Whoa, it's been a while since I posted something! (Other than a chapter of "Loki's Pranks", of course...)
This one-shot was originally just a very long rant about Loki's side of things, that I then filled in to make readable, lol. This is post-Avengers pre-Thor2 AU of Thor visiting Loki in his dungeon cell in Asgard, where Loki snaps and points out what a fucking hypocrite Thor is.
Hopefully this one is more self-explanatory that the one-shots previous ;3
Footsteps rang like thunder through the cavernous dungeons, gradually getting louder.
In his cell, Loki paused his continuous pacing and raised his head from where he'd been examining the soft leather of his boots, turning his pallid face towards the stairwell, contemptuous lips quirking beneath his hollowed green gaze.
"So," Loki drawled, "The Thunderer arrives," as large brown boots began visible, quickly followed by the hulking blond form of Thor.
With the hood of his cloak pulled up over his head, the shadows obscured Thor's face and made him an even more imposing figure than usual. "You know why I'm here," Thor stated, coming to stand in front of Loki's cell.
"Yes," Loki purred, as he came up to the magic barrier to stand before the Odinson, actually able to look down on the mountainous figure because of the raised floor of the cell. Loki smiled. "But do you know why I'm here?"
Thor snorted, pulling his hood back so that the light from the magical barrier lit his stern, stony expression, light pixelating gold around the edges of his face. "Of course," he said, voice deep. "You're here until you repent for all the lives you've destroyed. You're here until you have a change of heart."
Loki's calm facade shattered like glass into a thousand pieces.
"Repent for all those humans' lives I destroyed?" Loki hissed, half sneering, half laughing. "All I did was follow Odin's example!"
Thor's expression grew stormy, but as he opened his mouth to speak Loki cut him off.
"Oh, now I see," Loki murmured, eyes steely as he stepped back and lifted his chin, smirking. "This is going to be one of your 'Know Your Place' lectures, isn't it? To know my place below you, below the humans! Because I'm a Frost Giant, that makes them all better than me, doesn't it? That it's a sin to kill a hundred of the humans when there's 7 billion of them on that disgusting planet, when destroying Jotunheim killing millions and taking the lifeblood of the world, when destroying the entire race of Dark Elves is okay?!" Loki was hissing and spitting, upper lip curling and teeth baring.
"I don't see anyone complaining about my trying to destroy Jotunheim—I must have killed thousands of them, and that was okay because they're Frost Giants, while as I kill a few humans and you all get upset! What are they, your little pets?! I see—they mean more to you than I do, with their fleeting existences, petty intelligences and revolting habits! You were on their world for a few days and you love them more than you ever loved me in thousands of years!"
"You think yourself above them," Thor stated, finally managing to get a few words in as Loki paused to draw a ragged breath.
"And you think me below them!" Loki countered, snapping back like whiplash. "Isn't that right?! I killed less humans than you usually kill elves or trolls or dwarfs or whatever creature inhabits whatever realm you decide to go plunder! You always asked why I couldn't be more like you, and now that I follow your example you condemn me for it! You try to kill all the Frost Giants and everything is just dandy—I try to kill all the Frost Giants and suddenly I'm a war criminal.
"You say I have to think about all the lives I've destroyed. Well, have you?! Have you ever considered the lives you've destroyed? The lives Odin has destroyed in the name of Asgard and her greedy conquests?! I doubt it. Have you ever repented a single life you've taken?
"Those Giants, those Elves, those Dwarves, are they all just monsters to you?! Have you ever considered that they have families too? That they have mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters?"
At Thor's dumbfounded expression, Loki laughed harshly, tilting his head knowingly as he took another step back and spread his hands.
"But apparently that only ever matters with Aesir and humans: those pathetic little creatures that are crafted in your spitting images and apparently have more worth than the lives of more intelligent, advanced races; those races that live hundreds of times the lifespan length of any human."
Loki's lips smiled while his eyes glistened like crystals. "You say that I need to have a change of heart. That apparently I will stay locked up here until I become some sentimental sap that will cry over a few deaths of a creature that won't live more than a century anyway."
Stalking closer, Loki splayed his hand on the magical barrier as he leaned forward to sneer at the Thunderer, not seeming to notice as the skin of his hand began to burn black, and smoke rose from it with the heavy scent of burning flesh.
"That suddenly—when you've ever derided me for not being a stoic warrior—suddenly I am condemned for not crying and sniveling and begging for forgiveness; that suddenly humans have to matter to me because suddenly they matter to you? You've never cared about them before!" Loki cried, voice cracking almost imperceptibly.
"You only ever liked that they worshiped you as a god! And now you are telling me that everything Odin and Asgard has ever taught us about war and ruling a kingdom is wrong? That the merciless warriors we were raised to be suddenly are supposed to have morals? And now I must changed and bend to your every whim. What, are you suddenly going to take a liking to trolls next?" Loki sneered, voice bitter and metallic with mocking. "Should I cry over a few of their deaths too?
