Or, alternatively, Asgardian Rhapsody: So Long, and thanks for all the Shwarma

A/N #1: So...I wrote this as part of a bigger thing, but felt like it could go here too. The first film (sweet gods, we'll be getting another one, be still my beating heart) of Infinity Wars has...razed me, for lack of a better word. At the time of writing this, I'm pretty much scorched earth beneath the purging fire of Phase 4's film decisions, and can barely muster the urge not to bawl my eyes out or just scream obscenities in every language I know. Rage is easier, more palatable, since I can at least sharpen that into a point to write with. Sadness is still lurking around too, but that just drains me and makes me not want to watch anything that's Marvel-related for at least a decade (and that would be pointless and stupid of me to do, so let's not do that), so I'm pushing past that and drowning my sorrows with tea, and taking to my keyboard to hammer out more fanfic as the only coping method that hasn't totally abandoned me in the wake of watching every single character I've gotten emotionally invested in for over a decade suffer horribly onscreen. Angrily hitting things and screaming epithets when no one else is home, I've found, also does help a little bit (thank goodness for punching bags).

A/N #2: WARNING AHEAD: For Norns' sake, please take into account that there are SPOILERS in this! Not tons and tons (because while I could give a flying fig about Thanos demanding silence when I really want to do is pound his stupid head into obliteration with the stupid Infinity Gauntlet right now, soak him in oil, then salt and burn him into nonexistence with his precious Infinity Stones for good measure, the stupid neckbeard purple raisin tosser deserves it, I acknowledge that I need to at least warn people as a common courtesy), but they will be there. Some of the film dialogue will be utilised as well, because there will be times when it will be needed to establish situational context.

Given that you understand that this is part of my Symbiote AU, though, please take into consideration that, while I recognise canon's complete nuking of everyone's feelings as a powerful, emotionally-changing idea just furthers how strongly Marvel has touched our hearts over the years, my salty, salty feelings have decided it's a stupid-ass decision to keep in line with and I've elected to ignore it. It's a great film, and definitely one to watch at least once...but I'm standing my ground, planting my feet in imitation of Ents (they're even harder to move than Steve when they want to be!), and saying it's canon horrors can get thrown the **** over off the nearest cliff. THERE WILL BE NO CHALLENGE TODAY!

In other words: YOU MOVE, CANON. THE FANDOM YOU LEFT US SHATTERED OVER? IT. IS. DEFENDED. I DO WHAT I WANT. *opens hands and mimics Peter Quill's flip-off machine motion because as ridiculous as it might be, I want these characters to LIVE, dammit*

A/N #3: Just remember what I said in a previous chapter about everyone living? REMEMBER THAT, PLEASE. It's taking everything I have not to throw my computer out the window as I write this, since I'm still trying to get over the shock of all the death and general dark stuff we got, and it's very hard when I've been digging myself out a bad place mentally in recent weeks (which is partly why I'm writing so much fanfiction, it's always comforting). I have a skeleton outline for this written already, but it's literally taking one look at canon and going "NOPE. DOING SOMETHING ELSE NOW. DIDN'T ASK, DON'T NEED IT, GO **** YOURSELF." so please don't expect frequent updates, or for full film accuracy (this is, after all, me writing a potential dumpster fire of ideas as a fix-it to soothe the part of me that demands my happy ending from Disney). I'm planning about 9 chapters for this in total, but I don't know if that will change in the future.

DISCLAIMER: I know everyone knows this by now, but still, just to be safe...I own nothing of Marvel, Disney, or anything even remotely required of it's associated products/films (including characters/film or comic dialogue quotes or abilities/locations, etc.), and just because I've been on a bit of a kick for it recently (blame enjoying the show despite any and all plotholes and destruction of feelings), Supernatural. This work is my own, but it's a fanwork only (so no suing, please).

Years later, as they looked out side by side over the cool, breezy cliffsides of Norway, their people prosperous and finally settling into the idea of being safe for the first time in forever, Loki, with his symbiote curled around him and miming in amused agreement, will tell anyone who will listen that it was Thor's terrible idea.

I shouldn't have said anything. Damn my sentiments.

The hand closed around their windpipe felt like damnation itself, a claustrophobic, agonising vice around symbiote-enhanced muscle and bone that ached with a cold and terrifying strength. Thor was screaming something in the background, something futile, perhaps, something that sounded like raw, ugly, throat-shredding grief and a rage that burned more fiercely than the sun itself and it sounded like NO and Brother and Don't you dare-! but they could barely hear it, given that most attention was diverted to not choking to death beneath the Mad Titan's delighted grip.

At least Thor isn't dead yet, Thanos didn't split his skull. He knew he wouldn't be so fortunate, they knew they wouldn't be able to escape death's grip again.

