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Once upon a time…
That’s not how every story begins, but it’s not a bad place to start. Beginnings are difficult. Loki doesn’t enjoy them—he prefers action to exposition, starting in medias res rather than explaining the workings of the world. Beginnings are not interesting, not to Loki. He would prefer to do away with them all together, truth be told.
In the beginning…
Loki does not think about his beginning. Cold, frozen Jotunheim. Cold, palacial Asgard. So different to those around him (her, them, it doesn’t matter) and too young to realize how. She (they, he) doesn’t know any better. It was someone else’s duty to tell them (him, her, whomever). Instead, a story was crafted, fed to Loki since birth. A story with no beginning, and story Loki was not eager to see the end to.
(Unfortunately, every story must come to an end. It is simply the way of the world. Even a never-ending story has different authors, and it will morph from its original intention to something new. It is the joy of crafting; it is the purpose of creation. Not to endlessly create, but to end, so that something new may begin.)
Hwaet wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum…
Loki enjoys second-chances, Norns knows he’s been given more than he deserves. An end, a new beginning. A death, a second life. A branch, a variant, an office with brown carpeting and uniforms and days that run together despite the lack of a sunrise and sunset. A smile from a man who should know better than to trust Loki, the god of mischief, the god of lies.
(And the god of stories, of course. People always seem to forget that. They condemn him for his silver tongue, but forget he only tells them what they wish to hear. Perhaps they should wish to hear the truth more often.)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
Loki doesn’t enjoy being alone. He pretends he does, and if one pretends something long enough, it can become true. It’s a lie, but one with weight, one with value, one with comfort. When he is alone, pretending he doesn’t mind it, there is no one to call him on his delusions. There is no one to tell him the emperor wears no clothes.
He is not alone anymore. That is terrifying in its own regard. When he is alone, he is miserable, but there is no one close who can hurt him (Loki has learned there is always someone, somewhere, who wishes to hurt him—it is simply a matter of proximity). When he is not alone, he is comforted, but he is haunted by the knowledge he now has something to lose, or someone close enough to truly hurt him, or both. He lives in a state of paranoia, fearful of being stabbed in the back or abandoned or simply forgotten.
(Some say the greatest stories are not forgotten. Loki knows better.)
There once was a spider by the name of…
Loki had no say in his names. Loki Liesmith. Loki Silvertongue. Loki Odinson, Loki Laufeyson. He did not choose his fathers. He did not have a say in his own name.
It is not so bad a name, if not too masculine for his tastes at times. His mother assures him it has a feminine grace, and it is the only name Loki truly likes. He knows many reject the names others have given them, and choose another, beginning a new life, or continuing an old life with a truer moniker, but that has never been what Loki wanted. It is easy to remember his own name said lovingly by his mother, or exasperatingly by his brother, or—
(Almost-approvingly. Almost-kindly. Almost-acceptingly. Odin was never as convincing a liar as Loki.)
The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was…
Was it fair to hate Sif? No, likely not. Loki did not like any of Thor’s friends, but Sif was perhaps the worst. Was that misogynistic? Was it jealousy? Cutting her hair had been petty at best and a cry for help at worst, but Loki does not think he deserves what was given to him as punishment. He had apologized. He had glared at Sif’s new hair, and who gave a rat’s ass if it was black and not blonde, because it was long and textured and just as good as before, just a different hue. Loki’s own hair was wispy, thin, close to his face. Her lips were full and trembling with anger, and Loki’s lips were pierced through with a needle and sewn shut so that his lies would stop, if only for a few weeks.
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in their own way…
Loki cannot remember if he ever told Thor he forgave him. Loki is not sure if he ever forgave Thor, or if they decided not to speak of the incident and one day they returned to something close to normal. It was a wake-up call. Loki had always thought Thor would protect him from anything, even if he played tricks sometimes, even if he made mistakes. Thor was his older brother; he was meant to protect the younger. If Thor wouldn’t protect Loki, and his mother would stand by with tears in her eyes, and his father would allow such an act to take place in the first place (even if it was Loki’s fault, even if it was better than the alternative), then where did that leave Loki? It left him alone, with no one to speak on his behalf but himself—and no one believed a liar.
Two households, both alike in dignity…
Life and death, love and betrayal. Really, Loki should have never gotten his hopes up with Mobius in the first place, but he did, and they were Loki and Mobius and now they’re LokiandMobius and Loki is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is that sad? Loki knows, somewhere deep inside, that it’s sad, and that’s why he doesn’t tell Mobius. He tells him stories instead—not lies, stories. He’s the god of stories. Mobius never forgets that.
(“My girl-best-friend, Verity Willis—”
“You can just say best friend, you know.”
“But she was more than a best friend, she was a girl best friend—a human who could detect lies, without any magic of her own. A pure anomaly.”
“No magic? That’s not like you.”
“She swallowed a magic ring as a baby. She didn’t know this, of course.”
“Of course.”
“She aided with the heist of the millennium—”)
It’s not a lie. It’s a story. Somewhere, Loki thinks it might even be true, but it’s not true in the “sacred timeline,” so Mobius can’t predict the ending.
(“Your stories are sad.”
“They’re not. They’re funny, and clever, and the world is saved at the end.”
“The hero isn’t saved, though.”
“Why would they be? They’re the hero—they save everyone else, so who’s left to save them?”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s realistic.”
“That doesn’t not make it sad.”)
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board…
What did Loki wish for? A companion? Understanding? Someone to hold his hand, to say, “You were wronged, you suffered, you deserve a second chance?”
(To tell him he could be good?)
Perhaps Loki’s greatest wish was to not be Loki.
(“There’s no one quite like you.”
“I’m aware.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to keep telling you, so you don’t forget. You get too inside your head sometimes, you know? You’ve got to remember there are people who care about you.”
“Care and love are not the same.”
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“It’s in my nature.”
“You love to chalk things up to your nature, don’t you? Next time you credit your flaws to your nature, I’m going to remind you that telling jokes and being clever and all the good parts of you are also in your nature.”)
Perhaps Loki’s greatest wish is to be a better version of himself (herself, themselves).
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy…
There is so much Loki does not know, that he does not understand. He does not like to admit that. The universe is so vast, and now he knows it is far vaster than he previously thought. It makes him feel small. It makes him afraid.
(What is a man to a king, what is a king to a god, what is a god to a man—a good man, a kind man, a man who does not hold all the answers but says I love you so honestly and so frequently, a man who forgives and forgives and forgives—)
Loki does not want the story to end, but it is out of his hands.
(...“We’ll take a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”)
(...she called in her soul to come and see.)
(...than this of Juliet and her Romeo.)
(...but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!)
(...they were on the fastest horses in the kingdom, and the lead was already theirs.)
(...ordering him to change his name Anyankon to Anansi, which is the name he has kept to the present day.)
(...he’s my brother.)
(...lēodum līðost ond lof-geornost.)
(...he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.)
(...and they lived happily ever after.)
“Loki?”
“Yes?”
“Would you tell me one of your stories?”
“I thought you said they were sad.”
“They are. But they’re good. You’re good at telling stories.”
“I’m the—”
“God of stories.” (A laugh.) “I could never forget.”
(A pause.)
“Please?”
(Another pause, and a sigh—not one of annoyance, but one of love, of acceptance, of knowing the story has a bittersweet end, but the end isn’t the point, the point is the story — )
“Among the gambling tables of the Planet Sin, I cheated a large sum of money and the Raido Key out of the possession of Snarrrdax, Arch Face-Masticator of the Terror Quadrant…”
(And what a wonderful story it is.)