The Trickster From the Box
by TwinEnigma
Disclaimer: Done for fun and not profit; I do not own characters or concepts from the Mighty Thor, Journey Into Mystery or Doctor Who.
Warning:AU, Loki isn't a Frost Giant, but something rather different altogether.
Loki has always been unusual. It is something that, as his brother, Thor has always been aware of, even from an early age.
He is brilliant, outrageously so, and it makes him a stranger to everyone. Sometimes, Thor thinks that Loki does not belong here on Asgard, that somehow this place will either diminish him or drive him to madness, but finds that he cannot voice the words for fear that it might drive his brother further away than he already has become.
"Can you hear it, brother?" Loki asks, and his eyes are wide, feverish with some strange knowledge that only he knows. "The stars are calling to me."
But he cannot hear it any more than he can stop the inevitable and so he must let the dice fall where they may.
It comes as no surprise to Thor when he eventually learns that Loki is not of Asgard. He has always suspected the strange truth of his brother's twin heartbeats, even from his cradle days. To learn that Loki was pulled from the dimensionally transcendent wreckage of a mysterious skiff in the last days of the war against the Frost Giants is only confirmation of a truth he has always known: Loki does not belong on Asgard.
But, strange as it is, this revelation changes nothing.
Loki is still his brother.
Loki is cold where Thor is hot and he is quick where Thor is slow. In this, the study of contrasts, they are a perfect compliment. It is how it has always been, since the beginning.
This time it is different: Loki is the one who burns, even as he dies, and when the gold fire has gone, in its wake it is the figure of a woman that remains. She has the face and shape of Sif, but when she finally opens her eyes and speaks, the truth of it is obvious.
Loki has always been unusual.
What is but one more quirk in a multitude for his brother?
They lie on the grass, as they had done so many times before in times long past. His sister-brother idly twirls a strand of the long, dark hair that now frames the pale, familiar face and rests her head upon his chest.
"When I sleep, I dream of red grass and silver leaves," she says. "Have you ever seen such a thing, brother?"
"I know of no such place in all the nine worlds, brother," he tells her. "But if it exists, we shall find it."
Loki does not say anything, but it is not unusual in this new Loki, this Loki who is his sister and brother all at once. She sighs, her eyes lowering.
Eventually, lulled by the warmth of the sun and the steady rhythm of their hearts, Thor drifts into sleep. He is not surprised that Loki is gone when he wakes.
He hears things sometimes, of Loki.
When Loki dies in front of him once more, he knows better than to trust his eyes. The illusion crumbles, as it always does, and he follows the clues his sister-brother has scattered across the nine realms until he finds the truth.
And then he finds Serrure.
As he was meant to.
Loki dies and Loki is born in gold fire. In the same flames that his brother found life, the human child Serrure can only die and Thor knows this.
It is the tragedy of his brother's trick and Thor can only applaud the cruel genius of it. Loki has tied his hands.
"You must choose where to go from here," he tells the boy and holds out a hand, the deceptively innocent-looking device that is disguised as Midgardian technology dwarfed within its depths.
Anyone else would turn away or try to take the power contained in the device for themselves, but not Thor. He has seen the power in that device. He knows how it haunted his brother's every waking moment and he does not want it. But he will not force this child's hand either: whatever may come, the decision must belong to this child and him alone.
Serrure burns with the desire to belong, to know himself and the truth, though he doesn't know – no, he cannot possibly know the true scope of what he is doing when he takes the device.
He opens it.
Serrure burns until there is nothing left of him but Loki, sobbing in the ashes.
They return to Asgard.
Things are not as they once were before, not that Thor expects them to be. Much has changed, after all, and the brothers most of all.
"I keep feeling like I'm going to fall off the skin of this world," Loki says, his childlike eyes wide and honest. "Will you help me stay grounded, brother?"
This Loki is as different from the last as the last was from the first, but he is his brother all the same and perhaps more so this time.
He is still a bit strange.
Thor pauses, smiles, and carefully takes his brother's tiny hand in his own. "Of course."
But, then again, Loki has always been unusual.