Grey poison consumes him, shading the world from his sight. It stops his ears, everything fading to only silence, and pain. Yet he can still feel his brother's arms cradling him, warm. So warm, when everything else is not. He is fading away. He is dying.
This time, he has no regrets.
He does not know when he stops breathing until he is no longer lying in his body but beside it, formless and unseen. He can feel something pulling him, a welcoming—that leads to what? He does not know. But he lingers, watching. Even after Loki has gone still, eyes staring up at nothing, no longer mouthing words he hardly knows he speaks—even then, Thor clings to him, as if it still matters. His face is a blank mask, his breathing harsh, and above him, the winds begin to move.
Loki steps back unconsciously, watching the awful power, controlled and uncontrollable, spin above his brother. Dust rises in the air, picked up by the swirling winds, but there is no rain. Only dust, fine and chocking, and Thor sits head bent as if he would let the winds cover them, bury them both.
But the mortal, standing beside him, finds it in herself to speak. "Thor," she says, quiet but determined. "We need to leave."
In this place, she is a bystander, insignificant and fragile, and she knows it. "Thor." Somehow, the soft words travel, piercing the numb veil that has settled over Thor, that will he never move again. He sets down Loki's body, and Loki feels a wrench in a deep place inside him without knowing what it is. The winds still spin, unstoppable, screaming silently.
Thor walks to the mortal, and they leave, growing smaller and smaller amid the vast desert of the dead world.
There is pain. Within the fog of grey that covers the world, there are two pinpricks of swirling power, two eyes that look upon him, and he is dying. The unbleeding wound lances through him, and the poison marbles his skin. He takes a rattling breath and it turns into a rasping cough that never seems to end. He is lying upon the ground and the eyes are watching.
"Loki of Jotunheim," they say, and the voice is familiar. Malekith. Something traces his throat and then he can speak.
"That is what I am called," he says at last, wondering if this is even real, even happening, or only a dream brought on as the poison steals him.
"You look unlike the Jotuns I have seen. Have you really changed so much in a thousand years?" The question is measured and curious, and Loki laughs, the motion causing the pain to flare up even higher, twisting around his insides like constricting snakes. "I do not share much with my brethren."
The eyes fade out of sight for a moment, but then reappear, razor-sharp and glowing. "Do you wish to live?"
Loki closes his eyes, but they burn through his lids, red and pitiless. Laufey's eyes, and then he knows he is only dreaming. But he answers. "I don't see how that would matter anymore. I am dying."
"Yet I can save you," they return, calmly. "Only if you wish it, of course. It is no one's place to deny any being's right to die."
He opens his own eyes in shock, finds that the grey mists have receded somewhat, and he can almost make out the dark silhouette of Malekith's face before him. "Or I can speed you on your way to death, painlessly. I can even give you oblivion, if that is what you wish."
He cannot deny the offer is tempting, for a moment. The thought of no longer existing. And yet more tempting is the thought of life continuing. He may wish to die, but it is contradicted by a will to survive—by any means—just as strong.
"Why?" he asks. "Why save me?" Malekith leans back, and for a moment the eyes are staring somewhere he cannot follow. "Because I am going to lose."
The words linger for a long moment, as if once said they must echo.
"Lose? Your armies have invaded Asgard and could not be driven out. You have killed more in one day than in the past thousand years of Asgard's history. How is that losing?"
Malekith sighs. There is darkness coming from somewhere, casting his features in shadow, a chill across the dry hot world. "Because Midgard is the axis of this universe, the middle realm. Not so great in itself but in its connection. Because you stood with a man of Asgard and a woman of Midgard, a meeting of three realms that has not been seen in longer than when I last faced the light. Because that woman has the knowledge of the Aether and the strength to use it, and the warrior beside her has tangled his heart about her realm. Do you not see what you have done?"
No, Loki thinks vaguely. It irks him, though another part of him says pragmatically that Malekith's dire predictions have no basis in reality. Everything is dark and swirling behind his eyes.
"Then don't do it," he says at last. "Wait, as you have been, until this generation has long been dead. Do not meet them in battle."
There is a sigh, a sudden tremor. Loki grits his teeth against the pain that batters against him.
"I cannot. I have nothing left. Even if I did, then what? My species has been decimated. My family killed by king Bor. My closest companion by yourself." A hesitation, a settling. "I cannot. You must understand this. The light-dwellers do not know of determination like we do. They are fickle and cruel, like the sun."
The grey has been swirling about him ever closer, pressing deep through his skin and into his bones.
"Why did you stand with them? They would have had nothing without you." Malekith's words come, insistent, confounded.
Even the eyes are darkened and blurred now.
"For the same reason you cannot give up." He takes a breath, but the air does not enter. Everything has stopped moving. "If you are going to save me, please do it."
The darkness takes him entire.
Sound. The ever-blowing wind.
He is lying upon his back, aching, whole but decidedly not well. When he sits, the world tilts and nausea rises into his throat. He swallows, stares at the horizon. Breathes slowly.
He is alone.
.
.
.