so this is an idea I got from a photoset on tumblr, which I can't actually find at the moment cause I saw it a while ago. D: the fic and progression of ideas is my own, but I think I have to at least partially credit the artist who came up with the starting idea of an amnesiac Loki on earth.
and yes, it's slightly AU – I decided Victorian era earth would be more fun than modern day. xD
at any rate, R&R. c: I might see how people like the concept before I decide whether to continue it or not. |D
Blond hair, blue eyes. That's what he remembered. Blond hair and blue eyes on a remarkably muscular figure who didn't look anything like the men he saw around his streets. He would remember someone like that if he'd seen them, someone so rugged with that kind of fire in his eyes. The mane of his hair would ripple in the touchless wind, giving him the distinct appearance of a lion leading his pride with that sure and confident step along paths Loki didn't recognize.
Recently, the dreams had gotten even stranger. Past the man who was always there, he would see a brilliant landscape of gold and ivory, cascading over mountain peaks and valleys, a city so close to the sky that he was sure the tips of those towering spires must have grazed the clouds.
Loki preferred to keep these dreams to himself. They were harmless, after all, and there was a certain kind of magic to the fact that they kept reappearing, almost every night, like a fairy tale he could slip into to escape from the drone of real life. He wasn't really part of it, of course – this world was completely different, and anyway was only a figment of his imagination.
Even so, he realized that there could be something else to this. Grandmother always said so, but was he really an Ashmore? He had never questioned it, simply because everyone else was so convinced of it, but somehow at night, in those dreams, he couldn't help but feel like there was a reason for this reoccurring setting.
It was completely foolish, he knew, and he needed to do as his father said and get his head out of the clouds. The dreams were interesting, yes, but they were nothing more than dreams.
A sigh escaping his lips, Loki shrugged the suit jacket over his shoulders and turned to check the tailoring in the elaborate mirror that rested against the wall in the corner of his room. Reaching up, he allowed his hands to glide over the softened fabric before he fastened the tie around his neck, adjusting it so that it rested neatly in the opening of his jacket.
He tilted his head down and ran a hand through his jet black hair absentmindedly, not noticing the way his fingers immediately traced a certain path through the locks as if by some muscle memory that he didn't know until they had finished. Loki paused, frowned in slight confusion, and slowly did it again, paying attention to the way his muscles tensed in a certain way. He got the distinct feeling he was to put something on his head at this point. Something that was heavy, judging by the way his arms flexed a bit as if bearing a weight.
He let his arms fall and sighed. More memories of a past he didn't remember. Sometimes, if he focused hard enough, his body's muscle memory would recall things his mind didn't know, and he would feel that he should be doing something – grabbing a staff, fanning his hand out behind him as if to keep a cloak from tangling beneath his feet – but he never knew why. He kept these strange sensations from his family; he didn't want them to feel worse than they already did that he didn't remember anything.
"Loki?" The sudden voice at his doorway made him start, and he turned to see Viola, his younger sister, enter his room and twirl in her newly purchased dress. It was a lovely dark green flowery thing that billowed out when she moved, telling of spring and contentment when it echoed with her bright laughter. "What do you think? Does it look good?"
A gentle smile settled on his face and he strode towards her. "Magnificent. The trim suits you just right."
"Grandmother says it makes me look too old for my age," Viola pouted, crossing her arms and swaying from side to side, knowing her elder brother would compliment her.
Loki was not one to disappoint. He chuckled and shifted the bow in her hair affectionately. "And what is wrong with that? You look like a pretty young lady."
He straightened up and turned back to the mirror to continue fixing his hair, which had at last begun drying out from his earlier shower. The ball tonight was a stunningly large event, hosted by the duke himself in celebration of his new marriage. The entire area's noble families were invited, and no one dared to decline such an illustrious offer. Loki had been spending the last week preparing for it with his family, tailoring suits, buying dresses, and the like. There was an exhausting amount of work that went into it all. His sisters were understandably thrilled about it, especially Eliza, who was looking forward to meeting dashing young men at the ball from across the countryside.
