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It should not have perturbed Loki that he was falling. Falling, after all, had been the point. Hadn’t it?
He couldn’t quite remember. Was it the fall itself that he had yearned for, or the impact at the end of it? He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t keep his thoughts straight any longer. He had wanted it to end. Yes, that was it. He had wanted it to end. He had just wanted it all to be over, finally, finally over.
So why wasn’t it?
Nothing ended, he thought feverishly. As ever, the thing he most desired was out of reach. Doubtlessly death would only reach him if he could cease wishing for it. Until then, he would continue falling, falling-
In the fourth-largest bedroom in the palace of Asgard, Loki woke up.
It took him a long moment to gather his bearings. He sat slowly, out of breath, covered in sweat. This was his own bedroom, he realized belatedly, the same one he had slept in for the last four hundred years. He looked down at his hands – pale pink, unblemished, young. Too young? He could have sworn- what year was it-
A knock at the door. Confident, loud, enthusiastic, in a familiar pattern. Thor.
“Brother!” the voice filtered through the door. “Are you still asleep? We have a quest to start on!”
The memory returned to Loki after a moment. That was right, he was to go to the outer forests with Thor and his friends to investigate reports of a lake-monster of some kind. Such quests had become more and more frequent over the recent years, as Thor’s coming-of-age ceremony loomed on the horizon. Something tugged at him distantly, a thread of thought, a sense of something just slightly off-
The knock came again. “Loki, wake up! Or you’ll be the last to the stables.” The handle rattled, and Loki had just enough time to realize that his wards weren’t up (why weren’t his wards up? When had he last slept without his room thrice-warded?) before Thor was crashing into the room, his face jovial. “Brother-”
Thor cut himself off and blinked in surprise when he saw Loki sitting up and staring at him, pale-faced and wide-eyed and sweaty. His brow furrowed in concern, and he shut the door behind him hastily. “Loki, what’s wrong?”
Loki took in a sharp breath, realizing he hadn’t inhaled in a while. “Ah- nothing,” he said hastily, shaking himself. “Just strange dreams.” He forced a smile. “Forgive me. I’ll be ready soon.” He swung his legs out of bed and stood, holding himself steady with an effort (too much effort, what was wrong with him?).
Thor was frowning. “Are you certain? You don’t look well. If you’re ill, you don’t have to-”
“Please, Thor,” Loki scoffed, “I’m perfectly fine.” He waved his hand, and his day clothes settled over his form. “Let’s go, lest the Warriors Three think we’ve left them to deal with things themselves.”
Thor’s frown remained for only another moment before his face cleared and he clapped Loki on the shoulder. “Right. Let’s get something to eat, and then-” He froze.
It was Loki’s turn to frown. “What?” He looked over to his brother, and saw him staring at Loki with a look of dawning horror. Where his hand had come into contact with Loki’s shoulder, it was turning black and frozen, and a shock of blue was spreading over Loki’s skin. Loki jerked away in a panic, and Thor drew back with a snarl, thrusting a hand out for Mjölnir.
“Monster,” Thor said hoarsely, “what have you done with my brother?”
Loki stumbled back. “I- I-” The blue was washing over his whole form, and he couldn’t stop it. There was a distant crash, and the hammer was swinging for him. The breath exploded from Loki’s lungs, and he was falling-
Loki jolted awake with a start on the bare rock of Svartalfheim. There was a terrible pain in his chest, and it took him a moment to recall why. That was right. His mother was dead, and Thor had left his corpse to rot here. Except he was not a corpse. Death had spat him back out once more, impaled and bleeding but still, for some reason, breathing.
The blade was still in him. Thor had not seen fit even to take the wretched thing out? Typical, only calling on Loki when he could be of use, abandoning him when he could help no more. Out of sight, out of mind, such was the way of the house of Odin, Loki thought bitterly. With a great effort, he heaved himself upright and began the slow, bloody work of pulling the blade out through his own body. Every inch, he had to stop and pant and try not to heave as his skin and guts shifted around the blade. The owner of the sword had not oiled the blade, evidently. Poor form. Loki would never neglect his own daggers to such an extent. Loki would say the bastard should be embarrassed, were he not so very dead.
