"I was a king! The rightful king of Asgard, betrayed!"
—Loki
Home, T = 7
Being Loki of Asgard, renegade geneticist and ink-eyed weakling, made being Odin's second son look positively inviting by comparison. At that thought, the mirror frame altered again. A number of facets glowed warmly, but each flickered, slightly different from the others, as if a myriad of flames were each caught in its own draft. The facets were too near infinite for Loki to say that any looked familiar, but he recognized the conversation between Odin, Thor Odinson, and Loki Odinson in the weapons vault easily enough.
Asgard 2, T = 7
"Do the Frost Giants still live?" Loki's blond self innocently asked. How could he know that an adult version of himself had attempted to exterminate them all?
As before, Thor inserted himself in the conversation before Odin could respond
"When I'm king, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all." His eyes shone with hero worship. "Just as you did, father."
Monsters, monsters, monsters ricocheted through Loki's mind. How many times had he been told, as a child, as an adult, that the Frost Giants were monsters? Vicious, thoughtless beasts, desiring only destruction? His own words to Odin mocked him: I am the monster parents tell their children about at night.
"A wise king never seeks out war," Odin chided mildly, "but he must always be ready for it."
As Odin moved to leave the weapons vault, Loki scoffed at the scene before him. "Pay no heed, young Loki," he whispered poisonously. "Such considerations are not for such as you. Are you fool enough to think you could ever hold value in Odin's heart?" As his words resounded in the arching rooms of the vault, Loki watched the happiness fade from his child-self's face. "You will never be king," he continued spitefully. "You will never be more than Thor's pale echo, no more useful than a shadow."
Thor looked at Loki with fondness before running after his father to take his hand. "I'm ready, father!"
Loki-child, eyes full of tears, did not join him. "I will never be king," he whispered to the Casket of Ancient Winters. In adult Loki's hands, the mirror's central facet's gold dimmed, and the host of others lit with it began to flicker in unison.
Home, T = 7
"But I will," Loki vowed, releasing his hold on that version of reality. "I was king, and should be king of more than one realm." king, his thoughts agreed, king, king, rightful king; rightful king, betrayed
The mirror almost writhed between his hands, now mostly-flat, now a faceted orb, now pushing into dimensions that would melt a mortal's mind, now returning to a thick-framed mirror with a central face. If Loki had been able to track any one universe previously, this upheaval meant that ability was now gone. Nothing was where it had been, he'd lay his life, though a great profusion of gold-lit universes glowed under his hands. Some fundamental shift had taken place as a result of his request. He suspected the reality he was about to see diverged from the others in a drastic manner.
Earth 1218, T = 7
"God and his angels guard your sacred throne and make you long become it!" Though the speaker was out of Loki's sight, he had no doubt that it was this reality's Loki he addressed. The sentiment was correct, for one thing. And for another, Loki himself was seated on a throne, a gold crown atop his curly brown hair.
"Sure, we thank you," Loki's king-self responded. "My learned lord, we pray you to proceed and justly and religiously unfold why the law Salique that they have in France or should, or should not, bar us in our claim." Loki straightened slightly in surprise. For what reason was this king consulting the law? And abjuring his advisers to give him accurate readings thereof? Loki found the law useful only because its edicts' lacework showed him how best to dance through the loops and whorls left open. At times he enjoyed simply flouting the law, but he found more satisfaction in outwitting an opponent and particularly savored those times he had won his victory by setting the letter of the law against its spirit.
The mirror's view widened, and Loki saw an older man wittering on about genealogy and inheritance. Truly, the language was somewhat opaque, but his king-self seemed to be attending quite closely as he nodded on occasion. Loki scrutinized his other self; his eyes were the same bluish green, but his skin had a more golden hue, as if he spent time out-of-doors, and that brown hair shaved into a goatee on his chin—
"May I with right and conscience make this claim?" the king clarified at long last.
Truly, Loki thought, the differences were more than superficial. His king-self talked of war and gaining a throne, but he desired all possible assurance that he was right within the law to do so. His other advisers clustered about him, discussing contingencies and other requirements and Loki found his attention waning.
Their speech came through the AllSpeak oddly, with an unusual formality and rhythm that he had not found before. At a whim, he released his grasp on the AllSpeak spell. How interesting. English, the Earthers called it, but a flavor of English which Loki's tongue had never tasted. He repeated a bit of it to feel it in his mouth. "Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on, to venge me as I may and to put forth my rightful hand in a well-hallow'd cause."
Loki stopped, nonplussed. These were words and phrases he might easily choose on any day in Asgard's court, or even when addressing lowly mortals. Did his speech strike their ears thus? As he turned this thought in his mind, the king concluded his audience with his advisers. In the pause that followed came a shout in a voice he had not yet heard.
"And, SCENE!"
There was a high-pitched, metallic jangle, a shout of "That's a wrap!" and each person in his vision changed somewhat; one slumped; one shook his shoulders, his arms, then his hands; one stepped to the edge of the audience chamber and retrieved a white paper cup from a table; Loki's eyes flew to his king-self in time to see a man in jeans and a logo-ed t-shirt lift the crown from his head and walk it over to another table.
