[ EU ] Loki finds himself able to pick up Thor 's hammer .

** [ I'm writing in the MCU rather than Norse myth universe, because reasons, and also because that way I can imagine Tom Hiddleston ] ** 
 
 It is an odd weight. 
 
 He shifts it in his hand, trying to find the balance point, that perfect place where it will rest evenly, but no matter where he shifts it, it tips away from him. The thought briefly amuses him, but no more than a quirk at the edge passes his lips. 
 
 It is, of course, a two handed weapon, meant to be wielded thus -- carried with one massive hand just under the head, as his brother does so naturally, so easily, as if it costs him nothing. As unassuming as if it were his hand, or some further part of his arm, swinging with the firm and obvious clomp of his gait. Loki's hand is slimmer, longer, perhaps, but conducive more to spell-work than this: the blunt and oppressive weight of the dead-star hammer, and her mighty heft. 
 
 `` You always did hate me,'' he murmurs, looking over the slate grey uru metal, the sigils carved into it by a hand now long forgotten, lost in the ether of the tetherless cosmos. 
 
 He remembers the first day that Odin brought her from the vault. 
 
 His father -- what he had thought to be his father -- set the hammer down, head first with the leather bound handle sticking up, and looked over at the two of them with that ragged grin, that wide and white thing that had always come out to play when the sun shone on Thor's golden hair, but stayed locked behind mutterless lips whenever Loki dared to call for him. Pride, Loki knew, was a limited thing, and there had only ever been enough in Odin for one of them. 
 
 The old man had set the hammer down and smiled, waved his arms out as he came to them, telling them both the story of her forging -- fairy-tales, Loki was sure, the story of Mjolnir's making so long gone that even the civilization that made her had been erased from the stars. But Loki had believed him then, going through a particular phase at the time -- some attempt to win his father's approval by being particularly sycophantic, an eager smile for every glance, an attentive ear for every word. 
 
 Loki curls his lips, curls his fingers too, flexing around the handle, feeling the grip and tensity of the leather, worn so smooth and warm by Thor's kind hand. In indirect connection rankles him, as does the muted longing that cries out weakly, as it always does, a pathetic creature he has yet to discover how to kill. 
 
 They had been boys, back then. Thor a meager two decades older than him, but more settled in his bones. He had been working at his training in the Glima, muscle just beginning to wrap whip-cord around his bones, gather in the crannies of his boyish form. Loki, a meager two decades younger, was skinny as a broomhandle, everything gawky and angular, and no matter how Tyr yelled at him in the Glima and no matter how he tried to fit their mold, his body seemed to refuse, growing him long and lanky, as if it thought itself a vine trying to creep up the palace walls. 
 
 Now, of course, he knew the truth. 
 
 Back then, he had snuck out of his rooms at night to press every inch of himself on the rack and the mats, trying to gain whatever advantage his brother seemed to have tumbled so easily into. Back then, he had woken up sore and wretched in the mornings, pulling his hair into a messy plait, only to withstand Tyr's scorn when he could not even lift a broadsword, the other boys smiling behind pursed lips, knowing better that to speak ill of their prince in his presence, but Loki already knew the bitten off words that hid behind their teeth. 
 
 Back then, when they had just been boys but not quite children, Odin had walked into their shared parlor and set a hammer down, and told them she would only come to he who was worthy. 
 
 It had been a lie. Loki supposes that his mother would have termed it'a story', but as far as Loki could tell, that was only what it was called when people wanted to permiss. When Loki's tongue spake it, it was a lie. 
 
 His father had told them that the hammer was cursed. In truth, that event would not occur for many hundreds of years, not until Thor had finally broken into the old man's ire and been banished to Midgard, and Odin had made true the curse he'd once made story, and sent the hammer hurling after him. *Then* she remained unbudging. *Then* she would not move for any but he she found worthy. But before, she had just been a hammer. But Loki remembers believing. 
 
 Loki remembers straining and pulling, yanking with all his might. In retrospect, he's certain that the hammer must have moved *somewhat*, though for the life of him he remembers her as stone, an implacable test unable to be passed. 
 
 But Thor moved her. 
 
 With that same determination that won him every smile, every accolade. With that same forthright sense of self, that unwavering and unyielding confidence that he truly was as golden as they all thought him, with that same untroubled, beautiful swagger that had so easily bought Loki's love, tumbling after every footstep -- 
 
 With all that made Thor *Thor*, the braggart had picked the hammer up. Barely got it a few inches off the ground, Loki thinks with a huff, but in his memory it might as well have been hefted over the oaf's head. Loki had been in awe. Until Odin had swept in to embrace his sun, and Loki's sky blackened once more, the venomous sting of failure sinking into his cold, Jotun flesh. 
 
 Loki wonders if that was when it began to pollute him -- shift from mere envy and pain into something dark and living, slithering inside of him, so that each dose of that poison only built upon the last, until he was made of it, until he was consumed. 
 
 Now, in this room, in this same parlor, he stands. He stands within the golden pillars and the terraced halls of Asgard, no prisoner but a king, and looks at the hammer in his hand. 
 
 This is not the hammer he tried to lift as a boy, dense as a dying star but still just a hammer. 
 
 This is the sly creature cursed with Odin's words. 
 
 *Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor. * 
 
 Loki licks his thin lips, runs them through his teeth. She hums with ancient power, something old enough that she learned a little of living herself, and there is that age old temptation in Loki, that gnawing need for mischief, that wants to reach out and play. To touch her power with his seiðr, to see how he can twist it, to make it maliable in his hands. 
 
 But there's something that dogs him -- a smooth portion of leather, flattened over time by the press of a thumb, and Loki rubs his own over it, back and forth, back and forth. His hand is cold, warmth fleeing him as it always did, thin fingers like the breeze on a late autumn day. But within the leather there is a warmth. Old sunlight shining on golden memory -- the notion of a sun warmed field and his mother's skirts, and two little boys too exhausted to laugh. The notion of -- 
 
 `` Father?'' 
 
 Thor's voice interrupts him, the fool never knowing how to enter a room with any grace. Loki half-turns, looking over at his once-brother with Odin's one-eye. The hammer rests in his hand, almost like it was meant to be there. 
 
 But not quite. 
 
 `` Old memories,'' he says with Odin's grumbled voice, smiles with an old man's yearning for yester-year, and Thor smiles too, the memories of Frigga's funeral still too close to let nostalgia go. 
 
 `` Come, Father,'' Thor continues. `` The council waits -- it must be decided what is to be done with the Aether, now that our war is at its close.'' 
 
 `` I shall be along shortly,'' Loki replies, waiting, watching as Thor leaves. 
 
 Loki, or Odin, sets Mjolnir back upon her stand. Thor, of course, did not even bother to question his father's worthiness as Loki might have, knowing all the black sin under the man's weathered palm. But Thor, stupid Thor, beautiful Thor, simply loves. Simply *believes*. 
 
 Perhaps only the blind stupidity of innocence could ever truly make one worthy, Loki wonders. 
 
 It matters not. 
 
 Because Odin is gone now, and with him his curse. Loki brushes his fingers over the dark metal and feels her hum in rage, but he only smirks in response. 
 
 For he is king here now, and power runs through him in every vein.
