A.N.: some small movie canon details will be changed to suit my dark authorial purposes. Try to roll with it, this is fan fiction after all!

The events in this chapter are synced with the movie Thor

He sat rigid at his father's bedside watching his mother fret and hover, trying to calm the racing, whirling thoughts that wouldn't stop flying through his mind, beating against his skull. He grit his teeth against the pain, both physical and emotional, staring at the man who'd built up a life for him to sit pretty on and then ripped it away.

And then fallen into a false death to escape the consequences.

His mother tried to reassure him that Thor would be fine, father always had a purpose to his actions, but this was not about Thor, and as had just been made clear to him, Odin's machinations were nothing to hang any confidence on.

He tried to smile in return, not let on that anything else was wrong. He wondered how much she knew.

She was obviously not his mother, not by birth. Did she know he wasn't Asgardian? Had she willingly raised a frost giant as her own or had Odin lied to her as well?

He was afraid to ask, afraid to shatter the illusion that one of his parents cared if she didn't know. To watched her recoil in horror if she wasn't previously aware...

"It's getting late Loki, and you still haven't faced Kagome since the coronation. She's worried and upset. I know her anger is formidable but you cannot avoid her any longer. Plus, you have some rather big news to break to her do you not?"

His heart stopped altogether.

Kagome. His wife. His wife.

He would have to face her. He couldn't hide this from her, she would know.

He nodded numbly and stood, placing a soft kiss on his mother's forehead and exiting slowly, spine straight with what tatters of dignity he could scrape together.

He hoped she'd be asleep, though that was a fool's hope and he knew it. In fact, he was a fool to even hope he might make it to their room alone, as she met him at the entrance of the family wing, apparently having lost all patience to wait in their rooms.

"You!"

She stomped toward him, fury and worry and hurt making her power stir and whip the ends of her hair out. Distantly he thinks she's beautiful this way, but he ducks by her, avoiding her gaze and heading straight for their door, letting his anger take hold as his dominant emotion.

She wanted to fight, he could do that. That was safe enough.

"Loki are you totally fucking insane?! How could you let him do that? How could you think committing genocide was a good idea?!"

Her voice was shrill with her panic and anger. Loki ripped the cape from his back and tossed it to the floor of their bedroom.

"Of course I didn't think think it was good idea!"

"Then why didn't you try to stop him!"

"I told the guards what he was planning. I knew they'd tell father. I had no intention of letting that stupidity get as far as it did!"

"Why did you let him go in the first place? He listens to you, Loki, why didn't you talk him out of it?"

"You know how he romanticizes war and conquest and victory. Even I cannot sweet talk him out of such lunacy when his battle lust has been engaged."

"Yes I do know, Loki. That's why I'm so freaked out! He would really let his desire for victory lead him to straight up treason?! To genocide?!"

Loki turned his back to her, pretending to fiddle with some part of his clothing. He brought his hand back up and examined it, looked at the pale flesh of his fingers that he'd seen turn blue twice just this day. He couldn't possibly put any sort of words to what he was feeling, couldn't begin to convey the depths of the betrayal, the horror, the disgust that filled him up until he couldn't think straight around all of it. He needed some kind of anchoring point. His wife, his Kagome, forever honest and true, might help him find the clarity he couldn't find for himself.

"Why is it the genocide you're so hung up on and not the possibility of war coming to the shores of Asgard? They're only frost giants."

It was a test. A manipulation. A cheap one to be sure, but it was the best he could muster in his current state of distress. He hoped her own anger was intense enough to keep her from questioning him.

"Only fro- Loki! How could you even say that?! Only frost giants?!"

"You've heard the stories! We all have! Odin tells them often enough, reminders of the monsters kept at bay by his might alone!"

"Yeah, stories Loki! Stories! Told by the victor! He won. He gets to say whatever he wants! I don't for one second believe there aren't innocent people in that realm who don't deserve to have your brother tear apart their world and snuff out their lives."

"People..?" He turned then to face her, face carefully blank in shock and confusion.

"Yes Loki. People. Do you know anything about their society? Their family structures? Do they farm? Do they build? Do they go to school or have religious festivals? Do you know? There are potentially men, women and children in that world, Loki, who've never done anything to a single soul. Just because Laufey might not have a personality worth writing home about doesn't mean all of his people deserve to die."

He stared down at his hands in silence, trying to process her words, make sense of them, accept them. But the truth of them would not take root in his heart, in his mind.

"There's something else that's bothering you. Something more than Thor being flung to earth. What is it?"

Damn her perceptive nature.

"It's nothing." He replied shortly, turning back around, cutting her off.

"Do not lie. Not to me."

"I said it's nothing."

"And I said don't lie!"

"Leave it alone, woman."

"Tell me! How can I help if you don't tell me!"

It all became too much. Too much, too much. He felt the last tendrils of control slip and he turned on her, mad and frantic and devastated. Frozen blue bled across his skin, his eyes turned red, and the truth of him spilled out into what was supposed to be their sanctuary.

"Is this it?! Is this what you wanted?! To see the truth of the monster you married?! To know your husband is not a beloved prince of Asgard but a monster king's discarded bastard? Are you happy?!"

Her brows were deeply furrowed and he could practically see the gears shifting in her mind.

"Loki... Loki are you... are you a frost giant?" Her voice was a soft, cautious whisper, and he spread his arms in a sarcastic flourish and bent forward slightly in a mocking bow.

"Ta-da."

"Oh loki..."

"Save your pity, woman!"

Quick as a blink her arms were around him. There was no recoil, no hesitation, no absence of her affection.

"I don't pity you. I can feel how much this hurts you. That hurts me."

"How can you act as if nothing has changed?"

"Because nothing has changed. I don't care what you are, Loki. And you are not a monster."

She was not lying, of that he was absolutely certain. Her love for him had not been tainted or diminished or broken.

He sat on the edge of their bed and pulled her into his lap, where she snuggled against him and sighed. He could see them in the mirror across the room. He still wore that damnable blue mask, but his little wife had embraced him all the same.

Still, he shifted back, finding some relief in his normal appearance for the time being.

He ran his fingers through her silken hair, reluctant to shatter this illusion of peace between them, but that was not all the news he had to impart.

"Father has fallen into the Odinsleep."

"He what? Now?!"

"Yes. And with Thor banished and mother unable to leave his side, that leaves me to act as king in his stead. And you... as my queen."

Her eyes widened in horror then, and he found it distantly amusing that this is what had been too much for her to handle. She truly didn't care for crowns and thrones, and while before that may have been a comfort, now he wondered sadly what he'd have to do to prove himself worthy of her.

She leaned back into him, taking some measure of comfort from the strength of his arms around her, trying to find a solid point while everything else fell into chaos.

Why... how had things gone so wrong?

.