Hero (Tom Hiddleston)

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Unfortunately, I just have a tendency to dance in public spaces with absolutely no respect to the humiliating effect on my person.

-Tom Hiddleston

The girl was small, but her face looked aged beyond her years. That was, she looked young, there was no denying that... young, and beautiful, around sixteen if he was guessing right, but her face showed off... pain... the pain of seeing things she was much too young to see and doing things she was much too young to do.

It was reading into her a lot, and Tom knew it, but he couldn't help it. He was an actor, after all, and part of acting was portraying a character with every part of you... your voice, your body, your face, your movements and the way you saw the world. The way Tom saw it, you acted people that way because that was the way they were in real life. Everything a person did, every expression on their face, even in their resting face, every move that they made, showed something about them. It showed who they were.

People told him he could read people well. He credited that to his acting. When you pretended to be someone else for a living, you learned to read characters that didn't even exist. It made it frighteningly easy to do the same to people who actually did.

Besides, there was something about her that had caught his eye, made him truly see her beyond the passing glance you gave most people that you passed in Walmart at midnight. Something that had caught his eye, or everything that had caught his eye.

Everything, like the way she walked like she was scared of the world, her head down and her arms wrapped around her body. Like the way she gazed at the world, one half of her face hidden by her hair, her eyes darting around her like she thought everyone she passed was going to hurt her. And the way she, scared of the world as she obviously was, seemed to be the most terrified of the man she walked the store with.

It was clear when she shied away from him when he spoke to her, by the way she looked at the ground instead of meeting his eyes, how her shoulders tensed and her arms wrapped that much tighter around her tiny waste when he looked at her.

Tom was still trying to figure out what the man must be to her. He looked to be around thirty, too young to be her father, but a little too old to normally be her brother and much too old to be her boyfriend. Maybe he was her uncle? Why she would be out with an uncle she obviously wasn't comfortable with at twelve-thirty in the morning escaped Tom. But what else could it be? That mystery was another thing that had caught Tom's eye about the girl.

So it was all of that, that had made him notice her, but, he had to admit, it had also been the hoodie. Not only the hoodie itself, which was obviously at least three sizes too big, but also her bare legs under it, as it obviously hid shorts or something. But also the hoodie itself... or more specifically, what it said.

Loki's not evil... Just misunderstood.

And under that, a picture of Loki himself... a picture of Tom.

Yes, there was all of those other reasons, but the hoodie was probably a big part of him stopping to look at the girl. He'd come because of a late-night need for cheesecake, something he should have been in and out with in five minutes, but instead he'd lowkey followed these people around for ten minutes and had no plans of stopping any time soon.

Why? He didn't know. Yeah, she'd caught his gaze, and she looked hurt. Yeah, she was wearing a shirt with his face on it. But there were plenty of sad Loki fans out there, weren't there?

Yes, but she was more than that. He didn't know how he knew, but he did.

If it wasn't for his cliché sunglasses and hoodie, she most certainly would have recognized him by now. He could tell they hadn't noticed that he was following them... he'd done it in a roundabout way and kept his distance, but even so... she seemed to be a pretty big fan. And she was wearing a reference to compare him to.