This Would Be The End

His world had turned still.

The moment he was completely submerged in the shifting waves, his world had turned still.

It didn't make any sense, not really. How could his world be still if the choppiness of the water and the salt of the sea were pouring into every nook and cranny of his form?

He was gasping for air, except his lungs wouldn't work and his mouth wouldn't swallow the colorless gas. Instead, he was swallowing large cups of water, inhaling the liquid, driving it further down his frosty lungs.

He couldn't breathe, he couldn't fucking breathe.

Over and over he tried to break through to the surface, but a weight held him down.

Something was holding him down in a vicious, unrelenting fashion.

No, wait…

They were hands. Hands were holding him down, wrapped around his ever constricting throat. Hands were wrapped around the muscles that were so desperately trying to fill his lungs with anything other than the fluidity that swayed around him.

There wasn't anything he could hold onto. There wasn't any way he could reach beyond the enemy and strike them.

He was sinking, maybe floating, maybe not, in a pool of nothingness. The choppy channels bumping into his body as he attempted to fight his way out.

Nothing all around him, nothing surrounding him, everything had twisted into some dark, limitless grasp of nothingness.

Just like when he had fallen through the void-surrounded by nothing, everything was nothing, he was nothing.

His vision was blurring with the stinging of the salt water to his eyes. His vision was blurring and soon there would be a permanent lapse of nothingness awaiting him in Hel. Soon there would be darkness, but for now there was blue around the edges, blue in his line of vision, cream colored skin above his torso.

He couldn't help but think of his not-brother then. Childhood memories seeped into his mind like swirling flashbacks-memories of bilgesnipe, hunting, fighting, father yelling at them, snippets of mother's cool embrace. Unbidden feelings wrapped his brain in a sickening hold: anger, envy, jealousy yet love, happiness and regret. He thought of the valiant and golden fool that was his not-brother.

Was.

Because while his not-brother was somewhere above the nothingness, somewhere amongst the something-ness, he was not, and he was below it all, just as he had been all his life. He was nothing and he was emerging into nothingness, just as he had done when he'd courageously let go of the staff and fell, fell, fell into the void.

His not-brother was above him in every way shape and form-physically for his strength, physically above him on the ground, safe and filled with anger and heroic jubilation. Emotionally his not-brother was above him, the younger demigod foolish in his sentimental feelings and woe is me.

His not-brother was alive, would be alive. But he? He was not.

He could not be.

For all his time spent cooped up in the libraries of Asgard, all his time spent fighting with and alongside his not-brother, all his hundreds of years of life-not once had he considered learning how to swim.

A fool he was, indeed. For such heaps of information would have been helpful and life-saving to him now, in this moment. Even with fingers grasping his throat with taunt muscles, at least he could have swam, could have done something other than buckling and shaking uselessly under the gallons and gallons of water.

Salt water, ocean water, drowning.

If Asgard's all-seeing aid would ever have warned the demigod that he would one day in the future be drowning, the younger prince would have scoffed at him. He wouldn't have believed a word the golden eyed man had said, and he would have shaken his head and hurried back to dive his nose into yet another spellbound book.

But here he was. Here he was, under the water of a Midgardian ocean, drowning. With someone, someone filled with the rage and hate that once coursed through the trickster's veins holding him down.

Murder.

Oh, by the Norns, how could he have forgotten that flimsy little detail?

Not only was he drowning, not only was he to be dying in such a pathetic manner, but he was being actively killed. Whoever rode above him was strangling him, choking him with the ocean at their hand, pushing him down, down, down further.

Murder suicide.

It had to be. How else would this foul creature be able to kill him with the ocean water if they weren't also sprouting on the branch and killing themselves too?

In order to kill me, they have to kill themselves, too. The thought rattled like coins in the trickster's quickly fleeing brain.

Well, now didn't that just narrow down the list?

But wait, Midgard…so he was on Midgard. If he was on Midgard, then that did narrow down the list.

That meant…oh by the Norns, it meant-

His body was growing limp. Water logged and heavy, this was it.

These would be his last thoughts, no air available for him to utter them from his bluing lips. No stack of paper available for him to record the moment they began to be caught in the delusions of nonsense.

He felt his body spasm, three, four, five more times.

He felt the fluid gathering in his lungs, the sea becoming part of him and him with it.

His eyes were closed, had been for quite some time, it was just too painful, too unbearable to watch-watch as the water surrounded him and he fell, deeper, deeper into oblivion.

Maybe this time it would hurt less. Maybe he wouldn't find himself on some other planet in the nine realms, not to be tortured and manipulated by the hands of other alien creatures.

Maybe this time he would truly, truly find peace. Freedom, the taste of it on his tongue was questionable but he had such a quench for it.

Maybe, just maybe, this was it….

If things would just go his way for once, this would be his end.

His body gave one last kick, his heart one last beat.

But he was Loki Laufeyson, and things just never went his way. Not even in his death.

A/N: I've been on a writing roll this week, I cannot help it! I'm planning for this to be a short "one-shot" split into two chapters, but if you'd like to read more I can also grow it out. Say the word, peoples! ;)

Inspiration gathered from the scene in Thor when Loki finds out his true parentage and Odin falls into the Odinsleep (in which there's that water channeling down below the staircase). And the music that aided in my delivery of this chapter "It all runs together". :)

Thank you for reading!