After the end of everything, when the fight is over and the universe is rebalanced, Thanos goes to a secluded cabin to watch the sun rise, just as he said he would. The wound from Thor's axe aches, but it is already beginning to heal, and it is easy enough to ignore when he contemplates the magnitude of what he has accomplished. Half of all life, gone in an instant. It's a heady thought, headier still to think that he is vindicated against everyone who called him a monster, that this peace is the culmination of a lifetime's effort and sacrifice.

He regrets Gamora, still. She was magnificent, a bright and cunning child he was able to sharpen into one of the fiercest warriors he has ever known, and he wishes it had not been necessary to give her up. But his unwavering resolve even in the face of losing his most finely honed killer is yet more proof that only he possessed the strength of will to do what had to be done.

The Gauntlet, having served its purpose, has gone dull and brittle; the metal cracks in places as he pulls it off, the Infinity Stones no longer glowing so brightly. But he has done what he set out to do and has no need of it anymore, so he sets it on a rough wooden table and limps to the front of the cabin where he can sit in the sunlight. It feels like a benediction as he lowers himself into a chair and closes his eyes.

Balance. Order. The universe carrying on as it should, no longer crippled by the teeming masses weighing it down, with those left behind made harder and stronger, forced to show why they were worthy of survival. It's a beautiful thing.

There is a quiet hum behind him, and Thanos twists to see the Space Stone flaring to life on its own. As he frowns at it, a projection of sorts begins to take shape next to the table, indistinct but vaguely humanoid. It moves toward him and around the chair, gaining definition as it goes, until standing in front of him is the semi-translucent blue form of Loki Laufeyson.

"So," Loki says, "this is your retirement cabin? It's a lovely view, I'll grant you that much."

Thanos sighs and leans back in his chair. "I suppose I should have known you'd manage to come crawling back somehow."

"Probably, yes. I do seem to have a talent for it."

"Hm." Thanos studies him for a moment. "Well, you don't look entirely corporeal, but with all the power of reality at my fingers, I'm sure that won't be hard to change, and then I can simply kill you again."

"You don't even want to hear my villain monologue first? It's going to be quite a good one, I think." Loki tilts his head, considering. "Though, is that really the right term for it when the one receiving the speech is the unquestioned villain, and the one giving it is a bit more ambiguous? I suppose when heroes give speeches, they focus rather more on rallying the troops and so forth, with little cause to explain their schemes to a captive audience."

"You still talk too much," Thanos says, smiling faintly. "Do you remember how I broke you of that, once? Perhaps we should revisit that lesson. I'm sure the Stones would conjure me up a needle and thread."

Loki flinches, which is satisfying, but he recovers with disappointing speed. "You know, you're not the first person to complain about that, and I doubt you'll be the last. Nearly everyone seems to think I talk too much or not enough. It's a little puzzling, really."

"Is it?" Thanos says. "I certainly have no interest in your self-important prattle. But hearing your pathetic cries for mercy as my children tore you apart and you believed I might save you from them because you were so desperate to make the pain stop? That was at least entertaining."

Loki lifts his chin. "And all of it was years ago."

"True. How about something a little more recent? I'm sure you remember how it felt when I killed you." Loki swallows visibly, and Thanos smiles, half-closing his eyes. "What was it like, feeling my hand squeeze the life from your body and knowing all your struggles were as insignificant as everything else you ever did? I wonder which was worse—fighting for air and losing, or that last moment when your bones and windpipe shattered under my fingers?"

Loki pales, one hand rising toward his throat before he jerks it back down, and when he speaks again his voice is faintly unsteady. "Has it even occurred to you to wonder how I am here?"

Thanos shrugs. "Not particularly. I attained my goal, and whatever you want to say will not change that. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the Space Stone retained some echo of you, but that only means you are in my thrall more fully than ever before." He stretches out a hand, amused when Loki flinches back. "As I said, you're not entirely solid, but I'm sure with the Stones I can change that. And then, well—now that I am no longer working on a fairly urgent timetable, I can take a bit more time killing you again. I'd worried about becoming bored here, but dealing with you should entertain me for…oh, at least a few days."

Loki just looks at him for a moment, his expression opaque. "Yes. You have all the time in the universe now that you have fulfilled your calling, don't you? So I'm sure you won't mind sparing a few minutes to listen to what I have to say. When I am finished, I imagine you will do what you like."

Thanos smiles. "So I will. But go on, say your piece. I confess I'm a little curious to hear what you think is so important, now that nothing you do or say can change what I have already done."

