Another shameless Loki-whump, but not graphic. Enjoy.

Surprising as it may seem, these characters still belong to Marvel, not to me.

The anguish of a full-blown identity crisis was the dominant thought in his mind when Loki of Asgard let go of the spear. He used to be "prince of Asgard," "son of Odin and Frigga," "brother of Thor." And then he wasn't. He was instead the child of Asgard's and Odin's greatest enemy, child of Jotunheim, son of Laufey. Brother of no one. He was his antithesis.

Every action Loki took in the days since discovering his monstrous origins was an effort to dissect his identity back out of the festering tumor engulfing it. Laufey could lay no claim to his paternity if he was dead, he reasoned frantically, so Loki killed him. That was not enough either, though, for what if his identity was exposed from within rather than without? Loki had always been different, the "dark prince." It was no longer adequate to be Thor's equal. He had to become Thor. He had to be the crown prince and next king, because otherwise he was vulnerable, otherwise everyone would know he was really different, wasn't an Odinson at all and had no right even to be in Asgard, let alone be called its prince... It all made sense now, why he had always had to try harder than Thor to earn half the praise. He was under scrutiny his whole life. He lived now in mortal terror of when Odin's, or Frigga's, judgments would mean he was no longer suitable to be part of the family. They were the only ones that he knew knew, and Odin at least had always been waiting for him to fail, he feared. Waiting for him to betray his birth. Well, no longer would he be the child of either side but rather the avatar of Asgard itself and destroy Jotunheim once and for all...

But he was still wrong, somehow. First Heimdall said it. Then Thor said it. Then Odin said it. Somehow, he wasn't supposed to destroy the Jotuns, his bestial kin. It was ironic. He had methodically clipped every link he could find between him and the frost giants in his effort to secure his nonexistent place in Asgard. And for that, Thor and Odin rebuked him. His slim ties to home and family were neatly severed in a breath, leaving only the thin shaft of Gungnir to keep him from the abyss. The other end of the spear was in Thor's hand, Odin grasped Thor's boot, and Odin's lips were telling him "no." No, you did wrongly. No, you failed me. No, you are not worthy of my house. No, you are not of Asgard. No...don't let Thor bear your weight, don't ask me to save you...let go.

Loki let go, and the darkness swallowed him.

For the first hours and days that he fell, the horror of his birthright followed him. But this was not sustainable. That abominable feeling, that inversion of self, died to make way for something greater, something even more unnatural. Beyond all belief, he was not dead, at least, it didn't seem that way. He remained aware, in darkness. This was was not Valhalla, or even Hel, or oblivion. This was a continuation of consciousness in the absence of anything else, and it was terrifying. There was no light and no sound. There was no sensation of gravity, after the first hour or so. Where initially there was bitter, painful cold, this quickly became a numb lack of stimulus, and he did not know why. There was not even hunger or thirst despite what seemed to be days and days, weeks, months. It took him a time to realize he no longer even had the sense of angular momentum when he thought he turned his head. The only thing he could feel was the limits of his own form, and he thought that might be an anxious hallucination of his sensory cortex, desperately placing some physical body between his mind and the utter nothingness.

After an undetermined time, the edges of his body were no longer distinct, and in fact rapidly retreated to the mere idea of I have a body. I am mind and body. I am...

I am afraid. Loki had never understood the profound terror of the unknown that most races lay claim to. He had always looked upon the "great unknown" as a stimulating forum for discovery and entertainment. Now he understood, because his circumstances were entirely incomprehensible. He had fallen into the Void, he knew that, and he understood the physics of it, but nobody had ever known what it meant to experience the phenomenon unshielded. And he, from the inside, still didn't, because there was nothing. He thought about it for what must have been months, or even years, discarding each possible solution in turn until he was left with nothing but mystery and sterile mathematics again. In the reality of his experience, and there was nothing else to go on, there was nothing except his own thought. Loki grew terrified that the unknown was growing greater and would soon dismantle and swallow his mind entirely. A living mind requires energy, requires stimulus. He was running out of stimulus because he was running out of ideas. His mind was feeding off its own memories, and what would happen when he forgot something? How would he know? How would he get it back? How long would his mind be able to continue without succor?

He noticed when he started thinking in circles: he was afraid because he thought he might go mad(der) because he could not hold his mind intact in the midst of this great nothing when his thoughts lacked an anchor besides terror... The circle eventually shrank.

I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am.

I am. I am. I am. I am...

I

Author's note: this story is kinda an excuse to play around with various philosophical and scientific thought experiments. I imagine the Bifrost as a device that projects a stable wormhole between selected points in the universe but necessarily also creates a real spacetime envelop which is what travelers actually experience along it. When Loki falls from the Bifrost into the Void, he is falling outside of normal spacetime and into the nothing in between dimensions, probably similar to the "quantum realm," actually, since wormholes are one of the places where quantum mechanics and astrophysics meet up and break down. It's basically a magical fluke that his consciousness isn't immediately zapped out of existence along with his physical self (that's why he can't really experience his own body anymore in this chapter). He has essentially become a consciousness trapped inside a singularity of both infinite space and time and nonexistent space and time.

The other major idea I was drawing from is Avicenna's "Floating Man" thought experiment. Basically, the scenario is of a man spontaneously created floating in a zero gravity environment with no light and no sound, no outside stimulus, his limbs not touching his body, fingers lightly spread apart, no hair, etc. So no sensation. Is he aware of his existence? Avicenna says yes: it's an argument for the existence of the soul. Read about it on Wikipedia if you're interested.

Anyhow, read, review, and enjoy! The first part of the story is drafted, so hopefully I will be releasing it fairly quickly.