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Loki is nearly 160 years old when he tries to kill Thor. It’s not the last time, in fact, it is not even the first time, nor is it really about Thor, but it happens nonetheless.
The warmth of summer has arrived: the fields around Asgard are blooming vibrant greens and soft yellows and a brilliant array of bright colours too numerous to count, the air is constantly tinged with a slight breeze and the perfume of flowers, and the sun hangs in the sky longer and longer each day. The palace is busy with the bustling of preparation for the Midsummerfest, a celebration of the longest day of the year filled with strawberry cream cakes and woven flower crowns, but in the royal wing a storm is brewing.
The tiles of the hall feel icy cold under Loki’s bare feet, as if it is still mid-winter, and he almost expects his breath to be visible in the air as he exhales slowly. Odin slamming his office door behind him muttering “disappointment” just loud enough that Loki knows he was meant to hear it reminds Loki he needs to move, and he runs. He runs as fast as his legs will carry him, as far away from the icy cold that tries to claw its way into his bones. He doesn’t slow until he reaches the hills outside the city, beyond the fields of the farmers that supply the palace. The grass is soft under his feet, and he slows, then stops, lets himself sink to his knees into the soft dirt. He wants to cry, but warriors don’t cry, princes don’t cry unless they are babies and you are no baby anymore, are you Loki?
Instead he focuses on his breathing, counts the seconds for each inhale-hold-exhale until he can feel the panic residing, not quite leaving but settling down into his body in a way it won’t bother him anymore, not until the next time when it will all come rushing back up.
He hates Odin.
But Odin is his father, has given him everything, and maybe maybe he loves Odin too.
Just like Odin hates him, but also maybe loves him.
It is a complicated feeling, the want, the need, combined with the hatred. Just twenty years ago the world had seemed much simpler, Odin was clearly disappointed with Loki but not in a way that felt irredeemable. Loki could still try, work hard and learn, and then Odin would look at him the way he looked at Thor, with pride. Loki had dreamt about it often, half asleep and half awake as he imagined the smile on Odin’s lips at Loki’s seiðr, the slight nod of his head as Loki defended Asgard bravely from foreign treats, the speech he would give at a feast in Loki’s honour, for his coronation perhaps. After all, Odin had said both Thor and him were meant to be kings.
But Odin’s harsh words this morning left little to even Loki’s imagination.
Odin was dissatisfied not by something Loki did, even though what he had done was unforgivable, but by what Loki was. There was something irrevocably wrong with him, and there was nothing Loki could do to change that. He could never live up to Thor, the golden heir. He would always be inferior to his older brother.
Loki wipes away the tears, because his emotions always betray him in the end, and moves from his kneeling position to laying down, letting the grass tickle the back of his neck as he looks at the endless expanse of blue above him.
He imagines all the ways he can kill Odin, but imagining his father choking on his own blood does not have the effect he had hoped, not after seeing his brother’s face pale as blood drained out of him, as red covered his tunic and their combined hands and the green summer grass underneath him. Instead he just feels more miserable.
Yet, he does not stop playing out scenarios in his head until a shadow falls over the bright blue sky. “I’ve been looking for you,” Thor says as he carefully lowers himself next to Loki. Loki doesn’t want to look, but he still notices the slight grimace his brother gives as the movement pulls on the wound in his side. It’s invisible under his bright red tunic, just a bit too bright to be blood coloured but barely, but Loki knows his chest is wrapped in white bandages.
Loki does not respond, instead turns his eyes back to the sky.
Thor nudges his leg. “Come on, Loki, it’s alright, I’m alright, and Astriðr promised me we are getting an entire tray of strawberry and cream tarts each.”
“I’m not hungry,” Loki said, even though his growling stomach betrays him.
“Is this about Father?” Thor asks, tentatively, as if he is afraid Loki might break from his words.
Loki doesn’t answer, because they both know it is, but it is not something they discuss, not something they are supposed to discuss.
Odin’s ire had not appeared out of nowhere, of course, and Loki’s mind continued to circle back to the events leading up to the scolding this morning no matter how hard he tries to forget.
In the end, attempting to assassinate Thor is not about Thor.
In the end, it is always about Odin.
~~~
It starts with a snake.
Ever since he had taken his friends into the far hills of Asgard and encountered one, Thor has loved snakes, is fascinated and delighted by them. Loki, wanting his brother to be fascinated and delighted by him, takes it as a challenge.
So he learns how to turn into one. Shapeshifter seiðr has always come easily to him, in a way it didn’t to Odin or even his mother. It was like second nature, he just had to think really hard, to imagine and he could change. Similarly shaped and sized creatures first, but for all accounts and purposes Loki was a seiðr prodigy, and it didn’t take him much longer to learn how to change into any creature he wished at the drop of a hat.
Loki had been left out of the midsummer hunt, even though Thor and his friends got to go, and he couldn’t help but be jealous, feel green like the soft velvet of his preferred robes. Jealous of that proud smile Odin had given, the hand Odin had placed on Thor’s back, all the little ways of affection that Loki craved like a hunting dog starved and ready to attack.
So he follows them, his dagger strapped in his belt and determination painted on his brow. If Odin thought him a liability on the hunt, he would show just how wrong Odin was and kill the beast on his own.
He would show Father his seiðr was just as powerful a weapon as Thor’s hammer.
Except that is not what happened.
What happened was Loki using his seiðr to change into a snake to blend into the environment, readying his attack as he crawled closer to his target.
What happened is Thor, hammer raised in case he runs into the boar they are hunting, getting distracted by Loki’s snake form. His brother drops his hammer and comes closer. “Look, at this lillesnek. It reminds me of Loki!” He reaches out a hand, laughs softly when Loki hisses. “He’s small and angry and green like Loki.”