"I suppose we'll see, won't we?" Loki says. He seems to have regained his footing, which is annoying, but there can be no harm in letting him speak. "Well then. A dying Midgardian once told me I was going to fail because I lacked conviction, and he was absolutely right. I didn't realize it at the time, because you'd done such a thorough job of twisting my mind to shape me into your weapon, but he was right. And now I say the same thing to you, mighty Thanos: you have staked everything on your own conviction and you have already failed. You can lie to yourself all you like; you cannot lie to the Infinity Stones."

"That is an interesting argument," Thanos says. "You were weak, and you failed. I did exactly what I set out to do. I do not think the successful rebalancing of the universe indicates a lack of conviction."

"You did it, yes," Loki says. "But as you said, part of me was absorbed into the Space Stone at the moment of my death, and you carried me with you ever since, so that I saw everything you did. Part of me went to the land of the dead, where I could see even more. And I noticed something curious. When you turned half the universe's sentient life forms to ash, did you know that you quite neatly split apart families and friends? Did you know how many of them crumbled in front of the ones who loved them most? Does that sound truly random to you? Does it sound fair?"

"That is not my concern."

"It was perfectly fair, of course," Loki says, as if Thanos hadn't spoken. "That's the truly curious thing. It wasn't quite random, as you claimed, but it was fair. Because what you gave to the universe, fairly and equitably, was not peace or freedom from want. It was suffering. Because that is what you wanted all along."

"I did what had to be done," Thanos says. "I do not expect you to understand that."

"Really?" Loki says. "Did you? You could have done anything. You could have eliminated scarcity, willed food and housing into existence for those without, but you'd already determined the answer and so nothing else but that conclusion would satisfy. You delight in death, in suffering, and you're not even honest enough to admit it. No, instead you're a visionary, the only one with the clarity of mind to see what must be done and the strength of will to do it no matter the cost."

A twist of something he will not call uncertainty begins to uncurl in Thanos's chest, but he gives no sign of it. "If you are trying to make yourself feel better, I can't see the point."

"I am getting to that," Loki says. "You told Gamora her planet is a paradise now. I suppose it's peaceful enough, if only because no one lives there anymore. Did you even know that she was the last survivor of her race? The rest of the galaxy knows it. You rewrote her history, your own history, because you wanted so badly to make yourself a savior in the narrative you'd already decided was the truth. Shall I tell you what really happened? It's a fascinating story, really. Oh, your forces didn't kill everyone, not quite, but they killed a great deal more than half the population. And the tiny remnant that was left—well, you'd devastated their resources, their infrastructure, their knowledge base, their ability to travel or communicate offplanet. They died of diseases they could no longer cure, or natural disasters from which they could no longer protect themselves, or offworld opportunists they could not see coming and could not fight. Many of them killed each other, fighting over the resources you pretended would be plentiful after your culling because you never fixed anything, you just made sure they couldn't distribute what they already had. You destroyed all of them and you won't even admit it's what you wanted."

Thanos can feel his hands involuntarily curling into fists and forces them to straighten. Every word of this is ridiculous. "Why should I believe you, God of Lies?"

Loki's lips curve in a smile utterly devoid of warmth. "You forget," he says, his voice low and venomous. "I wielded the Mind Stone, dampened as it was. I wielded the Tesseract, studied it, carried it. I touched the power of the Reality Stone in its rawest form. I know them. And what is more—you tore apart my mind when you shaped me. Did you think you could ransack my thoughts without exposing some of your own to me in return?" He leans forward, his gaze so fierce and intent that Thanos begins to feel the first real prickle of unease. "I know you."

Thanos scoffs. "You know nothing."

"I know this, Lord Thanos: that you, fancying yourself as the only being in the universe coolly rational and logical enough to see what must be done to save the concept of life—you love death. You love the power you feel when you end a life—more, you love the power of inflicting pain." Loki is pacing now, caught up in his own story. "You always have, but you knew it was wrong, so you told yourself death on an unthinkable scale was the only answer to your world's problems. Not fairer distribution of resources—that is complicated, after all, not quick and satisfying—but death and grief, spread equally across the population. And when your people found your ideas abhorrent and rejected them, rejected you, you took that as further proof that no one else could see the truth. They were all too weak, too sentimental. They had to be—else why would they have failed to see your genius? You were cast out, misunderstood, so that only meant you had to be right, and everyone who was horrified by you, everyone who fought you, it only added to the mythology you built yourself, until you found in it your excuse for what you wanted to begin with. You gave up everything to save the universe, you told yourself—how was it right that you should suffer for their sake while they enjoyed the paradise you created through your sacrifice? So you snapped your fingers and turned half the universe to ash, because that was what you told the Stones and yourself that you wanted. But what you really wanted was the pain. Half the universe died and the other half mourned, stripped in a moment of friends, lovers, parents, children. Brothers and sisters. No warning, no explanation, no reason—just sudden, pointless death because you willed it so."