As for Loki, he didn't consider himself much of a party-goer. He would really have rather remained home by himself with the books in their family library if it had been up to him, but he knew better than to think about saying that he wouldn't go. His absence would draw a lot of unwanted attention to the family, and people would gossip and speculate. He didn't wish that kind of negative press on his father and especially his aging grandmother.
But the promise of socialization wasn't the only reason he wasn't overly eager. Ever since he'd woken nearly a year ago now, his father and grandmother had been pressing for him to find a woman to marry, and not subtly either. It was improper, they insisted, that he had not found a suitable wife at his age yet. Now that he was regaining his bearings with society, he needed to move out again soon and live his own life out from under the family roof. They had done him service by letting him stay with them for this long because he had lost his memory, but people were beginning to talk. And one of the main discussion topics was his celibacy. Loki was not looking forward to his family's hints at the ball tonight about which women he should dance with, or which looked pretty.
But he would go.
"Brother," Viola's voice brought him back to the present again, and he turned to see her gazing curiously at a couple crude sketches he had scattered about his desk. She was looking particularly at the one he had done early this morning after having woken up before dawn and being unable to go back to sleep. All his drawings were of the same thing – or rather, the same person. "I haven't seen this one before. Is it new?" she asked, lifting up his rough etching, and Loki stepped up to look over her shoulder.
"I could not sleep last night," he admitted. "Sketching calms me."
"It's the man again," she noted with that child-like innocence only a ten year old could manage. "You always draw the same man." She glanced up at him with wide green eyes that looked very much like his own. "Who is he?"
Who was he? It was a very good question, one that Loki was not sure he could rightfully answer. He didn't know the stranger's name, or anything else about him. Months of dreams about him, and he'd never interacted with the man before, or heard his name spoken, or seen what his life was like. His dreams were always piecemeal and hard to decipher, and all Loki could put together from them was the spiraling towers, some far-flung visions of banquets, and a rainbow bridge that dazzled with its lights. "He's a man that I dream about sometimes," he answered, placing his arm around Viola's shoulders. "A man I almost remember."
"Viola," their grandmother's aged but stern voice interrupted whatever the girl was about to say next, and the child scampered away from her brother, beaming up at the old woman. "Now stop troubling your brother; why don't you go and read a book until we leave, darling?"
"All right, grandma!" Viola chirruped brightly, and dashed out of the room, leaving the woman to turn back to Loki as he adjusted his tie for the fifth time.
"You look very dashing, Loki," she murmured approvingly. "I'm glad you've agreed to attend the ball tonight."
He glanced at her over his shoulder and replied with a small smile, before turning back to the mirror. At this point he wasn't doing anything but standing there, though the faraway stare in his eyes seemed to indicate that he was distracted. "Grandmother," he began uncertainly. "Could you tell me what happened again?"
"But you know how it went. I've told you a dozen times now," she answered concernedly. "Have you been having those dreams again?"
"They haven't gone away yet," Loki sighed.
There was a moment's pause, and then the old woman eased herself into a luxurious chair beside the bed, looking up sadly at her grandson. Unable to hold that kind of look, Loki glanced to the side, feeling guilty for not being able to remember anything. He knew that his grandmother's greatest regret about his amnesia was his inability to recall a single thing about his mother, who had supposedly died a few months before the incident. From the pictures and stories he'd seen and heard though, Loki had deduced that she must have been an angelic woman whose untimely death had been an unjust stroke of fate at work.
