Chapter Text
In the royal house of Laufey, it was generally understood that Loki would have been a disappointment to any family.
Laufey couldn’t be blamed for finding him too small. Farbauti couldn’t be blamed for despairing at his moods and backstabbing, capricious tricks. Helblindi and Byleistr, tall and strong and frank warrior types, couldn’t be blamed for warning their shieldbrothers away from Loki.
“One time,” Helblindi told the other giants, “we wouldn’t take him on a hunting trip. It couldn’t be helped, you see. He’s too small to hunt frigidwyrms. But he wouldn’t see reason. He transformed himself into a bilgesnipe—“
“He knows we love bilegsnipes,” Byleistr put in.
“—and snuck into my saddlebags, and when I pulled out the bilgesnipe in delight—“
“He turned back into himself and stabbed us both,” Byleistr said sadly.
“He stabbed us both!”
Loki hadn’t thought it was such a bad thing to do. They were both frost giants, weren’t they? So large and broad and ice-covered that a few nicks with a knife couldn’t do them any harm. And it was their just punishment for excluding him. And yet no one saw it his way — as a meaningless jape that was only meant to assert himself, to get him a place in the hunting party. No, the giants told each other frankly that this was something Loki would have done under any circumstances, to anyone, that even if Loki had been born to a family as powerful and rich as Odin Allfather’s, he would have been small and sneaky and bitter about it. So, really, his Loki-ness could not be blamed on the house of Laufey.
And there was some truth in this.
Loki was small, and far too slender besides. So small and slender that by his third century he’d captured no mates, drawn no eyes to himself. Helblindi and Byleistr, his younger brothers, had both sired and borne children by half that age, but Loki? Too small to bear a child safely, and too small, it was whispered, to bring a giant any pleasure.
And he was sneaky. He had no choice but to be. He was so much smaller than everyone else that mischief and tricks were often the only way to draw attention to himself. And though only the very uncharitable would have called him bitter, bitter was not too far off the mark. For Loki had been raised in the house of Laufey, where his icy, elegant brothers were apt to exclude him. Where his dam was apt to titter about how they would be burdened with him always, for no one wanted to relieve the family of one so small and useless. Where cousin Thrym was apt to make jokes at his expense.
“Runtling!” he called Loki jovially, and so often that within the first century of Loki's birth everyone was calling Loki that. And when Loki snapped that he preferred his proper name, all the frost giants only looked significantly at each other and commented on his unpleasant moods. Bad enough to be small and sneaky and unhandsome. Worse to be so unpleasant and contrary about it.
Truthfully, it was that whole combination -- lack of size and lack of looks and lack of a halfway decent personality -- which made the house of Laufey disclaim him as not quite theirs. And yet, in their eyes, they were not unkind to him. Into the house of Laufey he'd been born, and so he would be the trial of the house of Laufey until the end of his days. They would gladly clothe him and feed him and put up with him. And if they reminded him of this endlessly, well. They were only stating the facts.
"In Vanaheim, runtling," cousin Thrym said, at one of his great suppers, "the weak are abandoned at birth. But here we would never do such a thing!"
It was the anniversary of Loki's birth. This was why the supper was being held. But, rather than look grateful at this, Loki only looked long-suffering, as though he knew exactly where Thrym was going with this. In fact he did know. Thrym told the same story every year.
Now Thrym chortled, letting great chunks of frigidwyrm soup burble up behind his lips and stain his woven silver bib (all the house of Laufey wore silver and ice-white and pale blue, even Loki, who did not like those colors and felt they did not suit). And now Thrym's eyes twinkled. And now Thrym surveyed the great many brothers and cousins and uncles which surrounded Loki, all slurping their fine course of soup and listening with eager amusement.
"But we did not do this with you," Thrym said in a mock-whisper, leaning in. Loki leaned back, so as not to be sprayed with the soup.
"No," he recited to Thrym dully, "for though I was born in wartime--"
"Though you were born in wartime--"
"--to a dam already weakened by brave fighting--"
"So weak but so brave!" Thrym declared, and Farbauti, who enjoyed this story, here gave a theatrical half-sob to show how correct Thrym was.
"The whole family paused their fighting, begged of Odin Allfather to let them have a ceasefire, and conspired to send me to safety in the frost-marshes of Quirt," Loki said.
His voice was so reedy, bitter, and unhappy that it could have shattered the great blocks of blue stone that made up Thrym's magnificent hall.
"We played at being cowards in order to send you to safety in the frost-marshes of Quirt!" Thrym bellowed. He smacked the table. The house of Laufey erupted into titters and congratulatory clapping. They were not cowards, none of them. They were huge, strong, ice itself -- all but Loki. But they had pretended to capitulate to Odin Allfather briefly, ever so briefly, just to send the infant Loki to safety, and for this none could fault them. For the royal house of Laufey was a dutiful house, and no matter how much a disappointment Loki contrived to be, they had always done their duty by him.
"I still say he would have been perfectly safe holed up in the temple for a bit," muttered Laufey, into his soup, but no one paid him any heed. He had earned the right to grumble a bit, as their ruler. He had been the one to have to bend at the knee to Odin, that sneaky brute, and to apologize for using their own Casket -- their Casket! -- which was rightfully of the house of Laufey and which Odin should have had no interest in.
