So, I got this idea from a poster on tumblr, who spoke about head canoning that Thor: Ragnarok was a story being narrated by Thor, that the entire film was essentially his fantasy, which is why it's so unrealistically optimistic, despite all these terrible things happening, and that what really happened was much, much darker, and would reflect such if told from Loki's perspective. So, I decided to write it! Here's the first chapter! If you like it, let me know your thoughts, and thank you for reading!
When Last I saw You
Chapter 1:
When Thor finds him, there is in his eyes a familiar, boiling rage, thick covering a relief so powerful as to be called anguish, and Loki hates himself.
"You're alive." He says, half astonished, mingling with disgust, and it is for himself, Loki knows. It is for Thor himself, for how he has again allowed himself to be fooled.
Loki wishes he would not.
He did not fool Thor this time. He did not lie.
He knows not how to explain such to his brother. Knows not how to make Thor believe him, when indeed a fool he would be, to believe a word which dripped from his liars tongue.
"... Aye." He answers, and steps back, for he sees in Thor the violence of their youth. Days when his brother's powerful feeling took him full, and woe be to any so unlucky then to be got in his path. Oft it was Loki so in his way, for Loki was ever at Thor's side when they were children, and oft it was Loki who then fell beneath stone fists thrown in blind passion.
And never was Loki a match for Thor. Not in such things as that.
Thor comes at him, and Loki stumbles, a sick panic filling his chest, and he thinks for a moment, wildly, that Thor will kill him.
Bitter memory. Skin turning ice blue and wretched realization crippling his mind. Picture of his brother, soaked in black blood, steaming off his skin in the cold of a desolate plain, blinding bright smile shown as the sun on his golden face and love filled eyes as they gazed upon him.
"Did you see me cleave it's head with my ax Loki!" And he laughs, throwing his head back with the power of his mirth. "How easily a giant's skull splits in two! But truly 'tiss the power of my arm which drove the blade through!"
"Yes Thor." Loki answers, and grasps his hands together to keep the sight of their trembling from his brother.
"How?" Thor presses at him and Loki falls.
The weight of Mjolnir on his chest is too familiar, breath tight and trapped in his throat, mind dizzy with irrational terror. Trapped. He's trapped, and cannot move, and his brother will surely kill him this time.
"How!?" Thor presses again, bearing Mjolnir's head down with crushing force and Loki gasps at the pain of it.
It never did quite heal. Where the Kursed's blade went through him.
"... I don't know." He manages, voice weak and strangled. "Thor, please, I don't..."
"I saw you die." Thor speaks over him. "I held you in my arms. How are you yet living?!"
"I do not know Thor!" Loki spits, his own anger bubbling now up into his throat. For he knows in Thor's question is the accusation. Knows what his brother truly means to ask. "I was dead. I felt myself dying."
Thor gazes at him with hopeless disbelief, and Loki feels his eyes burn with frustration and hate.
"Believe me not, if that is your want." He hisses, hands coming up to grasp the head of Mjolnir, the power of its magic thrumming loud against his own. "But I speak true. I felt myself dying, and when I awoke, I was alone. You and your woman gone."
He cannot hide the rawness from his voice with his last words.
He had thought himself beyond such sentiment. Thought himself beyond caring what those who had stolen him and raised him under the weight of their lies thought and felt.
Only he had been lying to himself, and that he had known always.
When he had woken on Svartalfheim and found himself abandoned, there had been pain like a blade in his lungs and to his shame he had sat there for long hours afterward and wept like a child.
Thoughts had riven his mind. Surely Thor had gone after Malekith, to Midgard.
And more to his shame, Loki had stumbled to his feet, the poison of the Kursed blade turning his extremities to useless flesh and his thoughts to confused fragments, his feet staggering forward as he attempted to move across the blackened wastes of that realm, instinct first to open a portal to Midgard and follow Thor there.
But doubt had soon snaked its way into those thoughts. He was useless as he was. Poisoned and bleeding profoundly. And if Thor saw him alive...
