Thor: Ragnarok (Loki’s Version)
Summary: Thor: Ragnarok from the perspective of Loki Silvertongue
Author’s Note: Please remember that the opinions of characters do not reflect the opinions of authors, even when they are meant to be a sympathetic protagonist. I love Loki but he has a different moral compass than many people would be comfortable with and I am not going to pretend that he has the same opinions that I do because it would make me feel better about liking him as a character. That said, I fully intend for his character to grow and change in the sequel story to this Snap Back to the Past, where he will move beyond the antihero into the hero realm. He’s still gonna be a little bitch though because I wouldn’t love him otherwise.
Thor: Ragnarok (Loki’s Version)
“So he’s gone?”
Loki and Thor stood, armed and tense, looking at the woman who was supposedly their sister. Or Thor’s sister, at least. She had no tie to Loki at all.
“That’s a shame. I would’ve liked to have seen that.”
Her tone was of affected indifference, but Loki could sense a strong undercurrent of fury. This woman was full of anger, and this interaction needed a delicate touch, not—
“You must be Hela. I am Thor, son of Odin.”
“Really? You don’t look like him.”
“Perhaps we can reach an arrangement.” Loki interjected smoothly. If he could reign in Thor, this did not need to turn into a fight. He certainly held no love for Odin himself, and any good will that the man had managed to build up for himself had vanished when Loki realized that the Allfather had locked away his first born with no regrets and had zero intention of warning Loki or anyone else that she would return upon his death.
“You sound like him.” Hela replied coolly, and that brought Loki up short. He was uncomfortable at Hela’s observations— removing Thor’s connection to Odin and reinforcing his.
“Kneel.”
“Beg your pardon?” Loki almost forgot that he was trying to be diplomatic. He did not kneel before anyone. Yet as Hela manifested her blade he knew in an instant what Thor was about to do, and with certainty that it would not end well. There had to have been a reason that Odin only imprisoned Hela.
Once she destroyed Mjolnir, that was when Loki knew they were severely outclassed. Thor had made the wrong call, and now they would suffer. Fighting Hela was useless, and so he did the only thing that occurred to him—he called the bifrost.
In retrospect, he realized, as Hela cast him out through a tear in the rainbow and he traveled through a rip that felt frighteningly like the void, that was probably not the best idea he had ever had.
—
The place Loki landed was unfamiliar. The hall was grand, luxurious. Whoever had built it—or rather had it built—clearly had a great deal of wealth at their disposal. Therefore it would not do for him to be seen in anything less than his best.
Loki made sure that nothing of his recent brush with the goddess of death—her solid thrashing of him and Thor could hardly be called a battle—showed outwardly on his person. His hair fell in smooth waves, his armor was polished. This was a place he had never been before, and the diversity of species he could see around himself indicated that he was somewhere far from Asgard and the Nine. The place where he had been raised was incredibly prejudiced against outsiders, and those within the Nine all took the same basic shape. It was a feature of their worlds springing from the common source of the Yggdrasil.
He spared a thought for Asgard and scowled internally. So many years, wasted. He had invested a lot into his time as Odin. The work of a King was not easy, and he wondered why any part of him had ever wanted the throne. Preparing their worlds for Thanos was hard, and a large part of him just wanted to give it all up. Especially now that Hela had the intention to take back Asgard. She had utterly destroyed Mjolnir, did Thor not realize what that meant?
Loki remembered the stories from when it had been gifted to Thor. The weapon had not been crafted for him. Mjolnir had belonged to another, someone Odin had refused to name, only saying that she was a fearsome warrior who had lost the use of the hammer when no longer considered worthy. The story was meant to be a cautionary tale, so that Thor would always be sure to stay true to who he was and to the hammer. Yet Loki now realized the truth. Mjolnir had been Hela’s.
Loki wondered what the true spell was upon Mjolnir. How did Odin judge “worthiness”? What was his standard? Getting into Odin’s psyche felt impossible. The man could not be predicted, which was why pretending to be him was so difficult. He knew that many were not convinced, but they seemed to be fine with his rule. Interestingly, they seemed to prefer his rule. Loki was baffled, but he could not pretend it did not please him.
He had Heimdall, the warrior’s three, and Sif stripped of their posts due to treason, of course. Even if he were truly Odin that was the only natural. As a matter of fact it was the council who had suggested it, though he was certain that the five of them suspected that he was not Odin and thus were convinced he did so in order to stop them from exposing him, the fools. Did they not realize the severity of what they had done?
Disobeying the direct orders of the Allfather on multiple occasions was treason and they were lucky to keep their heads! The sheer entitlement had Loki seething. Yet at the same time, there was a part of him that still counted Sif and the warrior’s three as his own friends, despite the fact that they had not always treated him as well as they treated Thor.
