A/N: Because who needs sleep when you can write Loki with wings? Not me!

I've never attempted an AU like this before and I really enjoyed it honestly. I dunno if this fic itself is actually any good, but I got an image of Loki with black and/or green wings stuck in my head and I couldn't get it out so I made this cause I can't draw. And I might keep doing it...

Everywhere Loki looked, it was a sea of brightly colored wings. The darkest they normally dared to go was grey, but even that contained a faint sheen so it looked more silver. Father's were vivid gold, shot through with maroon; Mother's were the purest white; and Thor's made him the literal golden child, though his feathers were subtler than Father's, easier on the eyes, and dappled by Mother's white. He pranced happily amongst the others – magenta-winged Sif, lemon Fandral, and tan Hogun. Volstagg's cinnamon wings were some of the darkest Loki had ever seen, but since people associated the earthy color with growth and food, they accepted him.

But not Loki's wings. People took one look at their midnight black feathers and their eyes went wide. Even though they were the same shape as Father's, their color turned them from things of grandeur to malevolent shapes, just waiting to swallow innocent victims. It didn't matter how much Loki smiled, or how much good he did – people saw his wings and called him Prince of Darkness. So he gave into their expectations, turning to trickery for solace.

Even from a young age, Thor held his wings high and proud at all times, using them to his full advantage when it came to intimidation or attracting girls. Loki's wings had known no such pride, for they drooped constantly, and he held them close together. He tried to make them smaller, less threatening. He tried to hide what his feathers seemed to say about him – colors reflected who you were, after all.

Only to find out they were right. "Your wings are beautiful," Mother always assured him, the only one never afraid to touch their darkness. "Black means strength and elegance, and in many ways, those words represent you. Do not fear what they might mean of you."

Except he did. He didn't want people to look at him like they were waiting for him to snap and stab and kill, but at this point, it was part of him. He blamed it on his jealousy of Thor, for a long time, until that fateful day on Jotunheim. When that Frost Giant grabbed his hand and he didn't burn from the cold… His wings had only ever been representing the monster within. The monster his own brother wanted to wipe out.

And yet, some tiny part of his mind whispered, why are they now blue?

After that day, a few rows of feathers faded from midnight black to Jotun blue. Just a handful of rows in a line straight across the middle of both wings, bending only to follow the curve of the bone. If the others noticed, they said nothing, but Odin and Frigga could deny no more that Loki wasn't theirs by blood.

Thor's changed around then, too. The gold faded to more orange tones, signaling his change from arrogant prince to gentler hero. Noticing the change only enraged Loki further, staining his blue and black with emerald envy. Seeing what his wings had become, the disappointment in Odin's gaze as Loki hung off the Bridge, he despaired of ever proving himself worthy.

So he stilled them and let go.

Their blood red splatters didn't come for nearly a year after that. Literal blood splattered them repeatedly as Thanos had him tortured. His wings were broken again and again, stabbed, dislocated, the feathers torn out. But he never once screamed, just huddled in the corner of his dark cell, because the actions didn't pain him. What difference did it make? Even when they were pristine, they were evil and damaged, so why not make it literal?

When he finally caved, agreeing to steal the Tesseract, even the humans were horrified by the scarred state of his wings. He could see it in their eyes, in the way the trained agents almost hesitated to aim their guns at him, in the way even his brainwashed lackeys tried to take care of him.

He didn't let them. He just ran his fingers across the appendages, from the bent bone to the midnight background to the blood splatters. When he saw Thor again, his wings deeper orange and just as pristine as ever, he saw only the emerald envy splotches. Thor gazed upon him, rendered momentarily speechless by the grim rainbow painted on Loki's wings.

"Brother…" he breathed, evidently forgetting they were supposed to be battling.

Loki bared his teeth. "This is who I am, Thor. I'm no one's brother."

Thor reached out an arm, as if to brush against Loki's wing, but he stopped his hand midair. "Please," he murmured, "come home. We can fix this."

"I don't need fixing!" Loki spat, readying a burst of magic. But Stark interfered then, and in short order, Loki was caged on Asgard. He put on an illusion of confidence, when he really he sat huddled in the corner once again, his wings splayed unkempt around him. If his colors changed during that year of a different kind of misery, it was for the blood and emerald to grow more apparent.

