Fanfics I'll never write but god I wish I would

Thanos's new son Loki

TW // abuse mentions

Okay so I've been rewatching all the MCU movies with my friend in order for the last few weeks (we just finished Civil War last night) and obviously Loki consumes 98% of my thoughts at any given moment so I've had a bazillion new Loki fic ideas I'll never get around to but this is one I'd be most interested to read if someone else wants to write something even remotely like it 👀

So you know how in Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora talks about her past with Thanos? And she talked about how Thanos basically murdered her parents and took her in and abused her and used her and all that?

What if, when Loki falls from the Rainbow Bridge and into the Sanctuary, Thanos doesn't cut him a deal? What if, rather than forging an alliance like he did with Ronan, Thanos treated Loki the same way he did Nebula and Gamora?

When Loki let go of the Rainbow Bridge, he was pretty much ready to die. As far as he was concerned, he had nothing left. He'd destroyed Jotunheim and he didn't feel welcome among the Asgardians, so he had no chance with his biological or adoptive families.

Thanos could have used that. He could have just offered Loki shelter and acceptance and he would have had Loki's loyalty in an instant. Loki's entire journey throughout the first Thor movie was about wanting respect and wanting his father's love. It didn't matter that Odin wasn't his birth father; it just made him want to prove himself worthy of his love more.

As soon as Thanos made himself Loki's new father figure, Loki would have done anything to make him happy. He would have done anything to prove himself worthy of Thanos's love. And Thanos making that love a conditional thing, lashing out whenever Loki was less than perfect, would just make him try harder to earn it.

Thanos is canonically an abusive pseudo-father. Loki was already a broken soul when they met; Thanos could easily make it worse. Whatever he did to Loki, Loki would think he deserved. It wouldn't be necessary (tbh just saying "I'm disappointed in you" would be enough in literally any circumstance) but he would do it anyway.

But that's all backstory. That's the idea I think is cool, but you can't really make a fic out of it. In fact, it's kind of the opposite of fic material. It takes the entirety of the first Avengers movie and condenses it into "Loki steals the Tesseract, uses it to return to the Sanctuary, and gives it right to Thanos. Thanos tells him he's a good boy and Loki is thrilled because it's the parental validation he's always craved. The end."

The actual story would be what comes next. Let's just say, for fanfic's sake, that everything somehow proceeds pretty much the same as normal. The Avengers get together. Thanos collects the Infinity Stones. There's a big showdown. You know, all that superhero shit. (I'll be honest I don't really remember much of Phase 3 bc I haven't gotten there in my rewatch yet so I don't really know the specifics but that's the cool thing about this concept is that bc the Avengers movie never happened, Infinity War and End Game can be whatever I want them to be because god only knows how the Avengers got together in this timeline.)

A bunch of the Avengers are preparing to face off against Thanos and stop him from doing The Snap™, including but not limited to Thor, Gamora, and Nebula bc they're the important ones.

Thor sees Loki and he basically forgets every single reason he's here. It's been seven years since Loki fell from the Rainbow Bridge. He'd been so sure Loki was dead, but here he is, looking like absolute shit (think beginning-of-Avengers-riding-on-the-back-of-Clint's-truck absolute shit but worse) but alive. So Thor runs over and gives him a hug because duh that's his lil brother and he misses him

But Loki's like dude what the fuck and pushes him away and Thor tries not to let it get to him and he's trying to talk to him and trying to figure out what happened and idk exactly how it would go but like something like