Journey into...

-slots self into this convo- how /would/loki raise babby thor if there was no other choice? 🙊 what if one day thor wants loki to play "hunt the frost giants" with him? would loki tell him about his heritage? how would babby thor react to knowing that his brother is one of the terrifying monsters in his bedtime stories?

-Anon

That’s a good question. I think Loki would do his best, but his best would be faulty in rather different ways than Odin and Frigga’s had been. I mean, not to mention that the environment would be different all around by default, with Loki raising him in probably more humble (and chaotic) circumstances than being the beloved crown prince with the run of an entire palace. 

Loki, I feel, is good with kids but not great with being in charge of anyone other than himself. So his impulse is on the far other end of the spectrum from the overbearing parent that Odin was. But, again, it would get tangled up in his existing brother issues, and his beliefs, from his own memories of their upbringing and adult!Thor’s flaws, about what babby!Thor needs. So he’d be bound to fuck it up. I don’t know exactly how, but he definitely would. 

But aside from that.

Yeah the frost giant thing would definitely come up, wouldn’t it? Assuming we’re talking MCU and not comics where Thor grew up knowing… so, OK, I don’t think Loki was ready to really deal with that conversation at any point in the MCU timeline, and having to deal with it with a kid version of his brother is not really going to improve matters. 

So if and when it happens that Thor asks to play that kind of game, Loki’s not going to just readily straighten him out. He’s not about to tell little Thor about his own origins, and he’s not likely to really push back against the idea that the frost giants are monsters, because he still kinda believes it himself.

Now, over time he’d probably try. He’d tell himself that he’s going to explain things to Thor when he’s just a little bit older. Find a way to justify this decision that doesn’t sound, in his own head, just like he imagines that conversation went between Odin and Frigga over telling him. 

And instead, sometimes, he toys with the idea of showing Thor. He thinks of it for the first time because it’s so ridiculous, the thought of wearing that form again for the amusement of a child at play, to take part in a child’s game, even—or perhaps especially—if the child is his brother. He can’t stand to see it. He hates the feel of it, the odd changes in his senses that make him feel disoriented and disconnected from everything. The sight of his own face in the mirror, in that form, turns his stomach. He hasn’t willingly taken that form more than a handful of times since he learned the truth, and never in front of anyone else. Odin was the only other living being who had seen it, however briefly. Twice. 

(Excepting, perhaps, Heimdall. Loki brushes that thought aside entirely.)

So the thought of doing so now is impossible. That’s probably why he can’t get the idea out of his head, until one day, without thinking, he simply does it.

But he lets that skin wash over him out of the blue (no pun intended), without preamble or explanation. And young Thor already knows Loki can shapeshift, so he thinks that’s all this is. His response is one of repugnance, with the hint of fascination of a small child peering at a gory wound. He exclaims in horror, covers his eyes, peeks out between his fingers. 

It’s the reaction Loki thought he was expecting, but he doesn’t expect how it stings. He doesn’t expect to have to swallow back his own dismay.

And he’s further than before from coming to grips with it himself or ever again trying to explain it to the little boy in his care, the child his brother is now.

(It’s too bad, though, because probably with a different approach, little Thor could have accepted it easily. But that would be so anticlimactic that Loki would probably be left feeling unsatisfied. It has to be a big deal. It certainly was for him…)

WHAT IF little thor scrunches his nose at loki's 'attempt' and tells him that he's got it all wrong because "jotunns aren't supposed to be that pretty"?

- Anon

See I could totally see that. But not for original kid Thor. The kid who told Odin he was going to hunt all the monsters down and slay them? Nah. 

However, if we envision a version of kid!Thor along the lines of JiM kid!Loki? One who doesn’t necessarily remember his former self and is still a child in all the ways that matter, but who has nonetheless grown since his old life. One who is still Thor, but slightly better. That Thor could definitely have such a reaction, even if he wasn’t aware of all the history there.

It would be interesting, in such a scenario, to see how Loki would take little Thor reacting in ways he isn’t expecting, and beginning to really understand that this is a new, better Thor. (I’m sure Loki would be a little sad, because he liked the old, flawed Thor, dammit! And he felt on more solid footing with him, with the knowledge of all Thor’s flaws. He’d be a little afraid that a better Thor would not love him. He’d feel… cheated, because what he would have given to have this more thoughtful Thor when he was young and impressionable himself, not now, long after he’d been broken and healed misshapen and wrong… He’s a mess, our Loki.) 

In the moment, I’m not sure how Loki would react, except I doubt he’d want to linger on it much. Deflect, change the subject, pretend it never happened. Anything other than really deal with it. 

In the moment, it’d be interesting to see how this new, better kid!Thor would respond to Loki’s attempts to deflect and not talk about it. As I’ve said, Thor already had more emotional intelligence than he’s often given credit for, so he’d realize what Loki was doing. But he would only be a kid, with only part of the story. Maybe it would end with Loki holding tight to his (currently little) brother and pretending he wasn’t crying. Maybe nothing would really change. It’s hard to say. 

There’s just so much more that needed to happen between them on that particular subject that never got resolved in canon. So many possibilities, all of them painful and fun. :’)