Blood and Bond

Loki had never imagined himself as the sentimental type. He had been a silent and solitary boy who preferred his books and his magic to the company of others, and he had always known of the criticisms that were directed toward him, even before he perfected his use of illusions to hide his presence. Too small, too skinny, too quiet, too bookish, too different from Thor. Like night and day they had always been, in bearing, temper, and appearance, and everyone had always been happy to point it out. Loki had refined the art of hiding his angry expressions along with all his other illusions. One day, he had known, he would not be so small and weak. One day, all would see that brawn never triumphed when pitted against brains and power.

But years passed and no one ever saw or understood. So Loki prepared a small Frost Giant incursion, using the half-witted barbarians to cause an emergency that would show their father the enormity of his mistake in passing the crown to Thor. If a lifetime of disappointing his father had taught him anything, it was that Odin valued actions infinitely more than words. Loki was only too happy to oblige.

He felt the briefest of twinges when Thor was banished so suddenly and cruelly, stripped of power and thrown from his childhood home while gaping like a witless oaf, but he couldn't help the stab of satisfaction he felt upon realizing that he had finally escaped reprimand and been deemed righteous by his father. Besides, he reasoned, Thor would be back in a day or two. Odin's eye lingered long on the place Thor had stood but passed over Loki without seeing him and he knew in his heart that he was right. Odin would not be able to lock out his favorite son forever.

Odin's footsteps echoed and died as he left Heimdall's cavernous observatory. The silent emptiness pressed hard against Loki's chest as he stared at the cold and distant stars and wondered that he did not feel more triumphant.

All had gone according to plan - all but the strange reaction of his skin to a Frost Giant's touch during Thor's foolhardy attack on Jotunheim. He had absorbed the cold rather than suffering from it, his skin going blue and turning as frosted and hard as the ice under his feet. It faded immediately from his skin, but a tiny corner of his mind caught on the problem like fabric on a rusty nail. His thoughts would not stop itching and buzzing until he decided to descend into the guarded vaults of Asgard to investigate. It's nothing, he told himself again and again, keeping time with the hollow beat of his footsteps against the stone. Nothing... nothing... nothing...

His hands sought out the Casket of the Jotuns, a relic of immense power that swirled with an icy blue energy that felt strangely warm in his hands when he finally steeled himself to touch it. As though suddenly doused with water, his skin rippled and transformed into a smooth blue as clear as a cloudless Asgardian sky. Nothing... nothing... nothing... he chanted frantically as he felt the change travel through every nerve and cell, carrying the blue tint of the Frost Giants with it. He felt his eyes change, and the room brightened as the light filtered differently. His heart pounded, but could not budge the ice in his veins; he had never felt so cold. His mind slowed until thought was almost impossible. Nothing, he thought faintly.

"Stop," came Odin's cold, clear voice.

Nothing.

And he discovered that he was not the least favored son of Odin after all. He was the abandoned bastard of a monster who had never favored him at all. Nothing, chorused voices that carried the icy rasp of Jotunheim and froze him down to the soul. And he discovered that he was actually quite sentimental after all, for the moment that his connection with Odin, Frigga, and Thor was severed, he flailed frantically for it.

He reached for Odin, but the sleep had already taken him, so he reached for something attainable instead. Ignoring the hysteria that threatened to burst from him when he allowed himself to sit quietly and think - or worse - to feel, he concluded that the destruction of Jotunheim would not be hard for one acting as king of Asgard.

He decided to wipe out the Jotuns that had abandoned him and attacked so much that he had been raised to love - everything he thought he was a part of - but his ridiculous not-brother returned, spouting wisdom and sentiment that made Loki's blood boil and freeze all at once until he could have exploded with the single demand that he shut up.

Spewing wisdom and peace like an old philosopher did not suit Thor, and Loki would have laughed at the fool, the fighter, so suddenly transformed had his ignorance of Loki's true heritage and designs not made him so very angry. He attacked him, trying to force him out of the way so that he might finish what he had started and forever sever himself from the monsters that clawed at him from within his own veins. Thor's confusion (Loki, this is madness!) only turned his vision red, and made the blood rush in his ears. How dare he, the most beloved, the child of Odin's body, judge him whose only birthright was an icy death at the hands of savages and barbarians who loved only death and destruction. He hated Thor for not understanding, for lacking the wit to perceive what had happened and what was happening. He felt something akin to madness seize him and he attacked Thor with the sort of anger that could transform into weeping if not checked.

He was never quite sure what he intended to do with Thor if he bested him, but he didn't have to consider the issue for long. Naturally, Odin awoke in time to forgive Thor and issue a rebuke to Loki. It was so much like old times that Loki almost didn't feel the snap in his chest. His fingers let go of the staff that Thor grasped, keeping them together as they dangled above the starry abyss. Thor screamed, and Loki studied his look of regret as he fell. He had never seen it before. The distance between them spread and Loki felt the cord of connection between himself and Asgard stretch and fray. He wondered if it had snapped entirely. The blackness swallowed him and Loki was distantly grateful that it was all over.

