He blinked slowly. His eyes seemed to protest the move with all their worth, struggling vehemently to return to the bliss of oblivion. After another moment, Loki succumbed to the pull of unconsciousness.
…
The next time his eyes opened, they did so violently. He was momentarily blinded by a dazzling light; his facial muscles contracted in a sustained effort to block the intrusion and return to the soft, cushioning darkness that he had been floating through.
Loki forced his eyes to flutter open a second time. After being accosted by the light yet again, he fell gratefully back into nothingness.
…
He found himself staring at a shooting star as it snaked its way lazily across the cosmos. It seemed to him that he had been watching this star forever and had only now snapped to the realization of doing so. Slightly startled by a new awareness of his body, Loki dragged his eyes away from the sky and glanced at his right arm. It lay next to him limply; he continued to gaze at it until intuition told him that, were he inclined to do so, he would not be able to move it.
…
With his fourth awakening came the pain. A wave of sensation rolled through his body and forced his eyes wide in shock. Loki's mouth contorted in an attempt to cry out, but no sound came. His throat strained against the signals his muscles were sending as the sensation grew more forceful and settled somewhere deeper. It crept through his bones and lodged itself behind his ribcage. He suddenly became aware of every breath that scraped like sandpaper through his lungs. The next few did not care to take hold, but simply floated through him without serving their purpose. He gasped silently and grappled at his chest, allowing his eyes to dash madly from one end of the landscape before him to the other.
Scream after prolonged scream ricocheted off the barren stone before Loki as his voice returned.
…
His mind fell back to him as suddenly as his body had. As he acclimated to the constancy of the pain, a space at the back of his brain fluttered open and released the thoughts that led him to his current state. A long descent, a landing for which he had been semi-conscious, and then nothing.
…
Immortality, thought Loki, is not worth the credit that mortals grant it. What had it left him with? Eternal existence, being eternally trapped within his own mind, and what promised to be eternal pain. Mortals, he thought, had such an effortless way out. He, on the other hand, had fallen through the cosmos and lived to tell the tale. If only I had someone to tell it to…
In a split second Loki had made the decision to let go. Of course he had spent the majority of his adult life planning such a moment, but he had not yet made up his mind to let go. Endless nights dragged by, languishing in their ability to never end. They oozed across his eyelids, whispering maliciously as they passed, loud enough to keep Loki awake but just quiet enough to be meant for him alone. Night. After endless. Night.
A common musing that made prey of his restless mind was his own mortality. He reasoned that it would take something of godlike proportions to kill him; by extension, he would be capable of ending his own existence. The trick remained to puzzle out the method that would succeed. For, Loki reasoned, unless he found a way to strangle himself, very few outside forces would cooperate. Very few outside forces would be capable or desirous of killing a god.
In the frantic moments before the drop, he knew he would not die. Loki knew that somehow, he would awake to stare into his brother's grief-stricken face, no matter how far he fell. At least he was wrong on that account. He smirked, absorbing the stiff feeling that his face responded with in protest. It was immediately followed by a subtle prickling which grew to a dull ache.
His gaze drifted to the stars.
To think that not so long ago I was among them. To think that I was one of them. Perhaps not quite so bright…
…
Though he had regained the ability to move with minimal pain, Loki found the ground more welcoming. He had grown intimately familiar with the stones and pebbles surrounding him. He felt at home in the dust. The indent made when he crashed to the surface became his cocoon, and he felt in no rush to leave it empty. He grew to feel a sense of exquisite purpose in filling the cocoon. To leave it would be to strip it naked and abandon it. Loki felt an almost magnetic attraction holding him in place; every time the desire to stand flitted across his mind, a sense of doom chased it away dutifully.
…
If I wanted to leave, I could have done so in a considerably less painful manner, thought Loki scornfully. He had come to realize that death was a means of leaving. He did not want to die, but only to leave. The most convenient way out was by dropping away, spiraling down into the dark, all-consuming unknown. After growing up with Thor, one would think I may have learned that the mindless and easy way does not often succeed. He knew that he would not die. He knew it with every reasonable part of his being. His gut, however, had told him otherwise. It told him that no one, not even a god, could survive such a fall. It told him that he may land somewhere hostile and be immediately annihilated. It begged him to take the chance. Loki learned, as he looked on to an endless expanse of space, that he was not meant to follow an impulse.
…
The need to escape still held fast within him. He wanted to leave his body behind. He wanted to leave his mind stranded within his empty body. He wanted to be different, new, special, anything. He was nothing. Years of reinforcement had taught him that. He was not even so much as an Asgardian. He ached for a fresh identity. A place to begin anew. A people who knew nothing of him or his history. A people that would never see him in the shadow of another.
Loki stood laboriously, his legs convulsing under his weight and threatening to collapse. He steeled himself to withstand whatever pathetic pains his body gave him. Whatever insubstantial complaints his slack, unused muscles voiced, he would crush them with ruthlessness befitting of vermin like his "father" and "brother." He recoiled momentarily at his own cruelty, but knew it to be justified. At least as far as Odin was concerned, the sentiment held.
…
The first step was agony.
The second was a shock to every nerve Loki possessed.
The third consumed his body in unforgiving flame.
The fourth threw acid on his flame-licked remains.
The fifth contained a sense of validation.
With the sixth he embraced the pain.
The seventh was more certain in its footing.
The eighth held meaning.
The ninth wailed for his death.
The tenth hailed a rebirth.
…
I am nothing. I am dead to the world as it knew me. I am dead.
…
I will be born anew. I will destroy the shadow-self that held me to the life I hate.
…
I am a god. I am a king.
...
I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose.
A/N: I would be forever grateful if y'all reviewed!