A/N: All right, this is a story I wrote for THfrustration, and it's there as well ( tagged/what i've done) I decided to post it here as well. Enjoy.
Loki looked in the mirror. Here he was, he a former god, banished, stripped of his powers, sent to live on the very world he set out to rule. And it was his doing that put him here. It was no one's fault but his own. He looked into the mirror of the tiny apartment he was given's bathroom. He looked older, aged by the occurrences of the past year. He felt something within him he hardly felt over any of this: the attack on New York, the attempt to destroy Joutenhime. He sighed as he dried his face with the towel in his hands. He felt regret. He felt sorrow. He lost everything because he could handle being adopted. Although it was more than that, it was far more than that. It was the lies Odin fed him. It was the thousands of years of ill-treatment by Thor and his friends. But…did any of them mean any harm by what they did?
He shook his head and gripped the skink. That was how he intrupreted their actions. Odin meant to protect him from his heritage. No one could know he was a Frost Giant. He would have been even more ostracized from the normal society then he already was. It was for the best. And Thor and his friends….Thor never meant any harm by his words. He just was not the sharpest weapon in the armory when it came to people's feelings. The same with the rest of them, he supposed. And he tried to take it all. He tried to make him pay, his brother pay for slights he never even saw. He…..he became the monster he never wanted to be. He tried to prove himself equal to Thor, tried to prove that he was not a monster that children heard about at night….and that is exactly what he became.
He never wanted any of this. He never even wanted to rule, he just wanted to hurt Thor. He was angry at him, he was not thinking properly. He was…..he was insane. He wanted none of that to happen. He just wanted…he just wanted to prove himself how could he…he go so far, do so much damage. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked down to the sink. He was a monster; he deserved much, much worse punishment. Why had the Allfather chose this when his crimes were punishable by death? Why was mercy shown on him? Did they still have hope for him? No, that could not be it. There was no more hope for him. He was the traitor of Asgard. A fallen prince left to rot as a mortal on this world. He was nothing to his former family.
Or was he? Was he just tearing down himself because that is what he belevied he deserved? Was his family willing to forgive him for all of what he has done? They did give him the means for a new start, at least while he was learning his lesson on Midgard. A new name, Thor had managed to go through SHEILD and get him living arrangements…..where they all so Hel-bent on making his life miserable? Sure his life was not as good as it was, but…..then again it could have been worse. Maybe….Maybe He just needed to forgive himself. Maybe that was what was plaguing him so. Maybe…just maybe that was what this hurt was. This hurt deep inside of him that refused to go away. That refused to let him sleep the whole night through, that kept him from eating when mealtime came. It was an odd feeling to have, regret.
But how to rid himself of this feeling, this ache within him? This was…quite the conundrum. He took a deep breath and looked at himself in the mirror. Dark circles ringed his eyes, he looked sick. It reminded him so much of that first day of the attack. He shook his head once again as the ache built up inside of him. Do not think about that, Loki. You will drive yourself to madness like that. He thought to himself. He finally moved out of the bathroom and got dressed for bed. Or he should say another night of tossing and turning and no sleep insight. Maybe the sleeplessness would drive him mad before his own thoughts did. He did not know, at this point he honestly did not care. He just needed to be fixed.
Of course the only one who could fix him was himself. But how to go about that? He was…broken, unwanted, and tainted by his own former madness. How could someone like him, someone with his history change in anyway? Of course as he had thought before, there was a reason why Allfather had sent him here instead of letting him rot in prison or face death. He had hope for his adopted son. That was the only way Loki figured Allfather let him live here. He had hope that Loki could change.
He had to face what he was in the past. He had to face it, and accept it. He had to learn from it. Loki lay down in bed and took a deep breath. He could forgive himself. It would take a long time. He had to erase his history, well maybe not erase it, but erase that man from his personality. He hoped the ones that faced him before could at least attempt to overlook his wrong doings, for Gods knows Thor would end up dragging him to that tower of theirs. Of course for others to look past his wrong doings he would have to face what he has done. He was willing to do that. It may take time, a lot of time, but he was willing to try and start to reshape himself and his past.
He closed his eyes and pulled the blankets up over his body, a light smile on his face. He may just have hope for himself after all. He slept that night, much, much easier than he had in a very, very long time.