Loki had always wondered why Thor was the favorite son, why he got all the affection that Loki craved.
At first, he thought it was his fighting skills, but he'd gotten a lot better since that thought first entered his head. Maybe he didn't have as much brute strength as Thor, but he was good. In hindsight though, he thought that that wasn't the realization he should've gotten.
Nothing changed.
But besides the fighting, he couldn't put his finger on it. He wasn't as friendly as Thor? Even though he really wanted an answer other than the fact that he used magic and shape-shifted, sometimes, into a woman, he was convinced that that wasn't it.
He'd briefly (five years, it's true, it must be) entertained the idea that he was adopted, but he just didn't understand why his parents (they), had taken him in and not someone else. When he was born, there had been lots of families who'd lost their child or children in the war against Jotunheim, during the Valiant Defending of Midgard. They would have been more likely to take him in than his parents. He'd let that idea go, even though it still, sometimes, came forward from the depths of his mind and into the back of it, where it at inopportune moments made it painfully clear it was there.
Once, Frigga had told him that they would love him no matter what, that they loved him and Thor equally. Loki knew you only said that if it wasn't true.
Odin wasn't there.
What Loki didn't know was that Frigga told him that because she had been told by Heimdall about Loki's then night-time activities, which involved shape-shifting, men under the table and other people's beds. Frigga sometimes thought that 'people' was a bit generous. Frigga was just concerned. So was Odin.
The talk made Loki depressed and desperate for love, real love and not the false love his parents and brother gave him because they had to and not because they actually felt it, but the unconditional love that he must deserve (right?).
And maybe, just maybe, looking for that love in Amora, whom everyone knew had a huge crush on Thor, wasn't the best idea. But she was convenient. Loki figured that enough time spent together would lead to love.
In certain aspects, Loki was quite naive.
The next one, whom he really loved, was Angrboda. They met in a bar on Vanaheim, Loki was a woman and just felt like he had to get away, away from the boisterous company of Thor's friends and the false love of his family. They spent a lot of time together. Loki was pretty sure that Angrboda had lied about who she was, but then so had he. Their love was true though. Carried them through their miscarriage and beyond. It, despite the lies, was worth more to him than his family. (But that was what he thought, and he was wrong. The shadow of his family would never stop haunting him.)
That should've been enough, really. That was all someone like Loki deserved. Except it wasn't enough, no. His family didn't know anything about Angrboda or their miscarriage or what Loki really did when they (his parents and his brother and his brother's friends) though he was with his books.
Because it wasn't enough, the whole thing with the Jotuns started.
Loki had always been curious about them, those who dwell on a seemingly barren (like his womb) world and had complete control over ice. The Jotuns, who lived in a decaying and rotting society.
He started by just getting the lay of the lad, and then he dug deeper, deeper, deeper. In the end he destroyed his brother's coronation, he exiled his brother. He also killed a lot of jotuns (there was something familiar with the way they moved, there was something familiar with the way they manipulated ice).
He couldn't stop thinking about Angrboda, and he wanted to see her so much. She was nowhere to be found.
After that, it was just down. Further into himself, deeper into those dark corners of his mind where he had hidden all those thoughts he knew he should think but sometimes couldn't stop thinking anyway. He was scared of those dark corners.
He couldn't find Angrboda. (Had she been on Jotunheim when he tried to destroy the planet?)
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