Flawed Design

Original Prompt: Write a Loki oneshot with Flawed Design.

OOO

When I was a young boy, I was honest
And I had more self-control
If I was tempted I would run

Loki giggled, as if he was doing something viciously inappropriate for a three-year-old, as they crept through the dim halls of the palace.

The bluish-morning light streamed in through the frosted glass windows, casting cobalt shadows across the walls. Loki thought they rather looked like Jotun, the blood-thirsty monsters he feared more than anything. If he had come by himself, he would have never dared take another step forward, but he was not alone.

The boy squeezed his brother's hand. Thor looked down and smiled at the little boy. "It's alright, Loki, we'll be back before dawn, and Father will never notice."

That wasn't quite what Loki had been afraid of, but Thor's familiar, soft voice made it all better. Always.

---

"Brother, how on Asgard do you stand the cold?"  

Loki looked up from the snow-castle he was making, curiously. "Not cold." He declared.

Even with the cold, Thor couldn't help smile at his little brother, still too young to form complete sentences.

"Sthno." Loki pointed at the flakes falling all around.

"Yes, Loki, it's snowing." It was the first snow, always the most beautiful, as it coated the green Asgard land with a layer of white, so pure Thor didn't want to step on it. Not that it stopped Loki, though. The kid ran through the waist-deep snow like there was nothing there. "Snow. Say snow."

"Thhhhno. Loki  tried to pronounce the "s", tried so hard it sounded like he was blowing raspberries.

"Alright Loki. Thno. Happy?" Thor gave in. Loki gave a delighted squeal and ran over to Thor. Thor looked at Loki's flushed face - flushed, for Odin's sake, in temperatures under zero Celsius – and tried not to grin like a fool. His little brother was so absolutely adorable, and Thor wanted to scoop Loki into his arms and hug him-

Or wring his neck, Thor thought a few minutes later, shrieking on the ground as Loki stuffed snow down his shirt.

The two boys tumbled around in the snow, Thor becoming slowly used to the cold. They had the most marvelous time flinging snowballs at each other before a shrill voice rang across the courtyard.

"Boys! What in Helheim are you doing at this hour?!"

Loki squeaked, ducking behind Thor.

Frigga was standing at the gates of the palace, soft, delicate features marred with disapproval and anger.

"I'm sorry, mother," Thor stood up straight, like a soldier facing punishment.

"It is four-thirty in the morning, you two should be in bed! Thor, what kind of big brother are you, to be dragging Loki around in the dead of the night-

"No!" Loki pushed past Thor's restraining hand. "Loki wanted see thnow. Not Thor's fault."

"Loki?" Thor whispered. That wasn't the truth at all. Thor had quite literally, as their mother said, dragged Loki out of bed. But to be fair, they had both wanted to see the snow that so rarely fell in Asgard.

"So you wanted to see snow?" Frigga knelt before Loki. "Aren't you cold?"

"No," Loki peeked up at Frigga from under his lashes, the perfect puppy-eyes image. Frigga felt her stern expression soften.

"No, Mother, don't punish Loki, I was the one who-"

"Punish?" Frigga exclaimed, "oh, I watched you two just now, and I think losing to a girl in a snowball fight will be punishment enough."

Loki giggled and ducked, nimble and quick-thinking as always. Thor didn't get his mother's meaning until a pile of wet, cold snow slapped him across the face.

---
Thor got hypothermia for a week afterwards, but he didn't care, especially since Loki stayed in his room all day and read stories to him, in that stammering, awkward speech of his.

It was the most fun he'd had in his life.

OOO

Then when I got older
I began to lie to get exactly
What I wanted, when I wanted it.

OOO

"Santa Claus isn't here yet."

Was Thor's reply when Loki asked him why he wasn't sleeping.

Thor was ten, Loki eight, and sometimes Loki wondered if perhaps their ages had been mixed up. Because since five, Loki had realised there was no such thing as Santa.

"Very funny, brother." Loki crawled into the bottom bunk, deciding that it was quite impossible Thor was serious. "Go to sleep."

"No, I want to wait for Santa."

Loki paused for a second. "You are not jesting, Thor?"

"Jesting?"

Loki made an annoyed sound. "THOR! Did mother drop you on your head when you were young?"

"Not that I remember, why?"

Yep, Thor couldn't POSSIBLY be older than him.

"Everyone knows Santa Claus doesn't exist!"

Thor took in a sharp breath. "How can you say that, Loki?! Were you the one who spread this vile rumor to Fandral and Sif?"

