already passed that point and reached 'enough rope to rappel down to the depths of the deepest oceans'."

There was absolutely no reason to smile right now. Yet, somehow, that only made it easier to do so, a smile of wry amusement that bled a little more of the tension from her shoulders. Nebula knew, all of them knew, that there really was a strange sort of release to be found in helplessness. Sometimes, things happened or didn't happen, and there wasn't a damn thing you could do to influence the situation any further than that. For the three of them, normally required to keep such rigid control over themselves and do whatever was asked of them in service to Thanos, it was sometimes a relief to remember these things. They might still be punished because something utterly outside their control went wrong, but at least they wouldn't have to waste energy fixing it.

"I suppose that's fair enough," she conceded out loud. "Then you've got nothing to lose by telling me. Whatever walls you have up here…" She tapped him lightly but pointedly on the forehead. "Thanos and that thing have been trying to break them down since day one."

"They succeeded," said Loki quietly, two words that she knew referred to more elegantly prolonged and brutal torture than more words could ever encapsulate. Then, hitching a faint smile back onto his face, he added: "I've been…building them back up, so to speak. Not an easy task, as I've had to teach myself to avoid all my old tricks in doing so. But enough little pieces can quickly add up to a whole."

"'Building them back up' since when?"

"Since Mother."

Nebula drew back slightly, grudgingly impressed enough to release his hands. That had been months ago, by now. She'd thought at the time that Loki seemed to be acting a little…strangely, for someone who had just gone through the trauma of losing contact with their family all over again and being punished for making contact at all.

Apparently, she had been right, just not remotely in the way she'd first assumed.

Loki's grin became a little more pronounced at the look on her face, and then an idea seemed to strike him. He reached out, quick as lightning, and before Nebula could give into the reflex to retaliate, she realized he was only grabbing ahold of her hands with his.

"You should come with me!" he breathed. All of a sudden, he sounded rushed, almost desperate. Excited. "Even if he's agreed, Thanos only wants the Tesseract. He'll never trust me entirely. We can use that. Say you have doubts, say you want to keep an eye on me on his behalf. By the time he realizes the truth, we'll be half a universe away! And if he tries to come for us, we can take the Tesseract ourselves and fight!"

We. Better still, worse still, beneath that, the unspoken implications that came with it. Together. Not just under Thanos' orders, but by their own initiative. Their own wants.

Nebula had wondered once, back when she'd first encountered Loki in his cell, if he was mad and just very good at working with that. In that moment, she found herself wondering again.

Only for a moment, however. Then Nebula found herself feeling certain about a great many things that she'd never had cause to think about before.

"You're insane," she said. "And you're going to get us killed."

Some of his excitement faltered. Nebula's chest hurt. "Do you have any better ideas?" he demanded, a flash of defiance in his over-bright green eyes.

She didn't. Nebula just had one idea that was much, much worse. She took it anyway, just because he was here and just because she could.

Loki made an almost comical sound of surprise as Nebula moved in close to pin his hands again. Whatever noises he wanted to make after that, whatever protests he wanted to sound, were quickly muffled by the kiss she planted soundly on his lips.

After the moment of initial shock passed, he didn't seem much in the mood to protest at all.

Nebula had sometimes been called on in the past to use her body in ways other than for torturing or immediately killing people. People, normal people, were easy, soft, and pliant, willing to do anything for another warm body. With the right touch here or word there they could be coaxed into spilling all sorts of important secrets, or else left with wounds that would not easily show and would yet be all the more stubborn to heal.

Nebula still always enjoyed those missions the least. She had spent so much of her life striving to become stronger, to be worthy, that to willingly debase herself as these more delicate operations so often required…it left a bad taste in her mouth. It left her skin crawling for days afterwards in a way that the most grisly assassinations couldn't accomplish anymore.

Nebula hated the feeling of being weak, of submitting. Even to Thanos. Even to serve Thanos' goals. Even as a necessary pretense.

Yet as she kissed Loki, there against the door of his room, somehow she'd never felt stronger. He could have snapped her wrist or frozen her fingers and shattered them. He was stronger than he frequently let himself be, despite all her efforts to drive him to the alternative. Yet he didn't do anything of the sort. His mouth was soft and warm and pliant against hers', and it tasted of an invitation, one she was more than happy to take.

Better still, Nebula could feel him flexing and pulling against her grip, but not nearly as hard as he could have. Not nearly as strong as he should have, if he'd really wanted to escape. So Nebula could only assume that he didn't.

