He wasn't quite sure what he had expected. To die, he supposed. To float through the Universe, discarded, never to be a thought in a mind again. He assumed that the pulsing heartbeat of Yggdrasil would carry him down to Hel and there he would lie, gazing up into her hardened face. But these were all assumptions; stabs in the darkness of a mind he no longer possessed control of. In truth, he made very few assumptions.
But for all that he had imagined, he did not expect to feel rock beneath his back, or sense the pale pulse of blue light across his face. And he most assuredly did not expect to open his eyes and see the twinkling light of the Universe above him.
"Asgard is far away," a faceless voice whispered near his ear. His mind bristled and his fingers clenched in fright, but the rest of his faculties did not respond.
"Your body is broken," the voice assured him. "But you are alive."
Loki knew this. Even though his battered mind assured him that this was, indeed, Death, his quickly beating heart told him otherwise.
"You want to know where you are," the voice returned, this time it came from behind his head. He attempted to strain his neck and see, but the pain there was too great. "You have found the home of the Chitauri."
Loki swallowed thickly, "I don't understand."
"I am The Other," the voice replied, the whisper becoming a rasp. "And when your wounds have healed, I will bring you to your Savior."
"My savior…?" Loki asked, blinking quickly against the prickling heat at the corners of his eyes. He had not felt fear in a very long time. Since he was but a boy, he had little to cower from. He was a Prince of Asgard, after all.
But then, that was before.
"You once were King and He shall make you so again," said The Other. "He knows what is in your heart, Loki. He knows what you feel."
After a moment; a very long moment, Loki replied:
"I feel nothing but sadness," he admitted, his voice cracking as a wave of agony wrenched through his damaged body. He groaned softly, the weight of his thoughts washing over him like the arc light of the now-gone Bifrost. "What sort of King would that make me?"
"A very good one, indeed."
