He had been a ghost once, in the catacombs of the TVA. A variant. A ghost who learned to love a woman made of clocks and purpose, who watched that same woman shatter into temporal confetti, and who then stepped into the howling mouth of a multiversal storm.
August was quiet. He read all of Shakespeare’s tragedies in a single night and laughed at them. “You call this suffering?” he muttered. “I invented suffering. In 2021.” Loki -2021-2021
December 31, 2021. Midnight. Loki sat alone on the roof of the apartment building in the dying branch. Fireworks erupted across a dozen timelines at once, visible only to him. He raised a glass of champagne that didn’t exist—a phantom glass, a trick of light. He had been a ghost once, in the catacombs of the TVA
He drank. The year ended. And for the first time in a thousand years, Loki did not feel the need to lie about who he was. August was quiet