They had not always disregarded him, had not always distrusted him. The five of them had grown up together, had fought together, had depended on each other more than anyone else. The four were not only Thor’s shield brethren, once they had also been Loki’s. When had that trust been broken? When had it all fallen apart?
Loki was not one to dwell on what ifs. He could not change the past, he could only move forward. The four of them clearly held no love for him any longer, that could not be more clear. They had shown a certain amount of shock at his “death” and appeared to genuinely mourn him, which he found surprising. Still, it did not stop him from casting them out of the court. None of them had visited him even once while he was imprisoned, and worse than that if anyone would be able to tell that he was acting in place of Odin it would be one of the four.
But Loki was not in Asgard any longer. This place was wholly unfamiliar to him, and while he felt echoes of the branches of the Yggdrasil it was not nearly strong enough for him to feel comfortable attempting to skywalk to somewhere more familiar. He would almost certainly be able to manage short-range movements across whatever planetoid he had found himself on once he was more familiar with the area. Before he could do so however he needed to know just where he was.
—
Adjusting to life on Sakaar was incredibly easy. After careful observation Loki had established that the trash planet was controlled by a person called “The Grandmaster” which meant that if Loki wanted to have a comfortable life he needed to get on their good side and stay there.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on where one’s place in the hierarchy was, the Grandmaster had a habit of collecting things and people. Loki found the practice of enslavement distasteful at best, and he highly disapproved of people being forced to fight for their lives in the name of entertainment. Yet he knew that he was not in a position of power at this point to do anything to change the way things worked on Sakaar.
Loki would freely admit to the fact that his morals were much more flexible than others, and he was not afraid to look the other way when the stakes were high enough that others needed to be sacrificed for his goals. He refused to apologize for it either, because going down the road that acknowledged his feelings of guilt was too much to bear. So he did his best to cozy up to the Grandmaster. In a matter of weeks he had instilled himself as an adviser, a confidant, and a lover. Loki was no stranger to mixing business with pleasure, and he saw no problem with sleeping his way to the top. He knew that there were many others, especially on Midgard he had noticed, who disapproved of this practice but he was known as silvertongue for a reason.
The Grandmaster was erratic, untrustworthy, petty, chaotic, easy to anger, cruel, and if Loki was being honest the danger of it all only added to his attraction to the man. Oh he would betray him in a heartbeat given enough incentive, but their dalliance was one of the best he had enjoyed in centuries.
He was almost sad when Thor showed up and he remembered that the goddess of death was out to destroy Asgard. He half-heartedly tried to convince Thor to make a life with him on Sakaar instead of going to fight her—the Grandmaster was insane but he was also really good in bed, and had provided Loki with excellent accommodations in his palace—but in the end Thor was right to leave.
When Thor began his escape with the Hulk Loki knew they would need help leaving the planet, and so he resolved to help them get off-world before finding himself a ship of his own and leaving through a different route. The Valkyrie messed that up of course, but he still managed to almost give Thor the slip with his “betrayal” while in the shipyard.
Thor using the electric shock on him was both a surprise and not. He knew that his brother had lost almost all trust in him, but it still filled him with dismay to realize it. He was also frustrated to have not seen it coming. Thor, who was always so predictable had done something that Loki could never have seen coming.
Perhaps that was why Loki decided to go to Asgard after all, to rescue the Asgardians, to fight Hela. The other’s had taken a ship that was far too small, should evacuation be needed, and besides, he always did have a flair for the dramatic.
—
As Loki prepared to start Ragnarok—to rebirth Sutr in the eternal flame, to fulfill the prophecy that had only been whispered about—he paused to see the tesseract sitting innocently in the vault. Looking around he saw all sorts of treasures, items that had been pillaged from wars, stolen from broken worlds.
His eyes became fixed to the casket of ancient winters.
Loki lit the flame, and started Ragnarok, skywalking out of the vault back to the rainbow bridge in order to avoid Sutr’s wrath. Hela and Sutr could destroy each other and Asgard in the process. What did he care? Something bitter manifested itself in the back of his throat as he realized that the prophecy that he would destroy Asgard were in a way, true. That it was done on Thor’s orders, well who really cared about that in the end?
And if the casket of ancient winters and the tesseract were in his pocket dimensions then no one would ever know but him….
Right?
Author’s Note 2: TO BE CLEAR enslavement is more than slightly distasteful!! Loki has not quite internalized that because they spend most of their time presenting as a white man & due to shapeshifting abilities is perceived as cis in every presentation. They also grew up in a privileged position as a prince of an empire that controls entire realms and was built on bloody conquest. They have lived for over a thousand years and honestly it needs to be consistently addressed that just because they are a fave that doesn’t mean that they would necessarily be an exception to Asgard being stagnant and bigoted in some respects.
Next Chapter: It’s the end… and also the beginning?