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. [ETA after posting Part III: guess that didn’t happen, either.]

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.

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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.

Loki went through the secret path he had found deep beneath
the palace; he did not want Heimdall to know of this trip. He emerged from a
cave in the ice not far from the ruined palace where Laufey’s throne still
stood, but had to trek some distance around to make sure that he approached
openly: he did not wish to be apprehended as a spy or saboteur.

Laufey’s welcome was still far from warm: “Kill him,” he
ordered his guards, sounding almost bored, as Loki walked toward the dais
between the rows of towering ice pillars.

“After all I’ve done for you?” Loki said lightly; he was
determined to show no fear, though his stomach twisted with it.

“So you’re the one who showed us the way into Asgard.”

“That was just a bit of fun, really,” Loki said, adopting a
cocky air, half-consciously deepening his voice to match the Frost Giant’s. “To
ruin my brother’s big day. And to protect the Realm from his idiotic rule for a
while longer.”

“I will hear you,” Laufey said slowly, grudgingly.

“What I have to say is… of a sensitive nature.”

“Only a fool would dismiss his guards in the presence of an
enemy. Do you think me a fool?” Laufey’s tone was even, but his low growl held
more than a hint of warning.

“I think you a king, in the presence of a fellow king.”

Laufey scoffed. “What, is Odin dead, along with his elder
son?”

“Odin Sleeps and Thor is banished for his assault upon your
Realm.”

“In which you were an accomplice.”

Loki bowed his head. “I tried to dissuade my brother from
his bloody course, but you are right; I should not have assisted him. I hope to
make amends for the damage we have done.”

“How?” Laufey asked bluntly.

“By returning the Casket of Ancient Winters.”

An excited murmur arose among the guards and attendants who
lined what used to be the great hall. Laufey held up an impatient hand to
silence them.

“You would pay us weregild with stolen coin?”

“With lawfully taken spoils of war,” Loki corrected.
“Indeed, it would more than pay for the lives of a hundred men; with it you
could restore Jötunheim to its former glory.” He struggled to say the word
without irony.

“And what do you expect in return for this… excess of
generosity?” Laufey asked, allowing irony to drip from every word.

“Only the answer to a question, which I would ask in
private… or in the presence of only your most discreet, trusted men.”

“All of my men are discreet and trusted. Ask your question.”

Loki sighed; he hadn’t expected to be asking about his
parentage in the presence of twenty hostile Frost Giants. He would have to go
about this indirectly.

“If you will dismiss none of your men, then I ask that you
answer three questions.”

“One or three, it matters not. But ask quickly; the dinner
hour draws on.”

“And who knows what may happen when you let Jötnar get
hungry enough,” said one especially hulking guard behind the throne, baring his
teeth. The assembled giants laughed; it seemed that they knew of the stories
Aesir parents told their children to make them behave, or at least suspected.

“Peace, Byleistr,” Laufey said without heat. “Ask, Asgardian.”

“Did Odin take anything from you at the end of the war,
other than the Casket?”

“Aside from the lives, freedom, and honor of my people?”

“Yes, aside from that. And something taken from you
specifically.”

Laufey’s face darkened. “You dare to speak to me of my
beloved Queen?”

Loki cursed himself silently; he had known that Queen
Farbauti was killed in the fighting at the very end of the war. “No. Of…
something she may have left behind.”

Laufey’s eyes narrowed. “It seems this ignorant Asgardian is
of little threat to me,” he announced. “I will speak with him in my private
chambers. My sons, Helblindi and Byleistr, will join me, and as guard I shall
have only my esteemed warrioress Hvedra.”

Laufey stood abruptly from the throne and the two giants who
had flanked it—his sons, apparently—followed him down the steps from the dais.
The one who had not spoken, Helblindi, had a scar across his forehead and held
one arm stiffly at his side. One of the giants who had been standing in the
hall peeled away from her fellows, looking somewhat bewildered. Loki would not
have identified her as a female had Laufey not called her “warrioress”; she
looked much like her male companions, down to the bare chest, flat and
muscular.

Loki followed the giants through a passageway behind the
throne into another ice-cave, larger than the one he had come through and
furnished with a long table and six chairs, all carved of ice. Other openings
in the walls of the cave no doubt led to other chambers deeper in the glacier.
Laufey sat at the head of the table and his sons took their places to either
side. Hvedra remained standing, looking uncertain what to do, and so did Loki:
all of the chairs were too large and slick for him to climb into unaided.

“Hvedra, would you assist our honored guest?” Laufey asked,
noting Loki’s embarrassment.

Loki feared that the giantess would lift him by his armpits
as if he were a child, but instead she knelt and made a bridge of her hands as
if she were an Asgardian gallant helping a lady mount a horse. “Thank you, my
lady,” Loki said once he was seated on the chair opposite Laufey’s. His legs
dangled awkwardly and he could not make use of the backrest without reclining,
so instead he held himself stiffly upright. The ice of the chair chilled him
even through his cloak and thick leather trousers.

Once Hvedra had seated herself beside Byleistr, on Laufey’s
left, Laufey spoke—but instead of addressing Loki, he turned to the giantess
and said, “Hvedra, you saw when Alsvart was killed, did you not?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, looking only slightly less
puzzled than before.