"I can offer you vengeance. And afterward... this cell."
Eternity in a cell.
Loki could think then only of the maddening state of it. Days when he had felt himself losing any sense of proportion or reality. Days when he had found himself gripping at his hair, tearing at it in despair and a desperate, suffocating aloneness. For he had known then truly he was alone, and would be always, and the thought... the thought had been raging fire in his brain, burning him alive, and he would rather have been dead then. Would rather, then to face the hated cruelty of the Norns fate for him. When he had known with an absoluteness without exception that his family did not love him... had never loved him.
… Why had they not asked him of what befell him in the void? Why had they never asked, even if only once?
And he remembers Thor's face. Remembers his eyes as he'd held him. And Loki had been scared. He'd been so scared. He hadn't wanted to die, and Thor... Thor had looked at him with love, and Loki had loved him back, and had wanted to say so many things, but all of would come to his lips were only apologies. For all of it. Spoken too late and useless and weak. Apologies for what he'd done. And for what he was.
Oh, how he had only wanted to be Thor's brother. How much he had wanted...
He knew then, if he lived, if he survived the Kursed's mortal blow, he could not seek Thor out. For fear beyond that cell crushed his mind. Fear of what he now saw. Thor's gaze, full of mistrust and betrayal, only worse still, for the love which remained present, and Loki knew how wrongly he had misjudged his brother then. How truly Thor had always loved him. And never again did Loki desire to betray that love. How desperately he wished to hold to Thor's eyes in his memory, when he held him as he died, and let that be an end to it. Let also then his death be Thor's last memory of him, so he might think less lowly of his wicked and weak brother. The wretch who had done naught but cast a pall over the shining greatness of the House of Odin and the Realm Eternal.
Oh, why could Thor not simply hate him, and free him of his hate for himself?
At last Thor lifts Mjolnir from his chest, stepping back, his eyes shifting round to the gathered spectators, as if for the first time really taking note of them, and Loki feels a hollow emptiness inside.
If the people of Asgard had ever suspected him not to be Odin, they spoke nothing of it, and Loki had fallen into an almost morbid excitement of anticipation for when they would, and what price they would exact on him, a frost giant, masquerading upon the throne of Asgard.
Tales had spread through the realm of the heroism he had displayed in the wastes of Svartalfheim. Thor himself had seen to that, when he had returned from saving the Nine Realms, as Loki had known he would, and had regaled those gathered at the banquet thrown in his honor, of how his younger brother had risked and eventually sacrificed his life not only to save Thor's own, but that of his woman, Jane Foster.
Those gathered had shown grand displays of gratitude and pride in their fallen prince, and so long as Thor remained upon Asgard, they sung Loki's praises, ballads performed throughout the city's many staged venues depicting his supposed great courage and hero's death, worthy of the gates of Valhalla.
… That had ended upon Thor's departure.
It was since the youngest of boyhood Loki could recall the whispered insults and snide commentary of the Asgardian court towards the person of Odin's strange second son.
Ergi, they would call him to his back, for how womanly he seemed to them in his possession of seidr and his crafting of it. And for his physical weakness, most plain in direct contrast to the physical power and strength of arm possessed in Thor.
And as his power grew, so too did the insults, and the openness with which they were spoken.
Thor remembered it not.
As Thor chose, indeed, to remember not so many things of their youth.
Loki understood why.
How grave a blight such memories were, upon the pristine happiness of Thor's most carefree childhood.
How difficult to see the cruelty of others, when you know for yourself only their love and kindness.
"What mockery you make of your own sacrifice Loki?" Thor looks back to him, and Loki rises with wariness, aware still of his brother's anger.
The people gathered round look on in their sneering countenances, their faces mirroring Thor's own betrayal and disgust. Only theirs is for him. For Loki. Their hatred rolls off them in palpable waves. They move not for Thor's presence, and for the anticipation of Thor's revenge.
"You think this mockery mine own." Loki states. For he knows indeed 'tiss what Thor thinks. What Thor wishes to believe.
