Chapter 360: Two Weeping Thors — and a Mysterious Stranger Appears
On screen, Loki watched as the Infinity Stones he'd once coveted turned out to be nothing more than junk to the TVA — the kind of thing they used to prop up stacks of paper.
Loki, feeling something close to hollow despair, used the Reset Charge to slip back into the archives.
Inside, shafts of light and shadow crossed and layered over each other, every beam somehow carrying the weight of history itself. Loki took a slow breath and started the projector, the footage rolling like the turning of fate's own wheel, pulling him through one familiar scene after another.
The moment the footage froze on his mother Frigga's death — killed by the Dark Elves, indirectly because of his own actions — Loki's eyes filled with tears he couldn't hold back.
They slid down and struck the cold metal floor with a soft, echoing patter, like some quiet cry rising up from the very depths of him.
He hadn't actually done any of this — not in his own timeline. But watching his mother die because of him still cut deep, filling his face with grief regardless.
Watching the film, Thor shot to his feet. "That's impossible. There's no way that's real. This whole stupid movie's making things up!"
Nothing like this had ever happened in Thor's own timeline, so he refused to accept that his mother's death could really be laid at Loki's feet.
He turned to Fat Thor, desperate for some answer that might contradict what he'd just seen.
But Fat Thor was already streaming tears, his face etched with raw regret. He'd never let himself fully process, until this exact moment, that his mother's death traced back to something he and Loki had both had a hand in.
If he'd never brought his girlfriend Jane up to Asgard in the first place, the Dark Elves might never have invaded, and their mother might still be alive.
If he'd kept a closer eye on Loki, the events shown in the film might never have happened at all.
If he'd been standing where the film showed Loki standing, in his mother's place, maybe she'd have survived.
He and Loki both bore some part of the blame for their mother's death. But Loki was already gone. Thor was the one left carrying that guilt now.
Thor looked at his older self, tears streaming down that face, and understood — simple-minded as he was, even he could tell this was the truth.
He could feel it, too — somewhere underneath, that this film's Loki might well be the same brother he'd already lost in this world.
"What kind of bullshit organization decides what's the 'correct' timeline? What does 'it always happens this way' even mean? Are you telling me it was necessary for my mother to die?"
"Where the hell is this so-called Time Variance Authority? Ethan — you must know where they are." Thor's voice came out defiant. The moment he'd heard his own mother's death framed as "the correct timeline," something in him had rebelled against the very idea.
He wasn't the only one, either. Whether it was Tony or Strange, every one of them felt, at some level, like they'd just discovered their own lives had been quietly steered by some outside force.
Nobody wanted their life dictated by someone else. None of them said it out loud, though.
Old Tony, watching all this unfold, found himself pulled into a much deeper spiral. If Loki's "correct" timeline requires his mother's death... does that mean my own "correct" timeline required my parents' deaths too? Does that mean everything I've been through was just... inevitable?
Then why did this other universe's Tony have such a different path from mine? What's actually going on here?
Old Tony's earlier dismissive attitude had entirely evaporated, replaced by a flood of genuine questions.
"Keep watching. Both of you Thors — settle down. Get a handle on your emotions. You do realize interrupting other people's movie night is incredibly rude, right? Keep this up and I'm shutting the whole thing off. Just hold on — every answer you want is going to come from the film itself." Ethan cut in, irritation plain in his voice.
Honestly, he was genuinely enjoying the show himself. He'd never gotten to watch this particular series all the way through back in his old life — needed a VPN just to access it. All he'd ever caught were a few clipped highlight reels online, so he was thoroughly absorbed in it now.
Getting constantly interrupted by two loud, sobbing Thors was genuinely grating.
Ethan's threat did the trick. Both Thors reined themselves in.
Finally, some peace.
On screen, Loki kept working through his own archived footage.
"I love you, my sons."
"Remember this place."
"Home."
Loki watched Odin's dying words to his sons, and something in him cracked open. He'd never imagined that stern, unsmiling father of his could leave behind something so tender in his final moments.
The word "home" landed like a break in the clouds, warm light finally cutting through the shadow he'd been carrying — a reminder that no matter how far he wandered, that pull toward home, that ache for it, had never actually left him.
Tears slid silently down his face. In that moment, Loki let every wall inside him finally fall.
He watched Thor — the brother he'd once clashed with bitterly, who'd still stood up for him when it mattered most — say things Loki had never gotten to hear from him directly.
And the most staggering moment of all: watching himself throw everything away in a desperate, reckless bid to save Thor — ambushing Thanos, the universe's own tyrant, alone — and dying for it.
Watching the moment Thanos's hand closed around his own throat, Loki's heart pounded in time with the scene, as if he could actually feel the cold pressure crushing his windpipe himself — the same fear, the same despair, gripping him as vividly as if he'd lived it.
And then, once it had all played out, Loki started to laugh.
The laugh carried both a bitter mockery of fate's cruelty and something like a quiet, defiant hymn to life itself.
He laughed at his own past obsessions, his own confusion — and laughed, too, because after everything, he'd finally found something like peace within himself.
He felt something like pride, watching that laugh — pride in the man his future self had become, someone who'd stayed by Thor's side through everything, to the very end.
And he understood something else too: he was never some chosen one, never destined for greatness. Just a minor character in someone else's story.
Both Thors in the theater were openly sobbing by this point — especially Hell's Kitchen's own Thor, who hadn't lived through any of what he was watching, but understood clearly now that his brother hadn't been nearly the villain he'd once assumed.
He felt genuinely proud of the Loki up on screen.
The film, of course, wasn't finished yet. It kept playing.
The Illuminati.
"It's been a while since anyone's actually seen the Lord of Hell's Kitchen, ever since the big battle wrapped up," Susan Storm said, curious.
"They're definitely planning something. We can't afford to let our guard down — this last fight exposed exactly how far behind we actually are," Mr. Fantastic said, his tone grave.
"Do you honestly think we're capable of standing against that Lord of Hell's Kitchen?" Black Bolt said seriously.
"We need power. Real power — enough to actually match him," Black Panther added, joining the discussion.
While the group deliberated, a small figure in mysterious black robes suddenly appeared, standing atop the round table.
Every Illuminati member snapped instantly to alert.
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