"You're asking me to change when you never change yourself, and you're trying to turn me into something you think I should be as if I'm so different from yourself. I may be a Frost Giant, but I was raised by your side. I was raised your father's son. What I am is no fault of my nature—what I am is what you made me; what Odin made me; what Asgard made me.
"And now you're trying to place all the blame on me, when these events have been building up for thousands of years—and now you're just looking for a scapegoat to keep your perfect golden image untainted."
Loki removed his hand from the barrier, the flesh blacked and charred and dripping dark sanguine, white visible from the bones of his fingers. Turning abruptly, Loki stalked to the back of the cell and placed his hand against the wall, head tilting down as his arm drooped down to his side and left a dark bloody smear.
"You never acknowledge when something is your fault," Loki continued, keeping his back to Thor, though pitching his voice loud enough to be heard. "You always place the blame on others, because you can't ever admit you made a mistake because you can't be doubted; Odin can't ever admit he's made a mistake because he's king and he can't have his rule doubted, he has to remain the absolute ruler, and so he ever slips the blame onto others and condemns them, kills them for it and destroying the truth with them."
Thor started to open his mouth, and Loki turned back to face him, grinning knowingly.
"Go on—accuse me of lies," Loki prodded, still smiling. "Call me God of Lies, Master Deceiver. Say I never speak a true word. Go on, you know you want to. You want to live in denial and believe you can be nothing but right, and that it's all my fault that I turned out so awfully, horribly wrong."
Loki laughed.
"You are a fucking hypocrite in all the worst ways, dear Brother. You see a monster when you look at me? Turn around and look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself what you see there. What are you? Tell me where our differences lie, and you can try to flense them from me like strips of flesh and carve me away until I fit the image you like; and then take a look at the beast you made of me and ask yourself what kind of monster could have created me."
Loki let his charred hand come up to brush some strands of black hair out of his eyes, then traced red over his cheekbone and along his jawline to his lips, where his tongue darted out and he licked blood from his fingers, all the while keeping those intense green eyes on the Thunderer's revolted expression.
"You want me to bleed but I'm already bleeding," Loki murmured, mockingly tender. "Just not from the wounds you want to see; and you're asking me to cut my heart open for a few mayflies when it's already riddled with rusted iron scars, a silent beast behind my ribcage bars that you want to hear scream.
"You want me to shed a few tears?" Loki pouted his lips with childish sadness and rubbed at the corner of an eye with a fist. "Will that suddenly make everything right for you? For me to say I'm sorry, I was wrong, you were right, please forgive me? Do you honestly believe that?"
By now Thor had begun yelling at Loki, who just shook his head and smiled wryly, continuing to speak over the Thunderer's bluster, his low voice somehow still clearly audible.
"You're asking for something you know you'll never receive—and even if you did, you'd never believe. Why? To make it clear that all I will ever do is fail in your eyes? To justify why you're locking me away, to hide the evidence of what you've created, and telling me that I can only redeem myself by becoming something I could never be, so that I will never be redeemed and will stay to rot here forever, all the while making it seem like it's my fault—my choice to stay here. Is that it? Is that why you stand there in front of my cage and glare at me and open your mouth in anger and yell at me whenever I speak something you don't want to hear?
"And why don't you want to hear it? If it's a lie, it shouldn't bother you because you should know that it's not true. But what bothers you is the truth, isn't it? You're afraid to hear what deep down you know, and you're in denial and denial turns to anger and oh look," Loki feigned exaggerated surprise, "here you are yelling at me again, telling me to shut up and stop spilling my venomous lies.
"Lies, lies, all I speak are lies, aren't they? And what are you telling me? Truths? Do you even know where the line is between truths and lies, good and bad, black and white, wrong and right?"
Dipping his shoe in the puddle of dark blood on the floor, Loki dragged his foot in a red line across his cell as he continued speaking, voice lowering to a soft hiss.
"It's a fine line, my dear Brother, but I don't walk it," Loki smiled, "I dance it. Handsprings and flips on the diaphanous balance beam, while you tread wherever you like and mark in dark black ink where you want that line to be."
Looking up from his grotesque artwork on the floor, Loki regarded the Thunderer with his gaze piercing like shrapnel.
"So tell me something, dear Brother—why are you here? What are you trying to say with your presence? To taunt me, to show me that I could never be as good as you? Is that what you're trying to do? Grind me down and step on me, tell me to know my place below you, below the humans, a Frost Giant, a war criminal, evil, sadistic, unforgivable, irredeemable, hopeless? That I should be kneeling and groveling at your feet, standing behind you and following your ever word like a good little brother should?