No, ballads sung in Loki's praise had ended upon Thor's departure from the realm.
In their place had grown satire, had grown open mocking displays of Loki's death, and the nature of his being. Hatred for the Jotnar remained as ever in Asgard.
Loki had allowed it. For what truer confirmation of their hatred of him? What truer confirmation of Loki, no one's son? Loki of no realm.
Loki shakes his head.
"They mock me in stead." He tells Thor. "What need to mock myself?"
Thor glares at him, face tight with apprehension.
"... They would not dare it." He says after a moment, and Loki cannot help it now. He laughs. True amusement catching him and bursting the sound forth.
"Indeed, you think not?" He asks his brother, and feels his heart heavy for the confusion and denial deep in Thor's eyes.
How horrible, for such a warrior prince, to know how utterly he has failed in his duty towards his family.
"I'll always protect you Loki." Thor had told him when they were children. "I swear it."
"What matters it?" Loki says. He should not make Thor suffer so. He should not. "You discover the truth. I am not dead. And what then will you have done with me? Now that you know?"
"... I thought you dead." Thor repeats, and the anguish now dissipates the anger. "Why... why did you not tell me? Why did you hide here?"
Loki cannot answer this. Would not answer this, before all those gathered. A better play for their amusement than any put on by them.
"Not here Thor." Loki tells him, and hopes his brother will understand.
Again Thor glances to those gathered round, and perhaps he takes note now of the murmured whispers and agitation working through the crowd. He looks back to Loki, and Loki stares fixedly in return.
"The palace." Thor says flatly, and Loki is given no further warning before his brother grabs hold his wrist and launches them into the air, letting fly.
Loki has always hated this. Hated the motion of flying like this. With such awful speed and violence.
He had given up telling Thor so long centuries past. His brother had never listened.
He feels dizzy and weak as at last they land, and he turns from Thor, vicious anger like bile rising up into his throat, and he presses it down with effort.
It will not do, to begin an argument with Thor. Not here. Not now.
"Loki," Thor calls to him, and he stands stiff, jaw tight as he breathes through his nose. Calm. He needs to stay calm. "tell me why you have hidden here. Why did you not tell me you lived? And where is our father? You have not..."
"He lives." Loki tells him quickly, keeping his back to him. "He is on Midgard."
"Midgard?" Thor questions, voice astonished. "But... why? How?"
"I put him there." Loki answers, voice almost harsh as finally he turns to look at his brother. "He wanders that world now, stripped of his memory."
He knows his mistake before he finishes the words, Thor again coming at him, and Loki does nothing to evade him as his brother grabs hold of him by the arms, lifting him bodily and slamming him back against a wall.
"What did you do to him Loki!?" He bellows, eyes flashing dangerously.
Loki should be more frightened, perhaps. But a wave of indifference washes over him then, so powerful he feels oddly resigned.
"What I just told you Thor. I cast a spell to strip his mind and set him loose among the humans. No harm has come to him. He retains his power, only simply remembers not how to call it to hand."
Thor again slams him, hard against the wall, knocking the air quick from Loki's lungs, powerful hands tightening with vicious anger over his arms, threatening to crush, and it is all Loki can do to keep his face impassive.
"Call him back!" He snaps. "Loki, I swear, if you do not..."
"I cannot call him back." Loki speaks over him. "I have not Heimdall's power. And Heimdall wanders the forests of our realm."
"Why?" Thor questions, patience thin.
"He was banished. By Odin. You recall his act of treason in helping us to escape the realm, do you not? That be Odin's judgment upon him, before you go accusing me of all and sundry."
