Another Stolen Relic

//Loki's POV//


I had to make sure; I had to be absolutely certain before I really thought about it. I couldn’t just believe that my arm truly had turned blue when the Jotun touched it; that was too absurd for me to accept. My arm was supposed to have frozen in the grip of that creature. I should have had severe frostbite; and yet my arm was perfectly fine. I had barely felt any cold at all when he had grabbed me.

I’ve always had a high tolerance for low temperatures, and now I fear what that may mean. Tolerance to extreme cold; my skin turning blue when I’m touched by a Jotun…. I didn’t want to continue that thought. But I had to know. And so I went to the trophy room where the Casket of Ancient Winters was kept.

I approached it cautiously; I was hesitant to touch it, for I was afraid of what might happen. Pushing through my fears, I quickly grabbed it by the handles, keeping my eyes on my hands. I watched in horror as a blue tint spread from my fingers and up my hands to my wrists; and it did not stop there, it very slowly spread up my arms and onward. As my skin changed color, it also became slightly colder, as if I were slowly dipping my hands into a cool pond. I lifted the Casket from its pedestal; but before I could do anything else, I heard my father’s voice behind me.

“Stop!”

Did that voice truly belong to my father?

I paused. “Am I cursed?” I asked, almost hoping that was the case. My face grew cold, as my hands had.

“No.”

My heart fell, and my throat tightened into a knot, so that speech became difficult. “Then what am I?” I asked in a hoarse voice, already knowing the answer.

“You’re my son.” Odin said, calmly.

I replaced the Casket to its pedestal and turned to him — and as I turned, I saw reflected in the polished floor that my entire face was blue. Strange markings were etched into my skin, and my eyes were a reddish-orange. The face that stared back at me was not my face, but the face of a creature that I had learned to hate from my childhood.

“What more than that?” I asked, feeling betrayal piercing me like a jagged knife; realizing that I was not what I had known I was without question only hours ago. As I turned to face Odin, my skin grew warm again, and I knew that I again wore the mask of an Aesir. The mask that I had once thought was my own face. Odin stood at the top of the stairs and did not answer me, and so I began to walk toward him. “The Casket wasn’t the only thing you took from Jotunheim that day, was it?” My voice had returned, but the dark feeling of being a stranger in my own home had not subsided. Instead, it grew stronger with every step I took towards the Allfather.

Odin stood on the stairs, looking to me as he always had when he was about to say something he really didn’t want to speak about. Finally, he answered, “No.”

With that one simple word, I knew that he intended to tell me everything. I knew him well, for he was my father. No, no, I thought. He is not your father, Loki. You are no longer Loki Odinson, but Loki the fatherless. This thought made my heart bleed, yet I did not shut it out. And so I listened.

“In the aftermath of the battle I went into the temple, and found a baby; small, for a giant’s offspring. Abandoned, suffering, left to die. Laufey’s son.”

I could not believe what he said then. I thought that I had heard wrong. I heard a voice say it a second time. “Laufey’s son….” This time the voice that said those words belonged to me, though I did not recall making my own lips form that dreadful phrase.

“Yes.” Odin said.

Whereas my heart had fallen before, now it crumbled into dust. No, I was neither Loki Odinson, nor Loki the fatherless, I was Loki Laufeyson — and that name burned itself into my mind with a searing pain. I was the son of Laufey. Laufey, king of the Frost Giants. I was the prince of Jotunheim, and I had been abandoned because I was deformed, too small for a Jotun, the size of an Asgardian — a disgrace to the king of the Frost Giants.

I remembered back to when I was a very young boy, in the trophy room with Thor and Odin. Odin had said that though only one could rule, both of us were born to be kings. I now knew that he meant I had been born prince of Jotunheim. He had never intended to give me hope of the throne. I had seen my true father that morning. He did not recognize me, of course, and I had not known who he really was to me. I had hated him more than any other Jotun; and to learn that I was the son of the being I hated most in all of Yggdrasil was too much for me to bear. The horror of it all was impossible, and I lost my ability to speak again.

