October. Halloween. A child in a cheap Loki mask knocked on his apartment door. Trick-or-treat. Loki had no candy. He gave her a dagger. Her mother screamed. Loki turned the dagger into a chocolate bar. The child grinned. For one perfect second, Loki felt like a god again—not of mischief, but of small, impossible kindnesses.
Sylvie had pushed him through a time door. She had kissed him, betrayed him, saved him, and left him with the most terrifying gift: hope.
November was cold. He stood on the edge of the multiverse, watching timelines bloom like flowers from a corpse. He Who Remains had called it a loom. Loki called it a garden. And gardens needed gardeners. But not masters. Never again a master. Loki -2021-2021
In July, he pruned a rogue timeline himself. Not because the TVA ordered it—there was no TVA—but because some branches grew thorns. A reality where a mad scientist weaponized grief into a plague. Loki stood at the epicenter, held the detonation in his hands, and whispered, “Glorious purpose.” Then he let it go. The branch dissolved. No one cheered. He was fine with that.
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. October
That was the pact of 2021: love without possession.
When Loki stepped out again, the year on a Midgardian calendar was 2021. Trick-or-treat
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.”