To Be Reborn The Butterfly

Dinner time with the family is just painful. Neither Loki nor Thor can bring themselves to look at one another let alone speak. Frigga and Odin chalk it up to embarrassment and nothing more. Loki’s anger for Thor festers in the silence and she makes the decision to find something else to obsess about. Thor had pretty much consumed her thoughts since the day she was……born? A couple of children skip by in the dining hall and Loki has a sudden realization.

She has absolutely no memory of having ever been small. In fact she can’t remember anything from before a little over 3 months ago. How old is she? These people say they found her as a baby to raise as their own, but what the hell happened to her childhood? Why is it that she as an adult woman is just now learning how to read? How to speak? How to cut her own damn steak! An all-consuming fear envelopes Loki as she considers the logical possibility that she doesn’t remember these things because her memories were taken from her. What if they are actually kidnappers? What if she is just a hostage, willed into quiet submission by rendering her so dependent on these people she had no choice but to comply.

“Mother when is my birthday?” Frigga and Odin share a look.

“It is 4 months from now.”

“And how old am I?”

“ You are 3,247 years old.” Frigga answers. Loki stares at her stunned. She CAN’T be that old. What the hell happened to her life! “Loki my angel, the time has come for us to explain who that man in the painting is.”

The Royal Family stands abruptly and excuses themselves early from the evening meal. Thor follows behind though he says nothing. They file into the King and Queens private quarters for a very long talk.

XxXxXxXxXx

Loki looks around her room, like really LOOKS around her room for the first time. She sleeps in this room every night and yet it is filled with things that she doesn’t remember. Like the men’s clothing in her closet there are things, books, and trinkets tucked everywhere. They all had some personal significance to the man she used to be.

Her eyes are drawn to the many bookshelves in her room. She pulls out one of the books that appears to have been read repeatedly. It is a book of spells. She thumbs through it briefly before putting it back. She opens another, this one is an anatomy book covering all the dominant species of the 9 realms. Jotunn are among them. She finds a book of poetry with a flower pressed into it and wonders if it had belonged to a woman he’d loved. She spends hours opening each and every single book, but none tell her of the private thoughts of the man she was.

He’d been executed, sentenced to die by the man she calls Papa. He’d been captured and brought home to face said execution by the man she lusts for, the man she calls brother. Thor. Frigga had been powerless to stop this chain of events from unfolding any other way. These people love her just as assuredly they must have loved HIM. Odin had listed off the reasons Loki was put to death, but the details, the pain extracted from those events was widely glossed over. Like the pain in Thor’s eyes.

Loki betrayed Thor and tried to kill him. Loki almost succeeded in committing genocide against his own species. Loki murdered thousands of innocent mortals in a bid for power and a throne. WHY? Odin, Thor, and Frigga tried to explain it but it seems they themselves didn’t fully understand Loki’s motivations either. Loki looks at the large desk dominating her room and tugs on the middle drawer in front. It is locked.

Loki looks around the room. The key has to be stashed somewhere, and not in an obvious place either, though she checks them anyway. Loki spends an hour ransacking her room to no avail. She spends another hour trying to pry the desk draw open, but again fails. She plops down on her bed about to concede defeat for the evening when she spies a book on the bookshelf. The Key to Understanding and Mastering Magic. Could it really be that simple? She pulls the book from the shelf again and opens it to find nothing inside. Just like last time. Her fingers graze across the picture of the key that is on the spine of the book, and something happens. The drawer in the desk makes a definite clicking sound. Ah ha!

Loki runs to the desk and pulls the drawer open. Inside is a very large and very thick book. It is hand written and stuffed full of pages of spells, secret information, and personal thoughts. It is the gold mine she has been looking for.

It takes weeks for Loki to read through the entire book. It doesn’t help that she hasn’t quite mastered her reading skills yet. She doubles down. Loki is seldom seen outside her room, often forgetting to eat or sleep. Frigga lets her. The girl is trying to rediscover herself. But Frigga is worried, they all are. At what point does learning who you were affect who you are? Odin fears she will take up his old grievances.

It isn’t until Sif shows up to drag her outside in the sunshine that Loki realizes she’s been isolating herself.

“I’ve been sent to try and coax you out of hiding.” Sif says.

“Why you?”

“Your parents and brother believe that you might be more forthcoming with your thoughts if you talked to someone who isn’t family.”

“Yes, but I could hardly call you my friend. I don’t even really know who you are.” Loki says to Sif.