She had thought, shortly after they had first been properly introduced, that she wasn't sure when looking at Loki whether she wanted to kiss him or slit his throat. So many times over the course of their relationship, she had found herself debating between preserving his carefully-hidden fragility as something rare and fascinating or stamping it out for the good of them both. Now she had her answer in all the best ways possible. So she kissed him until her heart was pounding because she could, and he knew that she could. They had nothing to gain from it and everything to lose from it. This moment, this meeting of lips and fingers, was for no one but themselves.

When Nebula finally pulled away, it was only for the sake of taking a breath without tasting him, for the sake of stringing a sentence together. For a long moment, even that was beyond her. For a long moment, she could only laugh breathlessly. Loki's eyes were wide and dark, his breath was coming in time with hers', his lips were red and a little swollen and oh, those were her teeth marks...

"You like this," Nebula purred. She leaned in to catch his lower lip between her teeth once more, sucking languidly. He whimpered, and it was like a lance of heat straight into the pit of her stomach. "I should have known. You've always been afraid to take charge. Afraid to be as powerful as you know you could be. You like it when someone else takes control. It sets you free."

At long last, she released him, stepping two short paces back. Loki's hands remained where she'd left them a second longer and then, perhaps realizing that permission had been silently granted, he lowered them. He cradled them against his chest, one clutching the other, and she saw bruises forming.

Loki only stared at her, tense. Breathless. Waiting. Nebula didn't have the heart to disappoint him.

"First it was Thanos," she breathed. "Now it's me. Get on the bed."

He did. Loki laid himself down on his back, and Nebula could feel him all but humming with tension as she stalked over to join him, as she straddled his hips and settled herself on top of him. She settled herself right over the front of his pants, and swallowed hard at the way a muscle in his throat jumped with a hitched breath. When she growled "hands up", he obeyed, and she rewarded him with a deliberately long caress up his arms to his wrists. But she didn't hold them there this time, and rewarded his questioning look with a hungry smile.

"I'm going to need my hands for what I'm going to do to you. And if you want me to keep doing anything to you, you'll keep them there. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good."

Most of what she did with her hands, and her mouth, and her body, was torment him. Nebula produced a knife from her boot before letting both boots fall carelessly to the floor. It didn't take cutting around too many straps to strip off his top, but she enjoyed herself anyway. And if she accidentally, or not so accidentally, nicked his skin once or twice when stripping him bare, the noises he made weren't entirely ones of pain.

Finally, a red haze to her vision, Nebula pushed aside the last fold of cloth to bare his torso to her entirely - slender lines and lean muscles, fine scars and the delicate impression of his ribs just barely visible as he took shallow, racing breaths. Nebula took her time looking him over, eyes roaming hungrily over what was being offered up to her. Then she wasted no more time in bending her head to bite in a mark onto his pale, lying skin. He keened a little beneath her, a sound that became a breathless cry as she deliberately rolled her hips.

"Nebula..."

It was a mad, stupid, desperate impulse that drove Nebula on to say what she did next. Yet no words had ever tasted as sweet. It was likely that none ever would again. No words had ever meant more to her to say, making her twisted, mechanical heart skip and thud with too many emotions to name.

"Shhh," she murmured, and drove the point home by sliding her hands up his chest to wrap them slowly around his throat. She felt Loki swallow beneath her grip, and her pulse skipped a beat in time with his. "You're mine, okay?" she breathed, curling her fingers just a little tighter, staring down at him intently. As though hypnotized, as though mesmerized by her, he stared back up at her with his eyes wide and dark, seeming all the more prominent in his pale face with his dark hair fanned out around him. A few strands were stuck to his sweat-stained face. Nebula wasn't even surprised at herself when she brushed them carefully aside. She was out of her comfort zone and traveling without a map, well beyond anything she'd ever known.

Even so, she didn't feel like she was falling.

Instead, she finally knew what it felt like to fly.

A thrill lanced up her spine when the words made Loki's breath visibly quicken, his fingers flexing and his pulse racing beneath her grip. She felt him twitch beneath her, and hissed softly between her teeth. Yet all the signs were there – the words excited him as much to hear as they excited her to say.

So Nebula pressed her advantage. She got so few of them in life. "Not Thanos'. Not Asgard's. Mine." She punctuated each assertion with a roll of her hips, slow and deliberate, and each one drew a broken whine from his lips. "Your life is mine. Say it."

