A/N Just a quick drabble I wrote to avoid doing schoolwork and get through some emotions from Ragnarok. Enjoy!
Snakes...I cannot remember when I first began to admire them, but from my youth I had always sought them out. Really, how does anything become a favorite? Perhaps it is either an association with happy memories, or a consistency of exposure, that lends familiarity. Whatever the reason, at a young age I loved snakes. I remember quite well searching the castle gardens on Asgard for them. Sometimes my exuberance and joyful searching would draw a royal guard away from his post to help me look. Together on hands and knees we would scurry under the bushes, getting dirt on our palms and knees until I would cry out loudly that I had discovered one. Whoever was helping me look, a guard, my tutor, a kitchen servant would catch up the serpent and allow me to touch it and admire it.
Nothing was more precious to my young mind. Their liquid black eyes are a startling blend of innocence and cunning, and I never liked the common sentiment that they were dead or evil looking eyes. Looking back, they remind me of...It is of no matter. About the snakes... Well the snakes in the gardens were usually golden with a blue stripe down their center, and there was this one time I scurried to my mother to present the snake in my arms as a gift to her, declaring quite proudly that they would make the finest ornaments she could own. Ah, I can see her face even now, it always glowed with an inner light... well being the fearless shieldmaiden that she was, she took the serpent from my hands. She made a great show of examining it before looking shocked, lifting it to her ear, she seemed to be listening to it.
She said to me "The Snake told me he is very impressed that you managed to catch him, because he is the fastest of his kind and a prince of the snakes. He asks that you please put him back in the garden so he can go back to looking after and ruling his people."
Hah. Well, I was amazed! I never knew my mother could understand animals, but given her magic I never once doubted. I quickly took the serpent and returned him to his royal domain of the gardens and to his own people, highly pleased that I had managed to capture a prince among snakes.
Yet as I aged I never outgrew my love for the creature. My own brother had never even had a favorite animal or really a favorite anything. He always seemed to be watching what all around him favored, and then sought to match their favorites, in order to make himself MORE likable. Perhaps it was an insecurity, or born of a need to belong. I do not know. I realize now that I never truly understood my brother and only here, at the far end of the nine realms that I can see him as he is.
I never knew exactly how much older I was than Loki, but I had always been told that I was the first born, and unfortunately acted as one. It is always difficult to equate an immortal's lifespan to a mortal such as yourself, but we would have been considered around the same age in human terms.
Loki seemed to envy my enthusiasm for things. He never seemed to love anything of his own. If I had something I loved he wanted to love it too, if I desired to spend time training hawks he resented it and wished to train hawks himself. I suppose it was only a matter of time before he set his sight on my love of snakes.
When we were young, I was walking out of my chamber early in the morning to go train when I saw a lovely black and green snake coiled up outside my door. I bent down, and picked it up, amazed at its unique color and length. I never once thought that it could be poisonous since I was unfamiliar with the species. I shifted the creature to one arm so I could look at it properly.
"You are a handsome fellow aren't you. I'll bet you are a prince among snakes yourself!"
The snake seemed to tilt its head and regard me with a judging look and I was just wondering if perhaps it would speak to me, when it transformed into my brother Loki who threw his weight into me, knocking me over as he loudly shouted.
"HAH IT'S ME!" Before I knew it, he had pulled out the poniard he had been given by Heimdall and stabbed me in the side before rolling off of me and taking off down the hall.
Now I can see the expression on your face, and you must not regard that as you would a human child stabbing another. The horseplay of Asgardian children is no doubt more severe, and believe you me that was not the worst thing my brother had ever done to me, or I him.
Once when we were striplings, Loki and I had risked our father's wrath by sneaking into battle. Father had been drawn into conflict with the Half Giant Half Ogre Nurtagh. The thrill was glorious and fighting side by side with the person I loved and trusted most in battle was intoxicatingly exciting. Yet I was rash and paid no heed to the tide of battle. I did not pay heed to my brother's warning and we soon found ourselves behind the enemy line and greatly outnumbered. I remember grabbing Loki and tossing a turned over chariot atop him so the warlord would not see him. I was captured and I found myself dragged in chains before Nurtagh and his men. I must admit that I was hotheaded youth and I laughed in the warrior's face, taunting him that it was only a matter of minutes before my father finished the last of his soldiers. I could see his line of warriors being mowed down by the shining line of Asgardian troops from the hill we stood on. I only realized after I had spoken that I should not have revealed my connection to his hated enemy. Nurtagh grinned, his thick yellow skin splitting over his teeth. I struggled with the chains but I was young and untested; I could not break them. The Warlord left to determine my fate. I was left alone in his tent. Soon enough a snake came gliding under the tent flap but I would knew those green and gold scales anywhere.
"Loki!" I shouted
He immediately transformed with a scowl and hushed me. "Be quiet. I can't rescue you if I'm dead."
"I'm just happy to see you brother. I was worried you had been crushed by the chariot."
"I appreciate the concern in hindsight. Come on" He said.
Loki waved his hands and I transformed into a snake as well, being so small I was easily able to escape the chains. Together as snakes we fled Nurtagh's camp and back to Asgard, our father none the wiser of what had happened.
Come to think of it, snakes punctuate the story of my brother and me. Like a bad coin they reappear and refuse to leave.
On the day I was to be coronated as King, Loki came to congratulate me before the ceremony. An unfortunate servant had laughed at a joke I had made at Loki's expense; Loki startled him with the illusion of several small snakes spilling out of the cup of wine he held. When I saw the snakes the memory I had of Loki startling me as a snake came to mind. A warm laugh shook me and I could feel the mirth radiating off of my brother as well.
You know, Loki always had the talent of getting into people's minds and making them relive memories or dreams or forget things, but I always believed that this sensitivity was two fold. I could always sense his emotions, but perhaps it was just me who could sense them. After all, no one seemed to mention it except me. If I could sense my brother's emotions why couldn't I have sensed his pain, his conflict? I wish I had an answer.
Then of course there was that painful revelation when I came to realize my brother was a snake. At Stark tower, pleading with my brother to come home, to stop the maddening destruction of Earth, I finally realized; my brother was a snake. He could not help betraying me, it was his nature. He had the eyes of a snake: inscrutable, mild, guarded. That terrible mixture of innocence and cunning I had wondered at since my youth staring back at me from eyes I once loved so much. Then he stabbed me, but I knew it would happen, even before he had...after all, what can a snake do but bite.