“Then that is both our faults. Neither one of us has made an effort.”

“And you wish to make an effort now? I’m busy. I have 3000 years of training and education to
relearn.”

“Either you come with me now and pretend to fawn over the men beating the hell out of one another at the training grounds, or Odin is going to come in here and burn all of your spell books.”

“The East training field or the West training field?”

“Thought that would get your attention.”

XxXxXxXx

“My former body was just as slender and light as it is now, from what I can tell from my old clothes. These men are so much larger compared to me. What was my preferred weapon?”

“Daggers, magic, ….. and deception.”

“Ah, the weapons of the weak, of women, and of the dishonorable. What are simple throwing daggers when compared to the might of Mjolnir. I’m beginning to understand why I was so bitter. It is funny, I could take up all those same weapons again, only now I would be a venerated sorceress, and an elegant fighter for my sex.”

“Aye, daggers would be a proper choice for a princess and lady of the court.” Sif say sardonically.

“Surely his magic was helpful in times of mortal peril?”

“It was.”

“Was he ever praised for it?” Loki asks. Sif thinks on it. Now that Loki, THAT Loki, is dead Sif can honestly answer questions like this.

“Not as much as he should have been. Loki was rarely given glory on the same level as Thor. His powers were more feared than respected.”

“Because he was a man wielding woman’s magic?”

“Yes.” Sif says as a bitter taste fills her mouth. All these little things about the old Loki are adding up to paint a picture of a sad and lonely man who wasn’t accepted even by his closest friends. Sif feels a pang of guilt fill her heart.

“You of all people should have understood the hurdles he was facing. Were the two of you very close?”

“No, In fact I used the fact that I could fight in a manly way that he could not against him repeatedly. I needed someone to build my image up against in the eyes of the other men. And I still hated him for what he did to my hair.”

“What did he do to your hair?”

“I used to be blonde.” Sif says.

“Really? It’s funny, I can’t picture you as a blonde.” Loki pauses for a moment. “These people are never going to see me as anyone other than the Prince of Lies are they?” Loki looks out at the people around them.

“You will always be the Jotunn traitor responsible for the destruction of the Bifrost. You will always be the Trickster. Even now you are STILL the God of Chaos, Mischief, and Lies. Those powers still reside in you.”

“And what of Thor?”

“What about Thor?”

“That day… when we were all last here at the training fields. I was wearing that dress and Thor ran off and I glared at you. I caught Thor fucking one of the maids in his room. Afterwards, he tried to apologize to me. He kissed me. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, he really didn’t have anything to apologize for. He did nothing wrong. I’m his sister… I suppose. He isn’t supposed to have those kinds of feelings for me.”

“So then why did he kiss you?”

“Why indeed?”

XxXxXxXxXx

“We need to talk.” Loki shuts the door to Thor’s room behind her. Thor looks like a frightened doe.

“Yes. Of course. What do you want to talk about?” He gulps audibly.

“I know you are sexually attracted to me. Is that something new or did you feel that way before I became a woman.” Loki asks him pointedly. Her bluntness stuns him, and Thor stutters to find an answer, but he can’t. He just stares at her and his silence is deafening.

“You loved me even then didn’t you? And not in a brotherly way either. Is that why you were so quick to forgive? You said you begged him to have a change of heart, even in the middle of the battle you said you beseeched him. When did you know that he was lost to you?”

“When you stabbed me in the ribs with one of your daggers.” Thor says, his face etched with pain and loss.

“My being remade into a woman must have been a dream come true for you.” Loki says evenly. Thor swallows hard. He knows that tone of voice. This conversation is about to go very bad very quickly.

“Yes.” He cries. Loki’s eyes glaze over with tears as well. This man has done nothing but loved her since she can first remember, and she is about to break his heart.

“I’ve learned a lot about my former self these past many weeks Thor, but the most important thing I have learned is that I will never break free of my former life if I stay here. I can’t get myself wrapped up in you. I don’t even have an identity of my own, and I don’t want to be who I was. Because who I was, he was a miserable lonely man filled with murderous vengeance and hate. I don’t want to turn into that, and I can’t become someone whose whole existence is based on being loved by you. I need to be my own person and I don’t know who that is, and I won’t find out so long as I’m surrounded by people who are incapable of seeing me as anyone other than that man. I need to leave Asgard.”

Notes

I had to do it! Loki cannot relearn what it means to be Loki if she is being fucked by Thor every night in a happily ever after. Up next-Avengers Drama!