"Yours'," he breathed, and he said the word like it tasted sweet. "I am yours'."

Nebula inhaled sharply, feeling her arousal coil dark and tighter, and as she did so she had the mad impression that she was drawing the very air he breathed into herself. It made her smile. It made her feel satisfied in a way that merely laying him out on his back could not…though, that was proving undeniably fun. She suddenly wasn't content to let it end at this.

Thanos be damned.

"Good boy," she murmured, leaning down to kiss him. He parted his lips easily and willingly for her, and she took his mouth with relish and without hesitation. She broke the kiss at her leisure, ignoring his whine of protest and the way he squirmed with such wonderful helplessness beneath her touch. He could have ended this. He could have broken her wrists if he'd only remembered his power over ice, or made her see such horrors that she might even have forgotten that she was about to fuck him.

He didn't. Why would he? He finally understood that here was where he belonged, where he perhaps had always belonged, just as she finally understood.

"Now that I have you," she murmured against his lips. "I will not ever let you go. And so that means you aren't allowed to die, doesn't it? Not until I say so. No one is allowed to kill you except me. Do you understand?"

"Yes." It clearly pained him to admit as much. She knew how much he wanted to die, how much he had wanted it since first being brought into Thanos' service and for who-knew-how-long before. She knew that he was only living because Thanos had forbidden him to die. He lived to serve the Mad Titan.

Now, he lived to serve her. He even did so willingly, though the fact that it was reluctant willingness only made it all the sweeter.

Nebula eased the pain of it with another kiss, slow and deep, and didn't break it even as she lifted her hips to seek out the buckles on his pants.

She rode him mercilessly - hard, at first, and then slow and careful enough to force him back from the edge. Doing so was a supreme effort of will on her part. It wasn't one that was quite as great as hacking off her own arm, but it was close. Very close. Still, she was able to stave off snapping beneath the weight of her need by the sight of Loki twisted up in pleasure and pain and surrender beneath her. With hands and mouth and blade, she took particular pleasure in leaving her own marks on his skin. Most of them would probably heal within a few hours. Still, maybe some wouldn't.

Sometimes she toyed with tightening her hands around his throat. Never enough to make him black out entirely. She wasn't that merciful. Nebula was, however very, very good at killing people. Sometimes that translated to being very, very good at keeping them alive. She knew how to dance on the edge so that his world narrowed to her and only her and only the sensations she was inflicting on him, but no further. Sometimes, she just tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled his head roughly to the side, the better to bare his throat for her to mark once more.

Loki was forbidden to touch her in turn. The only time he tried, she punished him by stopping for a full minute. Not getting off of him, shifting her hips just enough to keep him hard, but nothing beyond that, and she could tell he was still close to begging by the time she resumed.

Nebula almost made him, but her need was just as fierce as his by then.

All the same, Loki was still forbidden to touch her in turn. Just in case. She didn't want to risk remembering all the moments that had come before this one, where she had been in control at the start and at the finish but never in between. She didn't want to risk remembering, and in doing so ruining this moment where she was perfectly, utterly in control, free to do whatever she pleased with him and still have him thank her at the finish.

It was a mark of how far they'd come together, and perhaps a sign of just what her true feelings were beneath the conditioning and the orders and the reality of their situation, that what Nebula ultimately decided to do was spare him.

So she came, and she let him come with her, and it was long and drawn out and good even as it was edged with pain. Both of them tried to silenced themselves, muffle themselves, even though it was well past a time when stealth could possibly have saved them. When it was over, Nebula barely had the presence of mind to pull herself off of him and slump back against him, panting, eyes wide and heart racing. She could feel the thudding of Loki's pulse through his skin just the same.

She could have stayed. Nebula knew from past experience that it would have been "traditional" or "expected" to stay, and maybe that was precisely why she didn't. She wanted to, or at least a part of her wanted to. She certainly wanted to in body. The sex had been hard enough to leave her exhausted, trembling, and already sore. She wanted maybe even a little in mind, out of mingled curiosity and need to see where all of this would go next.

It was that same inevitability, however, that drove Nebula on to leave instead. If she stayed, there would be no saving her or him. If she stayed, that would be admitting to too many emotions that neither of them could afford for her to have. If she left, if she dragged herself out of his bed no matter how much her muddled mind and aching thighs protested, then she could pretend it was only physical.

It was a lie, of course, but it was a lie that she could still believe might save them.

