Marvel has a free MMO where you can play as a whole bunch of different Marvel characters, and it's more or less a Marvel-skinned Diablo clone (so I've heard; I've never played Diablo because I have no interest in dungeon crawlers, or really anything that isn't heavy on story) with a typically thin MMO plot, and honestly it's not even that good aside from the fact that it's the sort of game I get bored with very quickly...and yet I'm addicted for the simple reason that I get to play as Loki. MCU Loki, more or less, because his default costume is his armor from Thor: The Dark World (interesting side note: I think he's the only character so far whose default appearance is from the MCU rather than comics), and also a good guy, more or less, because the only available storyline is about helping traditional good guys defeat traditional bad guys. As you might imagine, I am all over that.

And then I found myself wanting to elaborate on a few in-game interactions and events, and eventually that turned into "what the hell, I will write actual Marvel Heroes fic because I do what I want". This will most likely end up being a plotless, randomly updated fic with short new chapters whenever I feel like it, in part because I doubt it has an audience of more than like 3 people.

It is an exceedingly strange world in which Loki has found himself this time—he might almost call it unsettling, if he were of a mind to risk the minor vulnerability inherent in admitting it even to himself, which he is not. "Strange," at least, is inarguable, and in most cases a vast understatement.

He is not sure, for instance, how long he has been here (perhaps a very long time, perhaps almost no time at all), or which of his memories are real, are his. Sometimes he is sure that he is the Loki who believed himself Aesir, the Loki who fell, the Loki who tumbled through an endless void, who did not know whether to laugh or weep when he was plucked from the dark and then learned what it was to truly know pain, who was sent to Midgard after the tesseract with a scepter and a threat and a memory of agony. Sometimes he is the Loki who tried to fail and thereby defy his master, as much as even the thought terrified him; and who had to conceal his relief (not so difficult, tangled as it was with bitterness and hurt and grief) when Thor was sent to stop him. Sometimes he is the Loki who tried furiously to win, who took grim delight in the destruction he wreaked on primitive Midgard, who despised Thor and Odin for their hypocrisy, who knew beyond a doubt that he could never have what he had always wanted and so he would have this or die trying; who, in his rage, knew but could not care that Thanos would let him rule Midgard only as a puppet; who knew that the best he could hope for was annihilation and so he swore by his blood and despair and tattered magic that he would drag all Yggdrasil down with him. Sometimes he is the Loki who rotted in an Asgardian prison, mind turning on itself, before he finally contrived to escape (and even that is complicated and confused, weighted down by a terrible grief that he only sometimes thinks he understands).

(Sometimes, more faintly, he is a Loki who was never imprisoned at all, who told Thor as much of the truth as he could and more to the Allfather when the chains on his mind were broken, who tentatively rejoined his family and threw himself into preparing the Realms to fight the Titan. Sometimes, in his weaker moments, he only wishes he were that Loki, and then he thinks in disgust that he deserves nothing of the kind.)

Sometimes he is the Loki who burned, the Loki who hated everything Asgard stood for and wanted either to rule it or destroy it, the Loki who stole a shieldmaiden's body for his own purposes, the Loki who brought about the end of all things once again and bartered damned souls for a way to escape death forever. Sometimes he is the Loki who became a child again, devious and fiercely intelligent and good, who loved his (suddenly much older) brother, who sacrificed that brother to save everything else, who alone knew enough to recognize an imposter, who loved a girl from Hel and undid his mistake by setting her free, who had a dog and liked milkshakes and discovered Tumblr, who schemed and laughed and wept and bore the weight of decisions too heavy for any child and tried his hardest, who lost in the end but won by dying as himself. Sometimes he is the Loki who took over the shell of his innocent self but could not escape his guilt and his new/old conscience, who worked to change, who did and did not lay waste to Midgard out of spite, who did and did not seek to destroy his younger self, who understood what it truly was to be Loki and in so doing discovered how to rewrite his own story.

