Chapter Text
In Jotunheim, winters were long and hard. Endless snowfall capable of spanning centuries, and with an ongoing war there was not long till the planet would be left in icy tatters.
Unbroken cold decreased yield of cyrosynthetic food growth. A lack of resources withstanding, being born small was a weakness.
The first time Loki died he was a child left out in the cold, at the start of a war that already had the Jotnar in shreds.
Time seemed to slow around him as the war progressed, months becoming hours. By the time the fighting was done and he was found it is evident he did not stay dead.
Worlds away, hanging from the neck of an alchemist, a gem lit green.
The second time Loki died was less forgiving.
It was a means to an end, the Hero overwhelming the Villain, both roles Loki did not quite fit as he let go of the spear holding him above the abyss.
Time did not slow around him—no matter how it felt—as he watched the Bifrost fade into the blurred darkness of the universe’s vacuum, the wormhole swallowing and spitting him out somewhere new and unknown. He slowly, slowly succumbed to the absence around him, the way a leaf teeters but stubbornly refuses to blow away in a frail winter breeze, each frigid gasp of breath crucial in a space with no air.
His magic tried to sustain him; It was involuntary, but even that began to dim, eventually.
An artifact SHIELD had carried for decades turned itself on, remaking itself a subject of interest.
Loki awakened just as it did, on a near asteroid in a cloud of blue smoke that alerted its hosts to the uses of keeping him alive.
The linking of the realms was not an exclusive event; the movement of each planetoid encompassing the spaces between and allowing energy to be shared worked as a living system, the equilibrium of which was oft disturbed momentarily, and just as commonly a negligible anomaly.
The Aether awakened one year and twelve days after Loki’s imprisonment in Asgard's dungeons, the day he slit his own throat.
(He had thought he would rather die than go mad, selfishly lying to himself of having a choice in the matter.)
Death proved itself futile to induce. And once again proved him a coward.
He cursed Asgardian healing.
He sacrificed himself for Thor. A noble death.
(Until it was not.)
He would find out long after the fact—there had been no one to recount her death to him—but Loki was hurt by the same hand that slayed his mother.
By the time he was once again able to stand, pulling himself together to do so despite the gaping wound in his chest, the Mind Stone had awakened, and it had gifted the Scarlet Witch her fate.
He died again when calling his magic to himself to rid the Allfather of the throne. He used what had been allowing him to stand to banish the king—and that he had not yet been hale disrupted any healing, or so he told himself.
(He did not remember the essence of death surrounding Odin, nor that he touched what he should not have in his haste to exile.)
In an abandoned region far out of the Nine, an ancient relic, an Orb, desirable, finds itself traceable.
Loki did not notice this death, thinking his collapse was rest righting his injuries.
The final time Loki died it was clenched within the closing fist of a madman. A nightmare. A torturer.
He was bound by love for his brother.
He was defined by inevitable loss.
A soul for a soul.
(Gamora had known it was not love.)
Thanos snapped. The stones deteriorated, life in them spent as they took half the universe with them.
Deep in space a body floating amongst wreckage opened its eyes; They glowed white, manifesting infinity all at once.
As It pulsed, burning through everything within that made him him, Loki screamed.