His king-self rose, smoothing the deep red doublet down over his waist, and shook out his legs. "That was lovely, Paul," he called after the crown thief, rubbing his forehead lightly. "No blister at all this time."
"Glad to hear it, Mr. Hiddleston," the crown-thief replied casually. "Just smoothed it down a bit in the front there. Thanks for letting us know."
"Tom!" a voice called from the group of king's advisers, and Loki's double turned to face them. Loki stared as his alter ego, this Tom, moved into conversation with the men who had moments ago been advising him most diffidently. Did that one just clap him on his shoulder? And his not-king-self answered with a wide grin, and a laugh, and a comment in a voice so low, so gentle that Loki could not hear it before the others erupted in appreciative laughter.
"Right then," called the same voice again, "all for today, gentlemen. And let's get those robes back to costuming tonight, shall we? Yes, I'm looking at you, Laurenson!" There was general laughter after this pronouncement as well.
The company quickly divested themselves of their long robes, changing to clothing that Loki recognized from his brief time in modern-day Midgard. They had been playing a scene. And his other self, though he pretended to be king, treated the others with deference. They, in turn, treated him with affection. Loki watched for a time longer, and many approached this Tom, this Mr. Hiddleston with fondness and good humor. It was clear that he was a favorite among this band of professional lie-smiths.
Loki watched as these men, these actors, concluded their trade for the day. With a loud grating sound, one of the walls rolled to the side, opening the room to the outdoors. His double braced himself, as for battle, as they exited the play-area, and a moment later Loki realized why. Shouts of "Tom! Tom!" rang out from the crowd waiting outside. His not-king self smiled in a manner that Loki would have called "self-effacing" had it not been so foreign on his familiar face.
"Loki!" someone screamed. Even as this Tom laughed, Loki scoured the mirror for the new voice. Tom reached an arm across another fanatic to claim a sheet of paper... with Loki's image on it? What madness was this? Tom scrawled a brief message on the gold shoulder of Loki's formal armor, and handed the sheet back to the young woman.
"Madness, indeed," Loki murmured, easing himself deeper in his chair. With a small magic he exchanged his armor for a soft tunic and pants and drew one foot up beneath his thigh. What strange connection was this? He had first thought the mirror paired them because of this man's ambition to rule; then because of their shared features. Was the true reason both simpler and more bizarre? This man impersonated him? And was paid for, lauded for such?
It took some focus to direct the mirror some distance further in the past, but he was able to see this mortal play a role of Loki, yes, and interact with a Thor-mortal, too. It seemed that in this reality Loki was only an idea, a figment of another mortal's fertile imagination.
Loki watched the cloying adulation of his double's many "fans", and the gentle way the human welcomed them. It was appalling. It was disgusting. Clearly so, as his belly clenched each time another mortal called, "I love you, Tom!" and his not-self ducked his head and waved. How much would it take for this mortal to rule this realm with such adulation to start with?
But then, he had no desire to live a mortal life. Subject to infection, disease, age? How would this Tom have fared when his brother threw him from the Bifrost into an abyss? falling, falling, falling so long, so long, days, years, eons, minutes, eternities, falling so long... Vulnerable to trivia such as weather, dependent on the good will of others for a livelihood? Needing so much, and unable to procure it but at great effort? "No," he told himself firmly. "I am myself, not this poor mortal flesh." He regarded that lowly mortal's existence in the mirror yet a while longer, however, the better to later remind himself of its shortcomings.
Home, T = 11
Even life as a member of one of the higher realms had requirements, however. Loki set the mirror aside for a moment to address those requirements. He unfolded himself from his chair, stretching his long legs as he did so. His jailers had fed him in Asgard's dungeon, but bathing had been deemed an unnecesary luxury. He ran his fingers through his lank hair, wrinkling his face in disgust as the oils coated his fingers.
His time of freedom had allowed his sorcerous powers to recharge, and he made full use of them to return himself to his normal, hygienic state. He examined his fingers and toes as he trimmed his nails. How long had it been since each of those appendages had been whole and unbroken? The Other had taken a perverse glee in the sound they made as his minions broke them and in letting them heal up only to break them again. He pressed a thumb into the skin of his thigh, watching as the slight pigment blanched away and returned, marveling in the lack of pain, pain, sweet as pain, make you long for pain. He shook his head, and if the tremor traveled through most of his frame, then he had merely shaken his head too vigorously. This was not The Other's influence, not his voice. It was merely an echo looping endlessly through Loki's own mind.
The skin of his body was pale again, unmarred with a rainbow of bruises in varying states of healing. The Other had enjoyed that, too: decorating Loki's skin in the varied colors of injury, colors the Chitauri's greyish skin could not display. The trivial scrapes, cuts, abrasions and contusions that Earth's Meaningless Heroes had bestowed upon him had healed even before Loki had been returned to Asgard.
As he rose from his bath, Loki considered his continued use of the form the All-Father had given him. His birth form, his Jotun form, would not have displayed those injuries nearly as well. What would The Other have done to display his handiwork on Loki then? The water evaporated from his Aesir-pale skin and Loki shivered.