Self-Loathing
@mxrdermystery -- continued from (x)
♔—- Her words were hard to digest because, in many ways, he’d experienced the same self-hatred. If Odin’s claims were true and Laufey had abandoned him directly after birth, then his own parents took one look at him and decided he wasn’t worth keeping. They threw him out into a frozen tundra as a newborn, willing to let him die and return the very earth that his younger siblings lived upon. Sometimes he liked to humor the idea that Odin was lying about how Laufey treated him, but even if he was? Laufey never came for him, never fought for him, never tried to find him.
And in the end, the Jotun King found himself dead as a result.
“That’s not true,” Loki finally said. “Maybe you mostly feel hate and maybe you don’t feel like you’re human because of your sins, but I’ve been with you long enough to know that you do feel more than just hatred. When you look at me, I see passion in your eyes, hope, and something I don’t think you’re ready to admit, even to yourself--love.” He didn’t necessarily mean passionate, romantic love. Perhaps it could blossom into that one day, but he did see the admiration and the acceptance in her eyes that he desired for so many years. “You love Ares,” he pointed out. “You have the ability to love creatures and people, even if you want to insist that you don’t.
“But I can’t sit here and preach to you about loving yourself because I don’t love myself either. I never have. I don’t know what that feels like... To wake up and look in the mirror and actually like the person looking back at you? I wish I had that. I wish you had that, too, but you don’t deserve to hate yourself this much. Haven’t you experienced enough of that by the hands of other people? Don’t torture yourself, too.”