The Aesir are a people who are defined, first, by their military prowess. For a majority of their existence, they and Asgard have flourished through triumph in battle, though these days, they have less need for advancement in such ways. The majority of the Nine Realms either acknowledge Odin's superiority, isolate themselves from Asgard, or, in the case of Midgard, exist in near total ignorance of the other worlds that they share the universe with.
But the Aesir are still primarily a warrior culture. There is a clear chain of command. Asgard and its armies are led by a single powerful king, who passes orders down to his generals, who in turn distribute those orders until the lowest soldier or gardener has his task. Without this chain of command, the Aesir could not function. It is built into the genes of every citizen of Asgard, from farmer to Einherjar. The fundamental order and obedience of the Aesir keeps Asgard at a perpetual world peace, in perfect harmony and balance.
The streets of Asgard are brilliant and gold-paved. The capital's buildings are soaring, magnificent feats of architecture that defy the Midgardian concept of physics, and they say that the sweeping, gleaming curves of the Palace can be seen from Jotunheim.
But no Aesir walk these streets. They do not see the spires of the City that glitter by day and by night, nor the bright stars that illuminate the skies both above and below their Floating World. Most city-dwelling civilian Aesir do not leave their homes. After all, why should they? Every Aes has his or her place in the world. They are not required to travel, in order to do their jobs, and so they do not.
And so, consequently, the number of Aesir who leave their homes regularly is only slightly higher than the number who ever leave Asgard altogether. And there is only one who leaves Asgard on a regular basis not for his king, but for himself.
Loki has never felt too comfortable around his brother's friends. He knows better than to call them his, for despite the many battles they have fought together, the late hours on long campaigns spent around a fire together, they are no more at ease around him than he they. And they have good reason. Because despite the lessons ingrained in his psyche from since childhood, and enforced every time he interacts with another Asgardian, he has never found it in himself to obey his orders without question. He's a mischief-maker, a loose cannon. And there's nothing that Asgard hates and fears more than a loose cannon.
-o-
Thor has always been the golden prince and Odin's favourite son. He's the epitome of Aesir perfection, after all: always first into the fray, impulsively emotional and powerful in battle, and his muscles make all the Asgardian women gasp and giggle coyly. Even Sif, who sometimes rolls her eyes at his posturing, does so with fondness.
So Loki is terribly amused when he realizes that Thor does intend to do the unthinkable: defy Odin and very possibly start a war with the Jotun. Thor's impulsivity has often led himself, Loki, Sif, and the Warriors Three into all sorts of disasters before, so no surprises there, but the fact that he does this in active disobedience of his father the King, well… One could almost accuse Loki of being a bad influence.
And it only goes downhill from there. For Thor, at least.
"Do you realize what you've done, what you've started?"
Loki stands off to the side, the only of the company remaining in the Bifröst Observatory other than Thor and Odin himself, and he can't help but feel the slightest twinge of pleasure at seeing Thor chastised for his actions. Heaven knows Loki's been on the receiving end of that quite a bit more than once, and it feels nastily good to see Thor cut down for once.
And it takes his mind of off its latest conundrum, the one he's going to avoid for now, the one he can't even consider because the chill of Jotunheim is still on his undamaged Aesir-pale skin.
"I was protecting my home!" Thor replies hotly.
"You can't even protect your friends, how can you hope to protect a kingdom?" Odin shouts with equal heat.
"There won't be a kingdom to protect if you're afraid to act! The Jotuns must learn to fear me, just as they once feared you!"
And then Loki realizes that he's miscalculated.
Because the Aesir are an obedient race. And Thor is the epitome of Aesir perfection, and that's really all that most of Asgard sees of him. But Loki is his brother, and he should know better than to think that Thor would simply submit to Odin, at a time like this. Because they've just retreated from enemy territory, and Thor is not a rational creature, and Odin just pulled Thor from the heat of battle by speaking to the enemy.
Yes, Loki has miscalculated, and Thor is going to be punished terribly because of it. This he already knows for certain. All for a handful of emboldening words spoken to a righteous but delusional prince in a deserted feasting hall.
Because although Thor may not be about to obey anything that Odin says right now, that inherent obedience and trust that the Aesir so love is also a quality that makes them so easily — too easily — manipulated.
"That's pride and vanity talking, not leadership! You've forgotten everything I've taught you, about a warrior's patience!"
"While you wait and be patient, the Nine Realms laugh at us! The old ways are done, you'd stand giving speeches while Asgard falls!"
"You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!"
"And you are an old man and a fool!"
And so begins the downfall of Thor Odinson, Loki thinks humorlessly, desperately.
"Yes. I was a fool. To think you were ready."
Loki has to agree with this. It's just a shame that Odin had been unable to see it before now. They're a family of fools, the royals of Asgard. The difference between Loki and Odin is that Loki understands the nature of his own foolishness, while Odin can't even see out of the one eye he has left.
"Thor. Odinson. You have betrayed the express command of your king." This, Loki knows, is the real reason why Thor's punishment is inevitable. He has refused to submit to the alpha. He has defied the laws, and, more importantly, he has disobeyed Odin.
He continues, "Through your arrogance and stupidity, you have opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of war!" He roars this last word. "You are unworthy of these Realms, you are unworthy of your title. You are unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed."
And then Odin starts stripping Thor of rank, and Loki sees with a dawning horror that he's going to be under closer eye himself, now. "I now take from you your power, in the name of my father, and his father before. I, Odin Allfather… cast you out!"
And he's gone. Thor's gone.
And it's really too soon before he's back, it turns out. It seems that some lessons are far too easy to learn.
-o-
At some point later — is it really so short a time after? — Loki falls.