Sometimes he is yet another Loki, horned like an unsubtle demon or robed and genderless, who convinced the Allfather to turn Thor into a woman for reasons that now escape him, who alone in Asgard had the strength of will to choose against the pressure of stories and expectation and supposed fate, who helped save all Midgard from destruction. Sometimes he is old and worn, the Loki who won and ruled Asgard and found in it no satisfaction, who did not realize until too late that he could not triumph by killing Thor. Sometimes, confusingly, he is very young and attending a Midgardian academy with Thor and many of his equally young superhero friends, or battling to rule Midgard and Asgard in a bizarre world made entirely of blocks, or spinning schemes that involve ice cream and pigeons. Sometimes he is a Loki who carried the hammer, if briefly, and was Odin's favored son from the beginning. Sometimes he is a Loki standing on a Midgardian stage and basking in adulation as thousands of mortals shout his name.

Sometimes, he thinks he is all of these selves and none of them, and it eats at him.

The people with whom he shares this world are no less strange. He is surrounded by beings he simultaneously does and does not know, in guises that both are and are not familiar. He sees others with his own face, even, others who are and are not him, just as nearly every Thor he meets both is and is not his brother. They are all copies, or they are all real, and he is not sure which possibility is more dizzying—especially when they all seem to exist across the same ever-shifting spectrum of selves as he does.

(Sometimes he thinks that only the obnoxious Deadpool truly understands this place and its inner workings. This is a thought he will never, ever speak aloud.)

The answers become no clearer to him as the days go by. Instead, as he learns the secrets of Avengers Tower and the nooks and alleyways of New York, as he works with humans like Maria Hill and Phil Coulson and Hank Pym and Ben Ulrich, as he visits slums and skyscrapers and sewers and jungles, as he becomes used to exchanging barbs with an ever-shifting roster of heroes…the questions somehow seem to lose their importance. He is a being of countless interwoven myths and stories, the precise intersection of which seems to shift every time he tries to examine it, and eventually he stops trying, because he is no longer sure that it is relevant to what he is doing here. One thing, in all this, is constant: always, he is Loki, and he knows more than almost anyone that identity is malleable, that facts and truth are not always perfectly interchangeable.

And the truth is this: he is all of these things and more, and no one has forgotten, and he is not at all sure that he believes in redemption, and yet…he assists SHIELD, and travels Midgard, and rescues commoners who recognize him and call him "hero" anyway as they thank him for his aid, and he becomes gradually aware that here in this strange place of intertwining realities, he is building something new. It is tentative, fragile, and he tries not to think of it because surely that is tempting fate, to name a thing and still think he can keep it—but it remains anyway, growing and strengthening ever so subtly when he is not paying attention.

He is chaos and change, after all, and in each of these is the possibility for new beginnings, even if he could not see it until now and here. He is Loki, with everything that means. And for the first time, he begins to think—truly, not in empty bravado and arrogance—that it could be enough. Not yet, perhaps. Not today. But someday. And that, in itself, is enough for now.

I really have no excuse for this. I was just going to do a little introductory chapter to set the stage or whatever and establish, you know, here's this MMO that's a weird mashup of various comics and movie canons, here's how Loki fits into that, now off we go, and instead I WENT AND GAVE MYSELF FEELINGS. Not just Loki feelings generally. That's pretty much my baseline state and the whole reason I'm playing this game, because I have a ridiculous amount of feelings about MCU Loki and a couple of his comics counterparts. No: in writing this, I gave myself feelings about this specific Loki from this specific MMO, despite its thin plot and thinner characterization. I have problems. (In fairness, I did already know I had a thing about identity and semi-metaphysical stuff with alternate universes, so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.)

I reference a whole bunch of Marvel universes here-the MCU generally plus different interpretations and potential AUs, the mainstream comics universe (the Lady Loki era, Siege, Journey Into Mystery, Agent of Asgard, one mention of classic weird Loki), Earth X, the 2004 Loki miniseries by Rodi and Ribic, Avengers Academy (the new mobile game), Lego Marvel Super Heroes, one episode of the Avengers Assemble cartoon, and Tom Hiddleston's 2013 SDCC appearance. Because I can, that's why.