The comment fills Loki with green and with anger when all Thor’s friends laugh in chorus at Loki’s expense.
“Thor,” Odin warns from atop his horse. “Do not let yourself get distracted by a mere snake.” A clear dismissal not only of Thor, but of Loki, of his memory and very existence. His name is not even worth mentioning, not during the hunt he was clearly not welcome in.
What happened is that Loki, unable to control those emotions that bubble up in him, the green, the jealousy, lets them boil over, lets them break through to the surface.
What happens is that as Thor tries to pick him up despite Odin’s dismissal, Loki changes back, unsheaths his dagger and buries it into Thor’s side.
Thor’s face flicks from surprise to dread. His lips form an “oh” before his brows furrow either in confusion or pain. “Loki?” he asks, disbelievingly.
Loki feels like he isn’t quite in control of his body as his hand, still gripping the dagger, twists. He hears the wet sound of flesh tearing, but does not feel the resistance of the dagger as it twists in Thor’s body. His hand is not his own.
Do not let yourself get distracted by a mere snake.
Oh, how Odin underestimates Loki, and his golden son will pay for it.
Thor’s hands grab at his side, at Loki’s hand and the dagger still embedded into his body. His fingers are slick with his own blood as he presses against the wound.
Loki’s own hand is slick with it too, and it is only then that Loki feels it, sticky and warm and outside Thor’s body. The surprise registers only now, the gravity of what he has done, and it feels like emerging from an ice bath, sending a shock through his entire system, burning away the green and the anger that seemed so important moments ago. Without thinking, panic high in his chest, and as Thor starts to say “Loki n-” he pulls the dagger out.
Blood gushes.
“No” Thor finishes. He has gone very white, like the crisp linen sheets on the clothesline, and his hands are clammy as Loki presses his own hands over Thor’s, murmuring apologies he is not sure Thor can hear, wants to hear.
Thor is his brother. His brother. He can’t die, what would Loki do, be, without Thor by his side? His brother, who showed him the best place to swim near the waterhole, who marveled at his magic with the earnest enthusiasm only another child can have.
Behind them, vague voices cry out, movement flickers in the corner of Loki’s eyes. It doesn’t register. There is only Thor, Thor and the rising panic and the blood.
Loki continues to mumble apologies long after he had been pulled off Thor.
The last thing he registers of his brother is the way Thor looks at him, not angry as he expected, but betrayed, hurt.
To his own annoyance, Thor has to spend three days in the infirmary. Because he had lost a lot of blood, and he could have died. For two of those days, Loki is kept away from not only Thor but everyone, forced to mull over the events in his head, sitting alone in his bedroom. As the hours pass, Loki is more and more afraid Odin will turn up and tell him he will never be let out again, or worse, bring the dagger Loki had used and bury it in Loki’s side and leave him to bleed out alone, an eye for an eye to avenge the near death of his golden son. Odin doesn’t come, nobody comes. Not until the third day, when they finally unlock Loki’s door and Mother takes him to Thor because Thor has apparently been begging them to let Loki see him. Loki couldn’t fathom why, not when all he sees as he closes his eyes is Thor’s blood and his hurt expression. His older brother had looked bored more than hurt by the time Loki gets to see him in the infirmary, the white sheet look long gone, but a weariness remained, as if this had changed something between them, as if Loki had taken something he could never give back.
And that is why Odin can be disappointed in what Loki is, what he almost became.
Kinslayer.
To Asgardians, it is the vilest of crimes, something only someone truly evil would attempt. Had he been anyone else, anyone but Odin’s son, he would been killed, or worse, outlawed, astrosized from society and banned from Valhalla. But he is Odin’s son, so everyone who witnessed the events is chiefly reminded that “boys will be boys” and the reprimand Loki receives is three days of isolation and four hours in Odin’s office being reminded of all the ways he will never be good enough.
I should have let you die as a baby, Odin had said.
Maybe it would have been easier.
~~~
“Do not let him get into your head,” Thor says as he carefully lowers himself to lay down next to Loki in the grass, shoulder touching Loki’s affectionately, pulling Loki back to the present. “I still love you, lillesnek.”
It’s the nickname that gets him sobbing again, curled into Thor’s unhurt side as Thor rubs soothing circles into his back as if they are still little children of not yet one hundred years old. If Thor blinks away tears himself, Loki doesn’t say anything, because they are princes and not babies.
Lillesnek. Little snake.
The same thing Thor had called him before knowing it was him, the same thing Thor had called him when he demanded Loki turn into a snake again so he can have a proper look when he was in the infirmary. Both times, a smile had painted Thor’s lips, a wide toothy grin that meant wonder and admiration and cheerfulness. It was then that Loki imagined maybe things were not completely broken between them, but that was before Odin. Loki doesn’t dare to look up from where his face is scrunched into Thor’s armpit, but he imagines Thor has the same smile now.
The smile that would tell Loki I forgive you without the words needing to be said out loud, not when Odin clearly did not want Thor to dish out forgiveness as easily as he did.
The smile that somehow seems more important than Odin’s proud smile, more genuine, if only by the fact that Loki has seen it directed at him a million times before, knows that it exists and is not a mere figment of his imagination.
The nickname becomes a common occurrence, a reminder of Thor’s trust, of his pride and delight in Loki. They fight often, as young princes are wont to do if the history books were to be believed, but every time Thor calls him lillesnek Loki knows it’s alright, knows that no matter how angry Thor is, he doesn’t hate Loki. All is forgiven.
When Thor mentions the story, on a planet far away from home, hundreds of years later, Loki scuffs, smirks as he tries to hold in his laughter as if Thor will follow up with calling him lillesnek like before, but the nickname never comes.