Loki, for his part, often thought privately that if he had been left in the temple, so much the better. Some other family might have come along and taken him. Some family without two sons as stunning and large as Helblindi and Byleistr, some family with less of a sense of duty. Some family which might have cheerfully abandoned him when he became too annoying, and then he could have just as cheerfully retaliated, burned their whole hall to the ground or something, and no one could have held it against him.
But the house of Laufey tolerated him so perfectly, extended so much duty to him, that he could never get away with that sort of thing, could never get away even with minor tricks. In the house of Laufey, he was expected to resign himself to being a dutiful disappointment.
And yet in his dreams, he was chaos itself. Mostly in his dreams. But still -- that was something. Now, as attention strayed from him to Helblindi and Byleistr's latest exploits (as it always did), he sank down beneath the great silver tablecloth. Being small, he could sink very low indeed. Once he was hidden from view, he pulled out a manuscript which he had bought, for quite a reasonable sum, from a peddler in Jotunheim's central square.
The Great Exile of the Thunderer, Strongest Avenger, and His Revengers
This was the spark to light Loki's dreams! This. The Thunderer, a being no bigger than a large Midgardian, which was to say smaller than a Frost Giant, which was to say about Loki's size, who was nothing less than ultimate power. Though his magic was one-note, it was great, for he was the God of Thunder. And though the author's spelling was inventive and his punctuation nonexistent, the tales he spun were very like those Loki had been spinning in his dreams all his life, tales of intrigue, ambition, and power.
In the foul halls of Sakaar, the vile Grandmaster projects a great, giant figure of himself before his abased people. 'Slaves!' he commands them. 'Come see my evil, wicked games!' And it was into this world that the Thunderer was brought as a lowly prisoner, and they did not believe him when he said his power would undo them. But lo, dear readers! He was to emerge from the games as nothing less than a CHAMPION!
In truth, all the Thunderer's stories ran the same way. He was banished to Midgard, for upsetting an older sister. And yet he emerged a champion. He was tricked by elves, and yet he emerged a champion. The thrust of it never wavered: always he was treated poorly, cast as buffoonish, seemingly smaller and more stupid than his opponents. And always, in the end, a champion.
And yet to one like Loki, could this be anything but a balm to his soul? At night, in his too-large, too-cold room in Laufey's halls, where everything was a dull frosty blue, he would sink into dreams, a veritable grotto of dreams. There, he would fight monsters of flame, would trick his way out of the death-games of Sakaar. He would not quite do it as the Thunderer did -- he did not delude himself into thinking he was anything so traditional. For all of the Thunderer's diminutive size, that being had to be close to Jotunheim's ideal: a fighter, a bruiser, a battle-raiser fit to take to bed. While Loki was all spindly legs and knobbly fingers, scraggly dark hair he had never shed in a warrior's rite, with the moon-eyed face that, on Jotunheim, made one no more intimidating than a child.
At best, Loki was a sneaky little house witch. Yet when he dreamed he was a witch far greater than that, a partner to the Thunderer, who would appreciate his magical gifts as Jotunheim did not. Who would agree that Loki, unleashed from Laufey's halls, could offer more than the house of Laufey knew, could bargain his way out of fire pits and Midgardian cities. That Loki was a power in his own right.
"Oh, Loki," breathed out Farbauti now. "Are you reading those dreadful tomes again? You will give me--"
"An attack of nerves," Loki muttered.
"An attack of nerves!"
And then Farbauti, great warrior, so brave he bore a child in battle, succumbed to an attack of nerves so horrible that Thrym said, "Bad form, runtling. Bad form!" and everyone felt truly sorry that Farbauti had suffered such a difficult labor three centuries ago just to give birth to one so ungrateful as Loki.
"He will bleach his skin again!" Farbauti moaned. "To be like those silly books he reads--"
"That was one time," Loki snapped, "and I was only wondering if it suited me better!"
"He thinks losing his heritage lines, our lines, the lines of the house of Laufey--"
Everyone tittered at this. Truly, it was perverse. Loki's lines were the best thing about him, for they marked him of the house of Laufey. For those lines, he should have prostrated himself with gratitude.
"It was one time!"
"And his eyes were so horrible," Farbauti moaned, "such a poisonous color--"
"Only red eyes suit you," Helblindi told Loki, in an aside. "Why, with red eyes you are almost normal, brother!"
"Oh, why does he torment us so?" Farbauti finished. "Why? And we who've done so much for him."
Everyone agreed with this, loudly. Laufey reached one powerful arm over the table and plucked the manuscript from Loki's hands and said, "Enough of that, you," very sternly.
So after this Loki had nothing to read.
Naturally, when the remaining frigidwyrms in the soup appeared to come back to life, all chopped up into pieces and leaking silver blood and upsetting everyone, the house of Laufey all should have known that it was their fault for making Loki bored. But the other frost giants refused to see reason on this. The end result was that Laufey loudly chastised Loki and Farbauti's nerves made a great comeback (had they ever left?). And Thrym informed everyone that Helblindi and Byleistr would never do such a thing, even though they had never been so lucky as to be sent to the frost-marshes of Quirt.
"I'm sorry," Loki bit out eventually. "You're all right, of course, and I'm wrong. To tell you the truth, I feel a bit piqued. I think it's my heart or something. It's a sort of pain in the chest."
"You don't have a pain in the chest, you are a pain in the chest," Farbauti cried bitterly, and even though this was a cruel thing to say, no one corrected him, because secretly everyone agreed with him.