It's absurd, all of it. Thanos says nothing; arguing with Loki's words at all gives his foolishness too much credence.

"And I know this as well: Above all else, the Infinity Stones are pure, and to use them requires purity of intent. And you, Thanos…you couldn't even be honest with yourself about what you wanted. How did you think the Stones would respond to that? How did you think they could? You demanded one thing while pretending you did not desire something entirely different—and you broke them."

Thanos relaxes. To think Loki's rhetoric had begun to needle at him; now he knows it is all nonsense. "That is the conclusion of your theory? They are not broken, little god. They did exactly what I wanted them to do."

"Well, yes, that is my point," Loki says, and smiles. "Do you know what the best part is? If you had been honest from the beginning about what you wanted, it would have worked. If you'd told the Infinity Stones you wanted half the universe to die so the remaining half would suffer—well, that would have been easy. But you desired that while insisting your aim was mercy, and so you elevated that fundamental conflict to a cosmic scale—and when you snapped your fingers, you put a crack in the very fabric of reality. Did it really not occur to you that the Infinity Gauntlet was not supposed to crumble after one use?"

"It hardly matters what happened to the vessel," Thanos says. "It did what it was meant to do. Whatever details you have fixated on are irrelevant."

Loki shrugs. "I was worried for a bit, to be perfectly honest. It was a good theory, but it was a theory, and after a few years away I thought you might have changed—grown more honest about your intentions, or truly committed yourself to your stated goal. So it was quite a gamble really, not my best plan, though in my defense I had very little time to come up with anything better."

Thanos huffs out a laugh. He'd forgotten just how entertaining the Jotun runt could be. "You tried to kill me with a toothpick."

"Well, it would have been nice if it had worked," Loki says. "Less painful for me, at any rate, and a great deal quicker. But I never actually expected it. All I really wanted was to get close to your gauntlet—so I suppose I should thank you for how you chose to kill me. I can't say I enjoyed it, but you crushing my throat with the Gauntlet was certainly convenient. It's much easier to bind oneself to an object one is actually touching, after all, and even more important when something as distracting as being strangled to death is happening at the same time."

Thanos goes still, his eyes narrowing. "…you deliberately bound your consciousness to the Space Stone."

"Indeed I did. I used up my life on this chance, in the hope that when it was all finished, when you'd depleted your power in a single stroke, I would be able to take the Gauntlet and fix everything you broke. And so—here I am. Here you are, weakened by my brother's rage, the Infinity Stones lying quiet in a shattered gauntlet because you changed the universe with a lie and called it a job well done." He makes a grasping motion and the Gauntlet flies to his hand, crackling with green magic it shrinks to fit him.

Thanos heaves himself to his feet, already reaching for the Gauntlet. The Stones will not, cannot respond to another master, but the very idea that Loki would dare—Loki might not be flesh and blood but with the Gauntlet Thanos can make him so, and then make him regret he ever thought to taint this triumph with his arrogance and lies—

"No," Loki says, and a wave of invisible force slams Thanos back into his chair. He struggles against it, annoyed but not alarmed when the pressure doesn't let up. Only he has managed to wield all the Infinity Stones; the little god will overstep himself soon, and then they will tear him apart.

Loki turns his hand back and forth, examining the Gauntlet's shattered surface. "That won't do," he says, and more green light flows over the metal, surrounding it in a delicate latticework of glowing magic. Damaged metal falls away in flakes until what remains is more light than substance, but the Stones still rest easily in their settings. Loki sighs. "Truly, it was fine craftsmanship, wasted on someone who had no interest in appreciating it. My version is not nearly so elegant, I'm afraid. But it doesn't matter, because you introduced the flaw that the Infinity Stones want to correct, a fundamental crack in everything you used them to do. That is why they will respond to me now. That is why I am here at all, to seize this chance you created with your own hypocrisy. You might have pulled it off, too, if you weren't so damned determined to look at your own cruelty and convince yourself it was justice and mercy."

