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Thor barely even got to finish his overly optimistic assurances before Thanos' ship was suddenly looming over them like the billowing clouds that ushered in a thunderstorm.
Even as he felt the blood drain out of his face, Loki had to admire the universe's sense of dramatic timing. Haha, the joke's on you, too busy worrying about Earth and the remnants of Asgard's people to remember what you should really be worried about.
"Loki," he heard Thor say, and it didn't sound like the first time. It wasn't like his brother to sound panicked over anything, let alone this suddenly, but these days they were all scraped raw, emotions close to the surface. "What is it? Who's there?"
"I'm sorry," he heard himself whisper, but it sounded far away. "I'm sorry."
"What is—"
He reached out, laid a hand on his brother's shoulder, and between one blink and the next, Thor disappeared.
***
He had started, as the Midgardians might have done centuries later, with mice.
Well, that wasn't exactly true. He had started with a smooth pebble from his mother's garden, one she had picked out during their lesson and had him practice with. He'd cup it in one palm, pushing it carefully into and out of this plane of existence, a slow and laborious process that became easier and easier with repetition until it was nearly effortless.
It gave him something to do when he was bored during lessons and meals, at least until his mother had caught him at it during a family dinner and made her 'no warping space-time at the table' rule.
Honestly, he'd started to wonder how much of his tendency to break rules came from the sheer number of rules made entirely for his benefit.
The mice had come later, when he'd mastered the trick and thought to wonder what would happen to something living that ended up in his own personal pocket dimension.
The answer seemed to be 'not terribly much'. The first mouse reappeared much as it had been when it had vanished, if a little upset at the handling.
He'd gone for a longer test then, tucking it away until that afternoon when it mysteriously reappeared in Sif's boot while she was swimming. The mouse itself seemed more bothered by the young warrior maiden's screams than its extended ride outside of reality, and the only harm done was to his face when Sif correctly deduced who was responsible for the little rodent. Not that she'd had any proof; he still resented that.
Through continued experimentation he'd discovered that small animals could survive for years, longer, even, than their own nature-appointed lifespans, in the in-between space without any apparent ill-effects. It seemed to function as a sort of stasis, preserving the animal in the exact state in which it had originally entered. It was as though for the mouse, no time had passed.
Of course, a mouse could speak nothing of the experience, and Loki could hardly vanish himself away in the same way. He might not ever be able to get out, from the inside, and no one would be able to come in and find him. There were no other mages he would trust enough to put himself so completely at their mercy, save perhaps his mother, and she would almost certainly object to the experiment rather than help him carry it out.
So naturally, he'd done the next best thing.
He'd tried it on his brother.
He snuck up on his brother in his room, tucked him away, then strolled leisurely to the garden before pulling him back out.
Thor had spat and sputtered, but when Loki got him talking coherently it turned out he had no memory of the time spent in Loki's pocket. From his perspective, he was in his room one second, and the next he had blinked and was staring at his mother's favorite apple tree.
It had become a favorite game, dragging Thor from one place to another like that. He even used it to make Thor disappear for a while when he got too unbearable, until Mother had once again found out and made her 'no banishing your brother to a pocket dimension' rule, yet another of the rules designed specifically to apply to him.
He'd still done it every so often after that, but only when Thor was too asleep or drunk or unconscious to realize.
***
Loki took deep breaths, mourning the loss of his brother's comforting presence even though he knew it was his own fault. He looked up to find Heimdall staring through him with his unnerving, all-seeing gaze.
"The sword," he gasped out, hoping that reminding Heimdall of its presence wouldn't result in him attempting to use it to separate Loki's head from his shoulders. Again. "The residual energy... could you use it to summon the Bifrost?"
Heimdall eyed him mistrustfully, but he answered. "Perhaps once. The entirety of Asgard would not have time to pass through, else I would have suggested it before now."
"What about the two of us?" Out of the corner of his eye he saw Valkyrie reaching for him, and she looked angry, which really shouldn't be surprising given that it seemed to be her default setting around him and, well, he'd just vanished Thor. Her fingers dug into his shoulder as though to spin him around, but he waited until the right second and tugged with his magic and she was gone, too.
Something started beeping; they were being hailed. He left the alarm to continue. Let Thanos waste time trying to establish contact.
"Perhaps, but I would not leave our people behind."
Our people. Amazing how, even now, that made something twist in his chest.
He tried for a smile, aware that it probably looked weak and shaky. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said.