Of course, she was proven a fool. Of course, this was nevertheless one of the very few times that she was proven right at the end. They really had just been given enough rope to hang themselves, and in the end, they'd even done all the work of weaving it and slipping it around one another's neck.

The days that followed were taken up with the busy work of preparing for an invasion. It wasn't the first time she'd lived through such an affair, but Nebula held out hope for a little while longer that it might be the last. She didn't see Loki for some days after their last encounter, yet found herself hoping all the same that his absence would include a discussion with Thanos, to secure her involvement in the journey to Earth.

Then she did see Loki again. They ran into one another entirely by chance, and somehow, Nebula knew from one look in his eyes that it was not to be. Still, she'd never yet known the ability to quit when she should, so she pushed her luck anyway.

"I need to talk to you," she said, reaching out to take firm hold of his upper arm.

He didn't even look at her, continuing to stare straight ahead even as he stopped in his tracks. Even in profile, however, she could see something wrong with his eyes – too bright, the green almost blue, and glassy as stars seen through a ship window.

"Can it wait? I need to take this report down to…"

"No. It can't."

He pursed his lips in an expression of distaste, but allowed himself to be towed into a quiet alcove between two windows without another word and with minimal dragging of feet. Nebula's mind was already working through the initial fog of shock to take in more details. One of those details included what he was holding, in his other hand.

"Nice staff. Where'd you get it?"

He looked down at the thing as though only just remembering that he'd been carrying it. Then he smiled, a vicious, edged expression, and hefted it in both hands for her to take a better look. Nebula had the very distinct impression, however, that any move made to touch it would result in her losing fingers.

"A gift," he said. "From Thanos. In preparation for the war."

It looked exactly like Loki's sort of weapon, that much was true. It might have been a scepter, or it might have been a spear. The two pronged points at one end looked sharp enough to slice someone's heart open either way. But what drew Nebula's eye immediately was the gem set into the tip, glowing a piercing blue-white that made her vision swim to look at too long, and her heart stutter to realize what it was.

Just looking at it let her hear the echo of the Other's whispers in the back of her mind. If that was the case, how loud must it be in Loki's as he held it?

"That's an Infinity Gem." Her voice was flat, and cold with fear. Thanos' endeavors had born some success over the past several years, but the fruits of those successes were generally locked away under everything he could muster to guard them, in preparation for the day when they could be united together.

"It is," Loki agreed, smiling in obvious satisfaction. "More than powerful enough to help me conquer the Earth, and Asgard after it."

"Alone?"

He didn't so much as skip a beat, at first, and Nebula almost gave in to the urge to break his jaw. This time, it was more from the fear she felt even being near the thing on his staff than any fond feelings towards Loki personally. He could kill her entirely by accident, with that in his hands, and she no longer trusted him not to. "Of course. That is what Thanos instructed, is it not? Really, for a planet as pathetic as Midgard, it seems the only sensible course of…"

Then he did falter. Then he looked at her, and Nebula could see something behind the cold blue fog. "Oh," he said at last, very quietly. "What we discussed."

"Yes. What we discussed." Nebula's felt her fists curl and uncurl reflexively in her side. The motors in her mechanical arm were humming with the effort of staying still. "Have you even bothered to mention it to Father, in the middle of all your grand plans?"

"No." Did he sound apologetic? Merely wary? Nebula found that she was having trouble telling anymore, now that the fog was back in his eyes. But somehow, she knew it didn't matter.

Loki drew himself up a little, visibly trying to regain his regal composure. "You must understand, Nebula. This is an intensely vital mission, and Father trusts me…"

Fear of accidental death be damned. Nebula didn't quite manage to break his jaw – sometimes, even she forgot he was tougher than he looked – but she made a damn good go of it that snapped his head to the side and sent him staggering. She thought he even might have bitten his tongue, a thought which set off a lovely, warm, vindictive little glow in her chest.

"Save it," Nebula said. What more was there to say? So that they would both be spared the needless, pointless pain of finding out, she turned on her heel and walked away in a random direction, without once looking back. Anything to get her away from him, before she was somehow tricked into making even more of a fool of herself.

Distance from him, however, did not lead to distance from the memories and feelings that had taken root in her head and heart. Perversely, it almost seemed to have the opposite effect. Each step she took felt like she was simultaneously driving a shard of glass deeper and deeper into her heart. The memory of feelings that had only just become clear were like the weight of a noose drawing tighter, she couldn't breathe she couldn't blink without remembering…

"Nebula?"