Finally, finally, he threw the blade aside, coughing and spitting. He could not believe Thor had left him on this godforsaken rock. Left him to die alone after everything he had done- and not even had the grace to ensure Loki would die properly this time-
He shook himself. His head was still fuzzy, his thoughts disordered. He should go give Thor a piece of his mind. Back to Asgard. His brother would be on Asgard. Loki pushed himself to his feet and took a moment to breath, center himself, and gather his seiðr. He took a breath in, then out, and then shifted into the form of a raven. He flitted through the branches of Yggdrasil, following pathways he knew better than his own reflection, and soared out into the sky of Asgard to look for Thor. He thought he could see a blond head of hair over there-
Suddenly, there was a new, piercing pain in his side, and he let out a shrieking caw. Huginn, a raven twice as large as he, Odin’s raven, was attacking him. The two birds tangled together in the air, pecking and screaming and biting. Loki fumbled to try and shift to a different form, a larger one, but the first one he reached for was his Aesir form, and suddenly he was wingless, flightless, falling-
Loki fell out of his bed on the Statesman, panting. “Fucking- shit-” he swore breathlessly, clutching his chest. With a shaking hand, he waved on the lights of his small cabin. It was small, contained, safe. His wards were intact, and the alarm spell he had in place in a wide radius around the whole ship was still active and quiet. He felt for the wound on his chest, and felt only his old, ragged scars. (So why did it still hurt? Why did he still feel like he couldn’t breathe?)
A moment later, there was a knock at the door, and Loki swore again. “Not now, Thor,” he bit out.
There was a pause. Then, Thor’s voice. “I heard a bang. I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”
Loki buried his face in his knees. “I’m fine,” he called. “Leave me be.”
Another pause, for longer this time. “Loki, may I come in?”
Loki bit his lip. He looked down at himself, his pathetic, shivering form. The cold pool of desperate loneliness in his chest was as present as ever. He snapped his fingers, and the lock on his door clicked open, along with the wards.
After a moment, Thor stepped inside. There was a furrow in his brow, all too familiar from the earlier dream, and when his eyes fell on Loki, the concern on his face grew. He shut the door gently, and came over to sit a few feet away from Loki.
“What happened?”
Loki shook his head. “Nothing happened. You worry too much.” He could not quite bring himself to sell the lie.
Thor’s eyebrow twitched. “Nothing, hm?” He leaned back against the side of Loki’s bed. “I’ve never seen ‘nothing’ rattle you so, brother.”
Loki hissed at him quietly, defiantly. “I am fine. They are only dreams.” (If they were only dreams, why did it always hurt so-)
“You recall what Mother always said,” Thor said softly. He had learned well, these past few years, how to be softer. While Loki grew more flintlike, Thor’s edges were smoother by the day. It was worrying. “That even if a dream is false, its effects-”
Loki pressed his lips together, pushing down the awful pang that accompanied any thought of Frigga. “Yes, yes, I know. I remember,” he muttered. “Still. You needn’t fuss.” You are doing too little, too late, he did not say. You can no longer fix this.
“Maybe I want to fuss,” said Thor. “I’ve had few enough chances to do so, of late.”
Loki scoffed. “Like when you left me to-” He bit off his words before he could finish them, before he could snap at Thor for leaving him on Sakaar to be melted (or worse, worse, far worse, Thor had no idea what the Grandmaster could do) or leaving him on Svartalfheim to die slowly or leaving him in his cell while Mother was killed or leaving him on Sanctuary to- no. He shook his head. “Fine. Do as you will.”
Thor let out a sigh. “Just talk to me, Loki, won’t you? What are these dreams that disturb you so? Perhaps speaking of it will help.”
“You have no conception of what will help,” Loki spat. “There’s nothing to help. I will deal with it, as I always do. I- I will be poor company tonight, brother. You don’t want to be here.”
“As you always do?” Thor’s remaining eye sharpened, and for an instant, he looked so much like Odin that Loki wanted to throw up. “How often does this happen?”
Loki shrugged helplessly. “What does it matter? What difference would spreading my misery around make? Besides, I deserve it, don’t I? For all my many betrayals,” he muttered, hearing his own bitterness and hating himself for it, hating Odin for it, hating Thor for it, hating and hating himself again.
Thor’s lips thinned, an aggrieved look coming over his face. “Haven’t we had enough of silence by now?”
Loki ran a hand through his hair, suddenly exhausted. “…I dream of falling,” he said at last. “Again and again and in a thousand ways.”
Thor paled faintly. “Oh.”
A shard of ice in his chest, a bruise pressed too often to heal, hurt sparked anew in Loki. “Yes, unpleasant, I know. Which is why I did not want to speak of it. So now you will know better than to ask.”
“That’s not- Loki, I didn’t mean-”
“Enough! What do you want from me?”
“I want to help you.”
“You can’t! It’s too late, it’s too-”
It was too late, it was too late, it was too late. Loki Odinsson Friggasdottir named for a family whose blood he never shared- Child of Asgard of Jotunheim of Sanctuary, Sanctuary-
There was a snap, and Loki’s body fell still. A massive palm opened, and the former Prince of Asgard slipped to the ground in a heap, his heart finally still.