You're all wonderful! I love you!
For this one, I listened to "A Viking Sad Song by Gisli Gunnarsson"
Enjoy!
VVVVVVVVV
In a Crowd of Thousands
Chapter 3
"The Nexus Event"
The elevator doors shut. Loki stared straight ahead.
And Death stared straight back at him.
All his life, before this bizarre twist of fate, Death had been a tangible, visceral thing. Dirty, violent, gasping, struggling. Blood and heat and cold steel. The clamor of armor and the howl of screams. Baring of teeth, eyes desperately searching for light as it faded from the sky.
And then, in one moment—a moment that always came too soon—the eyes would fix, breath would stop, and a person who had, just an eyeblink before, been able to speak and feel, smile and weep…
Was gone. Gone, never to return.
But even so, there remained the very tangible body. The body, which would be borne home in honor upon a litter, where his kin and friends would wail over it as it was processed through the streets. Once it reached home, it would be lovingly bathed and bandaged, dressed in fine clothes and adorned with gold and jewels. And at last, it would be laid upon a boat amongst a bed of flowers, a treasured sword placed in its hands, and set afloat upon the westward ocean, beneath a billion colorful stars. An arrow would set it aflame, and the body would burn to cinders as it vanished over the edge of the realm.
But that wasn't the end.
His mother had always assured him, whenever he had awakened from a dark and shapeless nightmare, that Death was not to be feared. Because people were not their bodies. People were souls. Eternal souls who simply inhabited bodies for a short time, and then would pass into Paradise, where they would walk the halls of their fathers, and be at peace forevermore. Loki had never ceased to believe this, no matter how old and cynical he became. Something about it simply rang true. He saw it whenever a comrade or enemy died: he saw the instant the soul left the body. It was something he had always clung to, every time he went into battle. In the back of his mind, he would say it to himself: "Even if I die, this is not the end. It isn't the end. It's never the end."
But…
What about now?
He had seen Mobius "trimmed" by one of those sterile weapons that were no more than sticks—nothing like the nobility of a sword, or the finality of a spear. He had been hit, and his body disintegrated. Mid-sentence. No blood, no gasps, no struggling to keep hold of just one more instant. Yet Loki felt certain that his friend was dead.
Or perhaps…
Worse than dead.
It might be true, what his mother said—that it wasn't the end if a person's body was slain in battle, or he died of old age.
But what if he were "trimmed"? Did that mean that the TVA destroyed him completely? Soul and all?
A bone-deep chill ran through Loki's entire body, and a deep sickness twisted his gut.
Later in life, he had also been taught about Hel. A place devoid of life, a place of repeated torment, or mere emptiness. The very thought had terrified him.
Never in his wildest dreams had he ever believed he would encounter a thought even more terrifying than that. But now, he had.
The thought that he could simply cease to exist.
The thought that his entire inner person—everything about him—all his vibrant memories, his powerful emotions, his potential, the depth and complexity of his being, could simply vanish.
Especially now.
Now, after what he had seen.
Back in that interrogation room, Mobius—poor Mobius!—had thrown around the word "girlfriend" and "romance" when speaking of Sylvie. But Loki knew now, as he had then, that such mundane and prosaic words couldn't come close to the truth.
That wasn't it at all. Sylvie had become as vital to him as his own breath. And it still staggered him to contemplate the reason why.
When she had touched him, and he had touched her in return…
She had transformed into something extraordinary.
All this time, all his life, he had been stumbling around in the fog, barely able to see ten feet in front of him, groping his way along, hoping the path he chose was the right one.
And suddenly, through some sort of magic he couldn't comprehend, Sylvie had become the Light.
Intensely-focused, brilliant light that shot straight into the two powerful violet stones hidden within him, and refracted through them, sending a kaleidoscope of universes showering through his mind.
They overwhelmed him—rapid, swimming images he couldn't understand. But each one showed him electrifying possibilities he had never imagined, both painful in their beauty and staggering in their tragedy.
Attacks upon Asgard that left it shrouded in darkness…
Being locked within a wall of ice, his heartbeat slowing to nothing…
A laughing, raven-haired little girl bouncing upon his knee…
Sitting inside an isolated cabin high in snowy mountains, beside a fire that glowed and danced…
Walking through the glorious autumn woods of Aelfheim…
Hiding within an elvish time-vault, surrounded by books…a tiny ship…and a strange mirror…
A quiet, golden Yuletide in an ancient kirk in Asgard…
A lost child. A child with a name written in the sand.
His own death as a piece of the broken Asbru bridge stabbed through his chest.
But through all of this, a silvery thread blazed, constant and bright and soft. Loki could see it leading off through the center of all these pictures. It seemed to whisper to him, touch him with half-remembered sensations. It wanted to pull him with it, to show him something. Something that, in this reality of fractures and splits and splinters, would unite all the pieces of him completely. Because it always remained, no matter where he was, or when he was.
Sylvie was his connection to that. The light that clarified the confusion. The tie that would bind him to the truth of who he was, and where he should truly be.
And yet, Death still stared him in the face.
He had to choose.
He had to choose, now, what he was going to believe. Who he was going to believe.
Would he believe this faceless, sterile TVA, and acknowledge that they had the power to obliterate him completely, soul and all?
Or would he believe his wise, gentle mother? The mother who would look at him steadily, not a trace of deceit in her soft eyes, and say:
"Death is not to be feared, Loki. No matter what form it takes. Remember. There are forces far more powerful than Death."
No matter what form it takes. Loki latched onto those words in a fever, taking a deep breath as the elevator doors opened.
"Even if I die, this is not the end," he whispered to himself. "It isn't the end. It's never the end."
He had decided. He would believe his mother, who had never lied to him.
And, no matter what happened, he would follow that silver thread.
To be continued…