For all you Loki fans out there…
FYI, I still can’t think Loki would ever be “nice.” I don’t know if he totally lacks empathy, but I can’t imagine him being a total good guy. An antihero, maybe. But not a good guy.
Insubstantial
Not knowing who or what you are, or what you are meant to do or become, is a nightmare with no backdoor and no awakening.
Loki knows that far better than anyone. He has never had a purpose, unlike Thor, and even when he believed that he was indeed Odin’s son he still didn’t know what he was meant to do.
If he was to say that it was Odin, or Thor, or Laufey that made him like this, it would be a lie. Because there is only one person who made him this way. And that person was Loki, no one’s son, no one’s brother, the one with no real substance of his own. Everything that Loki appeared to be was masks.
He wears and sheds those masks, those names, like snakeskin, as it pleases him, and his pleasure is aimless. He is mischievous and deceptive, but not evil. Or at least, he doesn’t mean to be. How can one be evil without a purpose?
And how could one be truly good without direction?
He hates himself, sometimes. All the time, really. It’s not exactly something that he can escape. It’s not something he can turn off. He can’t lose himself in anything. He envies his brother… anyone, really. Anyone who is oblivious to their own heroism, or to the harm they’ve done.
Ignorance may destroy them all in the end, but ignorance truly is bliss.
Every time Loki clashes with his brother or his brother’s human friends, he truly envies them. So innocent. Naïve maybe, but knowledge and power equal torment.
He envies them their ability to connect with people. Yet another thing he has never been able to do. Even the self-proclaimed narcissist still has people he lets in close, who he actually cares about.
In another life, he might have been one of them. Rather than being the enemy, he might have worn the colors of an Avenger.
As it is, he is doomed to self-loathing.
He is as cold as ice.
He doesn’t like the feeling.