"You want to have your dear little brother back? Your dear little brother that you never cared about? Your dear little brother that you dragged with you only to constantly leave behind? Your dear little brother that you always yelled at and shouted at for messing everything up? You want that person back?"
Thor had stopped yelling, and now just stood there silently, entire body trembling, hands balled into fists at his side, jaw clenched and brows furrowed low over his narrowed eyes that were starting to catch the light and glisten.
"Oh, don't look like that now," Loki purred with a poisonous smirk. "Does it hurt? Does what I'm saying hurt you? And why does it hurt you, dear Brother? Because you don't want it to be true?"
Turning on his heel, the Thunderer began to walk away from the prisoner in the cell and towards the stairwell.
"So what now, oh Mighty Thor, will you turn and run away from me?" Loki called after him. "You can't even look me straight in the face."
Thor stopped, pausing with his back to the cell, entire frame wound taught.
"I can see you want to fight me," Loki plowed on, "to hit me, to bang my head against the wall until I give in to your screaming, till you get your way. You spoiled little child, you can't stand not to get your way, can you? Fighting because you don't know what else to do."
Abruptly Thor turned and stalked back in front of the cell, nostrils flaring with fury as he stood there like a towering specter of darkness.
Loki, skin blinding in the bright lights, was still smiling.
"Maybe you'll be able to kill me," Loki acknowledged, "end this little problem right here. This little green-eyed problem that will do nothing but mess with you until the end of time."
Growling deep in his throat Thor turned himself away again, as Loki's silvery voice slithered into his head through his ears.
"But oh now, you're trying to be a man and just walk away before you do anything stupid, aren't you? Trying to adopt some of those human morals, trying to prove that you can be a good king? Is your father even a good king? What makes a good king, my dear Brother?
"Is it benevolence? Or is it the ability to keep order? Odin has harsh, often cruel methods, but he's accepted as a good king because he keeps order in the Nine Realms, keeps things from falling into chaos. He pummels people into submission so that they won't fight amongst themselves. Odin rules through some respect, but mostly he rules through fear.
"All you Aesir in Asgard think he's a good king because his laws favor you. But have you ever traveled the Nine Realms, Thor, and seen how the other races lived? How they think and how they feel? Odin and Asgard are hated throughout the Nine, Thor. You are not loved. You are hated and feared. Only that fear keeps the other realms from rising against Asgard; only that fear and the fact that Odin makes sure to keep them all too weak to rise against him."
Shaking his head, Loki looked down, letting dark hair fall into his face and stick to the drying blood there.
"You know, your mother told me that a good king admits his faults." A dry chuckle, like a desert that hasn't seen rain in millennium. "Have you ever heard Odin admit that he was at fault? Ever?"
Loki raised his gaze, but Thor still would not turn to look at him.
"Look around you, Odinson. Look at what you are all accusing me of. Does it make any sense to you? Does it seem fair? Does it seem right?
"Of course it does.
"Because the rules have always been different when it came to me. You knock somebody against the wall, they obviously deserved it. I knock somebody against the wall, and I obviously acted without reason. You try to kill an entire race and you get banished to a harmless little realm. I kill a hundred people and I get locked up in the dungeon with a death penalty hanging above my head. You step out of line, you get a second chance. I step out of line, I get disowned.
"And you know what? Odin is not my father. You are not my brother. Frigga is not my mother. None of you can tell me what or what not to do."
Now Thor turned to the criminal, face blazing with anger and accusations on his tongue.
"But of course," Loki murmurs, locking his shadowed green eyes with the Thunderer's stormy blue ones, expression knowing, "Every word that I say you will sneer at and label a lie, and in the end you will believe what you want to believe, no matter what. So I just won't say anything."
Loki raised his hands as if trying to placate an angry animal and slowly sat down on his bed, leaning against the wall of the cell and taking his knees up to his chest. His lips twitched.
"Try calling me a liar when I won't speak."
And with that Loki closed his mouth and bit his tongue.
Thor left.
Odin came. Odin left.
Frigga came. Frigga left.
Thor came back. Thor left.
People talked.
But the God of Lies was true to his word—he never spoke again. Never made another sound.
And Loki got tired of talking, because he knew nobody would actually listen.
I feel like I should point out though that in no way am I saying that what Loki did, trying to destroy the Jotunheim and trying to take over Midgard, was okay—because it wasn't, and I'm not trying to justify his actions. I am merely trying to look at things from Loki's POV, and looking at his actions with respect to the culture he was raised in.
But I do honestly believe that Loki is no worse than Thor or Odin, for that matter. Thor is just as guilty as Loki, only Thor was given a second chance and Loki wasn't.
Anyways, please let me know what you think! (And if anything is confusing and needs explaining X3) Do you agree with Loki's arguments?