Loki never wanted to be king.
Everyone thinks he did, even back when he was on Asgard, supporting his brother, they all thought that. He could tell by looking at them. It made him laugh when they put their petty thoughts into his personality and saw their own warped and pathetic dreams and ambitions painted upon him because he was a convenient target for an outlet.
No, no. He stood by his brother not because he had to, but because he wanted to. He respected his father's decisions, because he was his father. He loved him, and his mother, because that is what they were. Maybe if he had behaved differently, maybe if he'd told him, then things would have been different. He believed Thor would make a good king, even if he was arrogant, rash and hot headed. They all had their vices. He couldn't take things seriously. He couldn't help but ruin special occasions. And that's all the little Frost Giant thing was. Just a trick. Something to scare people. It just got out of hand.
He had only ever wanted to be considered Thor's equal. And maybe Thor was the only one that actually considered him to be. And this made Loki angrier at him than he was towards anyone else in the entire nine realms.
See, when Loki thought about it, his problem was obvious and very, very apparent. It wasn't that he hated his so-called 'family'. No. It was that he loved them. Even after all of the lies, even after everything Thor did and everything he himself had done. Thor would still save him, he would still save his father, they would still mourn for him, and they would miss him and he missed them too.
Sometimes he wonders why he'd let go. Other times he knew exactly why.
Because he had to convince himself that he wasn't a part of that family before they finally realised and cast him out. He had to stop trying to make his father proud, had to stop doing things for them and begin to do things for himself. This should, and would, be Loki's time. And he would do something spectacular and attention seeking and live up to every expectation that anyone had ever had of him.
He'd watched an Earth film once with Thor as a teenager. A cartoon about lions. Afterwards, he'd started to realise what everyone was thinking when they looked at him, when he play fought with Thor in the corridors, when he patted his brother on the back and smiled his congratulations and when he pulled a silly little prank that everyone else thought was dangerous or wrong. Thor would always laugh and clap him on the back and say something along the lines of
"Very good, brother" even as everyone else in the entire realm was sighing, tutting and shaking their heads in evident and frankly unneeded disapproval.
He was the only one who ever understood that he wasn't the dark lion of the film, he didn't have a scar over his eye and he didn't want to kill his brother and take over the throne for himself. Because, when it came down to it, it looked like a hell of a lot of work and no one on Asgard really liked him anyway so he'd have to rule by fear and fear alone, and someone would always be defiant and rile up the troops to bring him down. It was a fools game, he knew that.
But, as he sits on a cold and rocky planet surrounded by some of the ugliest fucking creatures he has ever seen, with them growling and snarling and roaring demands into his face he stews. And all of the bitter and venom that everyone ever thought he was hiding behind his smile came into force. The more he thought about it, the more unfair it became; the fact that his life was one big lie, the fact that everyone was probably laughing behind his back at how much of an idiot he was, at the fact that his mother and father were probably having a feast in Thor's honour, Loki desolate and forgotten so very soon. Because he wasn't there's anyway, so how much could it hurt?
Negativity he hadn't even known he had, that he hadn't even known he was capable of, was growing. He wanted to rip, and tear and destroy. To set fires blazing and dance on the ashes once they died out. He wanted to spit on the wounds he'd clawed apart. Everything he'd suffered was winding together, tightly stringed and forming a perfect ball of red-bright rage that sat right where his heart should be.
He had a plan, formed with these creatures. He knew what he was going to do, what they wanted him to do just happened to be a similar goal. He was going to hit them where it hurt, in a place they loved but could no longer reach. He hoped they'd be watching down on him as he did it. Loki even managed a smile as he thought of the expression that would rest upon his brother's face as he played with and pulled apart the earth bit by bit.
But, right at that moment he was tired, had a tension headache and wanted nothing better than to lie back, close his eyes, and fall asleep pretending that he was still on Asgard in his warm bed, surrounded by normality. Not that he really wanted to be back there, not now; it would just be nice to have a real bed rather than the ground.
He sighed; maybe he'd finally go down to Earth tomorrow, steal the Tesseract, grab a few soldiers' hearts and turn them into minions to help with his world takeover. Only the best would do, of course, so they'd need to be part of, what was it again? S.H.I.E.L.D? He just needed to make the first step; simply needed to get down there and begin.
Motivation had always been one of Loki's problems.