If Loki Had Fallen In Love.

A Union of Fate

It started with blue.

One moment the world was a monochrome place, the next streams of azure and sapphire were romping across the walls, cobalt and indigo were wrestling over the window frames, while cerulean and turquoise were dappling the reflective surface of the counter tops, chased by streaks of emerald and gold.

Then came the noise.

A once silent domain was smashed through with the reverberating wail of noise. It shrieked through the house, pressing on the girl's ear drums, pushing her down under the table. Her hands flew to protect her ears as her mouth opened in a silent scream. It was only when the pressure was replaced with a high pitched wail that she realised she was making any noise at all.

Now was the silence.

The explosion ringing in her ears she placed her hands a fingertip at a time to lift herself from the crouch she had fallen into and inspect her surroundings.

Beyond her lay a chaos that did the past event nothing but justice. Glass had been thrown from the window, some shards even impaled deep in to the wall behind her. Half a chair was upturned and across the room from its usual position, the other half was not even recognisable. The peace lily her brother had given her was spread in an earthy smear from one wall to the other.

Panic crept up her neck and into her eyes. Unknowingly her grip tightened on the counter as she sank back down behind it, her raged breathing seemed to protrude from her face, as if her own fear was trying to escape her body in a bout of terror. Her heart beat like a hummingbird trapped in the cage of her ribs. There was too much disorder in too small a time span; she needed cold, hard, calming facts. A hummingbird can beat its wings from twelve to eighteen times per second. Breathe in. Hummingbirds are the only birds with the ability to fly backwards. Breathe out. The brain of a hummingbird is roughly 4.2% of its body weight. She pushed herself back to look out from her hiding place. She stood and walked carefully, slowly, towards where the door was swinging precariously off its hinges.

A massacre of nature lay before her. Sunlight now penetrated the ground where it shouldn't causing the girl to throw an arm up to protect her eyes. All around her trees that, mere minutes before had been standing proud and tall, casting dappled shadows on the forest floor, lay flat on the ground - as if someone had yelled 'bomb' and their first instinct had been to drop. The most interesting aspect of this sight, however, was the point from which the flattened trees spiralled out from.

There, in the dent formed by his impact, lay a man. The shaken girl crept towards him even more tentatively than she had crept across what had once been the kitchen. Reaching him, it was apparent that he was in just as bad a shape as his landing site. His skin was pale to the point of turning green, the effect was only intensified by the sheer blackness of his hair - its colour disrupted only by the odd piece of gravel. His face was a frozen image of shock. Dark eyebrows sat sternly above closed eyes, crinkled in the middle by the force with which they were being drawn together. His cheeks shone with something like tears. His nose was caked in a dark red crust and was probably broken, red fault lines of blood tracing from it across the rest of his face, predominately around his cracked, swollen lips. His entire being, including his peculiar clothing of dark leather, coloured with green, gold, and black, was blanketed by dust. The girl placed a hand on the side of his face, tapping it gently in an attempt to rouse him.

'Sir, excuse me, Sir? Are you okay?' She tapped his face lightly again, not wanting to cause too much movement in case he had suffered some sort of spinal injury. She moved two fingers to his neck; his pulse was evident but erratic, as was his breathing. 'Sir you need to wake up.' She moved a hand to his forehead as if soothing a child. 'Sir?'

One moment he was frozen, unmoving, - the next his hand had shot up and was clutching at her upper arm.

'Falling! I'm-' his words caught in his throat, obstructed by a bout of coughing. His eyes couldn't seem to focus on anything in particular. His fingers dug into her flesh, the skin around them turning white with the pressure. He was cold. 'I'm falling...' he repeated, quieter this time.

'Sir, you're not falling, you're not falling,' she soothed and glanced up at the wreckage surrounding them. 'Though you do appear to have landed pretty hard...'

'Landed? I...' He trailed off, adjusting his grip on her arm in an attempt to manoeuvre himself upward. His eyes finally found focus on the small face, surrounded by a mass of burgundy hair, which hovered above him, he frowned as if confused then glanced around at the ruins surrounding him. He shifted himself slightly, still holding her arm as though it were anchoring him to consciousness. He squinted at her again. 'Where am I?' His voice was cracked and dusty.

'You're in the Forest of Dean,'

'No, what realm.'

'Realm?' The odd request added to the utter perplexity of the situation.

'Planet then,' He winced slightly as he shifted again.

'Planet?' Her voice squeaked a little with befuddlement.

'Yes. Planet.' There was no patience in his voice.

'Earth... You're on Earth...'

'Oh, it had to be Midgard, didn't it...' He said gruffly, moving his hand up to her shoulder. 'Help me up.'

'Midgard?' Her brow furrowed in confusion as she helped hoist him up, 'as in Norse mythology?'

'Can we just...' He bent slightly and moved his grip back to her arm, letting her support some of his weight. 'Can we just discuss it later?' His words were clipped by his breath, 'You might not have noticed, but I'm not in prime condition right now...' he gave her what would have been a coy smile. His entire torso moved with the force of his breathing.

'Right, yeah, sure, sorry...' She started walking him shakily back towards the house, guiding him around the fallen branches and scattered clumps of dirt. 'Can I just ask,' she paused tentatively, 'who are you?'

'I am Loki of... well,' he stopped, looked at the ground, and then dragged his pale blue eyes back up to meet her own dark brown ones. He heaved a sigh.

'I am Loki... just, Loki.'