"See, even your friends understand." Loki stood on his tiptoes and peered at Thor through the railings. "There. Is. No. Santa. Claus."

"This is why he's not coming, Loki." Thor's bottom lip trembled. "He's sad no one believes in him anymore."

He didn't even look ashamed, Loki realised. He's not even denying that he believed wholly in a made-up character.

If Loki could get this story out to the other children, the Golden Prince's life would be ruined for at least a few months.

"Just go to sleep, Thor." Loki plopped back into his bed.

Thor gave a long, stifling sob above him.

Loki sighed.

---

Thor stayed awake till Loki's breathing became soft and inaudible.

And the door opened, slowly.

Thor almost fell off the bed in joy, as a big figure came in, but the boy managed to stay very, very still. He'd heard that the man wouldn't leave any presents for children that were awake.

After that the man left, leaving a single green box on the desk, labeled with the young Thunder God's name.

Thor ripped off the packaging, and was so overjoyed to see a new toy sword, that he didn't notice Loki's bed was empty.

OOO

Now, I'm having trouble
Differentiating between
What I want and what I need
To make me happy

OOO

"Loki didn't get me any presents!" Thor wailed as he burst into his parents' room, dragging a steely-faced Loki behind.

Odin sat up in his bed, blinking in the morning light. "That was rather mean of you, Loki. Why didn't you?"

Loki pursed his lips and glared.

"At least Santa gave me the best present ever." Thor huffed.

"Santa-?" Frigga glanced at Odin. "Did you dress up this year?"

"No, I thought the boys were too old for it."

"Did Heimdall?"

"He wasn't in Asgard yesterday."

"Then who-"

Odin caught the glint in Loki's eyes.

"Thor, could you leave for a minute while I have a talk with Loki?"

Thor gave Loki the smug you're-going-to-be-scolded look, before backing out of the room.

"So, Loki, you've learnt to shape-shift?"

Loki looked up with a start, realised what the Allfather was saying, and broke into a smile.

---

Thor, for all the life of him, could not understand why Loki and Odin spent the rest of the day in the training room.

OOO

So instead of thinking, I just act
Before I have a chance to contemplate
The consequence of action

OOO

There was an annual sparring competition every four years in Asgard.

Thor, having been sick on that precise day for both of the past two competitions, was determined to win this year.

Unfortunately, so was Loki.

Loki had honed his magic skills most dilligently, after he'd lost to Sif the previous year. Sif did not stand a chance. The Warriors Three did not either. No one did.

Except, perhaps, the God of Thunder.

Loki did not want to lose. Especially not to his brother.

When Thor suddenly became violently ill, from eating a cake left at his door, no one suspected Loki.

Loki, indeed, did win that year. But when he took his trophy to show Thor, Thor simply went pale, and managed the tiniest "congratulations", and burst into tears.

Odin told Loki, later on, that it was the last year that Thor could enter the contest. Four years later, Thor would turn sixteen, and the age limit for the contest was fifteen years.

Loki had walked back numbly to his room, the trophy still clutched in one shaking hand.

If Odin saw Loki's trophy in the dustbin the next day, he didn't question it.

OOO

I lie, not because I want to
But I seem to need to all the time

OOO

"You give up the Tesseract; you give up this poisonous dream. You come home, Brother."

I will, brother. Loki wanted to say, the words sticking in his throat. I want to. Go home to back when we were still brothers, when I didn't know of this treacherous blood in my veins.

But it was too late.

It was always too late.

So Loki settled for hurting Thor, because what misery didn't love company?

"I have no home."

Lies are double-edged swords.

It wasn't the first one Loki had told, but it was the one that cut himself deepest.

OOO

And ever since I figured out
That I could control other people
I've had trouble sleeping
With both eyes closed

OOO

Loki gasped for air, remembering how behind those bright, bright, bright blue eyes, the man had begged for release.

In the archer's mind, he was begging for death.

Loki wiped a hand across his sweaty cheek, clawed so hard he drew blood.

Two were enough, Loki decided. Thor's friend Selvig, and the hunter Barton.

They called it brain-wash, Loki thought it was more like torture.

Unless someone forced his hand, he would not use the scepter for it again.

OOO

But never take advice from someone
Who just admitted to being devious
Who just confessed to treason

OOO

Loki wanted to go home. Truly, he did. When he found himself in the helicopter, with a super-soldier and the infamous mortal genius-scientist glaring down at him, he was fully prepared to tell them where the Tesseract was.

Then Thor came.

