Chapter Text
They were so much like prophetic dreams that, when they had first begun, Thor had woken furious.
Sure that once again Loki had tricked him, somehow, into believing him dead only to go on living without giving a single thought to Thor, still mourning him, unaware.
Each night it happened Thor would jolt awake fuming at the sheer cruelty of it. Ready to jump out of bed and hunt Loki down and yell at him for not considering that Thor might care to know his heartless, selfish, traitorous brother was alive.
Then the memories would return: the last thing he said to Loki, the last thing Loki had done.
Foolish.
But so typical of-
Loki wasn’t the worst.
He’d never been-
And each night, before the rest of the memories could come flooding back to drown him, Thor would rise and stride out into the small village containing what was left of Asgard and let himself grow numb in the cold Norwegian rain.
He knew even in his half-asleep fury that it was impossible for these to be prophetic dreams.
Loki was dead.
And despite Thor’s last words to him, Thor knew that Loki wouldn’t…. Thor didn’t think Loki would just leave things the way they were. Even if Thor doubted Loki’s love for him he was sure that Loki would’ve wanted to know their people were safe.
Or…if he really didn’t even care about the remainder of Asgard and really no longer felt responsible for them…
Well… it was too far beyond the realms of Thor’s imagination to think that the Loki he knew would willingly put up with such treatment at the hands of mortals.
Whatever Thor’s mind was doing to him in tormenting him with these dreams, they were not prophetic.
Loki was not alive somewhere kowtowing to some old Midgardian man.
And he certainly wasn’t doing so while dressed in brown.
Thor decided that this must be some way for his mind to reconcile the loss of his brother and their home. Loki could not be here, but in Thor’s dreams he was on Midgard somewhere, somewhere temperate, or in the rain in front of some department store. The Midgard Thor knew did not look like these places, there was something uncanny about them, just as there had been something uncanny about Asgard in the vision Wanda had given him years ago.
It was after seeing Loki uncharacteristically drunk and singing poorly on some dimly-lit train that Thor fully realized he would never see Loki again.
And almost as if he had willed it with this realization the dreams stopped.
And all Thor was left with was memories.
Loki always had gravitated toward such melancholy songs. Not songs about glory or honor, but about longing. Songs about wandering, being lost, being alone.
Why was that?
Thor had always hated those types of songs - had never understood what the draw was.
As time passed, with no more dreams, Thor began to feel like he understood the sentiment a little better and it made him ill.
The next Thor saw Loki it was not rage that woke him.
Loki had looked well - more well than he had been in earlier dreams.
On Midgard again.
Using his magic, so he must be well.
Only a glimpse, and the surprise had jolted him awake.
Thor choked back tears of relief and frustration.
The dreams were back, but no longer a torment, not in the same way - not in the way that had Thor rising early and raging and trying to numb himself to it all.
The dreams were too brief.
Always too brief.
Loki on Midgard as it may have looked once, but no longer did. Still uncanny somehow. Not visions of Loki in the past or the future. Not Loki at all, because Loki was gone.
Thor would wake too soon and choke down tears and long to go back to sleep. So much worse a torment than before.
And finally Thor dreamt of Loki, sitting in a dark Midgardian bar, talking to someone - Thor didn’t care who it was. Whoever it was didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Thor could hear this dream Loki wondering where he belonged, speaking as though he didn’t have a home, as though he were lost.
As though Thor were not alive wishing Loki would return to him.
And he woke on a sob, knowing that the last he’d seen him, he hadn’t given Loki any reason to think otherwise.