Accidental Good
By Rey
Loki goes to Jötunheim intending to deceive the frost giants, turning them into tools for the sole purpose of disrupting Thor's coronation.
He doesn't come back.
Story tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Thor movies, Family Drama, Internalised Racism, Single-Gendered Species, Jotunheim, Spiritual/Supernatural
(A standalone glimpsing into a pivotal and rather popular what-might-have-been.)
Ruins lay all round, intersperced with ice, snow and ravines. Wind whistled past the cliffs and crevices, creating eerie noises and echoes here and there. But oddly enough, the pair of boots of an Asgardian trudging through the broken land felt the loudest and sharpest of all, the most out of place at that. Dozens of eyes seemed to watch the intruder closely, although no living being – sentient or not – was visible.
And still, Loki proceeded through the ruins, until he came upon a more-or-less intact one, which looked like either a small palace or an elaborate temple. He hadn't encountered any of the frost giants thus far, but he had never hesitated on his way. This invisible path, taken almost immediately after he had emerged from the rarely used 'twig' of Yggdrasil that had brought him here, felt somehow right.
The audience with the leader of the frost giants ran as smoothly as Loki had hoped. His "typical Asgardian" disguise held rather well, if he said so himself, and King Laufey did not seem too suspicious of him and his offer. The only thing left right now was to go home and wait for the unfolding of his plan.
He would rather not spend more time than necessary in this broken land of monsters, beasts which had been barely defeated by Asgard's armed forces more than a thousand years ago and reputedly held so much hatred for Asgardians in general.
He was yet to completely vacate the throne room, however, when a jötun nearly twice his size stepped on his path with silent confidence.
But it was not he who shooed the obstructing frost giant away.
"BÝLEISTR!" Laufey thundered from the direction of the dace, set perpendicular to the doors to the throne room, and the smaller frost giant flinched.
Then again, Loki could barely prevent himself from also flinching and turning round, because that commanding tone was so… was not…. Well, Laufey had no business whatsoever to mimic Frigga!
His moment of distraction cost him dearly, unfortunately. Just as Laufey rushed to where he and the smaller frost giant were caught in a standstill, a pair of huge, cold hands grasped his shoulders. At the same time, a powerful, half alien presence battled against his illusion and won.
The throne room, previously already empty of any guard or courtier, turned deathly silent. Even Laufey's hurried – but oddly light – steps had halted.
Loki felt blood draining from his face and rushing to his feet, anchoring them to the floor. – The illusion had been his only disguise. He had thought it would hold, so he had not thought of dying his hair and putting a separate, subtler illusion on his eyes and face. Now these monsters knew very well that he was–.
"Ah, see, Abý? This one looks a lot like Abý when in hot-weather skin," the smaller frost giant – Býleistr? – crowed, innocently and enthusiastically proud like only a child or a rather sheltered adolescent could achieve, in Loki's opinion, although the size of the frost giant seemed to indicate maturity.
"There seem to be layers of wards and geas on them, though, not of their own making," the taller frost giant who had captured Loki from behind agreed thoughtfully, while manhandling him into facing Laufey. "Shall we try to peel these off, Abý?"
There was no mention of Loki being the second prince of Asgard, at all, although he doubted both – Laufey's closest advisors? Relatives? Children? – were ignorant of the fact, now that they were confronted with his true appearance.
His bemusement only served to dig the trepidation deeper. What were these frost giants going to do to him? What was Laufey going to–.
He yelped. His feet had just left the floor abruptly, but there was nothing threatening in the gesture – Laufey's gesture.
Startled green eyes met unreadable red ones, as Laufey – oh so casually – perched him on one arm, like… like….
"Abý?" The two smaller jötnar were crowding the both of them now, looking up in anticipation and… hope?
Loki squirmed, feeling threatened by their – very, very close – proximity and this intimate gesture not apt for adults and almost-enemies.
And then a somehow familiar deluge of power drenched him, and nothing he did managed to free him from it – not his flailing, not his cries, not his own flare of power. In fact, somebody else cried out with him, while he was cocooned more thoroughly in something that he was no longer sure was just a mere arm. His tendral of power was also caught firmly in a corresponding one from the outside, cradled as if it were some precious treasure by the torrential downpour of seiðr and presence drowning him.
A welcome coolness crept up on him, a reprieve from the figurative hot day that he had not known he needed. It came with something in him breaking and shifting, but the discomfort was quickly and attentively alleviated by his cocoon.
Layer after layer peeled off of his inner self afterwards, like wet and dirty clothing reluctantly parting with sweaty, tender skin. He was distracted from the greater, prolonged discomfort this action caused him in the same manner, and also by something liquidy and almost warm flowing into him, bursting as energy for healing and growth inside.
And then, buoyed as he was by the conflorgration of power that hurt him not in the slightest, a vision – or was it a memory? – unfolded almost shyly in his mind: He floated in a nourishing fluid, often bumping against and playing with another entity that was of his same size and make. Loud, constant sounds of dug-dug and rush-rush kept them company alongside the same deluge of power that was wrapped round him now, assuring them that they were alive, that they were safe, that they were protected, that they were loved.
He keened. His cocoon – his mother – keened with him, sharing the grief of long, unneeded, wasteful separation.
Loss permeated him – permeated them – and crystalised the memory in a bittersweet frame.
The name "Loptr" was spoken in a soft, hoarse whisper, both inside and outside of his mind, just like the first time, after he had firstly breathed the cold, dry air outside of his mother's womb, and it felt like a hope and benediction all at once.
The name, now, was also a promise – of love, of sanctuary, of acceptance – and it followed him warmly into oblivion.
`Mother,` his heart acknowledged in kind before darkness completely took him, unencumbered by the restrictions of his dazed mind. And with that, the last layer of foreign binding broke.