The first thing Loki noticed was the soft, feather-light feeling of snowflakes falling on his tiny nose. Blearily, he opened his eyes to find his whole bedroom had been frozen over black ice covering the walls, and his blankets stiff with frost.

In wonder, he sat up, pushing the crisp white sheets off his small frame, as he blinked round at his surroundings with wide eyes. It all looked so unfamiliar, in the winterscape, and the odd positioning his adult self had moved the furniture into only made it seem completely alien to the young boy's eyes.

There was no sound, save his breath, which made little puffs of steam, coming out of his mouth, and the ominous creaking of the ice.

Maybe if he put a log on the fire, it would warm things up. While he couldn't feel the chill, himself, he'd never been able to, he knew from experience that he could catch cold in this weather. One tiny foot lowered itself out of bed, onto the frozen rug beneath his bed. It wouldn't be too hard to stoke the fire, he thought to himself. He'd seen his father do it plenty of times.

The ice in the carpet felt sharp on his toes, as he padded across the floor, and he glanced down, thinking perhaps he'd cut himself.

There was no blood showing on his toes, but instead, something far more disturbing.

His feet were blue.

Blue, with raised, foreign ridges running across the tops of them, up his legs like a hideous ivy, and disappearing under the hem of his nightshirt. His hands, too, were blue, with horrid black nails.

"You're one of us." A deep, frightening voice rumbled from behind Loki, and he whirled around to see terrifying red eyes peeking out from his closet. "You're a monster."

"I'm not!" He protested, his voice rough, and foreign, yet still squeaky in his ears. "I'm a good one!"

"A good frost giant?" The monster laughed, sharp teeth flashing in the dimmed light. "There's no such thing."

"There is too!" Loki insisted, unsure, himself. Nervously, he began creeping back towards the safety of his bed. "Thor said! You mind your own business!" He'd heard one of the servants say that, once, and it seemed a grown-up and mature way to tell someone to butt out.

It seemed to upset the Jotun, and a terrible growling sound came from behind the half-shut door.

"Leave me alone!" Loki whimpered, scrambling up into his enormous bed, which suddenly seemed twenty feet tall. "I don't like you!"

"You are me." The voice was just behind him, now, and he was too afraid to turn around.

"I'm not! I'm not!" He wailed, pulling at blankets. "Thor! Help me!"

"I'm here."

Loki flailed in terror, his hands blindly landing on Thor's chest, and he fisted them in his older brother's shirt.

"It's alright, brother." The Thunderer soothed, smoothing Loki's mussed hair with one hand, and holding his shaking shoulders with the other. "You were having a bad dream."

"There's a frost giant in my closet." The small child informed, his voice small, as he buried his face in Thor's shoulder. "Can you go chase him away, please?"

"It was a nightmare, Loki." Thor repeated, sounding far too sure of himself. "There's no Jotnar here. Well, except you."

"I'm not!" Loki insisted, peering up into Thor's face insistently, his eyes brimming with tears.

"Okay. You're not." Thor began using the tone he always did when humoring him.

"Not a bad one." Loki amended, with a tiny sigh. "They're real. The good ones? Right?"

"Of course." Thor beamed down at him, and once again, Loki was struck by how big he was. He had said he was twenty, or something. Maybe ten? It didn't matter, he supposed. It was a good thing he was so big; even the Jotnar would be scared of him.

"You sure there's no Frost Giants in my closet?" He meekly spoke up, as Thor gently tucked him back under his covers.

"Positive." To prove his point, the Thunderer got up, and threw open the closet door. "And even if there were… Mother found something for you."

"A surprise?" The younger prince lit up in excitement. "Is it candy?"

Thor only smiled, and pulled a familiar stuffed dragon from his pocket.

"Ragnar!" Loki squealed, and dove for his favorite toy.

"He was pretty hard to find." Thor chuckled. "Older You had put him away a long time ago."

"Away?" Loki looked up, horrified, as he hugged the beloved, battered dragon to his chest. "No one to play with?"

Thor nodded. "I don't think Older You had much time to play with him."

