Loki hadn't experienced a death quite like this one before.
His first had been the impulse of a moment. He'd had mere minutes to plan the second. This third death, though. This, he'd had ages to plan for. First he'd decided what he'd do if the Mad Titan gathered the other stones and came to Asgard for the sixth. Then what he'd do if he came to Sakaar with any of the spectrum. Then what he'd do if there came a ship, a shadow so much larger and darker than their own--
And now at least he was here, just as he'd planned. Not quite dead, nor quite exactly alive, but most certainly still around. Insubstantial, but capable of being more with ease. There were spells he'd learned, castings even the slightest of spirits might perform. His essence simply needed to come to land somewhere with breathable air, within range of food and water. In the empty blackness of space, it could very well take decades, centuries, longer. It wasn't as if he could float very quickly in any particular direction.
That was what he hadn't planned on. There was always something. This time it was those needs, the ones he hadn't taken into consideration in his planning. To breathe, to eat, to drink; these were luxuries he could forego as long as necessary, no matter how solid his form.
The trouble was, there'd been another impulse, another moment. The plan had succeeded, but the premise had failed...for in all Loki's plans and contingencies, he'd always thought he would die alone.
*
""Are you sure we're going the right way?"
"Shouldn't we be following the king?"
"Are you crazy? We should be following the other ship. My family's there."
"Mine is, too."
"Are we there yet?"
"No," Loki said. He'd long since lost track of who was speaking, whether it was two voices or three or a multitude who were having this inane conversation. "The next person who speaks will be returning to life as a toad."
There came silence, not quite complete, but the grumbling that remained was low and indistinct enough that Loki could hear himself think.
It was a luxury he wasn't allowed for long, before another voice said, "I hope you aren't regretting your good deed already."
There was no point in turning his head to see Heimdall, or what was left of him, as his essence came to float beside Loki's own. "How well do toads see, do you imagine?"
A laugh, the same low rumble that was at least fifty percent of why Loki had banished him in the first place. "Better at night than any other creature."
"But no more capable of surviving here," Loki threatened, but with only half his mind on it. At another time, he might have been surprised at how little it seemed to matter, when any loss of face had mattered a great deal just a scant few years ago. Now, he looked out into the dark, and thought, and finally said, "Which direction would you take us in, if you were navigating?"
"That would depend on yourself," Heimdall said. "Will you actually consider my counsel, or do you mean to dismiss it out of hand?"
Over the course of the next long, scathing thought, Loki came up with a number of things he might have said to this. Not long ago, he would have said one or all of them, but now he merely said, and was barely even surprised to find it was all he intended to say, "I'm asking because I don't know."
A silence, through which Loki imagined Heimdall, too, might be considering and discarding a certain kind of rejoinder. Or perhaps he was merely casting out his sight, for then he said, "In that direction lies a world with air and supplies in plenty--though its citizens are wary of outsiders, and would likely be a danger to us." Heimdall's attention turned, and though he had no body and Loki no eyes to watch him with, he still had no difficult following. "In this direction lies a world with air and water but as yet no living things--but a vessel crashed there, some years ago, and we have several among us who might be capable of repairing it."
"Or maybe they won't, and we'll all perish."
"Perhaps. And there lies a world with air and sustenance, and none who would bar us from it."
"And the reason no one lives on it?"
"It lies beyond a thick asteroid belt."
"So, no one would be able to come for us."
"There are also fifty-foot sand snakes. And a great deal of sand."
"--Next," Loki said.
*
In the end, they decided on the same destination they had previously, for many of the same reasons. Midgard was much farther away than any of the other options, but there was no doubt they could survive there--and by the time the decision had been made for certain, Heimdall had reported that the living Asgardians had already arrived, and begun the rebuilding. No sooner had he said the words than the others had begun to speak up again, asking after this family member and that one. By the time their questions had quieted, Loki had long been pondering on one danger and one only.