Eitr is trapped here, they know it all too well what it's like to dangle, helpless and raging, in the grip of a force far more cruel and powerful than they were, and so while Loki bites back the urge to gasp for air through a bruised, cracked throat and the symbiote screams an internal litany of rage and anguish, Thanos is free to smile at the sight of the terrified, defiant ragtags left before him: Thor, chained to the ground and mouth bound shut with a cursed metal gag in a sickening show of submission, single eye wide with horror as Eitr sputtered and shook, body convulsing in the bone-crushing grip of the Infinity Gauntlet, and the Black Order (his soldiers, his children, his playthings, his tools and his subjects) standing by, grim-eyed and fingering their weaponry in readiness to cull the area of those who would dare show their master disrespect.

Asgard's pathetic remnant populace had been rendered ashes mere moments before, despite the valiant attempts of Thor's band of misfit warriors to defend their numbers from the cold and merciless grip of the Titan's advancement. The defense had ensured their ashes, save for that of the strange green man, joined their fellows, coating the ground with a sickening corpse-dust that choked the lungs and left an ill-gotten stillness in the air. He lay nearby, chained down even more than Thor was, with weapons aimed in case of any stray movement; the action seemed futile, given his glassy-eyed expression, gaze red-rimmed from silent tears at the destruction of his new friends.

Even with the golden Realm rendered close to extinction, it wouldn't do to lower their guard. They still had prey here to deal with, after all.

The choked whimper that makes its way free of a shared throat is utterly mortifying, as are the slow-drying tears threatening to encroach on their vision, but Eitr is more concerned with the fact that Thor, struggling mightily to escape his bonds, is glowing. Ozone unfurls through the air, sharp and tangy, as white-hot light shone from the god of thunder's remaining blue eye. Sparks dance at the edges of his hands, brighter and brighter, and the Thanos' children-soldiers are moving closer, looking angered and wary, and the glow is getting brighter-

That-That looks like-

They barely have a second to remember Thor's emergency plan before the world around them all but explodes as heat, scorching and feral and terrifying, slams through the air in a massive thunderclap of energy. Almost reflexively, the hand around their throat squeezes, and something in the muscle and bone spasms and gives way. Loki screams, voice cracking into oblivion around ruined vocal cords, and the symbiote (screaming with him It always hurts as he does) abruptly engulfs him, head to toe down to the very last hair and clawtip, hauling Itself around him in a full-body shield even as the suit's surface thrashed and quaked, needles erupting into existence as pain blossomed through every shared cell like some hideous flower. His magic joins in, bursting out of his body in a storm of shimmering gold and slamming into the nearest body like so much shrapnel. The crushing, deathly pressure around his throat suddenly ceases, and he barely has time to appreciate being dropped from the Titan's grasp as they fall, dropping in a broken, messy heap on the ruined floor. Dazed, mind awash with shock, they lay in a heap like an abandoned doll, watching the huge purple body convulse in surprise and pain as the Black Order shrieks and moans, smoking, charred, burnt and scrambling to recollect themselves.

Shakily, they try to move, get up, do something, anything, because they can't just lie there and be useless when Thor is still chained up and they're still surrounded by enemies. Pain lances through their neck, the feeling sudden and with such ugly frankness they nearly black out, and horror and dark resignation floods shared veins as Loki realises Thanos had broken it just badly enough to render movement nearly impossible, paralysis just a mere fraction of an inch away even as he grits his teeth and forces his limbs to move and the symbiote frantically works to repair the damage before they are rendered the last of Asgard's people-

But everything suddenly pales in significance as the Infinity Gauntlet begins to shake, vibrating wildly as the streams of Thor's lightning arc around it like some bizarre form of neon lighting, a familiar golden glow hitched around the blue-white energy and the Stones vibrating with increasing vigour as the power that impacted their container sank in and was absorbed. Thanos was staring at the Infinity Gauntlet with the strangest expression Loki had ever known, even when first "visiting" the Void: suspicion, and fear.

The Infinity Stones gleam and glow, they shimmer and pulse, but never in his life had Loki known them to sing. The haunting, insidious crooning of the Mind Gem had been somewhat of an enigma to him, he did not consider it singing so much as whispering the terrible, beautiful, disturbingly enticing lilt of It's promises when he'd been forced to stay near it, the haunting murmurs enough to set his teeth on edge and leave him uneasy, skittish, with the urge to stab and bolt at the slightest of provocations. Even now, the symbiote snarls at the noise, but their shields are in tatters and he doesn't think he can rebuild them when they're about to be extinguished.

