Sketchbook

Disclaimer:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I don't own,

So please don't sue.

For his eighth birthday, Frigga gives him a sketchbook and colored pencils.

She isn't sure why. He has never shown any interest in drawing, only an appreciation for other people's art. But something about the green and gold cover of the blank book just screams Loki would love this, so she buys it for him.

Her intuition is correct, as it turns out. Loki's first reaction when he carefully peels off the wrapping paper is one of surprise (he'd been expecting a book that had words in it) and then one of amazement.

"Thank you!" Loki almost yells. Frigga simply smiles and hugs him.

Loki spends days at a time locked in his room alone with the sketchbook and his ever-growing collection of drawing utensils, creating.

He draws anything and everything. People he knows, people he has never met, everything he sees around him, and anything his mind can conjure: all are captured within the pages.

By his next birthday, the book is full. And Frigga gets him a new one.

Odin has no idea of his younger son's new hobby until one day when Loki is ten, the family has guests over, and Loki brings the sketchbook to dinner.

"What are you doing, Loki?" Odin asks sharply, around halfway through the meal.

"I'm drawing," Loki responds, not looking up.

"Drawing what?" Frigga asks, not because she wants him to stop, but because she is genuinely curious.

"The candles," Loki says quietly, his hand stopping as he looks her in the eye. He goes back to his drawing; Odin shakes his head, exasperated.

"I'm sorry about my son," he says to the visitors.

Erestor, the ambassador from Alfheim, accepts the apology graciously.

After dinner, though, when he's talking to Loki on the balcony beneath the stars, with nobody else to hear, he says, "Don't ever apologize for doing what you love, Loki."

This is the exact opposite of every bit of advice that Loki's father has ever given him. Usually, it's "Be polite," "Pay attention to the guests," or "Don't lock yourself in your room. Interact with other people, or they'll think you don't like them." Don't ever apologize is completely new.

"Can I see the book?" Erestor asks. When Loki looks panicked, he smiles gently. "It's alright if you don't want me to. That was a genuine question, not an order in disguise."

The smile that spreads over Loki's face says more than words ever could.

Erestor loves the drawing, and shows him how to make the light of the dripping white candles glow golden.

Loki takes the advice to heart.

When Loki is fifteen years old, his sketchbook goes missing.

He asks his family if they know what happened to it, and his father says yes.

Odin pulls the book out from inside a drawer and opens it to a page about halfway in. "What is this?" His voice is tight and controlled.

The picture is of Odin as a Jotun.

Loki swallows, but says nothing. He meets his father's gaze, and doesn't see anything there but icy cold, granite hard, rage. It's a glacier of an emotion, and his first thought is that he would show it as broken ice in the place of his father's eyes. He would have added it to the drawing in front of him if he'd thought of it.

"Well?" Odin asks. It's no longer a question, but a demand.

"It's a picture," Loki says as calmly as he can manage.

The cold rage gives way to white-hot fury, like molten iron.

"I think," says Odin through clenched teeth, "that this is more than just a picture." He rips out the page and tosses it into the fireplace. "Now, if you apologize, I might be persuaded to let you keep the rest of this book."

And suddenly, Loki's anger rises, enough to match his father's and then some, and it sets him on fire. "No."

Odin raises his eyebrow. "No?"

"No. I will never apologize for doing what I love." It's almost a word for word quote of what Erestor told him years before.

"You insolent little-" Odin spits the words.

He grabs the sketchbook, rips it in half, and throws it on the fireplace.

It hurts Loki just as much as if he'd been the one torn in two.

Loki cries himself to sleep that night, holding the front cover of the book tight to his chest.

When he wakes up, all of his old sketchbooks and art supplies have been removed from his room and burned.

Loki throws himself into learning magic, spending as much of his time as his father will allow studying in the library. It is something constructive that he does with his hands, and he particularly likes magic because it is almost entirely mental rather than physical. Just like his art.

His greatest gift lies in creating illusions, images so realistic that they look real. Drawings with my mind as medium, he thinks of them, though he doesn't share the thought. Their significance is lost on the others, but not on Loki.

Based upon outward appearances, he has all but forgotten his childhood talent. But his parents don't forget, and while Odin is watching carefully for more signs of rebellion, Frigga worries that her son is more upset than he shows.

In his room, when he knows he is alone, he builds the shining images in the air, adjusting colors so they are just right. These do not look real, and they would have no place in a deception on the battlefield; they are a form of his drawings. He loves how he can create anything he can visualize, but misses how sometimes he would intend to draw one thing and would wind up producing an image of something entirely different.

His family does not know. They could not guess. The illusions leave no record, and Loki is very careful. He has learned.

He has learned that Odin sees him, not as a person with talents and dreams, but as a thing, to be used and cast aside, and he doesn't forget that lesson. He never forgets how Thor and Frigga stood back and watched as the thing he'd loved most was ripped at the binding and thrown on a fire that was meant to temper the harshness of a cold night, not to destroy a beloved creation. To warm a heart, not to break it.

They are not his family. Not anymore.

They didn't tell him. They knew that he was a Jotun, and they didn't tell him.

They truly are not his family, by blood or by bond.

"I could have done it, Father! For-for all of us." He's hanging onto Thor's hand like it's the most precious thing in the world.

"No, Loki."

The two words are all the confirmation he needs to know that he was right all along. They do not care about him, and so he does not need to care about them.

I'd almost forgiven you.

Loki lets go and allows himself to fall into the abyss.

When Frigga goes through his room a few days later, she finds a note in Loki's careful handwriting.

I'm a person.

Not a thing.

Remember that.

Underneath is a pen sketch of a burnt book.

When she shows Odin, his only reaction is to turn away.

But Frigga knows what her eyes are telling her, and she can see the tears.