"I must've been boring." He wrinkled his nose, and held the dragon up in front of his beaming face. "I'll play with you, Ragnar. You'll never be bored again!"

"And he can protect you from the bad Jotnar, right?" Thor grinned.

"Yeah!" Loki's tiny eyelids were heavy, and though he fought it, he was still tired. It was the dead of night, after all. "He'll roar so loud… they'll be too scared to hurt me."

"Right." Thor's fond smile was the last thing Loki saw, before he drifted off to sleep, again. The warm presence of his brother sitting on the end of the bed, and the toy in his arms warded the nightmares off until morning.

The one servant who'd been sent to fetch them for dinner told her friends, and it didn't take long for the whole staff to realize who Loki was, and despite Odin's personal instructions, there was quite a bit of animosity directed towards the little boy.

Whispered insults leaked through the hallways, dirty looks, gossip, and aloofness were unending, and the poor child barely understood why.

The maids were reluctant to work while he was in the room, convinced he was dangerous, and only pretending to be innocent and helpless, so that he could stab them in the back. Loki didn't even understand why everyone hated him, and there were very few children his age around for him to play with. After a while, he resorted to tagging along after Thor like a lost puppy, Ragnar in one hand, and the other occupied with being sucked.

Thor didn't have the heart to tell him not to suck his fingers, as he was already obviously stressed, anyway. Better to let him keep his bad habit a little longer than to upset him even more.

"Play with me?" His tiny voice would plead, in the heights of his boredom, while Thor was busy with his princely duties.

"I can't, brother." Thor would always have to reply. "I'm working on something."

So Loki would sit by his brother's chair, and idly play with his dragon, eyeing the passing staff as warily as they eyed him.

All morning, Thor would occasionally glance down to check and make sure his little brother was still there, and didn't need anything. Well, anything besides a playmate. He would always smile cheerfully up, and Thor was struck with a pang of regret through the heart as he realized Loki had already learned how to fake a smile by six years old.

Imagine his horror when he glanced down, at lunchtime, only to find Loki had vanished.

"Loki?" He called out, immediately, in hopes that the small Trickster was only playing a joke on him. "Come out, now, it's lunch time!"

There was no answer.

"Loki, this isn't funny." Thor scrambled to his feet, scanning the four walls of his study for the familiar small form. That's when he heard the shrill, terrified screams, from the hallway.

Oh, please, dear norns, let him be faking that, the Thunderer pleaded, and burst through the door so quickly, he nearly broke it down.

There was Loki, curled on the ground in a fetal position, screaming and crying as three Einherjar kicked at him, their steel-toed boots making dreadful thunks against his ribcage.

Thor roared in rage, and ran forward, shoving one of them onto the floor with all his strength. "How dare you?!" He demanded, as the other two began backing away, their arms held up before them in defensive poses.

"Y-Your Highness…" The one on the right stammered, his eyes wide. "We were just…"

"Assaulting your prince!" Thor finished, too indignant to even care about whatever pathetic excuse they would concoct. "And a helpless child, at that!" Trembling with rage, he scooped Loki's shaking body off the floor, holding him close to his chest as he sobbed in pain.

"He's not helpless, my lord!" They objected. "He's a shapeshifting sorcerer, cowering in the form of a toddler. He'll kill us all!"

Thor only levelled them with a glare, and bit his lip to keep from exploding in rage. It would only frighten Loki further. "You three are relieved from duty." He finally stated, his voice cold and hard.

Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel, and began making his way to his mother's apartments.

"Wait, Thor!" Loki's tiny, sniffling voice spoke up, and his little hand pointed in the direction of his dragon, abandoned in a heap in the corner of the hallway. "I want Ragnar, pl-please."

Quickly, Thor bent down, and handed his little brother the toy. All the while, his head reeled as he struggled to process what had just happened. He'd known they bore animosity towards Loki, but he never would have dreamed they would actually have laid a hand on him.

How dare they?

What had made them think they could take their twisted form of justice into their own hands, anyway? Even if the sniffling child in Thor's arms was evil, manipulative, and scheming, as they boldly assumed, he was still Loki. Still the prince of Asgard. And unless Odin himself disowned him, it was unthinkable to attack him in this way.

