Starting Over - Loki (COMPLETE)

1) The Fall

Loki couldn't tell when the end was near. All he wanted was a reprieve, for it all to end, but the drop was endless and he was petrified. If Loki believed that the All-father was omnipresent or omnipotent or omnibenevolent, perhaps he would have prayed to him in his final moments of consciousness. But all hope was lost and Loki had left that life behind long ago. All that was left was darkness and a small, spiralling god.

*

Time soon became meaningless. There was nothing but the fall - the constant, endless space. The journey had been bright at first with beautiful colours and cosmological entities that Loki never could have hoped to see if he had stayed on Asgard. But soon colour became monochrome and what had been cold became frigid and Loki was so, so alone.

*

Eventually, after what seemed like years but possibly only months or even a few days, space was no more. Rather, a barren land which, at the time, seemed like a preferable alternative to falling. But this land was also cold and desolate and, while Loki's memory was fuzzy, he felt more alone than ever, despite the company he remembered keeping. And so Loki drifted off again, or perhaps he was pushed, and all that remained was space.

*

As if in jest, the first thing Loki saw upon waking was blinding light. He was in a place of healing, he could surmise that much, and the humanoid figures bustling around him informed him of an unsettling fact. 

Loki was on Midgard. Midgard, the only world ignorant of the presence of other realms. The only world where he would never be able to get his old life back.

"Sir?"

A female healer stood at his side, holding a board with some paper and a writing implement. It had been at least one mortal century since he had last visited Midgard. He would need to get updated on recent developments.

"Yes?"

He might as well start being civil. Hostility would get him nowhere.

"Your name?"

Loki adopted a blank look.

"I d-don't know. I can't remember."

She gave him a kindly smile.

"That's alright. Short-term amnesia is very common with car accident victims."

"I was hit by a car?"

The term meant nothing to him but this particular incident sounded fairly commonplace on Midgard.

"We picked you up in the middle of a busy road outside the town. Hit-and-run, it seems. Multiple abrasions to the face, bruises all over. You're lucky to be alive."

Loki could understand that sort of terminology. So a car was a sort of mortal contraption, like a horse and cart, and these healers thought he had been hit by one. It sounded like no-one had found anything fishy about his drop out of the sky.

"I have you to thank for that," he said warmly.

The healer blushed.

"It is our job, Sir. I'll leave you to get some rest, now."

Loki sat back and thought for a bit as the nurse walked away.

This was... Inconvenient. While Loki was scorned and rejected on Asgard, people feared him and he'd earnt some sort of status because everyone knew that he could turn them to dust with a click of his fingers or some such trick. Here... Loki was like everyone else. Not a prince, not even a sorcerer, but a mere mortal. A mortal... Albeit one with an extremely long lifespan.

However, Loki was a pragmatist. He could look past the inconvenience and see opportunity. No-one had seen him fall. No-one knew his name. No-one knew where he had come from. Was it too much to hope that he could simply make a new life for himself on Midgard? Loki did not think so.

He was smart and he knew how to blend in. While it would be wholly different from the royal lifestyle he had come to take for granted, Loki could not imagine that the life of a citizen would be so bad. Here there was no danger and Thor would never look for him. Here he could be no-one. 

A prince from another life and a trickster in another realm.

Here, a mortal like any other. Ordinary, insignificant. Here he could live in peace for a few hundred years.

Nobody would get in his way, that he was certain.

And Loki could always be certain of everything.

*****

A.N. Welcome, everyone, to my first ever Marvel fic! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! :)

This is being entered into the 2020 Wattys so... Yeah.

This entire story is dedicated to my amazing friend @Emilia_Severus_Snape who has been pestering me day in, day out, to finish this fic. I owe you a lot! You would be hard pushed to find a better person anywhere. :)

This was published in one go. As such, if there are any errors, please let me know (although there shouldn't be any!) Don't be shy as I am extremely hard to offend. xD

Also, if you have any questions or are confused about anything, be sure to ask!

Thank you for reading!