He felt the air hum with energy, the symbiote's wary mental hissing bleeding out as rust-red shards of hostility and peppery bursts of dark orange confusion, and for a brief, terrifying moment, everyone on the scene was united in collective terror and curiosity as the Infinity Gauntlet lit up, trembling like a leaf on the wind, and then the singing picks up and crescendos to a pitch-less, unheard shriek as reality crumpled in itself like a piece of crushed paper, warping apart, and everything cracks-

A jötunn-born mage, a symbiote, and a thunder god fall through space, through time, through infinity itself, as the freed Stones whirr and glitter like captured starlight, burning supernova-hot and blinding like the sun's bounty, whistling like an out-of-tune harmonica and as the bands of travel stretch tauter, pulling tighter and tighter and tighter until something in the universe finally surrenders to the pressure and SNAPS-

Loki seizes his brother closer, fingers digging in enough that he feels blood oozing up, but even with both hands smarting and blistered from the touch of the Tesseract he refuses to let go now, if he lets go he knows that Thor will be gone forever and he can't, he won't have that-

Please, please, for Norn's sake, dammit, PLEASE-

The symbiote, ever-listening, ever-faithful, heeds his call, slinging out thick tendrils of liquid night and grabbing on like a lamprey, and together they grab onto arms and legs, wrapping snakelike around their prize even as he seizes Thor by the neck, hauling him close and shoving his head beneath his chin in an instinctive gesture to shield him from the eye-melting light show (even now, years and fights and screams and far too many stabbings to count, he still remembers protecting this dear, foolish oaf and centuries of muscle memory don't just evaporate out of existence even after a few years of trying). Green eyes flicker with a rainbow mirage as he shuts them against the kaleidoscope of colours surrounding them. Thor, still shivering, skin crackling with thunderbolts racing across in arcs and bursts like miniature comet trails, finally responds, forcibly clutching himself closer, tucking his head into the hollow of Loki's throat and squeezing his sides with hands that shake like an drunkard bereft of liquor, and the Lichtenburg figures that formed on skin contact felt sensitive, scraped raw, but he refuses to move away and the symbiote doesn't begin healing them yet because as long as the lightning reaches out and Thor still huffs a breath against his neck then Asgard has not yet burnt out of existence, that home wasn't entirely gone-

He'd never thought he'd miss the dizzying, nauseating sensation of BiFrost travel, but this was definitely the worse way to traverse time and space.

When they land, the impact shakes the ground with enough force to cause a small earthquake. A crater forms, huge and cracked and blasting dust so high into the air it could be mistaken at first glance for an erupting volcano.

Lying in the wreckage, curled around each other like a pair of cats, two figures stirred, coughing out dust-tinged blood and blinking against the harsh light of the sun's rays.

Pinned beneath his sibling's deceptively smaller bulk, the older of them spits out a mouthful of reddened dirt and sputters out, "Loki? Or is it Eitr right now? Are you alright? Say something, dammit!" He seizes them by the shoulders, clutching like a drowning man even as his voice shudders in an all-too-valid panic. The single blue eye roved over the skinny god's battered frame, desperation evident in the fingers that dug into suit-covered skin as if trying to find a pulse with every last finger-pad. The catsuit was shredded, leaving slivers of the body underneath peeking out in haphazard patterns, his exposed throat heavily bruised from the backlash from the Infinity Gauntlet. What skin he could see was littered with Lichtenberg figures, dark against the paper-fragile surface.

"We're here, Thor," and wasn't that just funny in the end? The end of everything they'd known, the imminent destruction of all that mattered, and yet it was here, in Norns only knew where, that his voice could be loud instead of quiet when he spoke assurances. He blamed the near destruction of his neck and its vocal cords for the fact that his voice was shaky, raspy, the words soft in a way that only sickness and the vulnerable points of youth had ever held.

The catsuit slid up and away from black-clad hands, revealing thin, pale fingers as Loki reached out, grabbing the back of Thor's neck and dragging him close. "We're here, and we're not going anywhere. Now shut up, just shut up-" His voice cracked, the symbiote too exhausted to help fuel his words further, and the resulting silence was deafening.

Thor fell silent, reaching out to wrap both arms around his sibling's bony frame and cling as tightly as possible. Nosing under Loki's chin with a grunt, he tucked his face into the hollow of pale throat before him and exhaled, feeling something in his chest loosen at the reassuring thud of a pulse against his skin. Loki slings himself over his brother's larger body, locking up arms and legs around scarred, tanned muscle as he shudders, trying desperately to unwind enough to remember that they'd survived, that it was alright to be a little clingy, to have this. He linked his hands together, petting the catsuit's surface almost on autopilot as his mind poured out a feedback loop of alive and safe and thank the Norns you're both still here.

Fixing the universe could wait. For now...just for a little while, they could take a breath. They could take a little bit of comfort, bittersweet as it was, that they had lived even amidst the loss of all else they'd hoped to keep. And when they finally detangled themselves, when they got up and began trying to figure out where (or even when) they were, then they could begin to move forward.

Thor exhaled, and tried to look on the bright side. He was alive, and was Eitr. They could fix this. They would fix this.

Because that's what heroes do.