…Right?

Unless…

Unless this wasn't the first time.

Unless they had done it, before, when Loki had been older.

Unless they had always disrespected the younger son of Odin so, and saw no reason to stop, now.

Dimly, he recalled Loki mentioning, in passing, how Sif had slapped him, and kneed him the groin for cutting her hair off. He'd thought it funny, at the time, and he'd been pretty sure Loki had been laughing, too, but when he came to think about it… Why in the Nine realms had Sif gotten away with striking the prince?

Was Loki… heaven forbid, was Loki always beaten about in this manner?

If Thor had cut off Sif's hair, would Sif have smacked him?

No. No, she wouldn't have. Any of the warriors were the same way. What justified the violence towards his baby brother, but no one else?

Thor's stomach rolled as he thought how often Loki would have had to put up with this, as he pushed open the door to his mother's private chambers.

"Hello, my boys." She stood up, immediately, and, upon catching sight of Loki's tear-stained face, and the bruise under his right eye, already swelling horribly, leapt up, and rushed to Thor's side. "What happened, little mouse?" She fussed, looking to Thor for answers.

Thor silently placed Loki on the couch. "Why don't you tell us, Brother?"

Loki hugged Ragnar closer to his chest. "You gonna be mad at me if I say?"

"Of course not, Love." His mother assured, brushing his dark hair from his eyes, as she began examining the bruise. It was cut a little, and oozing blood.

"Well…" Loki glanced down, his lower lip quivering. "I wanted to go see you… and Th-Thor was busy…" Tears welled up in the little green eyes, and he wiped his nose with his sleeve. Frigga procured a handkerchief, and wiped the snot from his upper lip. "And I didn't wanna bother him… so I went to go find you, and… and those men stopped me. They… They told me I'm bad… and then one of them hit me, and-and I fell, and maybe I screamed a little, and they kicked me a lot, and my-my sides hurt…"

"What men?" Frigga turned to Thor in horror, and began peeling off Loki's shirt to take care of his battered ribs.

"Three Einherjar." Thor returned. "I discharged them."

"Good."

Loki piped up, again, smiling hopefully. "Maybe you should send for Lady Eir?" Thor smiled, as well, as he recalled how the child had always loved the head healer, and she'd been one of his very few actual friends, when he'd been older.

Now, though… The queen and her son shared a glance. They couldn't be sure who was still on Loki's side. While medical attention was probably a good idea, the healers were probably the ones who could do Loki the most damage, if given the opportunity. Even though Eir and Loki had always gotten along, they weren't quite sure whether she would still be an ally, or whether she thought Loki needed to be punished for what he'd done.

"I don't think so, dearheart." Frigga quietly stated, feeling along the tiny ribcage for any sign of fracture. While he whimpered and pulled away when her fingers drew close to a bruise, there were few tears, and the bones didn't seem to be shifting, so she decided there was little more than bruising. They were ugly, dark splotches that covered much of his torso, though, and Thor's head whirled with all the possibilities of how it could have gone much worse.

All three of the Einherjar had been carrying swords, and the fact that they didn't use them had been nothing short of a miracle.

"Mother?" Loki looked up, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "What's a runt?"

Frigga sighed, and rubbed at her temples as she always did when thinking very hard. "It means someone born smaller than is normal. Why do you want to know?"

"The men said I was one." Loki admitted, glancing down at the jar of bruise cream in Frigga's hands. "Am I?"

"I suppose." Frigga nodded. "But that's just another thing that makes you special, little mouse. You wouldn't want to be like everyone else, would you?"

Loki didn't respond, but his answer was obvious. He did want to be like everyone else, if only to fit in. And, honestly, if he looked like most of the other Asgardians, or even like most of the Jotnar, he'd be far safer.

When lions hunt antelope, they always go for the odd one out.

Loathe as Thor was to admit it, this particular herd wasn't doing a very good job of protecting their odd one. Loki would need somewhere he could be safe, to grow up, and quickly. It had only taken thirty-six hours for him to get attacked. Who knew what would happen if he stayed around?

TheOnlyHuman.