Loki:

Thor is a fool. That's all I'm thinking as I cling to Father's spear, dangling over the sucking black hole the Bifrost has become. How can he not see that I was doing the right thing? Or was he jealous because I'd almost accomplished the one thing neither he nor Father had ever managed?

"I could have done it, Father," I say, gazing up into Odin All-Father's single eye. "For you! For everyone!"

For one shining moment, I think he's going to tell me that he understands. That he knows why I tried to destroy Jotunheim and that he's proud of me for reaching for a solution to the problem. That it doesn't matter that I'm not his true son. That he loves me just as much as he loves Thor.

Slowly, ponderously, Odin shakes his head. "No, Loki."

And just like that, my heart is broken.

My fingers slip free of the spear, and I fall. The dying Bifrost catches me, spins me like a top, dashes me against pieces of metal and stars and knocks me senseless. And all the while, the black hole tugs at me, pulling me closer to oblivion. I could fight it; after all, I know all the paths between worlds, and I could easily slip away, but I don't see the point. There's no one left in all Nine Worlds who would miss me if I were gone, and I know I wouldn't miss this awful, hollow feeling inside.

As the black hole draws me in, I can see strange images, almost too beautiful to look at, in the stardust and remnants of the Rainbow Bridge. I see a shining white sword in the hand of a serene, beautiful woman; a figure - who I think is me - standing alone in an icy wasteland that looks remarkably like Jotunheim; Thor standing shoulder to shoulder with Sif, the Warriors Three, and someone whose face I can't see, but whose eyes radiate light.

Then my eyes focus on the person standing in front of me. She's not real, to be sure, because she's almost transparent in places. I'm certain I've never seen her in my life, and yet she seems to be smiling. Oddly enough, she's smiling at me.

That's the strangest thing about this whole situation. I don't think there's anyone in the Nine Worlds who would look at me and smile like that.

"Who are you?" I ask, but the black hole sucks away my words. Somehow, though, she hears me.

"No one you'd know," she says. There's a strange, humorous lilt in her voice, as though everything's a joke and she knows the punch line. "Are you sure you want to do that?"

She indicates the black hole, which is pulling me in. Somehow, my mysterious visitor seems able to resist the pull of it, while I'm being dragged backwards away from her into the singularity.

"Do I have a choice?" I ask. Right now, to me, death doesn't seem to be such a horrible thing. It sounds like safety from the rush of words in my mind, spelling out a litany of reasons why Father never loved me. It sounds like the lack of feeling, when I'd give everything to feel nothing. It sounds like peace.

The young woman looks at me directly. So far, I've only been able to see the right side of her face, but as she turns, I see that the skin around her left eye is ravaged with a massive scar. Her smile gone, her eyes focused on me, she says, "There's always a choice."

I can't tell you exactly what color her eyes are, or even what she looks like. But I do know that I'm looking at someone who isn't judging me for being born a Jotun or for trying to destroy my race or for threatening my brother's mortal love.

She extends her hand to me.

For a moment, I'm not sure what to do. But my moment of indecision costs me dearly. The pull of the black hole increases dramatically, and I'm being drawn backwards far too fast. It looks like my choice has been made for me, and now that I'm going to die for certain, I want to live. How ridiculous is that?

The visitor, though, isn't giving up. The black hole rips away at her form, leaving gaps where starlight shines through, as she leans forward, reaching out to me.

I don't hesitate this time. I throw myself forward with all the strength I've got left in me and grab blindly for her hand. My hands grasp at empty air - and then my fingers lock desperately around her wrist. There's a brief sensation of falling sideways, and then the black hole of the Bifrost is gone, and I'm looking down at a green and blue world, its surface wreathed in clouds.

I'm still holding onto the visitor's hand. When I look down at our hands, I see that my wrist is now encircled by a thin golden chain.

"You have one, too, huh?" The visitor taps her throat with her free hand, drawing my attention to a gold chain like the one on my wrist. She wears hers around her neck like a collar.

"Where am I?" I ask. The small green world looks familiar.

"That's Earth," she says. "Terra firma."

And then she laughs, her voice clear and ringing against the empty stars.

I know that this is impossible. There is no sound in space - space itself is defined as a vacuum. This visitor is not real. It's entirely possible that she's something created by my twisted psyche to comfort me as I die.

"You're not dead," the visitor says. "You're just free. For the first time in your life. It's a disconcerting feeling, no?"

She looks around at the cosmos, still rife with the wreckage of the Bifrost. "They told me I wouldn't remember any of this when I woke up. I wish that wasn't so - because this whole thing is pretty amazing."

Then she lets go of my hand to smack herself in the forehead. "What am I doing? You've got somewhere to be, and I'm standing here blabbering about the view! My apologies."

"Where am I going?"

"Down there," she says. The visitor inclines her head toward Earth.

"How am I going to get down there?" I ask.

"That's easy," the visitor says, laughter dancing in her eyes again. "I'll just give you a little push."

She puts her hands on my chest and gives me a gentle shove. I tip backward, arms pinwheeling, falling for the second time today. It's starting to be a habit, one that I intend to break as soon as possible, but I'm worried I'm going to break something else as I plummet through cloud cover toward a vast expanse of brown desert.

The fall knocks me senseless for a while, and I lay in the dust with the sun glaring down at me, trying to remember how to breathe again. I have a feeling that something important happened to me, but the memory of the event hangs irritatingly out of reach. All that I have to remind me that something out of the ordinary occurred is the feeling that I've been beaten all over with a stick and the thin gold chain around my wrist.

I sit up and examine it. There's no clasp, no pendant. It's obviously magic, but I've neither the time nor the inclination to study it further. I have to get out of the desert before the heat finishes me off. I've never dealt well with heat - but I didn't learn until recently that it's because I'm a Jotun.

I can see metal buildings shining in the sunlight, somewhere off to the west. I have a sinking feeling that I'm in the same place where I sent the Destroyer not so long ago. As I stand up and begin to walk stiffly toward the town, I wonder idly if they've repaired the damage yet. If Thor's human love will have some deep hatred of me and attempt to kill me on sight. And most important, as memories of my fall begin to return - who was the visitor?

In the city, I keep an eye out for anyone who resembles the visitor, but since I have no idea what she looks like, I don't have much luck. It's only when I've given up and I'm sitting on a bench, wondering if it's possible to find food here if you have no money to pay for it, that I see her.