November 2, 10:37 PM


Upon arrival, Loki finds himself steeped in a darkness so profound it consumes his entire essence. She had not been in London where he had felt most of her energy. It frightened him, but didn't stop him in the least. Loki searched so long through the mists and void, he found himself entrapped in it.

He's not sure how long it's been. Time seems to be nonexistent here, at least for a little while. Could be milliseconds, hours, days, weeks. A year perhaps.

Loki is aware that he cannot feel his body. He knows in the recesses of his mind that he has a body but for the moment he simply exists. He is nothing more than a spirit on a forgetten plane.

No taste in his mouth (that is if he could feel his mouth), not even a sound to fill his ears: just emptiness. He cannot feel his corporeal body, yet, afloat in this plane he feels a cool scent wash over him, shocking his consciousness. It's not a sweet scent that overwhelms him, although, not an entirely bitter scent either.

A deep earthy musk of moss and juniper spice fills Loki to the brim, until he can't possible soak up any more. It's a familiar scent, though, he cannot recall where he had encountered it. Was it the scent of her hair? He grasps at the memory rushing up to him like an angry tide with no avail, as if he's reaching through smoke. Loki is familiar with this feeling, this restlessness, this sorrow.

The second immediate sensation that bubbles to the surface is ache. It's an ache that isn't entirely physical, yet it bears a nearly painful weight where his chest should be. There's the ache where his legs should be; tendons and sinews bent to their maximum, stretched and snapped. An ache in his bones; pure exhaustion overwhelming him. It's a tidal force, wracking every nerve ending, pulsing in his heartbeat, his blood, his brain. Their combined weights do not sit on top of his body, as if to crush him, rather, they weigh beneath him pulling him deeper and deeper into the void. He knows what lies there in the darkness for him: shadows and demons he'd rather not explore.

No certitude, no peace, nor help for pain.

Loki had read that in Midgardian poem, and it's meaning could never be more real for him than it is now. He had known physical pain and was, unfortunately, quite familiar with it. From this, he knew that there were different kinds of pain. The pain of a lashing was different from a bone breaking. A sting differed greatly from a bite, a snap from a twist, a cut to an impalement. This pain is something entirely different, a pain that has no remedy. A bone will heal, flesh will heal, yet he knows that this wound somewhere inside him will fester, and gnaw away at him. He's now sure how but he's faintly aware that its very cold, but the cold is something his body has always been familiar with.

So this is Hell, he muses, his inward voice garbled as if underwater.

He lies in this timeless realm of nauseating weight, and bombardment of ache for what seems like eons. Loki imagines where his corporeal body may be, wherever he landed, growing old and weathered alone in a cold, dank place. In a tomb, perhaps.

Am I even alive? He wonders vaguely. As if it mattered at all. Perhaps the mists consumed his very essence and he passed on into the underworld.

And for the second time the God of Lies feels very alone, and quite afraid. The first was in his incarceration, with the cold promise from Amora's lips to kill perhaps the only other being in the realms he cared more than himself for.

It doesn't come back all at once for him. Disjointed from time, it feels like an eternity, lifetimes just to feel the faintest sensation of self once more. He can feel his aura wrapped around a definite form, his form. He feels his weight and gravity again, anchoring him to somewhere. One by one, they begin to come back to him; the blood rushing through his body, the power of his heart, breath filling his lungs, head pounding, and the cold temperature of his body.

His consciousness, tossed in the chaotic void, slowly creeps back to shore with each rushing wave. What first washes to shore is a buzzing, a fritzing in his ears. It's a buzzing out thought, rapid synapses, controlling his breath, a small twitch his leg and in his fingers. He knows he is alive, and that doesn't affect him as much as it should. Other small things begin to wash back.

He remembers his name, Loki Laufeyson, as if it were the chill of a Jotun blizzard inside his throat. There used to be warmth to his name, especially when spoken from his mother. Her face, golden in aura, materializes. Her laugh, her smile.

He feels her wound as if it were his own, a knife wrenching itself through her skin, through cartilage and bone, collapsing her lung, and piercing her heart. He feels himself drowning in her blood. He is fully aware of blood on his hands, in his eyes, running down his throat in a never, ending stream of regret, regret, regret. He led the monster right to her. He might has well have held the knife himself.

Beyond this, multitudes of memories like small stones on a beach, pile before him. Thousands and thousands. The more painful the memory, the heavier the stone. This, it seems, is his punishment for spending too much time in the limbo between planes. He must relive the torture of every mistake he has ever made. If he were to forget a single piece of himself, he would lose it forever. What if Jane was washed somewhere within these stones? The sound of her laugh, the breath in her smile, the flick of those brown eyes that had disarmed him so completely. He couldn't risk it.

Each piece of himself he hauls away from the tumultuous waves weighs incredibly, as if it were trying to swallow him back up. It takes years, or so it feels. Decades of piecing himself together, of gut wrenching sobs and roars of hatred bubbling from his ragged throat.

As he heaves the last stone onto the beach, finally, there's the feeling of light on his eyelids. He doesn't believe it at first, so he focuses on the dull light penetrating his skin. It's definitely there, a very cold color. A dirtied ivory speckled with aquamarine, made from the light on a cloudy day.

Finally, there is relief, finally there is certainty that he is somewhere, and he is waking up. The buzzing in his ear fades into a hollow groan. Wind blowing through trees? The musk of earth and juniper is still thick in his nose. A forest? Triumphantly, he feels the waves, the tides of pain and ache receding back into the recess of his mind. He senses the iciness around him. Snow. He fights the waves back, pushing them harder and harder away from him, back to their pit to where they begrudgingly flee.

His eyes open, only to shut immediately. The white light is blinding, nearly painful to his eyes. With a stuttered breath he peaks through his eyelashes, only to see blurs of white, and a dead-brown color. Blinking rapidly, he opens his eyes. The white softens, the dark colors sharpen.

Snow. Snow and trees. Dead trees, His mind chugs. Dark green plumes of juniper branches lie speckled around him as well. He remembers now, it was the scent of her hair. How long had he been just lying in the snow, dormant like an animal in hibernation? His body continues to burn with a deep ache, yet this one blessedly physical. Lying on his side, the cold ground beneath his temple numbs his skull. He extends his limbs, stretching the pain from his body. The wind howls through the trees, being a Jotun, he cannot bring himself to shiver in the cold.

He rolls onto his back, groaning as he does. Groaning, shaking, and laboring on his breath.

Before he can move anymore, a twig snaps through the chilled silence of the forest, followed by an odd heartbroken gasp. Through blurred vision, he finally sees what he spent all this time looking for. Alive. And all he can manage is a blue-lipped sneer on his quivering lips. Yet before his vision fades completely, he knows something off about her. This is not the same Jane Foster that crouched over him in Svartalheim as he faked his death. A thousand question bubble up in his mind, but his world becomes cast in darkness once more.