Upbringing and education
- Anon
It doesn’t happen quite that way. Loki doesn’t tend to leave potions lying around, and if he did, they would not be of that sort.
But at one point Loki does begin reading to Thor from Midgardian children’s books when he is too exhausted to invent his own tales, too heartsick to recite the ones they heard together years ago.
One night he reads to Thor from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it’s not long before Thor is entranced. The story is very unlike Asgardian tales. To Loki’s mind, it is slightly disorienting and he almost wonders if Thor will be frightened—the story follows no logic he can comprehend, and the little girl at the center of it seems merely a recipient of her fate, with little control of it all.
Thor doesn’t seem to notice that, or perhaps it is enough like his current situation that he simply takes it in stride. Instead, he becomes convinced that Loki should be able to do magic just like that in the story.
“Loki, could you do a spell to make me small?”
Loki taps Thor’s nose with a fingertip. “You’re already small.”
“No, I mean, small enough to talk to a mouse!”
“Mice don’t talk, Thor. It’s just a story.”
Thor’s brow knits. “Then, but you could make me big, right?”
“Ah, but if you got too big, you would barely fit in the house, and you wouldn’t want that, would you? You would have to stick your arrum out the window,” Loki jokes, repeating the strange pronunciation of the characters in the part of the tale they had just finished.
Thor doesn’t laugh, though. He continues to look pensive, and it’s a strange look on his young face. Loki still hasn’t gotten used to that; he doesn’t recall Thor having been a thoughtful child before, when they both were small together. He remembers an older brother who could barely sit still through a whole lesson and one who was more comfortable with a wooden sword in his hand than a book. This Thor is still boisterous, but there are also the calm moments, like these.
When Thor answers, his voice is very quiet. “Could you make me a grownup again?”
Loki doesn’t want to have to admit that he can’t. Thor believes in him now—back when they were enemies, Loki had forgotten how that felt, and he doesn’t want to give it up again. He also doesn’t want to disappoint Thor. But of course there is no avoiding it.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think I can, Thor. But is that so bad? Do you wish to be grown up all at once?”
Thor looks away, shrugs. “Then you wouldn’t have to take care of me.”
Something about the way he says it wrenches in Loki’s chest. “I take care of you because I want to, and because it is unimaginable that I wouldn’t help you when you need me. Why would you say that, as if you were some burden? I love you, brother.”
Thor shrugs again and cannot explain why he doubts.
Loki sets the book aside and wraps the boy in a fierce embrace, stroking his hair and murmuring words that he hopes are reassuring until Thor sighs against him and embraces him in return.
- Anon
Part of Loki wishes he could just shunt little Thor off with someone else. It sure would make things easier sometimes.
The thing is that Loki’s particular combination of arrogant egotism and obsessive protectiveness makes it impossible for him to believe that anyone else can do this job as well as he can. An ordinary Midgardian education is surely not good enough for a little Asgardian prince. They won’t teach him the things he needs to know. They will treat him like any other child, and he isn’t. Loki has envisioned it all, dropping Thor off at preschool, leaving him in the care of people who would not know how important he is, and the whole idea makes him itch.
So he takes on the task of Thor’s education himself, even though he’d be the first to admit it’s not playing to his strengths. He has to rack his brain to recall their earliest education, the string of tutors through the palace in their first few decades of life; the fact that he certainly knows his runes now doesn’t mean he recalls precisely how he learned them. Late at night he worries, lying in bed unable to find rest, his mind running around like a caged beast because he’s sure that the things he’s forgotten or never properly understood in the first place were just as much a part of those lessons as their actual content.
Loki has always been aware of his own difference. He was aware of it back then, feeling how even though he excelled in most of their studies, the way his mind worked was not exactly what his tutors expected. He is even more aware of it now, trying to recreate those lessons and finding himself pondering how Thor must have perceived it back then. How he must perceive it now.
He feels he is trying to bridge a gap without being able to see it. He worries that he’s not going to get it right.
And that is only these early lessons, which go well enough after he learns what he must do to make the subjects more appealing for his brother. After he learns not to go too long without giving Thor something physical to do, to let him try things out for himself whenever possible, talking him through the steps rather than simply giving him a list of instructions. To let him get his hands dirty. To hold him often (Loki has always been aware that his brother is tactile, but this little child Thor… it is easier to see it, now, and he doesn’t have his own answering instinct to shy away from what once seemed an overbearing demand, and thus Loki can only feel strange about everything.)
Right now, Thor may be a handful, and it’s true that Loki runs himself ragged chasing after the kid and keeping him mostly out of trouble (at least out of any trouble that isn’t Loki-approved). But what will it be like later? He doesn’t know. He needs to give Thor as near to the education he received before as possible, so that he will grow up to be at least somewhat like his old self. But how possible will that be, on this realm, with only Loki for guidance?
Loki tries not to worry about that too much as he finds a nearby playground and watches, attentive, while Thor gets out all his excess energy there.
One thing at a time.