Prologue
Falling was all he'd ever known.
It was clear that he'd fallen from some place. Eyes that had never glimpsed light would not search for it in the darkness; a body, throned always on emptiness, would not writhe as it yearned for support. A man would remember nothing else if he'd always called limbo his home.
But he remembered a different home, where a bridge of tourmaline crossed an ocean of sapphire. He remembered glittering towers, brushing the sky like the crystalline fingers of giants. Their beauty made him ache. The other memories were even sweeter:
The traveling sorcerer he saw as a boy, conjuring serpents from thin air; the shriek of a serving maid, hours later, when he figured out how to do it himself. Dashing through the castle doors into his first blizzard; the frantic embrace of his mother when she found him, not lost to the storm, but napping in its snow. Huge hands placing a helm atop his head; the booming laugh as it slipped down past his ears. "You'll grow into it, son."
A grin from the boy beside him, who stood as he was supposed to, his own helm fitting perfectly.
He wished that falling was all he'd ever known.
It took a long time for time to lose its meaning; eventually, the days grew too tiresome to count. Instead, he thought of death and how it would rescue him. Was it possible for him to starve? Could he succumb to dehydration? Maybe he'd fall into a vacuum and suffocate. If the universe was merciful, a sun would burst beside him and the explosion would set him aflame. It would be worth it, he thought, just to see sunlight again.
But his universe had never been merciful. To spite him, it seemed, his prison grew even darker, even emptier. Silence pounded against his ears like a hammer while icy memories seared his flesh. He tried to scream, tried to fight them, but they kept coming. Before long, he forgot how to open his mouth.
It was then that he saw the stars.
They popped into existence before him, spheres of light, close enough to touch. At first, he did not trust them as anything more than memories. But the stars he knew did not twinkle.
He watched the orbs flicker all around him, gorging himself on their unfamiliar fire. Some grew huge with his approach, others shrinking rapidly as he passed until, finally, the last one grew tiny behind him.
"No!" he shouted, twisting his weightless body to face it. "Don't leave me!"
He realized then what he was looking at. A starry sky. A constellation.
Frantically, he twisted away from it, eyes boring into the blackness beneath him.
And there it was: a speck of dust in the distance, growing larger and more solid with every passing second. It glowed, bathed in the silver of a small sun; as he hurtled closer, colors began to pool on its surface. Silver light gave way to blue which yielded patches of soft emerald.
He began to laugh.
How fitting that, of all the planets in the universe, he would fall into this one. It would be his first - his only - triumph; the one time that fortune would pick him over Thor.
Are you watching, brother? he asked, silently. Do you know how little I want this?
The planet dwarfed him now, replacing shadows and stars with a gentle, pulsating blue. His eyes throbbed as they took in the color's intensity. Still, he stared.
It will be prison for both of us, he thought. You will be trapped in Asgard, brother, and I will be trapped here. We will never get what we want.
His body passed through a layer of whitish mist and, suddenly, he was no longer falling. He hung there, suspended between two existences, claimed by neither. Then the planet took hold.
Tumbling into its blue embrace, his body cradled by the sudden rush of air, he lifted three fingers in a gesture of farewell. He wasn't sure who he meant to receive it: his brother, his memories, or the only home he'd ever known. Perhaps all of them, he thought.
As Earth rose up to meet him, Loki closed his eyes.