Nebula whirled round with a wild snarl, bringing her fist around, reaching for her knife with her other hand…

…only to find her punch caught, with truly unfair ease, by Gamora. Nebula found herself freezing mid-grab, eyes widening with renewed surprise. Yet despite having just been attacked, Gamora seemed perfectly calm. Indeed, though her wild rage had left Nebula easily open to counterattack, her sister did not take the opportunity. Instead, she merely gave Nebula's arm enough of a twist to make her point, and then released her. Nebula should have kept on attacking, because it was not every day her sister was so foolish, but somehow, she didn't have it in her anymore. She stepped back, instead, folding her hands behind her back so she didn't succumb to the urge to cradle them against her chest. Even the fading warmth of Gamora's hand felt enough to burn, especially when combined with the sympathy in Gamora's gaze.

In their lives, there was no difference between sympathy or pity. There couldn't be.

"You knew," Nebula growled, accusing and hurt.

"We all did," said Gamora, quiet and level and Nebula wanted to hit her all over again. "Even the Other. Even Father."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

If there was to be any sort of punishment for her foolishness, that would have been one thing. But as far as Nebula could tell, the other three had merely been content to sit back and watch her fail and suffer and leave it at that. That, more than almost anything, somehow rankled at her. Their lives were hard, cruel, viciously regimented, and yet at the end of it all there was always supposed to be a point. Punishment for failure. Training or modification to become stronger. Eliminating threats, eliminating weakness, working together when they had to.

How was she supposed to work with him after this? How was she supposed to look him in the eye? Even Nebula could only swallow her feelings so far. Not like perfect, beloved Gamora.

"It's better this way," Gamora said, with the sort of half-shrug she recognized as deliberately casual. Maybe it was a habit they'd all picked up from one another. "It's like any scar. Now that you've been hurt there once…it will be harder to hurt you there again."

"He isn't coming back, is he?"

"Not without the Gem. And I don't fancy his chances of getting the Gem. He's not a warlord. He's not a leader. He thinks he can control the one in the scepter…"

"…but it's only so the Other can keep its claws in him," Nebula finished without missing a beat. "No matter how far he goes." She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, consciously forcing her heart back to a regular rhythm in doing so.

"And if you had gone with him, it would have found a way to do the same to you."

"Leaving you to bear all of Thanos' affections alone, sister dearest."

As much as they all fought amongst themselves for Thanos' favor – even if it had been Loki and Nebula against Gamora for the longest time – Nebula was still well aware that Gamora had every reason to flinch at the truth behind those words. This she did, and even Nebula was merciful enough to say nothing in reply.

Then it was her turn to flinch, however, as Gamora half-twitched as though to reach out towards her. Gamora saw it, she couldn't not, and so let her hand fall back to her side with the faintest of frowns that was still said as much as any words could, after so many years together. Sometimes, it was hard to remember just how late Loki had come into their lives, how long it had been just the two of them.

"I don't..." Gamora began. Stopped. Took a breath. Tried again. "I don't like being this way, Nebula. Any more than you do. Any more than he did."

Did. As though he was already dead. Well, he might as well have been. Accepting that fact as quickly as possible was the only thing she could do, now.

It was better this way.

"Shame we don't have a choice," said Nebula. With even the illusion of just the two of them, here, she could even mean it. With even the illusion of just the two of them here, it was also even harder to turn her back on the only sibling she had left, and walk away once more. Nebula made herself do it anyway, calling back over her shoulder, "Do me a favor, sis? Don't ever do me any more favors."

She made sure to insinuate her way into a mission that would take her to another solar system while the last of the preparations were underway. By the time Nebula returned, weeks later, it was to the news that Loki never would.

Thanos told her that he'd died a coward, died a traitor. Nebula listened, nodded, and tried very hard not to feel anything about that. Maybe that was just as well. She wasn't sure what she would have felt even if she could.

It was better this way.

Weeks later, Nebula sat alone in the cockpit of her star-jumper, speeding through hyperspace in fast pursuit of her wayward sister.

It was only there, as stars blurred around her in a riot of colors even her eyes could barely see, that Nebula remembered Gamora's words.

It will be harder to hurt you there again.

Very deliberately and very conscientiously, Nebula reached out and made sure that her communications channels were switched entirely off. After that, there was no one to hear her as she laughed and laughed and laughed, until her stomach hurt and there were tears in her eyes. She didn't stop laughing for a hundred thousand light years.