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When Loki let go and fell from the Bifrost he was expecting to die. He was expecting for an end, a respite from the disappointment and twisted anger he felt constantly. There was nothing left for him on Asgard, nothing at all. His home was a lie, his family was a lie, and his life was all based on a lie.
And he had tried his hardest despite that, and yet it wasn’t enough. He had fought to prove he wasn’t one of those... monsters, the Jotuns. He had fought to do what was right and to prove himself different. Loki had manipulated Thor because the stupid oaf hadn’t been ready to to be king. The Thunderer would have plunged Asgard into war within hours of his coronation. He had killed King Laufey of Jotunheim, his birth father, and had stolen the Casket of Winters to do so. He had concocted an efficient end to Asgard’s mortal enemies and the monsters of his birth. He only did what Thor would have done on the throne; albeit more cunningly. And it was all for nothing.
He would only ever be Laufey’s bastard son, a ward of Asgard to Odin. The liar and disliked god of Chaos. Looking up from where he was hanging, past Thor’s watery pleas, in question, "I could have done it, Father. I could have done it! For you! For all of us!"
"No, Loki." The All-Father had shook his head. It would never be enough, Loki could never be enough.
So he let himself fall.
Deep into the void, the places between the branches of Yggdrasil, he fell. Places that were spoken of only in the dead of the night while you were safe in your home around the hearth. Places that were full of the things of the worst nightmares.
It was... strangely beautiful at first. As he slipped away from Asgard, floating through the outside wisps of Yggdrasil. Golden dust parted around him, thinner and thinner the longer he fell. Strange nebulae and galaxies full of light and stars floating in the distance. Places that held no life, but were part of the world tree nonetheless.
Here it did not matter that he was a false Odinson, it did not matter that he was a Jotun, that his skin was blue and cold, that his whole life had been built on a lie. It did not matter that he was a monster told at bedtime to frighten children, and the always loser and evil creature in their play fights.
Out here, nothing mattered.
And then Yggdrasil slipped away, through his parted fingers. He was now falling through darkness, nothingness. It was almost tangible, a sentient being around him.
But where Yggdrasil was wonder and peacefulness, this was horror and fright. It was thick and cloying around him, a dark embrace that seemed to have malicious intent, squeezing him, suffocating him.
For the first time, Loki grew afraid. And then...and then the whispers started. One or two at the edges of his hearing but grew in number and sound. Countless were whispering in tongues that even with the All-speak, he could not understand. They were loud and full of hate and malice, they were inside his head. All of them, at once, inside his mind. As they grew and grew, he felt like his mind would fracture, it would shatter into a billion pieces under the pressure of the creatures of the void.
Loki opened his mouth and let a noiseless scream sound into the darkness.
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Somehow through the eternity of pain he was aware that he was no longer surrounded by the void. There were strange floating rocks, and a wasteland of sorts. A twisted dark place where forbidden monsters hide. And he was falling fast towards it.
He landed hard. The pain of it somehow made it through the remnants of his destroyed mind and he would have screamed in agony if he had any voice left. He drew the broken remains of his body into a ball inside the crater he had created and let out a whimpered of exhaustion and pain.
Heavy footsteps approached his curled bloody form. “Little prince, you have fallen far.” was whispered into his ear.
A flash of blue, and then everything was dark.