Disclaimer: Thor characters and story belong to Marvel; this fanfic is my creation; please do not re-post elsewhere without permission.
AN: I've always wondered what was going through Loki's head between that moment in the weapon's vault when he learned the the truth about his parentage, and the moment we see him as king on the throne of Asgaard. This is an attempt to answer that.
This story was inspired by the fanart entitled "Rue" by Linda Marie Anson:
lindamarieanson . deviantart art / Rue-339197355
UPDATE: I was re-reading, and I didn't like the format I posted in before, so I'm merely updating the way it's posted, by breaking it into three mini-chapters; the content remains the same.
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This is me for forever, one of the lost ones
The one without a name,
Without an honest heart as compass…
All I wish is to dream again
My loving heart lost in the dark
For hope I'd give my everything;
Once and for all and all for once
'Nemo' my name forevermore.
[Nightwish]
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Loki ran. His rapid footfalls and harsh breath echoed in the cavernous golden corridors, giving the illusion that he was pursued, chased, hounded through the halls of what he'd always believed was his home.
He ran as though his feet could outrun the truth.
Laufey's son…
His eyes squeezed shut against the thought. His shoulder clipped a column at full speed. Pain exploded. He barely felt it. He ran faster.
Father… Odin… slept. No one knew for how long. This Odinsleep was different.
Not my fault!
His mind screamed it, but his heart didn't believe it. The memory of his own enraged voice echoing in his ears, as it spat its acid down on his father's… on Odin's still form…
He had stood in attendance at the king's bedside long enough for appearances, but the world seemed made of shattered glass, all webbed with fractures and ready to rain down around him at the least touch. At the first opportunity, he'd excused himself with grave calm in the face of emergency; completely proper, showing only strength, sobriety, solemnity, never fear, never sorrow, never any weaker sentiment. As a prince of Asgaard should do.
As a prince of Asgaard should do…
Memories assaulted him.
His mother was holding him as a boy, her arms soft and warm around his middle where he sat on her lap, her clear voice singing to him, safety and love, teaching him little tricks when he'd proven to have a gift for magic even as a small child…
She knew even then, held him close, said she loved him.
Called him her son.
What was lies, and what was truth? Was any of it true?
I found a baby. Small, for a giant's offspring. Abandoned. Suffering. Left to die.
He couldn't seem to get enough air into his burning lungs.
In his mind he saw Thor: bright, shining Thor, the radiant hero of the Aesir, the beloved natural child of Odin and Frigga. What wonder that Loki, born a subhuman savage, could never live up to his example? It was like racing a cart pony against an eight-legged stallion. Memories of the pair of them riding through the meadows, sparring in the training halls, bickering and fighting, playing and laughing, conspiring in misadventures and mischief…
The gilded aura of a thousand beloved memories sloughed away under the pall of his new reality…
Clear as a clarion, he heard the echo of Thor's voice brimming with youthful glee, vowing to hunt down and slaughter every last Frost Giant. Little did he know there was one standing right next to him…
Odin had heard him say it that day. Odin, who had never seemed to tire in those days of recounting his victory over the Frost Giants, that vicious race of monsters; how brutal and ruthless they were, how he brought them low and made them bow before the might of Asgaard.
It was no different than what everyone else said, of course – the stories they told of Frost Giants vividly painted the cruel, primitive brutes massacring the honorable, slaughtering women, flaying and eating children raw. Everyone in Asgaard spoke so of the Frost Giants. Everyone despised them…
But Odin knew what he was all the while! That day, standing there in the weapons vault, watching Thor and him bicker over who was more ready to decimate Jotunheim, was he getting some sick satisfaction from displaying his trophy to the unwitting offspring of his conquered enemy?
Laufey's son.
He stumbled, catching himself against one of a pillar, then throwing himself back into the concealing shadows behind it as he heard the quite staccato of footfalls nearby. It was only the guards making their rounds. Yet here he hid in his own home, like an intruder. And was he not? Sound the alarm, he thought hysterically. The enemy is inside the walls.
He clung there, his back to the pillar, sucking air greedily into his burning lungs as new memories bubbled in like froth from an epileptic rictus to crowd out the old.
Not even a full day ago, he had stood before the throne of the Jotun king. It felt like an age had passed since the Frost Giant soldier had wrapped its craggy fingers around his forearm and it had not burned, but tingled and turned his skin the hideous mottled blue of a Jotun hide. Less than a day had passed since he had looked up into those merciless, blood-red eyes. Less than a day since he had heard that voice, like the grinding of broken rocks, and spoken himself, so courteously, to that gruesome, bloodless monstrosity that was his… his…
Laufey's son.
NO!
Every part of his being rejected it.
His stomach twisted; something desperate and panicked trying to claw its way out of his chest. His throat closed reflexively, as though his body knew instinctively that if he let that raging, burning something fly free, it would tear him to shreds and leave nothing but a bleeding husk in its wake. His subconscious strove to save him, even though he now knew that was the very thing he had been raised all his life to fear, despise and destroy.
Hush, baby mine, his mother's voice echoed in his head, comforting him when as a child he'd had a nightmare that Frost Giants had come to eat him. You are safe in your bed, and no monster can reach you here.
Liar! The monster was in the bed with him all along. The monster had always been there, inside him. How could she? It was hard enough to be Odin's great disappointment, little more than a spare next to Thor's great glory, the second prince in every sense, a back-up plan everyone hoped they would never have to turn to – though now he knew he was not even that. But he had always believed that even if Odin could not care for him, he was still Odin's son. Still Frigga's son, and that Frigga always would…
No wonder she had lied to him. How often must she have lied to herself to go on treating him like he mattered, the hideous, frozen beast spawned by her greatest enemy…
NO! His mind repeated, and even in his head, he sounded deranged, unrecognizable. The snarl of a hideous beast out of every child's nightmares. No! No! I am not the son of that creature. I am not Laufeyson! I am not! I am NOT!
But neither was he the son of Odin.
Who was he? Who?
No one, his heart hissed through the slivered cracks in his reality that seemed to have poisoned his senses – his fingers felt numb, and he realized he had clenched his fists so tightly that they his muscles had locked up; his nails bit into his palms and blood oozed lazily from between his fingers. I have no name. This blood has no source, no line. I have no ancestors to watch over me. I am the son of no one.
A strangled sound escaped from low in his throat. The walls and columns seemed to loom around him, close and cloying, and the shadows seemed to lengthen and deepen ready to swallow him whole. Little knowing or caring now if the guards saw him fleeing like a frightened child, he abandoned his refuge behind the column.
He ran again, blind to the blur of the castle corridors racing past him. He imagined he could feel little shards of his heart falling to litter the floor behind him, leaving a fragile trail of agony and loss glittering in his wake, little fractals of himself abandoned so that the rest of him could be delivered. But try as he might, he could not escape. He could neither run nor fight this foe. The monsters were all inside him.