I started this before I even saw Thor 2 and decided to just roll with it anyway.

Prologue

Loki, the recognized God of Mischief, let the spell keeping him invisible and unnoticed fade. Now that his idiotic adopted brother, Thor, and his brother's sometimes love interest Jane Foster were off to save the universe it was safe enough. It was a shame really. Thor was a kind-hearted idiot. What a woman as intelligent as that saw in him was a mystery.

He took a step closer, staring coldly at a dead body with his angular face and ghostly complexion. He sneered down at his dead double and vanished him with a flick of his wrist. As if he would die for Thor. Dusting off his hands as if to rid himself of that pathetic display of sentiment, he glanced around to find the dark portal he was looking for when a cry caught his attention.

His hearing was sensitive compared to other AEsir but not that sensitive and he could see nothing in the barren vastness around him. A malicious smile curled his lip, envisioning a pair of dark elves tearing each other apart. He raised his hands when a second cry pulled at him, demanding his attention, and demolishing his concentration. With an annoyed snarl he spun, the tails of his armored jacket fanning out as he stalked across the rocks and windblown surface towards it. Whoever it was, if they weren't dead were going to die horribly at his own hands.

At the edge of a short cliff he spied with his grey-green eyes movement a short distance from the mouth of a cave and teleported himself from point to point, enjoying the freedom of finally being able to use his magic as he wished. He would make Odin and all of Asgard pay for imprisoning him. Stalking forward, pulling a dagger from an invisible sheathe on his thigh, he froze as he stared down at a small form. The tension melted out of him as he chuckled and shook his head. It was a tiny dark elven baby, not even a few days old.

He glanced around again, flinching back when the child started crying in earnest, no doubt cold since there was nothing covering the bare infant, "Well if your parents forget you someone is certain to hear you." Assuming this elf even had parents at this point. Assuming anyone even cared. There was an odd hitch to the babe's cries, as if the little one were sick. Not even he was so heartless and it's not like a small delay would hinder his plans. Sighing and slipping the dagger away, moving to lean against the rock face and crossing his arms over his chest, "Oh hush, I will stay a while until someone retrieves you."

It bothered him that the child was just left out here in the elements, especially considering the state of the dark elves' planet. Where was their remembrance of children to leave a child out here like this? As he looked the boy over he thought he knew why. The babe was obviously ill, an unusually unhealthy parlor of white for an elf and the ears were not formed properly, much more subtly pointed than they should be.

And Loki, as a Jötun runt, knew what happened to the weakest of the litter.

It would be a kindness to put the child out of its misery than to just leave it here to slowly die from exposure. He found himself kneeling down before he'd even thought it through, hand extending with a soft greenish glow of magic on his fingertips. A tiny fist wrapped around his index finger and his magic retreated so sharply it felt like a chastising slap to the back of his head.

His magic was supposed to be his to command alone. The only time he'd ever had that kind of reaction…

Pulling in a deep breath and shaking his head rapidly, he threw himself from the vicinity and almost ran in his haste to get away. He had plans. He had to see them through. He would not let his own pathetic sentiment stop him, not this time. But the distressed cries, escalating, pulled at his feet, slowing him down. He flinched and clutched at his head. Not enough sleep. Not in years. Or maybe it was his magic, spiting him. His overburdened conscience finally resurfacing. Whatever it was, he crumpled to the ground.

And unbidden, a vision came to him. It couldn't have been a memory, he had been much too young and it was so long ago, but he envisioned Odin in this same moment. A warrior, a king, blood stains on his hands and armor, eye missing from battle, kneeling down over the frozen wasteland of Jötunheim to pick up a sickly runt of a Jötun babe from the snow. Him. The child of a hated race. A child abandoned and left to die by his own kind. Instead of leaving him to die Odin took the child home and gave him his name. Loki Odinson.

The image of the man he had called father and himself as an infant faded. He was still there on the barren expanse of chilled Jotunheim, but he was visited by someone else. He blinked and visibly started at what he was seeing. It was impossible. She was gone, in Valhala for certain but his eyes searched a face that wasn't, couldn't, be there. The specter that looked like his mother but couldn't be smiled with that chiding look he was far too familiar with.

Loki came back to himself, back curving as he bowed as if in prayer, shoulders shaking as he sank his hands into his dark hair. He had no idea why he shed tears, almost as if some gaping wound to his heart had felled him. Was it guilt? Remorse? Regret? He did not know, yet still he cried. He cried for the mother he still mourned, a mother not by blood but his 'mumma' nonetheless. He cried for the disappointment he was to his father, now a warmongerer and a blood covered tyrant. He cried for the traitor he was to his brother, a brother he denied and abandoned. And he cried for himself, for the Loki he had become that he hated with every fiber of his being.

He screamed once, a wounded sound and hit the ground futily with his fists before stilling. Even when his own tears ceased the child's cries continued to pull and speak to him more clearly than words ever had. Not even he, the Liesmith, the trickster Prince, not even he could abandon a child to die. Though he didn't know it at the time, this was the moment that he chose a different path. This was the moment that the fates hadn't foreseen. The moment when Loki would no longer be the portent for Ragnarok.

Roughly shoving himself away from the ground, swaying on his feet as he scrubbed at his face in irritation, he stalked back to the boy. With a series of movements the pieces of his armor fell off one by one, hastily pulling the green tunic he wore over his head before wrapping the child carefully. The little ones cries slowly tapered off, staring up at Loki in wonder with deep green eyes as the trickster snapped his fingers and the armor reappeared on his thin body.

He put a warming spell on the fabric, which helped cease the child's shivers. Hold tentative and gentle, Loki rose with the babe in his arms, supporting the fragile head and looking around carefully to be certain they were unseen. He couldn't return to Asgard. The moment his feet touched soil he would be magically bound and the child would be taken, most likely killed. Not that he cared, he hastily corrected himself. He only cared about the fact that he'd be back in the dungeons and that simply wouldn't do. In fact, there were few races he hadn't managed to offend at one time or another, but he knew that the forests of Alfheim's smallest moon were so extensive it would be easy for him to hide there, at least for a time. Loki had reached a fork in the road of his life, and he chose to go right instead of left.

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