And then the guard brought him news of Mother's murder.

He shrieked his rage to the world, even though no one could hear. He destroyed his furniture, everything Mother had given him to ease his life. The blood splatters spread until they dominated his wings. The green shifted too, spreading and darkening. He told himself it was jealousy that he wasn't there to watch Odin suffer, but his heart told otherwise.

It was guilt. Pure guilt.

If Thor understood that, he said nothing. In the wake of his own pain and the situation Asgard faced, the Avenger had hardened towards Loki. Very well, then – two could play at that game. Loki focused solely on revenge, and his burgeoning plan to retake his throne.

Except, when it worked, there was no triumph. Maybe at first, but he couldn't tell anyone the throne was his. For the second time in his life, he realized what it truly meant to be alone, even at the top of the world. As time went on and he watched more and more plays of himself, the blood seeped from his wings, and the emerald took its place. Even as he sipped wine and basked in adoration, his internal monologue was a repeating mantra of guilt. Guilt for getting Mother killed, guilt for banishing Odin, guilt for deceiving Thor so cruelly.

Suddenly, Thor was back. Some of the green vanished at that, because he was no longer lying to his brother, and then Odin was calling him his son and entirely brushing off being banished. By the time he reached Sakaar, his wings were the closest to their old solid black that they had been since Jotunheim. The red was all but gone, the green not far behind, and the blue had shrunk to only a couple rows.

And on Sakaar, he met the only other person he had ever seen with black wings. Hers were coated in a layer of royal purple stars, and while those accents confused him, the black made sense, seeing as she was the Grandmaster's most successful Scrapper. The purple clicked as they were fighting and he exposed her telltale tattoo, but when he dredged up her worst memory and noticed that her wings were still black even then, the logic slid out of place again.

"Why were your wings black, even when you were a Valkyrie?" he asked as she chained him up. Not really a socially acceptable question, but she had kicked his butt and was now chaining him up as a gift for Thor – he figured he was due something.

Valkyrie glanced at him and shrugged. "Black has multiple meanings, you know."

"What good meaning could it possibly have?" Loki muttered, unwanted memories of that childhood distrust surfacing.

She just blinked at him, surprised. "Don't you know? Black means protection. Most Valkyries had black somewhere on their wings." At his look of incomprehension, she sighed quietly. "Asgard really has forgotten everything truly important."

With that, she trudged off to find Thor, leaving a stunned Loki behind. I have the same wings as a Valkyrie. Why was I never told?

You were. By Mother. Maybe not in those exact words, but she knew.

Even Hela's wings weren't black. They were pure blood red, drenched by her past deeds and her desire to slaughter more in her path to total domination. And if the truly evil child of Odin had no black on her wings… maybe it wasn't what he'd always thought. Maybe Thor was right when he went on to say that maybe there was still some good left in Loki.

Still, Loki tried to deny it. Facing Hela would only get him killed, so he tried to get out of it. But the familiar green grew again as he lay writhing on the ground, and this time, he truly allowed himself to accept that it was guilt. And that he could do something about it.

After the battle with Hela, and even after the Infinity War, the emerald and blood never entirely disappeared from Loki's wings – the guilt and villainous bloodlust were too ingrained in him now to really disappear. But they were now small flecks contained within the thin rows of Jotun, while the majority of his feathers returned to their natural midnight black. With one exception: orange now flecked the blackness, just like purple starred on Val's wings. The scars remained, now a reminder of all that he had overcome. And for the rest of his life, his coloring remained steady.

Loki was a Frost Giant, yes. There was a monster within, and given the right motive, it came lunging back to the surface. But he learned to control it, use it to his advantage, and in doing so he became more. The tricolored monster blended with the true purpose of his birth coloring, lending him the strength he needed to protect his family. The strength he needed to earn those orange stars.

With Val and Thor at his side, his wings simultaneously matching and differing from theirs, Loki relearned how to be an unstoppable force of (chaotic) good. From then on, he held his wings proudly, displaying them in all their broken glory.

A/N: I wasn't even really thinking about this as I wrote this, but True Colors by Zedd & Ke$ha is a good song for this fic