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[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

Time: April 25, 2001
Place: Hospital Wing
Status: Private (War, Loki)
Summary: War pays a visit, (unknowingly) post de-cursing


It had been a while since she'd stopped by, War thought as she walked into the hospital wing. A nagging voice in her head said too long, but she pushed it to the back of her mind, not wanting to deal with the question of quite how she classified Loki: War wasn't supposed to have friends.

Still, even when he was ill it was good to have someone to talk to: that didn't need explanation. As she knocked on the door to his room, then started to slowly push it open, she hoped the god would be in a talkative mood.

Comments

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki clung to her hand in a way he'd normally never have dared, but now that he couldn't remember Odin and all his Norse pride his insecurity was all too obvious. He'd be terribly embarrassed, if he ever regained his memory.

"Can you tell me - Do you know - more about who I was, why I'm here?" he asked. "I ... I just wish I could remember who I am."

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

Loki's response was far beyond her normal range of emotional intimacy, and not at all what she would have expected from him - but then, War thought, he's really not himself at all - except he still is. Worth taking a chance...

She held herself very still as she looked Loki straight in the eye. "Loki - you're here the same reason I am, because somehow, something drew you here. That something was a very powerful young man called Adam."

War paused. Possibly some details about their host might be a little too much for Loki to deal with just now.

"All of us here - you and me too - we're here because there's something about us that makes us special, and that makes us important. You're important - about as important as they come, actually. You're a god, Loki. You're a god, and you're a trickster. You play tricks and jokes on people, and nearly always seem to come out on top. You love animals, some particular ones especially..."

Her words and tone were blunt and forthright, but War trailed off. How much of this could Loki cope with?

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Adam," Loki echoed. He could not remember anyone called Adam, though he was somehow quite sure that it was a very common name. Oh well, if he'd been interested enough to bring him here, hopefully this Adam would also be interested enough to stop by at some point and reintroduce himself.

"A god ..." This time he was pretty sure that there was a memory there, just out of reach. Something about a very tall man who ... had lost one eye ... and Loki knew exactly how it had happened ...

Or maybe not. As quickly as it had come to him the memory was gone again, but Ruby War had more interesting revelations for him anyway.

"Oh yes, I do love tricks and animals. Especially furry ones." There was a red horse, he was almost sure, and a big black dogie. "Horses and dogs?" He suggested.

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

War tightened her lips. So, whatever wiped out his memory, it seemed to have blocked some topics too. She could work with that... Grimly, she resolved to go find out what was going on, once she'd got Loki into a state where he'd let her leave him.

"Horses and dogs especially, that's right. Big dogs mostly - ones you can run with. I've never seen you with the little yappy types - can't seem them as being your style. And you love horses - there's one as used to be in the stables, I've not been out there for a while, but you used to go feed him and talk with him."

She wondered if her talk of running with the animals prompt him into remembering any more.

"You've got family, you know," she said. "Can you remember anything about them?"

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Red horse?" Loki asked trying hard to remember. "Eight legs ... No, that can't be right. Maybe two red horses?"

He had a family? Where were they then? The one-eyed man flashed through his thoughts again, but he couldn't hold the picture. Instead a woman with a cat in her lap appeared. She gave Loki a grumpy glare before she too disappeared. There were a few flashes of different faces, more animals a pregnant woman with wings and then the horse was back.

"No," Loki said sadly. "All I seem to remember is a red horse with eight legs and that can't be right. Maybe I dreamed it."

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

"Well," said War carefully, "it's been quite a while since you saw a lot of them. You were born a giant, you know, but you never really got on with your parents... that was before I knew you though. I first met you when you were taken to Aesnir as a prisoner in a war - I don't turn up for all of them, but once the gods get invclved I tend to. I knew Odin, too, so it was always good to catch up. You made a new family there, though - a brother, and a wife, at first... do you remember who they were? Don't worry if not. I can keep going and tell you more, maybe the more you hear the more you'll remember?"

On the other hand, she thought grimly, maybe not. This didn't feel right to her, not to be normal amnesia.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Born a giant? Loki looked down at where his feet were poking out under the blanket.

"I guess I must have shrunk a bit then." He wasn't entirely sure he believed that part of the story. "And Aesir? Odin?"

For a moment he saw a flash of some large room, a table, food, people around that table, but when he tried to look more closely at their faces it was gone.

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

"Well, as I understand it, your parents were giants, but I don't think you shrunk, really... just didn't grow as much as they might have expected. Odin is your blood brother, though - he's how I know you, actually. Used to turn up to go off on the wars with him and then you were there."