He reached out to the closest body that wasn't Heimdall's, his mind not really registering who it was, and vanished them as well. Vaguely he was aware that people were starting to panic, but it didn't really matter, nothing really mattered except that Thanos was here and they had to get away.
"Who is on that ship?" Heimdall asked, and he had to hold back a crazed laugh.
"Does it matter? He will kill us all, I promise you." He swallowed, but Heimdall was still fixing him with his unsettling gaze. "He is the thing that was moving in the void. The one who sent me to Midgard. I do not exaggerate when I say he will kill us all like a giant swatting a fly. If we hope to survive we must leave before he and his children board."
Someone tried to lunge at him; he stepped back without thinking and caught their wrist before sending them away.
"And your plan is to escape with all of Asgard in your pocket?"
Another strike, another deflection, another person safely stowed away. At least Heimdall wasn't trying to fight him, even if he wasn't exactly helping. "Basically, yes," he said, trying to shake off the fog that had settled over his thoughts while his mind chanted Thanos is here, he's here for you, run, run, run...
Heimdall nodded. "Then we'd best get on it."
***
Assembling the citizenry would have been easier with Thor. Perhaps he should have held off on stowing his brother, but then he would have to risk Thor saying no, Thor trying to answer Thanos' hail or fight him off, and they could not afford to sacrifice the rest of their people to Thor's foolish optimism.
There was another reason, one he didn't allow himself to think too hard about. If he had told Thor what he was doing the idiot would have insisted on going last, after all of their people were safe, and Loki wasn't entirely sure he could get to everyone before Thanos made it on board. Loki was selfish enough that he could abandon some of their people to save the rest, but not Thor, never Thor.
Not when they'd just gotten each other back.
Heimdall managed to gather their people, and to explain the plan (at least that's what Loki assumed, he wasn't listening), which was a blessing, because Loki wasn't sure what he would say and he didn't think he could speak right now anyways.
He set right to work vanishing people one by one, telling himself it was just like the pebble he'd blinked in and out of existence or the mouse he'd put in Sif's shoe. Some of the people stood solid and unmoving at his approach, backs straight and chins lifted, others flinched away from his touch. He didn't care. He didn't have time to care.
The task itself seemed easier than normal (and was that the influence of the Space Stone, burning away in the same pocket as the rest of his people?) but he was still dizzy and shaky and out of breath by the time the last of the Asgardian and Sakaaran refugees had vanished. For the first time, he was grateful for their small numbers, then he immediately felt guilty for that gratitude.
A heavy impact from outside the hull sent shivers through the ship. Thanos.
He was tempted to leave the green beast behind, but Thor would never forgive him, and besides, what he'd seen of Banner had seemed almost likable. He took a deep breath, ignored his impossibly fast, stuttering heartbeat, and teleported down to the hold, the only area of the ship large enough to hold Banner's monstrous form.
The beast was agitated, and when it lunged for him he ducked underneath one enormous arm and planted a hand on its back, launching the creature out of real space.
(That was going to be fun later—the reason he didn't usually use this technique while fighting was because you had to pull a thing out of dimensional storage eventually, so vanishing it in the first place only prolonged the inevitable and used up a fair amount of energy. It was like trapping a wasp under a cup, if the cup made the wasp temporarily immortal.)
He pulled himself back together to teleport back to Heimdall, but there was no need—the man himself came climbing down into the hold to stand behind him. The reverberations through the ship were getting stronger, the blows louder; if Thanos' minions weren't inside the ship yet they would be soon.
Heimdall caught him as he half-stumbled and swayed on his feet. "Is that everyone?" he managed, stomach turning flips as the sounds grew closer.
Heimdall nodded. "Ready?"
"One second." He shifted into a small green snake, the same one he had tricked Thor with all those centuries ago, using his hold on Heimdall's arm to slither up onto the gatekeeper's broad shoulder. No need to test the Bifrost with any more mass or distance than necessary. That, and this way the Midgardians probably wouldn't shoot him on sight and Heimdall might have time to explain the situation. It wouldn't do to die and leave his brother and all of Asgard stranded for a timeless eternity.
His tongue flicked out—in this form, the stench of burning metal was almost overpowering. They must be ransacking the ship, searching for its inhabitants.
He looked to Heimdall once he was safely wound around his neck and nodded once.
The last thing he saw was Proxima Midnight clawing her way through a charred hole that appeared in the hold wall before, with a rush and a roar, the Bifrost swept them off to Midgard.