"By the time we arrive, he'll have been and gone already," he said. "Perhaps he'll have forgotten by then. Perhaps he won't notice us."
"He would notice--if he still lived," Heimdall said, and told Loki then of what had happened in the last weeks or moments. The war that had been waged and lost, the head that had since rolled.
"I seem to have done better with my half, after all," Loki said, though not, perhaps, as smugly as he might have on some former day. "Don't tell the others."
"No."
After that, there was plenty of time to think on what other things Heimdall might have kept to himself over the years, but at the behest of a king, instead.
*
Time passed strangely along their journey. Months passed like minutes and days like years. The others spoke less and less, until the only proof they were there was the sense Loki had of them, their presences low, flickering flames against the depths of his mind. Once, he might have amused himself by threatening to snuff out this one or that one. Now, he took a far greater care than before not to jostle them, or do any thing else that might result in a wind blowing through.
It was hard to say how much progress they'd made, or if they had made any at all, unless he asked Heimdall. But the further they went, the slower Heimdall's answers were to come; the further they went, the less Loki wanted to ask, lest he be told that their destination was no nearer than it had been the last time.
Then came a time he called out, and received no answer at all. It was then that Loki knew being alone must have been the thing he'd truly feared all along.
*
There was nothing for it but to continue. Loki pushed into the dark, holding Midgard as firmly in his mind as he could. After a while, weeks or decades or moments, he was no longer at all certain he was heading in the right direction. He could no longer recall the place as clearly as he once had; he'd begun to question whether he'd ever seen it clearly at all. Sometimes he remembered Asgard, instead, only to wake from his fugue and feel a horror that he might have turned in the midst of some dream, when even the most minute change of course would ensure they never made it to their destination.
After a while, centuries or hours or millennia, he was no longer certain he existed at all. If he did, perhaps he was still in the midst of his first death. Perhaps he'd been in the Void all along. Always falling, always lost. Once he had thought of it he could hardly cease to think of it, until even the stars themselves could not quite convince him otherwise. There was little to no evidence there in the dark that could have, except the others, still carried with him.
Then there came a day he could no longer sense the flames which had always been with him before. There was no reason not to mutter the casting, no reason not to think or feel the words that would make him whole once again. But he could not remember how the spell had gone. He could barely remember why it mattered. There was no room left for horror. There was hardly anything left at all.
Once, giving up would have been unthinkable. There had been a moment, a few years or centuries ago, when Loki had meant to give up his own life--out of anguish, out of spite. But it had only been for a moment. Ever since, he'd guarded his life and his existence and his very being jealously. How many times had he wriggled himself out of some vise or another? How many times had he twisted away from a seemingly-certain doom? While he lived, he could plan and plot and change the way of things to suit himself. He could do none of that if he were gone.
He thought of all this, in fleeting moments. One here, one there. Who knew the seconds or years that might lay between each of them. Perhaps it was the gap between that left the thoughts toothless. Or perhaps it was merely that he was so tired, and there was so little left to hold onto.
So what did it matter, in the end, if he were to let go.
*
Perhaps there was something left in him after all, for he seemed to have this thought, or series of thoughts, a number of times. Each time, he decided that it really didn't matter, if he loosed his fingers, and allowed himself to fall to whatever might await him. Yet then he'd think of the candleflames, the ones that might still burn; and he'd think of how Thor would never know how he'd been tricked yet again; and where he'd once had the occasional other motivation, now he seemed to be fueled by nothing more than the slightest, weakest thread of spite.
Still, even that emotion must eventually fade, with nothing left to feed it; and out here there really was nothing. When Loki thought of it, he was not entirely sure what had possessed him to think he could travel in this vast blackness of space--for as long as he had been traveling, floating or walking or whatever it was, he did not seem to have gone anywhere. Even if he changed course now, he was nowhere near the world with the hostile natives, or the one with the sand snakes, or even the one with the ship that might be repairable. He was nowhere near anything, and it was easy to feel that the pinpoints of stars all around him might not be suns at all. Might have been painted onto the emptiness to taunt him.