“And you told me that something strange happened before his
death.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. The Asgardian who killed him”—her eyes
flickered briefly toward Loki before she turned back to her king—“Alsvart
grabbed his wrist and tried to burn him with cold” (Loki could tell that the
phrase in the All-Tongue translated a single Jötun word) “but he did not burn.
Instead, his hand and arm turned blue and marked, like a Jötun’s.”

This Alsvart had not been able to burn Loki with cold, but it
seemed Hvedra’s words could. He felt an echo of the same prickling numbness,
the same disoriented nausea, that he had felt—could it have been only the day
before?

“Is this the man who killed Alsvart?” Laufey asked, nodding
toward Loki.

Hvedra turned and scrutinized his face. “It is hard to say
for sure, they all look so similar… but he did have dark hair of about that
length and wore a dark green coat. And he killed Alsvart with a dagger he
pulled from the air.”

“Thank you, Hvedra.” Laufey turned burning eyes on Loki. “I
would be mad to ask you to pull a dagger from the air… but can you summon
something else?”

Loki was not sure it was wise to admit to having killed this
Alsvart… but they already knew he had slain many of their brethren, and Laufey
wanted him to prove that he was the one with the blue hand. So instead of a
dagger he pulled a book from one of his pocket dimensions and tossed it onto
the table.

Laufey nodded. Now he turned to Helblindi. “Burn his face
with cold,” he commanded.

Stone-faced, Helblindi rose, still holding his arm stiff,
and approached Loki, closing the distance swiftly with his long strides. Loki
did not move; he only flinched a little when Helblindi grasped his jaw in one
massive hand. He felt cold radiating from Helblindi’s fingers, but then warmth
suffused his face, the same warmth that had washed over him when he had held
the Casket.

Hvedra hissed in a sudden breath; “Well, fuck me,” muttered
Byleistr. Laufey shot his son a reproving look. Helblindi withdrew his hand and
Loki’s face could feel once more the chill of the frozen realm.

“You ask if my wife left anything behind at the end of the
war,” Laufey began. “She did bear a child, the day before she was killed. I
begged her not to rejoin the fighting so soon after, but… she was a warrior to
the last.” Grief was written starkly in the haggard lines of his face.

“And the child?” Loki asked. He could hear his voice
trembling, shameful as it was, and his tongue felt thick and heavy.

“It was one of the small ones,” Laufey said. His voice
sounded strangely flat. “She wanted to keep it, but the priests said it was
sacrilege, and would call down the wrath of the gods. That we must keep to the
old ways, especially in our hour of trial.”

“The small ones,”
Loki repeated. His own voice seemed to him to come from very far away.

“The old tales call them the children of the air and snow,
who must be returned to air and snow. But I do not credit such superstition.
Our people began leaving them to die as infants because otherwise they would
have died as children; it saved them and their parents a few years of
suffering. Perhaps we know enough now to allow them to survive to adulthood;
apparently Asgard does. But ancient customs are slow to fade, even when they
have lost their original purpose.”

Loki’s nausea seemed to have doubled. He abruptly realized
how much he had been hoping that Odin had lied, that he had parents who loved
and wanted him but were forced to give him up for the sake of peace…

“The priests fled the temple as the Asgardian army
approached. Those that survived returned to find that the baby was gone: its
body could not be burned, returned to the air as the gods demand. I killed the priests for their negligence and cowardice, and let the people think the Asgardians had
slain them in the temple they served. I thought the Asgardians must have found
the baby’s frozen corpse and disposed of it… but it seems I was wrong.”

“Odin told me I was your son,” Loki whispered hoarsely. “How
did he know?”

“Your heritage lines. Odin doesn’t let it be widely known,
but his mother was a Jötun: Bestla, my father’s sister. She was a shapeshifter,
like you, so she spent most of her life in Aesir form… which made it easier,
when relations between the realms turned hostile, to conceal the king’s kinship
with the enemy. But Bestla must have taught her son to read the markings of her
house, the royal house. He saw them on your face and he knew.”

Heritage lines? Loki
had never known that the marks on the Jötnar’s skin had any more meaning than a
tiger’s stripes. And he had known his grandmother’s name and even her face,
from the murals on the walls of the throne room, but knew nothing of her true
origin.

“Do you regret it?” Loki asked. His voice came out almost
strangled.

Laufey gave a sharp derisive sigh. “You want me to say how
remorseful I am for abandoning you. Sorry to disappoint you, boy. What would I
have done with a sickly motherless runt? The realm was suffering; my people
would have resented me for it, said the resources should be spent on worthier
lives.” He paused. “I do regret that Odin got his hands on you.” His mouth
twisted. “He styles himself ‘All-Father,’ father of all the Realms. ‘Father of
Lies’ is a truer name for him. And he has turned you into a liar like himself. I
should have slit your throat rather than let him take you.”

He has turned you into
a liar like himself. But how did Laufey know that? “So you’re the one who showed us the way into Asgard.” Of course.
But in deceiving Odin (to show him the truth about Thor!), he had only been
following Odin’s tutelage. Father of
Lies. I should have slit your throat.

Loki hardly felt attached to his own body: the
sensations of stiffness, cold, and even nausea seemed to belong to someone else;
the sound of Laufey’s voice seemed distant and hollow. All he could hear was
his own heartbeat in his ears and he felt as though he was watching himself
from within when he grasped a knife from its pocket dimension and threw it
without aiming into Laufey’s throat.