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Loki was not Captain Britain.
Captain Britain relied on his own emotions to power himself. When he believed in himself, he was powerful, and when he didn't, he wasn't. This was not the case for Loki.
Also, Loki never wore tights that made him look like he was experiencing a severe lack of pants. Though his past self had occasionally donned a scaley leotard that gave the impression that he had a pair of pineapples for buttcheeks.
But the first point was a lot more important.
Loki, like most gods, did not sustain himself through his own self-belief. The relationship between worshippers and worshippees was complex, admittedly, but Loki had gained momentum.
There was barely a person on Earth who didn't know at least one tale of Loki, even if it was something simple, like that he was Thor's brother, or that he got up to shit.
This was what kept Loki the concept alive, and the concept was of course related to the person.
Most gods, especially Asgardians, revelled in the fact that they were worshipped and moved on with their lives. Thor was a sucker for that. He just loved helping people, and felt the gentle tug of their prayers and reverence get stronger all the while.
Loki was not the kind of person who took something powerful for granted and moved on with his life. He liked to know the tricks and the rules, and how to beat the game. His older self had been more in tune with the mechanics of the universe than any other Asgardian, barring perhaps Odin - though Odin's understanding was more flowery and mythological - and Freyja, who seemed to know all kinds of things that she didn't always let on. The newer Loki had access to pretty much the same quantum mechanical information.
The older Loki had made several assumptions in his quest to throw off the chains of destiny. One of those assumptions had been that the power of the concept of Loki himself was enough that it created a reality wherein Loki had to exist.
(The other assumptions were significantly less wishy-washy, such as that Thor was a sucker for sentiment, and that exploding in front of people was an excellent way to create such sentiment)
Of course, the older Loki saw this as an advantage that could be manipulated for his own gain. But he saw everything like that, really.
Kid Loki was scared of that. He'd repeatedly come up against the wall of his own destiny, the way in which his own person was going to be shaped by people's perception of him. He'd explicitly told Thor to kill him if he ever went bad again. But resisting it was like swimming upstream.
Loki himself was so conflicted. Initially he'd been happy with his lot, but had found himself becoming more and more dissatisfied with the idea of returning to his old self, ever burning. Now he was flat-out running away from it.
The revelation that had caused this 180 degree turn had been sudden and harsh and he'd been hit by it sideways with such a force that he hadn't wanted to think about it.
No, he hadn't really stopped for thought when he'd begged America to kill him.
"End it. Before I can talk my way out of this," Loki had said, and he'd meant every word: Loki is as Loki does, and according to every story that shaped his fate, Loki escapes from tight situations by talking his way out of them and never being punished or sparing a thought for his actions.
No, Loki wanted to be held accountable for himself. He was a sick, twisted thing. He wanted to finally just die and be done with it.
He was the tortured shadow of a burning demon in the body of a dead child. And he just wanted to be gone.
America, for all her talk of castrating people with a single kick, just wouldn't do it.
Later, Loki realised that it wouldn't have worked anyway. He was himself and therefore bound to life.
The issue was, now that he'd left the only creatures he could call friends, he couldn't see a point anymore. There was nothing for him. There was only living for the sake of living, surviving because that was what a God of Lies did, and that was barely a reason at all.
Maybe he could take the path of the Midgardian pet cat, and just quietly crawl into an airing cupboard and die so that no one found him until the next winter and he just slowly faded from memory. That might stop him from coming back.
That was a childish hope. Nothing could keep Loki dead. Thor would drag him back from Hel or the All-Mother would of some purpose for him and restore his life, or through some bizarre turn of events, instead of dying he'd turn up naked inside a giant flower on Alfheim. Stranger things had happened.
For a little while after the whole Mother incident, he'd been weighed down immensely by his own immortality. He'd slept a lot. Drank more than usual.
Once the All-Mother gave him something to do, it became easier to get out of bed in the mornings. He had a job, and one that interested him very much.
They'd known, when they dangled the offer in front of him, how tempting it would be. The chance to divert destiny by erasing and replacing his stories. The chance to have something to live for aside from a slow descent into madness.
Loki tried. He tried, fighting against his own nature and self every step of the way.
But the knowledge that it would always be for nothing, that the river current would always win, nearly killed him. The raw, shocking betrayal of his future self laughing, enveloped in his own histrionics, was like looking into the abyss and having it stare right back.
And the knowledge that the All-Mother would dredge him back to life, would force him into a hollow and crazed future wherein he didn't even care about why he cared, was just another kick in the nuts.
So tempting to just use his sword on himself - no doubt the shock of every lie he told himself would probably be enough to finish him off - or to use a concealed dagger to cut a vital artery, or do something, somehow, that might just kill him. If he wasn't Loki. If he wasn't, he would've done it a long time ago. But he was, and death couldn't be the end.
"Damn me," Loki growled later at his own reflection, a hollow repetition of the sentiments of his child self. He wasn't just damning himself in the casual sense, angry at his own being, but he was damning every single other goddamn Loki that had created such a dense mythology of belief, forcing the Loki of now to be alive against his will.
Chaos implied freedom, but what was any kind of freedom without the freedom to die?
There was, of course, one Loki in particular who deserved scorn: "And damn you, you wrinkled old-"
Just like the fate that wouldn't let him run, the older Loki appeared and taunted him. All Loki could offer him was a bale stare, his sense of drama dulled by raw depression.
And after that, after Verity of all people had rang him to check he'd gotten home safe, after he'd stripped off his coat and boots, he slumped onto the couch and stared at the wall blankly.
Loki was so tired. It was nothing that could be cured by sleep; it was the result of being a badly bleached ancient being. Closing his eyes wouldn't bring him rest. Nothing would, because the exciting myths and tales of centuries of adventure pounded through his arteries like energy he didn't have.
Whoever wanted to be a god?
He was almost looking forward to becoming that crazy older version of himself, dangerous, unlying, and always burning, just because then he wouldn't care anymore. He could harness the worship-energy, use it to fuel the downfall of his own sanity.
Already the strain of not using his magic was showing through, and it hadn't been any great stretch of time. He was going to live forever and there wasn't a chance that he could hold out for that long.
Loki felt stretched too thin, unable to snap, just being pulled and tweaked further and further into a shape he didn't recognise.
And there was nothing he could do about it. No end, just the eternal pull of the Dark Side and an ever-increasing exhaustion.
But they were all just stories, in the end.