"You have nothing," Thanos says, his lip curling. "Wearing the Gauntlet does not make you capable of using it."

"I suppose we should find out," Loki says. "First things first…" He clenches his fist. All six Stones flare softly, and their essence seems to bleed into Loki's translucent form, giving him color and then substance. The moment his body fully reforms, Loki staggers, turning Jotun blue, frost racing over his skin as if his corpse still floats in deep space; and then the ice thaws, the blue fades back to ashy paleness, and his eyes turn bloodshot and his face mottled, his entire throat a livid purple bruise. Loki's legs buckle and he drops to one knee, choking, and Thanos relaxes as the invisible bonds that hold him in place begin to weaken. Just as he'd thought, the little god lacks the strength of will that he needs, and he has brought his body back only to feel himself dying once more. As soon as the binding falls away entirely, Thanos thinks, he will retrieve the Gauntlet and begin experimenting. If Loki can clumsily bring his own body back, it should be child's play to trap him in a loop of endless death and equally painful resurrection, and that sounds like a very good way to begin staving off boredom until he thinks of something more creative. Perhaps he might bring Thor in to enjoy the show—

But the trap stabilizes, Loki regaining control over the Gauntlet and his own body. He remains on his knees for a few more moments, shoulders heaving as he gasps for breath. As Thanos watches, the deathly pallor fades from his skin and the bruising recedes. Finally he gets to his feet again and wipes the blood from his nose. He looks drained, still, but his smile is almost feral and he is unquestionably alive.

"That's better," he says, panting. "Not—mm. Not very pleasant. But in my experience, coming back to life never is. Now—" He stretches out his hand and gazes at the Gauntlet. "This all seems…fairly intuitive. And do you know, I was right. They want to help. So I think I'll just…"

Loki snaps his fingers. The universe—blinks, with the unmistakable sensation of something knocked askew being slotted back into place. Loki grins in exhausted triumph, and Thanos can only stare at him, horror and fury mingling nauseatingly in his gut. Loki cannot be right. The universe was full of parasites that only Thanos knew to eradicate, it had to be true, and he will tear apart this arrogant little bastard for trying to make him believe otherwise.

Loki bares his teeth at him. "Now that we know which of us is right, would you like to know when I knew my gamble was going to pay off, that your grand plan would unbalance reality so gravely that the Stones themselves would yearn for someone to correct it? When I knew I hadn't thrown my life away for nothing? It was when you were killing me, and you looked at my brother to make sure he was watching and you smirked at him. I failed you and betrayed you, arguably, but Thor did nothing to you except try to defend his people from your attack, and you wanted to hurt him anyway."

"He should not have tried to fight me," Thanos growls.

"And for that, you crushed my throat and made my brother watch," Loki says, his voice fairly vibrating with fury. "You had the Tesseract. You could have just killed him. You could have destroyed the ship then. You could have left. Instead you made him watch me die and dumped my body in front of him, because you cared more about our pain than about simply acquiring the Tesseract. There was no point to it, none, except that it was cruel and you liked it."

"You lie—"

"Often. But not today." Loki's gaze is hard and unyielding. "You did it again, you know, with your beloved daughter. Not when you tortured Nebula, that was a means to an end, though I'm sure you enjoyed it too—but on Knowhere, with Gamora and her lover. You could have left then too, you know, as soon as you had her, and instead—well, we both know what you did. I suppose it amused you to see her beg him to kill her, and to give him time to make the most painful choice imaginable when you knew it was pointless. You might have loved what she was to you, enough to satisfy the Soul Stone, but that never stopped you from twisting and scarring and destroying her, over and over until she got away and then you finally killed her and pitied yourself for the sacrifice. That is not love, it's poison, because you've loved suffering too long and too deeply to feel anything so pure for even your daughter."

Thanos snarls at him in wordless rage. (He still cannot move. He still cannot shake the bone-deep knowledge that something has been restored that should not have been twisted out of joint. That he twisted out of joint.)

"Well then," Loki says briskly, "this has been fun, but I think it's time I was going. I imagine my brother will want to see me in the flesh again. You needn't worry about being alone for long, though. You see, I can't make it as if your actions never happened; I would do it if I could, because I have no interest in pointless suffering, but truthfully I'm fine with this outcome, because I have undone all of it—not just the people you turned to ash but everyone you killed while you wore this gauntlet. Not just the lives you snuffed out with a snap of your fingers, but all of them. The android who bore the Mind Stone, that you destroyed in front of the woman who loved him while you taunted her for her failure. Gamora. Knowhere. The ship full of Asgardian refugees. Even Xandar and Nidavellir. All of them. And every last one of them has returned knowing what you did. You wanted a grateful universe? I'm sure your victims and their loved ones will be here soon to express their gratitude. You should probably hope my brother doesn't get to you first, actually, although with Stormbreaker…well, I wouldn't bet my life on it, if I were you."

