Chapter Text
Loki blinked lazily up at the light glimmering through the trees. For a moment he struggled to remember where he was. That probably wasn’t a good sign. He squinted up at the darkening leaves above his head, trying to ascertain his position. The foliage waved placidly back, giving him no context to work with whatsoever. Stupid trees. Carefully, he assessed his situation. He felt largely numb, he was cold, and likely concussed if his current processing speed was any indication. Something warm ran across his chest, tickling his collar bone. If he were to hazard a guess he would say it was blood, but he was having a hard enough time just keeping his eyes open, it seemed a waste of energy to check. The more pressing concern would probably be that he seemed unable to breath in more than short, painful gasps.
With an effort, he fought to pull in one breath after another. Something shifted painfully in his chest, but it felt distant and foreign. He was probably in shock. He blinked once more, the frost on his lashes sticking his eyes closed for a moment before he forced them open again, trying to ban the encroaching fuzziness from his vision.
He remembered now. The bridge, the fall, the emptiness, and the deeper, crueler cold which made this unknown realm seem almost sweet. He remembered his anger, now all but spent. He remembered two faces staring down at him, one in desperation, one in disappointment. “No Loki.”
Finally, he allowed his eyes to drift closed. If the void itself refused to end him, this frozen forest would be no more generous.
An indecipherable amount of time passed before voices woke him. Deep, guttural, but unmistakably Midgardian. The irony. The First Prince of Asgard at the mercy of the mortal race that once worshipped his kind. It took a moment for his muddled mind to recognize the conglomeration of sounds as language, Midgardian Russian if he was not mistaken. Thank the Norns for the All Speak.
“He lives.”
“Impossible! He’s got a branch sticking through him!”
Loki took a moment to wonder at the imbecility of the speaker before the words sank in. That would explain his difficulty breathing. And the blood, he realized belatedly. He should probably do something about that, honestly. With an embarrassing effort, he managed to will his eyes open just far enough to see two burly men grab a thick, red colored branch, which he distantly recognized to be protruding from his body. He stared at it curiously for a moment, as though questioning its reality, when suddenly the branch proved its existence as it first shifted then tore through his battered chest, catching and splintering as it was ripped from his body.
With a scream, Loki lashed out with his atrophied magic, flinging it out blindly in an almost feral attempt to defend himself. With a bubbling gasp, he pulled his weakened power back to himself, wrapping it around his emaciated frame like a protective cocoon. Standing shakily, he surveyed what remained of his surroundings. All of the trees within a thirty meters radius of him were flattened and partially burnt. Several bodies littered the ground, some were beginning to stir, others lay ominously still.
He stumbled back a step, trying to control his sudden vertigo. He didn’t have much time, and already one of the mortals was methodically arming what appeared to be some sort of detonation device. With a frantic wave of energy Loki hurled the remaining mortals back several meters, already knowing it was too late. For a moment all he knew was that he had to get out of here immediately. The release of death had spurned him once, he would not allow it to claim him now. He was Loki, and he alone would decide his fate. Ruthlessly fighting against the darkness encroaching on his vision, he pulled his suddenly unwieldy magic to himself one last time to for a hastily woven shield.
In retrospect, he should have known he wasn’t strong enough for that. The grenade exploded moments before his shields locked into place, throwing him backward. The last thing he registered before the blinding white faded to black oblivion, was a man with a black mask and a silver arm standing over him.