"You were a very successful businessman," she began, "the manager of an enormous industrial company, which… you don't remember, I assume?" His silence affirmed her assumption. "We hadn't heard from you for a couple of months, and we thought you were doing fine. One morning, the police came to our door, bearing you. You were unconscious, still in your business attire, and it was your father who answered the door. They told us that you had been attacked by thieves on your way home, who had knocked you unconscious. Luckily you didn't have any injuries that required a doctor, but when you woke up…"
Loki didn't need her to continue. He remembered the rest. He had woken up on what he considered to be a foreign bed, with foreign people around him, and he had panicked. When at last they had told him who they were, and who he was, he had calmed. Everything added up after that – he had received calls and mail from people who had apparently been his old coworkers, but he couldn't remember a single one of them.
The dreams of the stranger had started that night.
"Soon, you will be able to put your life back together, Loki," his grandmother assured him. "I am convinced that you can."
He looked up from the carpeting on the floor to meet her steady gaze. For a moment, he held that look, as if searching for more answers, and then nodded.
It had been months since Loki's banishment, and Thor was still angry over the Allfather's choice. He had successfully brought his brother back home after having been separated for almost a year, and he hardly got two days with him before they were ripped apart again! How was Loki ever supposed to feel like he truly belonged in Asgard, regardless of his blood or heritage, if he was cast out again and again? Didn't anyone understand that Loki was still his brother – had always been his brother – and nothing would change that? He had merely wanted Loki to come back, had wanted him to realize that Asgard would always be where he belonged.
And not only had father cast him out, but in addition he had robbed him of all memory of his previous life and deeds, and stripped him of his power as a god as well. Thor recalled his own banishment as a human on earth and how helpless he had felt, but at least he had still remembered who he was.
The thought of his brother wandering aimlessly on earth with no one to turn to, recalling nothing of growing up in the palace, tore Thor apart with a pain more crippling than any battle wound. All the times they had spent together as boys, all the wars they had won standing side by side, all the jests they shared – all forgotten.
Nearly every day, Thor had gone to Heimdall to ask how his brother was doing. The answer was always the same: Loki had situated himself in a different life on earth with the human family Odin had crafted for him. He remembered nothing of Asgard or of Thor.
"Thor, you must move on," Sif sighed wearily. She and the warriors three were gathered in the otherwise empty hall, watching him with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation. "Loki cannot return to Asgard. There is nothing you can do."
"It's been months," Volstagg added with a hopeless shrug as he tore another chunk from a roasted lamb leg.
"There is life beyond… your brother," Sif continued, unmoved by the disapproving glance Thor sent her way at the hesitation of addressing Loki as his brother. He knew that of the four of them, Sif had always been the most antagonistic towards his brother after the events on earth. He knew she was secretly glad that Loki was gone, and though he could not blame her, he merely wished she could understand that his brother was not a bad person. Thor believed Loki still had a place on Asgard, even if his brother did not necessarily believe so himself. "You will become king soon," she tried to console him. "You must move on."
"He is my brother," Thor emphasized again, standing from the ledge where he had been resting for the last several minutes. Turning, he faced the four warriors before him. "I do not find it so easy as you to abandon one of my family. He does not belong on earth. His place is here, on Asgard. Have all of you so easily forgotten him?"
"Odin does not wish for him to return," Hogan interjected, his speech soft but firm.
"He's banished," Fandral agreed. "What do you wish to do, defy your father again? You remember what happened last time."
As if on cue, a messenger appeared in the hall, saluting to Thor before speaking. "Sir, the repair on the Bifrost is complete."
Since Thor had destroyed the passageway to earth, movement between Asgard and earth had been nigh impossible, which was the only reason Thor had not yet descended to earth to find his brother. It had taken all these months of sorcerers and soldiers working nonstop on its repair to fix it again, but at last it was available for use again. Thor paused long enough for Sif to stand and step towards him. "No, Thor. You can't -"
"Whether or not any of you love Loki," Thor cut her off as he started towards the door, "I will not merely stand and watch as he forgets all of his past." The door shut as he exited, leaving the warriors where they were, looking at one another helplessly.
so yeah I usually don't write AU fics cause I'm terrible at them. xD
but let me know what you think and if I should continue the idea. ^^ thanks!