When I finally got control of my tongue, all I could say was, “Why?”

For lack of any other words, 'why' would have to do to convey all the deep feelings swirling around inside of me. But that word was utterly inadequate to express the pain that was making my chest ache; making my mind fog up; making my throat burn and my eyes water. I then continued deeper into my question. “You were knee-deep in Jotun blood, why would you take me?”

“You were an innocent child.”

“No, you took me for a purpose,” I said, fully in control of my speech again. “What was it?” I desperately needed to know why Odin had taken me here to Asgard, why he had pretended he was my father, and why he had lied to me, for all one-thousand-forty-five years of my life, and made me believe that I was his son. But he said nothing. I felt a searing hot tear slide down my face, burning a trail of sorrow; and it only reminded be of the frigid ice world that I belonged in. Still Odin said absolutely nothing. Suddenly the anguish and despair hit the boiling point inside me, and I practically exploded, “TELL MEEEE‼‼!”

Odin calmly looked at me, his good eye glistening with what looked to me like sadness. “I thought we could unite our kingdoms one day. Bring about an alliance — bring about permanent peace,” He said quietly, “through you.”

There was an aching and throbbing feeling in my chest, and I felt a little light-headed. I heard a very small voice ask “What?” It must have been my voice, but it sounded more like the voice of a scared and lost child. I could say absolutely nothing. Odin took me because he had hoped I would be the Peace Child between Asgard and Jotunheim — a prince of both realms to bring them together.

“But those plans no longer matter.”

The way he said it seemed as if he truly said ‘but you no longer matter.’ And at that same instant, it hit me full in the face, like the clubbed tail of a bilge snipe; and it hurt. Thor. My brother — but he was not my brother. The prince I had grown up with in the palace, always at his side for over a millennium, was not my sibling; we weren’t even the same species. I was not his little brother; I was the enemy; an alien adopted into the family for the sole purpose of becoming a political tool. And I was now a useless tool, because of Thor. Thor had been so foolish, so outright stupid to attack Jotunheim, and now our two realms were on the brink of war. This very day I had become nothing to Odin. Because of my brother, Thor.

I then put some of this whirlwind into a question, not asking for an explanation, but more as an accusation. “So I am no more than another stolen relic; locked up here until you might have use of me?”

“Why do you twist my words?” the Allfather asked, the same way any parent would ask their child such a question.

I did not twist his words; I interpreted them as they made sense to me. Why else would I be here? “You could have told me who I was from the beginning; why didn’t you?”

“You’re my son.”

I said nothing. I was not his son; I was a tool that he had stolen from his enemies. He had never loved me.

“I only wanted to protect you from the truth.”

Protect me from the truth? He lied to me for years just to ‘protect me’ from knowing who I really was? “What, because I–I–” I was stuttering now, but I forced myself to finish. “I’m the monster who parents tell their children about at night? You know it all makes sense now,” anger flooded into my voice, all the years of jealousy towards my brother dissolved any love that I once had for him; and then it became scalding anger. “Why you favored Thor all these years.” I came up the stair toward him, yelling now. “’Cause no matter how much you claimed to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!”

And then I suddenly stopped. I realized that as I had been shouting at him, my father had fallen to the stairs at my feet, and he reached a hand out to me. For a moment, I thought that I had done something to make him fall, but then I realized that it was the Odinsleep, coming to take him away again. Once every year this happened. In this sleep, he would regenerate, but he was left entirely vulnerable. This time he had held off the Odinsleep so long, it seemed different now. More severe, dangerous. His hand dropped as I knelt beside him, and strange silence filled the trophy room. His eye was closed, and he did not move. Very carefully, almost afraid to touch him, I took his hand in mine. Father. Oh, I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to yell at you like that. Whether he loved me or not, I still loved him. Why did it have to be now?

“Guards!” I shouted, remembering there were always some nearby. “Guards, please! Help!”

The great doors of the trophy room opened, and two guards rushed in. I stepped back to give them room as they hurried to my father’s side. What had I done? Oh, father. Please be alright.