War paused. Risky, but it might trigger something. "He was here for a bit too, y'know. D'you remember that - someone you were close to, here?"

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki concentrated hard, but no memories of this place came. Well, except for the flashes of things he was sure he knew but was unable to place.

"A raven?" he asked surprised at the next picture that lasted long enough to actually identify the contents. "No, two. Do I know someone who'd have two ravens sit on his shoulders and wears a large hat?"

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

War grinned, and slapped her hand down on her knee.

"You most certainly do. Those are Odin's ravens - they're called Huginn and Muninn, if I'm remembering right myself. Something like that, anyway. They aren't always on his shoulders, mind - but that's where you'd have seen them. Can you picture his face, then?" she asked, curiously.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Thought and Memory?" Loki repeated slightly surprised to discover that he spoke more than one language. "No, I can't properly picture anything. I get a picture flashing into my mind, but it disappears quickly and I can't bring it back."

Correct me if I'm gettting this wrong...!

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

War grinned. "That's the ones. Don't worry about not remembering the rest yet - it'll come. After all, you couldn't remember anything when I came in, and now look at you."

"As for the Æsir - well, you all kept switching round, and I was never too good at keeping track, but Odin was one of the Æsir, so when you became his blood brother, you joined them. You married one of them, too. Any pictures of pretty women popping into your mind?", she finished, half winking.

Odin's wife Frigga, if you want to recognise her

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"There was a woman with a cat earlier," Loki tried to recall the picture, but that was pretty much all he still knew. "She was sitting by a fire, I think."

It was all rather vague and he didn't even remember whether she'd been pretty. Why wouldn't the pictures stick around?

Re: Odin's wife Frigga, if you want to recognise her

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

"A woman with a cat? Hm... only person I particularly remember with a cat when I paid you visits was Odin's wife - Frigga, I think her name was."

War smirked. "She was never too keen on me, though, going off fighting with Odin and the rest of you... goddess of marriage, housekeeping and the like, so I didn't exactly fit in with her image of the way of things."

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

This caused Loki to have his first acoustic flash of memory: Old Norse insults over the oddly familiar sound of pots and bowls hitting the wall. He wasn't quite sure why he suspected that War had secretly enjoyed her meetings with this Frigga.

He was supposed to be looking for memories of his wife, though, not Odin's.

"A woman with ... wings?" This picture was confusing and somehow didn't fir in with the acustic memory.

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

"Wings? Ah - that'd be Frigga again, I think. She had this cloak, see - a feathered cloak that let her fly. She could shape shift too - well, you all could. You used to shapeshift to run with Sleipnir - d'you remember that, not being human shaped?"

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"A cloak?" Loki said surprised. "It didn't look all that much like a cloak to me, but I guess if she can shapeshift*."

"I'd like to be able to shapeshift. I could be a wolf." He grinned. "Like a werewolf."

* Luckily his inability to hold on to anything he learned at the moment for more than about half an hour would save both Uriel and Frigga the indignity of finding out about the mixup.

*headdesk* trust me to start getting creative with the research... *kicks self*

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

War grinned. "I can see you as a wolf." She paused, trying to remember. "Uh, actually I think one of your sons turned into a wolf. Not a werewolf as such though, he got turned and stuck... Don't suppose you remember anything about your children?" she asked, hopefully. Things did seem to be coming back a bit, after all.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

Loki concentrated very hard on wolves, but all he got was the eight legged horse again. Then a man and woman. Twins?

"Blond twins?" he asked Ruby. "But they ... don't like me?"

[swords-love-me.livejournal.com]

War thought for a moment. "The only blonds I knew with particular reason not to be so fond of you were Frey and Freya - brother and sister. Not family exactly, but in the clan. You were never really in their good books though - not after you took off with Thor and pretended he was her to be married off, just so you could get his hammer back."

She paused, and chuckled. "Thinking about it, that one time you turned up to a feast already off your face and had a slanging match with her probably didn't go down too well either. That one may have been partly my fault though," she finished, winking.

[leucemic-god.livejournal.com]

"Thor? Who's Thor?" Loki looked around the room to make sure there wasn't anybody else present in the room that he'd forgotten about. "And why did I want her to marry that Freya-girl's chosen husband?"

That he'd arrived drunk at a feast somehow didn't surprise him so he didn't pay much attention to that tale. Just your usual run of the mill drunken argument.