-o-
The void below the Floating World is seemingly endless. At first, when Loki realizes that this is not going to be a short death by any measure, he cries.
By now he's falling so fast that the tears are stripping off of his face as they leave his eyes, and he suddenly notices, with some detachment, that they form silver ribbons, floating above him, if he tilts his head up to see them. He runs out of tears, fast.
But then misery becomes dull, and the anger comes back, and it isn't even directed at Odin. Nor Thor neither, though in part this is all his fault.
No, Loki is angry with himself. Because he's been a fool, and not in any way he'd previously suspected. Because the nature of fools is that they do not see their own foolishness. Not until it's too late.
Loki does not believe himself to be a fool any longer.
The falling becomes a regular feature of Loki's life. He wonders absently, at some point, if some quality of this void is suspending his physiological functions in some way, as he seems to have no need to eat and defecate, feels no strain on his lungs due to lack of viable oxygen, has not suffered internal damages of any kind.
But he is actively thinking, and he can twist himself in the air with some effort, not that there's much to see.
Or, to phrase it better, there's nothing that Loki can use here. There is plenty to see. More than one might suspect in a void, but that's not really an accurate term for this… whatever it is. The only problem is that Loki doesn't recognize any of what he sees. Sometimes there are stars, but they don't configure to arrangements that he recognises from anywhere he's been in the Nine Realms. Sometimes there are flashes of colour, sometimes explosions in the distance, but mainly the fall is silent and cold.
Loki has a lot of time on his hands.
He does a lot of thinking.
And inevitably, the thinking drifts toward Asgard, and Odin, and the nature of being Loki.
He has always thought of himself as a rebel, always pushing the boundaries of Asgard's rules, defying what is expected of Aesir.
And yet, he thinks bitterly, in the end, he'd still ended up hanging from that bridge with one thought in his mind: to please Odin. He'd still wanted to be accepted, to be seen as the better, more loyal, more obedient son.
The thought of it is abhorrent to him now.
-o-
At some point, he ends up on Midgard, holding a spear not of his own making, half-mad after years and years of falling. His skull constantly pounds after the stress of being outside of the Nine Realms for so long, and then being so abruptly thrust back into them. He hides in mirrors but never looks at his own reflection, knowing that he has visibly aged.
He hates himself now for becoming only a tool yet again. Odin, Thanos… there is no difference. Authority has always been his natural enemy, but he cannot escape succumbing to it no matter how hard he tries.
He has learned a fundamental truth about sentient beings, and it isn't the one he preaches above a crowd of kneeling humans in Stuttgart.
What he says: "It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled."
What he knows, however, is not that humans — and Aesir, too — long to be ruled, but that they ache for orders. They are wired toobey.
Because if there's anything that Man fears above all else, it is this: responsibility. Take away the responsibility, give him the ability to point a finger and say, "He made me do it", and he will do anything you say.
But Loki doesn't say this to the crowd in Stuttgart, and he doesn't put its principles into practice, because he doesn't want to win this war. Because he doesn't want to play by Thanos's rules.
Long ago, in the abyss, Loki decided that he will only play Loki's games, by Loki's rules.
-o-
After the Avengers debacle, Loki finds justification for his rejection of Odin's family. What is it the Allfather says? Oh yes, "Frigga is the only reason you're still alive, and you'll never see her again. You'll spend the rest of your days in the dungeon."
Not the words one likes to hear from the man who'd been one's father for, oh, just a couple thousand years, but this is Odin, and this is Loki.
And later on, when Thor comes to promise him revenge for their mother's death, the oaf is still foolish enough to tell Loki that after their little jaunt to Svartalfheim, Loki will be returning to his cell.
Well, Thor might think so, but as soon as Loki's out, he's not coming back.
-o-
Today, Loki sits on the throne of Asgard, and he thinks that he can do this. Or he tries to fool himself into thinking it, but the truth is that he knows all too well that eventually he's going to give himself away, and he won't even be shocked or regretful when it happens, because living one's entire life by another's rules is nothing compared to living the rest of it bound by another's defining parameters, namely, Odin's. He cannot be Odin without behaving like him, and in doing so would lose the freedom that he so loves. It would still be a kind of obedience, in a way.
So he'll continue to play at being king — and isn't it ironic, that of Odin's named heirs, the younger and more monstrous, more false of the two is the one who's sat on the throne not once, but twice — for a while yet, and then he supposes he'll end it on his own terms and go back to mischief-making, preferably somewhere far from Asgard.
But for now? Now, Loki has the throne, and he's not going to waste this opportunity.
When he tells Sif and Volstagg to deliver the Aether to a man called the Collector, of a world outside of the Nine Realms, they don't question the rationality of this order.
Of course, it isn't built into the Aesir to question anything.
Their king gives an order.
They obey.
Author's note: i. If you haven't heard of it, what is known as the Milgram Experiment was a series of experiments run by psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961, as a means of understanding the actions of ordinary Germans who participated in extermination and other genocidal deeds during the Holocaust. Check out the Wikipedia article if you have time.
ii. I didn't really know where exactly I was going with this when I started writing it, but it struck me that Loki's story is really an excellent example of demonstrating the conclusions reached by Milgram and exploring the subject of obedience in general.
iii. I am personally a member of the Loki fandom but am not one of those who believe in Loki's innocence. I chose to make this fic slightly pro-Loki but not in a "Thanos forced him to do everything" kind of way. The amount of fanfiction that goes in that direction is frankly shocking and also way too repetitive. I chose to go with Loki sabotaging his own invasion (because, really, that whole thing was botched in so many ways it either had to be deliberate or Loki lost a serious number of brain cells during his fall), not out of compassion or a sense of heroism, but because he wasn't about to do someone else's dirty work.