Naturally, it was not.

Thanos found him. Loki wondered if his internal agony was so pronounced that predators like Thanos could smell the stench of death clinging to him. He occasionally wished that death would tighten its grip and have done with it, but such fleeting thoughts hardened and broke away as he remained lost in the far-flung branches of Yggdrasil, far from anything he had ever loved.

Something curious happened then, something that Loki had never felt before. The internal wounds that still stung and bled, deep as a surgeon's incisions, started to grow numb. The memories that at first blazed red-hot and burned and burned finally cooled into a pale and blurred remembrance of a life that wasn't his - a half-faded painting to be passed over.

The ugly truth was that he had never been one of them. They had never loved him. The horror of that burned like neverending fire for so long... until one day it didn't. One day there was nothing but ashes, and whatever else remained was as cold and hard as ice. The cords were cut. The deepest love he had known had been severed and everyone he had admired and loved had turned away from him at the test... and yet he had survived.

Family was a lie, he concluded. In blood, but more importantly, in bond. They cared nothing for him; it had been proven relentlessly in signs he could not read before knowing the truth (Odin always, always favored Thor) and affirmed definitively after he found out ("No, Loki"). His not-brother was banished and stripped of everything, only to be welcomed back at the slightest sign of change. He would receive no such mercy, no such welcome. If he returned to Asgard, he had no doubt that nothing but a trial, chains, and his not-mother's grieved gaze awaited him. He was a grief to everyone and everyone a grief to him. Nothing could save him. One day, he no longer wanted that to change.

The death of hope and love had provided him a perverse sort of freedom - the freedom from caring. Odin did not matter. Thor did not matter. He could do as he pleased now and what he pleased was to make something of himself. Something great and shocking and magnificent. Everyone would know that he was someone, that he was not broken and he could never be. They would all know that he was a god, beyond any needs, whether love or freedom or happiness. He needed no one (and no one needed him). No one could touch him and no one could hurt him. He was beyond that now.

How Thanos had smiled. Loki led the Chitauri to Earth in the new armor he forged for himself. The armor's hard lines were cold and striking and powerful. Its strength helped to hold his chest together after the fires in his heart burned out, only to be replaced by fault lines and a faint ache. But he was learning to be strong and soon even these irritants would disappear. He would make them. When he set himself up as a king he would finally silence the voices in his mind that still endlessly chanted nothing, sometimes in the hissing rasp of the Chitauri, sometimes in the dry and stony tones of the Jotuns, and sometimes in the cold voice of Odin the All-Father. (The father of all except Loki.)

It was a magnificent plan, a glorious purpose. Naturally, Thor arrived in a turbulent brew of thunder and lightning and destroyed it all. Loki hated the tremors that erupted inside him when he saw Thor's face, the tiny rivulets of rage that gushed to the surface, proving that there was still so much sentiment down beneath his newly-cooled bedrock. He clamped down on his emotions viciously and tried to master them and the planet Earth all at once. When he succeeded, he would finally find the peace he so craved. But the universe hated him and favored Thor, as unjustly as everyone else. Loki wasn't even surprised when Thor came away as the victor, leading him away in chains like a circus animal. There was only one thing that surprised him on that day.

Thor's eyes were as cold as the glaciers of Jotunheim when Loki met their gaze. The blue fire of the Tesseract engulfed them and he felt the power sweep them far away to Asgard (not-home). Thor's gaze remained far away. A shared childhood gave Loki the ability to see more than others when faced with Thor's stony visage. In those once-warm eyes, Loki read something that finally sealed the fault lines that cracked his chest and settled his soul in a way he had not thought possible. He saw coldness and apathy toward him, unclouded by sentimental attachment. Thor wished he had no brother.

Loki sighed and relaxed and felt the sensation of being cut adrift, even while he was caught in the rushing winds of the Tesseract's power. His once-brother was nothing to him now, their connection as broken as the lies that had originally brought it about. There was a distant ripping in his chest as of old and decayed fabric, but he couldn't quite feel it. At long last, he searched his heart and felt...

...nothing.

The winds of the Tesseract calmed and his feet touched solid ground, his chains jingling as gravity took hold of them again. The guards were already waiting to escort him to the palace where swift judgement and a prison cell would await him - but he gave no thought to that. He relished the lightness he felt, the blessed relief of no longer feeling or being felt for. For so long, he had believed that freedom was naught but a lie, but in that moment he reconsidered. He felt nothing... and it felt remarkably like being free. Loki went to his cell with a smile.

Yikes - this was all doom and gloom! I wanted to explore Loki's beliefs about himself and his family, beliefs that are twisted and not entirely founded on truth. It was a dark thing to try and explore his thoughts... Maybe one day I'll write a companion piece exploring whether the freedom from sentiment is actually freedom for Loki - or anyone, for that matter. Of course, despite what Loki may believe, he isn't entirely past his familial connections - Thor: The Dark World proved that - but he desperately wants to be and he tries to make it true. And that's where this oneshot comes in. What do you lovely readers think? Please review!