He'd stopped really trying eons ago. What did it matter, if he let go, as well?
He wondered for the hundredth time, for the thousandth, as close to the edge as he'd been yet. He came nearer to it every time, and every time thought he might leap. Or--perhaps leaping was the wrong thing, the wrong word, the wrong thought.
Perhaps, in the end, there was nothing left to do but to fall.
*
It was in this spiraling dark that something, finally, changed. There came a sound, or a thought, or a feeling. In the beginning it was so strange, so alien and so loud, that Loki did not sense it. It was a call so bright that for a moment or an hour all he could do was look from one side of an empty cosmos to the other, unsure what had caused it, if anything had.
Then he saw it. There was a ship, not far from where his essence floated. There was a ship, and it was calling. It was lit up from bow to stern, spinning out more light than any ship had ever needed, more light than any ship would have dared, lest they be spotted by some enemy and boarded.
And with the light, there came a call. Not a sound, for sound could not travel here, but something else--
It was his name.
Loki, where are you?
Loki, come to me.
Come on, Loki. I know you're out there!
It was a call Loki knew. He felt as if he might have heard it before--long ago, before he'd ever started falling. Or perhaps during, or shortly after. Or perhaps always.
There was a part of him, that slight thread, that thought perhaps he would fall, after all. Once to spite another, this time to spite this interloper, the first new thing in what might have been always. But there was another, greater part of him, a part he had thought had long since faded to nothing, that said, no, and, I will take the offered hand, if only to later strike hard enough to make the offerer regret it.
After a very long moment--another hour, another day?--he made to move toward the ship.
But to change direction was like swimming in honey when one was also a ghost. It was an eon before he had turned, another before he was able to ascertain that despite trying to make his way toward the ship, despite intending to, he was not moving. There was not enough left to make himself move. There barely seemed to be enough left to regret what would happen when the call faded and the ship went away again, leaving him alone again in the dark.
He hung there for a time, and then an answer came--
But you're not alone.
If he'd had the strength to argue, Loki would have; as it was, he merely remained as he was, as perhaps he always had been, and allowed that state of being to serve as an answer. Then he forgot the argument entirely, in favor of trying to decide whether he ought to try again, whether there was any point. There didn't seem to be, but there didn't seem any point in not trying, either, and so, eventually, he marshalled himself and again attempted to approach the ship. It was just as difficult and bore just a little fruit as it had the last time--but something inside was beginning to grow something other than tired about it. There wasn't enough energy for fear, indeed there had been no fear for an eon, but there was, perhaps, just enough for something else--for some feeling that rose in him, hot to the point of boiling, an anger that might serve as his own shining star here in the darkness.
He pushed again, harder. This time, he thought perhaps the ship wavered--had he come just a little closer? Had he willed himself there? Or was it merely a product of imagination, of a long-unpracticed desire?
He pushed again, harder than that. This time, he was nearly certain the ship was closer. But was it closer by miles or merely inches? There was no way to know, no way to measure the distance, but he rather suspected the latter.
He pushed, again, again, again. The answer that hadn't been apparent with one push, or two, now was; he was not moving, or was moving so glacially as to make no difference. What little strength the anger had brought was swiftly fading. Soon he would be where he had been before--and he felt that this time, there would be no climbing out, no amount of clawing that would bring him to where he most needed to be.
You're not alone, came the voice again, not the un-ignorable bright loudness of a brother, but the low banked coals of another. We're here with you.
He'd forgotten the candleflames, somewhere along the way. The ones he'd carried, the ones that must have been snuffed out, oh, a forever ago. He'd forgotten them, thought he must have forgotten them, but they brightened in the back of his mind as he remembered them or he remembered them as they brightened in the back of his mind, and whichever was the cause and whichever the effect, there they were. In him and around him and behind him, lending him their strength and their speed.
