I still haven’t finished writing @shine-of-asgard‘s fic for my Satan-themed 666-follower giveaway… I shouldn’t even do fic giveaways, I can’t keep myself to a schedule or a word limit. Oy. I have written what I think is the majority of it, though, and I got to a good cliffhanger-y chapter break (and a little past), so I’m going to post it in two parts so that you don’t have to keep waiting.
Here was the prompt: “Loki/Lucifer and Odin/God. Variation of the ‘Lightbringer’ theme where Loki rebels against Odin and tries to steal the Casket of Winters to give it back to the Jotnar. It can follow the ‘biblical’ version with Odin striking Loki down and Loki falling from Asgard or you can spin it any other the way you want. Bonus points for the appearance of Thor as a conflicted good archangel who loves his brother but won’t go against God for him.”
I did it as a fairly straightfoward canon-divergent AU… well, you’ll see.
After Odin fell into the Sleep, Loki kept going back to the
Vault every few hours to stand before the plinth where the Casket of Ancient
Winters lay. Like a guilty man returning
to the scene of the crime. But what was the crime, he wondered, and whose?
Loki’s driving his father past the brink of exhaustion by confronting him with
the truth? Or Odin’s abandoning his son when he most needed his father’s
guidance? Or was it earlier: the lie he had told Loki for his whole life only
to reveal the truth in the wrong way, at the wrong moment, and then escape
taking responsibility for the aftermath? Couldn’t
he have thought of another lie? Any story, any explanation other than the
truth that Loki had already guessed?The Casket wasn’t the
only thing you took from Jötunheim that day.Loki felt a strange kinship with the Casket—like it was a
long-lost brother. Perhaps that was what kept drawing him back to it. We don’t belong here, either of us. Perhaps
that had been the true crime: those twin thefts more than a thousand years ago.He saved my life, Loki
reminded himself; I would have died if he
hadn’t taken me. But was that even true? Could he believe Odin’s word about
anything, now? Was he a rescued castoff or a hostage? I hoped we could unite our kingdoms one day—bring about an alliance,
bring about a permanent peace—through you. How would that have worked, if
Laufey had never wanted him? And how could Odin know he was Laufey’s son, if he
had been left alone to die?Loki was starved for knowledge, and he knew he would not get
it from Odin. Nor could he expect truth from his mother, from Frigga: Odin
might well have told her the same lies. No, there was only one person he could
ask: Laufey himself. As a king to another king, Laufey owed him the courtesy of
truth.I adore that you’ve included Loki’s brothers. I’m always sad when they’re not included (and it seems they really don’t exist in the MCU…). The entire confrontation is excellently done! Poor Loki 😦 Yeah, I’d stab Laufey, too. He could have at least worded it a little nicer. Then again, flowery language doesn’t really seem like Laufey’s style. Not who Loki inherited his silver tongue from.
Thanks! It’s pretty standard fanfiction practice to include Loki’s brothers, even in human AUs where Thor and Loki come from different families, but the MCU seems to have decided (oddly) that Laufey doesn’t have any other kids. Careless of him not to secure the succession. And if Loki is the “rightful king of Jotunheim” (per those dimwitted hacks Markus & McFeely), who’s been in charge there for the past 7 years? Do they have a Gondor-style Steward who keeps things running while waiting for the king to return?
If Loki inherited his eloquence from anyone, it was Farbauti; more likely he learned it from Frigga.
Loki is the Philosopher King 