He was falling for thirty minutes. But no one asked what he saw there.

.

At first, it's just light.

Which makes no sense at all, because Loki is used to falling: used to the rush and ache of darkness, to the peculiar and particular panic that comes from being unable to turn yourself right side up.

Loki is used to falling.

.

He is also used to magic.

The golden tendrils—and that is quite what this light is, it is nothing more than some over-bold sorcerer's cobwebs—are curling around his fingers, and he shakes them away. Perhaps this will be the away to spend the time, the plunge. Learn the secrets of his own fate, before it comes to pass.

(That train of thought shuffles together in very disjointed pieces, because he is terrified.)

(And that is the fate of all his secrets: Loki is always terrified.)

.

The light is fading. Darkness, he knows.

But this is no void of space and time; this is a triangle of tension, and he begins to see rumors of other worlds passing. And ever, he is powerless—ever, he is hurtling in a tangle of limbs without hope of redemption.

.

He says none of this to Thor, afterwards. Half because they find their father, and half because—well, what good what it do?

Thor has only ever grieved for Loki when Loki is gone.

He does not trust the doctor. He does not trust Hela—for once, even the whisper of possible alliances is lost on him. No, Loki will not make that mistake again. Asgard has spat him out time and again, but he finds that conquering worlds is much better a task for his brother.

His brother, who needs no savior.

.

When he is falling, for the endless moments, round and round and gold and gold, he keeps wondering if he is going to die, or if this is how he will live forever.

He tumbles out into some mysterious cavern of a house, and the sorcerer is fundamentally unimpressed with him. The sorcerer is also wearing a red cape, an accessory that Loki has always loathed.

Thor laughs it off. Loki does not dwell on it.

Does not dwell on the fact that he was alone again, alone and falling, and it might be safer if it felt the same each time—

But it never does.

.

Hela dumps him onto the trash heap of the universe.

By all that's good and green in the Nine Realms—which isn't very much, as well he knows—he's lucky to have just that. His luck.

The Grandmaster is as shallow as a blade laid on its flat, and just as dangerous. Loki organizes his past selves a little more carefully in his mind, and forgets any illusions he has ever had to rule. It's must better, much easier, to return to the scheming amusements that always get him in and out of voids.

In and out of falling, though he used to paint those escapes in a braver shade of black.

.

He was falling for thirty minutes. Nobody asks what he saw there.

The truth is, there is so much that no one ever asks. And he used to be no one, too.

He never asked—at least, not until he fell.