If that had been all, he might have stayed there, marveling or baffled--but there was an urgency in them, too, that had long since been gone from Loki. It seeped into him along with their strength and their speed.
He turned toward the ship once more, and pushed. And the longer he pushed, the easier it seemed to be, and the faster he and they seemed to be going, and the ship's hull came closer and closer, and the ship's lights became more and more blinding.
Then the ship was gone, and with it the vastness. They were somewhere else. Grey walls to either side, flickering lights above.
Loki tried to think of where they were, tried to think of why it mattered. He was tired, and stretched too thin, and as for the candleflames, they were flickering, even more often than the fluorescent lights, and so much more faintly.
We're on the ship, came the voice again, and it might have been Heimdall alone, or might have been another of them, or might have been all. You can finish it now. Do you recall the spell?
If there had been a spell, Loki could no longer recall what it had been, or what it had been for.
Did it have words? he managed after a time.
...I haven't the faintest notion, came the voice, the one that could be absolutely no one but Heimdall this time.
What use are you, then?
No answer came, but perhaps no answer was needed. In here, a small and enclosed place, it seemed easier to think of things other than the dark, or of falling into it.
A spell. Once, there had been a spell. It had had something to do with their current predicament. It had had something to do with death, and the reversal thereof (if you did the right magic when it was happening, which he had). He hadn't been able to perform it before because it would have snuffed out the candleflames. It would have snuffed them out because of where they were, a place Loki's body could have survived, but theirs couldn't. It would have snuffed them out because they were without food or water, but, most importantly, without air.
Well, there was air on spaceships. Usually. So the spell would be safe here, if Loki could only remember how it went. Was it words, or was it a feeling? Was it incantations, or hand motions, or--
My will, he thought, or said, or commanded. It's--
A wind blew through, and snuffed out the candleflames after all. But he had no time to be indignant about it, or offended, or even enraged, for then the wind blew into him, colder than space and harsher than the expanse, and when it had passed through, he was on the cold metal floor--
And not alone, after all, for the hallway was packed with bodies from one end to the other, and each one warm, and breathing, candleflames made flesh once again.
*
After a time, the murmuring grew to a din, and the door at the far end of the hallway hissed open. There stood Thor, much the worse for wear, alongside Banner, who might have been better or worse depending on which former self you compared him to.
"Loki?" he said. "Brother, what is this? We knew you were here, but these..."
If his voice had been bright before, in the darkness, it was something else now. Incredulous, filled with a hope that was as annoying as it was gratifying.
"I should have thought you'd recognize your own subjects," said Loki, only slightly distracted by the sensation of saying words formed by some arcane combination of tongue and lips and throat. "I should have thought you'd think more of me."
Thor laughed, the kind of hysterical laugh it was hard to take personally even if you tried and weren't much too tired. "I've always thought most highly of you, except for certain moments."
"And now you know you were right. Except for certain moments," said Loki, and now what he was distracted by was the way everything was spinning around him, the way up became down and down became up, so that he might have fallen after all, if it hadn't been for Heimdall beside him, steadying him. "I'll have you know I planned it all, down to the last detail," he said, and neglected to mention that the last detail was precisely what the others had been.
"Move aside," said Heimdall. "Give the Prince air."
But whether they did or didn't, and what Thor said next, the prince wasn't precisely present long enough to find out.
*
Loki slept for a long, long time. It was an agreeable falling, a pleasant letting go.
When he woke again, Thor was there.
"How long were we lost?" he asked. It seemed the only question worth asking (though later there would be others, such as how Thor had come to replace the eye he had so carelessly misplaced before, not to mention how he'd known to look for them in the first place...never mind how he'd found them, a speck of dust among a thousand suns).
"It's been six years since you died," Thor said. "The last time you died, I mean."
"Oh, is that all?"
It really had seemed like longer.