And as usual, thunder crushed everything, ripped everything apart.

Loki remembered. He didn't have a home. It was all a fantasy, a myth as ridiculous as Santa Claus.

Loki smiled bitterly as he remembered scorning Thor for believing.

Why, he himself was no better, believing in such a huge lie for almost a few hundred thousand years.

OOO

And I would also never ask a question
That I cannot ask myself
For it might dirty up your conscience

OOO

The mortals were bloody fools.

It was so easy to get out of the glass cage, Loki almost laughed.

He took a rather pleasant stroll through the Helicarrier, invisible, and had a little fun scaring the agents with flying objects.

Then he reached the room labeled "Doctor Banner".

Ah, the beast he had talked about in the cage, the one Nick Fury had shifted uncomfortably at when Loki mentioned it.

Loki stood by his bedside, watching.

He didn't look very beastly.

Perhaps Hawkeye was wrong?

And then the man had woke with a start, eyes wide, and Loki saw the panic, the sorrow and pain and regret and devastation, all in those brown eyes before they started to go green.

Loki didn't think it would be very healthy for either of them, or anyone on the ship, in fact, if the man went beast-mode.

Quickly, he weaved a calming spell. Banner stopped shaking, went limp in Loki's grip, eyes dead and blank. Loki made sure the man was still breathing, before setting him back down on the bed.

"You will remember none of this."

The man nodded numbly.

Loki opened his mouth to talk, but everything crammed in his throat and wouldn't get out.

What does it feel like?

You understand how I feel, don't you?

You call me crazy, but honestly, who are you to judge me?

You are just as much of a monster as I am.

In the end, Loki turned and strode off.

---

"I had the weirdest dream last night," Bruce said, as he and Tony worked over the scepter.

In the glass cage, two floors above the lab, Loki smiled a small bitter smile.

OOO

And how can you say those things
How can you still believe?

And how can you say those things
And keep a straight face?

OOO

"Loki, you are my son." Odin gingerly put his hands on Loki's shoulders. The younger God shook them off.

Defeated, tied up, sore all over, humiliated, and sent off without the drink he had been promised, Loki was in a very bad mood.

"If you are to lie, Allfather," Loki muttered, "at least make it believable."

"Not by blood, no." Odin made a small smile. "Loki, I chose you. I looked at you, and decided to choose you that day, in Jötunheimr, and that is even more than I can say for Thor."

Thor made a grunt at that back of the room.

Loki blinked. "Odin, if you are saying that you still accept me as family, you are utterly insane."

"You tried to eradicate the Jotun," Odin said. "And it was what I had taught you two at a young age. That Jotun were evil and monsters. It is my fault, Loki. I am sorry."

"You… you still consider me a …s-son?" Loki's voice broke, but he was beyond caring.

"Yes, Loki Odinson."

Loki's lip quivered. "You. You are an insane old man."

"Oh, you have been spending too much time on Midgard, my boy." Odin chuckled. "Have you forgotten that insanity runs in the family?"

Odin, Frigga, Thor, Loki.

The royal family of Asgard.

There had always been mishaps and quarrels, but now it had become whole again, like it always did, a few thousand years ago, a few hundred thousand years ago.

Like it always will.

---

The hologram of the happy family of four disappeared into the mist.

I lie, not because I want to
But I seem to need to all the time

It was a nice thought, but it was just that. A dream, a thought, a little piece of imagination, all Loki had left, as he stared through the glass walls of the Midgardian cell, seeing nothing but metal and wires beyond.

I lie and I don't even know it.

Loki lay back and sighed from the exertion of producing such a detailed illusion, one capable of even fooling himself for just a second back there. He had even reproduced each part of Odin's armor, each soft silk thread of Frigga's dress perfectly.

"Brother, it is time for us to return to Asgard." Thor called from outside the cell. Loki quickly wiped the small smile off his face, one he didn't even know he was wearing.

I lie and if I could control it,
Maybe I could leave it all behind.

"Very well, Thor." Loki hated himself, for kindling even the smallest hope for himself that Father and Mother… No, Odin and Frigga, would possibly still accept him.

Maybe this is all part of my flawed design.

Before he stepped out of the cell, Loki thought could still see the four figures reflected in the glass walls of the prison, smiling at each other, the way they had for countless years.

Loki was sure the wetness in his eyes was from staring at the wall too hard.

I lie and I don't even know it.

"Sentiment," Loki muttered to himself, cast one last look at the glass, and left.

Maybe this is all part of my flawed design.