"You know what I am capable of," Thanos says. "You will pay for this."

"I know what you were capable of. Alone, without your allies, your armies, your children, having traded away everything else in your single-minded quest for ultimate power? You are not so fearsome anymore." Loki flicks his fingers and a portal yawns open behind him. "I rather think the Infinity Stones are better suited to me anyway, so there are a few other things I might try to set right. Of course, you know what they say; power corrupts, and absolute power—well. I think I've had enough of that for several lifetimes. Thor, Captain Rogers, and King T'challa all seem to have experience in resisting corruption, so I think I'll ask for their advice. But after that—you remember the witch who destroyed the Mind Stone, don't you? I've been wanting to meet her regardless, but I think between the two of us, we can destroy all the Stones and scatter their fragments so far that no one will ever again amass this kind of power. And soon enough, you'll be no more than another cautionary tale of a glorified bully who briefly imagined he was a god."

Thanos roars, straining at the invisible shackles that bind him, but they are immovable, and Loki gives him one last sharp-edged smile over his shoulder as the blue light of the Space Stone carries him away. The portal closes in on itself and Thanos is alone once again, still paralyzed. Grimly, he begins working to dismantle the bindings, but seconds and then minutes drag by without success.

Not far away, he hears the first rumble of thunder.

It will probably surprise no one to learn that I was real upset about Infinity War and still am, mostly for extremely obvious reasons. (Look, they did Loki dirty, and unless they properly fix it in Avengers 4, I can't forgive Marvel for it, and I definitely can't be objective enough to separate the rest of the movie from how I feel about...that.) The more I've thought about the movie in the last few weeks, though, the saltier I've gotten, especially where Thanos is concerned. My conclusion is, I really dislike what they did with him, partly because I just don't think it worked well but mostly because in falling over themselves to humanize him, they also validated views that are actively harmful in the real world-namely, that overpopulation (of non-white people, usually; funny that Thanos's first onscreen victims are literally refugees) is the problem rather than systematic inequality and inadequate resource distribution, and that it's good to sympathize with abusers. (The original version of this fic, on AO3, includes several links to really good discussions about the most disturbing aspects of the movie; obviously I can't link anything here, but I'm 100indecisions on AO3 and if you look me up there, you can get the links.)

In thinking about all of this, a theory occurred to me about what Thanos really wanted, and then it further occurred to me after loxxxlay on Tumblr pointed out the way Thanos smirked at Thor: it's not just about the snap. A lot of what Thanos does in this movie can nominally be explained as ruthlessness in pursuit of a supposedly noble goal...but not all of it. Some of his behavior only makes sense if he's doing these things because he wants to, no matter what he tells himself or anyone else. And then I thought, well...in an awful lot of stories, cosmically powerful artifacts tend to have rules, and breaking those rules tends to have serious consequences. That seemed like a good premise for a fix-it fic, as well as a nice way to tie Infinity War Thanos (I hesitate to say MCU Thanos because I'm pretty sure this characterization was very new, given that there's absolutely no evidence for it in previous movies) back to the more comics-influenced Thanos who's been such a terrifying villain in six entire years of some of my favorite Loki fics.

I also included the specific detail about Gamora's homeworld because in the first GotG, she's explicitly identified as the last survivor of her entire race because Thanos killed everyone on her planet, except now I guess that's been retconned into "~only~ half for benevolent reasons!" because who cares about making sure your canon makes sense when you can just ignore it and switch directions midstream because you feel like it? (Am I bitter? Yes I'm bitter, fic writers are way more careful about this shit and we don't even get paid for it.) Like with the actual logistics of the snap, I know the real reason this happened is "because it's what the writers wanted to do," but I like having in-universe explanations for this kind of thing, so it's convenient that this piece of sloppy writing fit neatly into my theory.

Oh, and before anyone asks...I actually am working on a follow-up fic. No promises on when I might finish it, but I'm working on it (and it'll probably be a separate fic rather than another chapter of this one, so if you're interested, follow me rather than just following this fic).