Loki cannot keep the derision from his voice. Heimdall remained to him, as ever, a hated being, for how he could not forget the Watcher's attempt on his life, those years ago on the Bifrost. The blood lust in Heimdall's eyes, and Loki had known as surely then as ever he had known anything, the god's intent to kill him. Nor could Loki cast from his mind the centuries before of Heimdall's barely concealed contempt, each chance taken by the Watcher to humiliate and disparage. And Loki had wondered for so long, in awful self-disgust, why it was Heimdall, his father's nearest friend, so hated and despised him. Why his all seeing eyes never truly looked at him. Looked through him, rather, his tone always so cold, even cruel, when towards Thor and his friends, there had always been warmth and love. Convinced further in such treatment of his own lack. Convinced there had been something wrong in him. For Heimdall to hate him so, Loki thought. Nights spent wondering what it was. What it was about him that made others hate him so much...
It was only after... when Loki had learned the truth... It was only then he at last understood. For Heimdall had always known what he was. And if others knew not, still, they sensed it. They felt the wrongness about him.
Thor looks at him still with such suspicion, and oh, it is every bit as awful as Loki imagined, that judging, mistrustful gaze.
"Why have you done this?" He asks again, at last loosening his hold and setting Loki to the floor. "Did you stage your own death?"
Loki nearly lashes out then. Nearly hits Thor across the mouth for his ignorant stupidity. He remembers, though, Thor had thought him lost before, and neither then had he died. The Norns, it seemed, would not allow him that peace. And Thor, in his simplicity, had doubtless thought that too a planned course.
Thor was not stupid. Only he was simple, and despite his growth, still saw so much in such terms. There was only ever wrong and right for Thor. Only ever good and bad. Only ever one reason for anything.
"Nay Thor." He spits, keeping his hands clenched to fists at his sides. "I told you true. I took the Kursed's blade for you. You believe it not? Then witness it's proof for thine own eyes!"
He twists his hands, magicking away his tunic, revealing to his brother's wide and horrified eyes the ugly snarl of twisted, scarred flesh which spread like something shattered over his pale skin.
"It is..." Thor starts, and before he can finish, Loki reaches out, grasping his brother's hand and pressing it firm against his chest, letting him feel the raised and ruined tissue of his flesh.
"'Tiss no illusion brother." He snarls, exhausted and angry. "I took the Kursed's blade for you... I took it for our mother."
His eyes sting treacherously, and he lets Thor go, turning from him, dragging his palm against them to stamp it out.
"You will ask next the reasons for my actions against Odin, and I answer you this Thor."
He pauses, memories of Frigga strong in his mind, and for a moment it is difficult to breathe.
"... He would have put me back in that cell." He forces out. "As you would also have done. As you promised to do."
He turns towards Thor, glaring up at him with unflinching determination.
"I refused to go back to that. I would not."
"And the throne?" Thor presses after a moment. "Why have you taken it? Why do you masquerade as our father?"
"Do you really believe Odin's absence would have gone unnoticed Thor?" Loki answers, irritated. "I do not desire this. I never have. I was thought dead, and for me, that proved a convenience. You could not come back here and once again imprison me if you knew naught of my survival. Odin would know, and so I did what I must to ensure my freedom."
Loki can see in his brother's eyes a reluctant understanding, if still plain displeasure, yet still it is a relief, to know Thor will not simply haul off with him to imprisonment.
"Then we are going to Midgard." His brother states flatly. "To find our father."
Loki hesitates, the words coming quick to his tongue to once again deny himself Odin's parentage. Only he checks himself. What use is there, in continuing such? Thor will insist otherwise, and Loki... is too tired now, to fight.
"What will you do with me, when we find him?" He asks his brother.
He could flee now. Step onto the shadow paths, where Thor could not follow.
Only...
There is something in him. Some terrible part which longs for his brother's company. Some terrible part he has never fully be able to rid himself of.
And even if Thor cannot follow him onto the paths... there are others who can. Others who will. And he would be alone, with only his magic for defense.
His fate is sure then, if he takes that path.
"I know not." Thor answers.
Perhaps it is sure too, if he takes the one Thor offers. But he cannot know that. And so it is the one he will take.
"Then give me your hand." He reaches out to Thor, and Thor takes hold of him.
Loki says nothing as he pulls them through the shadows. From out of their realm and into the one of man.
