Author's note: This is a Sherlock/Supernatural/Thor crossover which I'm working on. Please review and tell me what you think!

All the world's a stage

He fell and fell and fell. Stars flashed by, turned into long streaks of light, out of his reach. Long distances away, he saw planets and clusters of comets. The rainbow bridge glittered above him. Glassharp, multicoloured pieces from the broken parts of the bridge had fallen around him, but now he was too far away, and the edges of the bridge far above him started to get blurry. The outstretched hand had long ago disappeared out of sight; the cry of his name silenced, even though, if he closed his eyes, he could still hear the echo of his brother's desperate cry in his mind: "Loki!"

He lost consciousness from time to time. When he opened his eyes, the world looked the same. Flashes of star light, comets, distant planets - all just different shapes of tightly packed star dust. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable end to his fall.

When he opened his eyes again, he realized he must have fallen out of consciousness again. He was lying in a huge hole, on solid ground. His body was hurting; an uncommon but not completely unpleasant sensation. The pain woke him up. His body was sending him a brutal message, reminding him that he was still alive. The cold air stinged the bare skin on his face and hands. He started moving his fingers, waking them back to life. He unsteadily got up on his feet and climbed out of the crater. He was standing on a patch of grass, next to a small road leading to a big, abadoned, sheet metal building. He ran his fingers through his black hair, comming the long strands backwards. He started walking down the road, limpering. He passed an empty parking place and reached a somewhat bigger road, where a couple of cars passed by. 'I'm in Midgard', Loki thought to himself. 'The world my brother has fallen in love with. These pathetic humans, ignorant to what happens around them, believing themselves to be the center of the universe. They have yet to meet their superior. Someone ought to teach them, and my brother, who their true masters are.' The hatred absoring his whole being, born from bitter jealousy, inferiority, misguided acts of love and pure anger, having lead to the attempt to sacrifice his own damaged life, turned in his heart, as he was observing a couple of other humans pass by in their car, from the deepest shade of grief, to the darkest shade of hatred, feeling his being with purpose. Dark thoughts passed through his mind: 'The humans are weak, pathetic, in their struggles for individuality, for freedom... Freedom. What good has freedom ever done for them? They aren't capable of leading themselves, these weak, stupid creatures.' He could take the world his brother loved and show him, and his father, that he could fulfill his position as rightful king and ruler. Loki stepped out into the middle of the road. A big SUV approaching him quickly broke to a stop in front of him and the driver opened his door and stepped outside:

"What the hell do you think you're doing? Are you fucking high or something? I could have run you over! What did you..."

He stopped at the sight of Loki's appearance; the long, green cape, the leather clothing and the armour, all torned and misshaped by the hard landing. Loki guessed that he had some marks on his body, but the pain was already decreasing, subdued by the overwhelming sensation of new purpose. Loki smiled at the man and walked up to the jeep. The driver stared at him, his mouth slightly open. He spoke again, almost in a whisper:

"Who are you?"

Loki grabbed the man's throat and lifted him up in the air a few inches.

"I am Loki, of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose."

Loki set the man down on the ground again. He trembled in front of him. Loki walked around to the other side of the car and opened the passenger door.

"Get in."

The SUV drove off at high speed on the lonely road, under a starlit night sky, bringing a god to the city of London.

In the heart of the city, a man was watching the sky. He was standing on a balcony, twelve floors up in a steel building covered in glass, which shone in light blue, reflecting the street lights, throwing the sounds of the streets at him, diverted into distant, incomprehensible echoes of voices, speeding cars and the occasional, even bass beat of a piece of music, as a door was opened to a warmer, more crowded place of socializing or entertainment, where the people of London went this autumn night to get their weekly fix of distraction, and to fall... and how they fell.

They fell out into the street, sending out odours of sex and alcohol, animalistic hormones and testosterone, which travelled up the building of glass and reached the man on the balcony, and he watched their dance of tragedy, and he lowered his head, took a sip from his glass of whisky and felt the dry, heavy drink stick to his gum and throat, drying out before it reached his stomach. He watched the people of the street through the swirls of amber in his glass and wondered, quietly, if he was alone this night, in watching the people on the streets like performers on a stage, dancing, acting and talking in predictable movements, as if their steps had been drawn out beforehand on a map, like a game of chess or a mathematical calculation. At that moment, the man's phone rang, distracting him from any further reflections. He picked it up from the pocket of his coat and answered it:

"Mycroft Holmes. Yes. I see. Similar to the event in America? Yes, it's definitely relevant to look into. Keep me posted."

The man emptied his glass and went inside the flat.

A few kilometres away, a woman was lying on a sofa; her blonde hair spread out over a small pillow. A piece of music was playing. She let her fingers tap the melody on the fabric of the sofa, moved them in the air, as she was weaving a fabric from the notes. A round glass of white wine was balancing on the edge of the table, forgotten. The woman sank down into the sofa, closed her eyes and felt herself being lifted up into the air. She imagined a large rabbit hole that she was falling down, with small bokshelves and candles in the walls, passing her by, her head turned towards the sky. She was waiting for the ground, but it never came, and as her waken fantasy passed into a dream, she kept falling, a smile on her face.

The water twirled in the sink, flushing down a stream of water. The young man rinsed his toothbrush and turned off the water. He put the toothbrush in its holder and closed the door of the bathroom cabinet. He stopped, put his hands on the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked into the depth of big, dark brown eyes. His eyes looked glossy on the surface, even calm in some lights, but underneath the fragile, transparent layer, there was deep darkness, unruly chaos, violent, vibrating madness. The man stared at his darkened soul, lost in the swirling, dark sea, and he could feel, really feel, the gears of his mind turning, conjuring innovative ideas, forming patterns. His level of boredom had long ago reached an agonizing, unbearable point, and his mind hungrily and ferociously sought what he desired most, the only desire which mattered: distraction. He was bored. Bored out of his mind. The man turned on the water again, counted the swirls. He gathered water in the palms of his hands and let it rinse through his hair. He splashed water over his face and started smearing it with a cleansing gel. He washed his face with water and looked back up at the mirror, his hands on the sink, water dripping down on the floor and on his tshirt. He stared into the darkness and imagined cleaning off the layer of skin which kept the face underneath invisible for the rest of the world. He flashed his teeth to the mirror and hissed at it, letting out a glimpse of the monster underneath the smooth, flawless skin and deep, dark eyes.

"Jim? Are you coming to bed?"

Using his real name... Another glimpses of the monster. But he hadn't been able to resist. Vanity, maybe. Or his boredom reaching dangerous peaks.

"In a minute, doll."

Jim Moriarty patted his face with a towel and ran it quickly through his hair. He hung the towel on its rack and smeared lotion on his face. He covered one side of his face while he was doing this, and as this side fell into shadow, he could feel the darkness in his covered eye growing, and the other, visible half of his mouth smiled.

Through the streets surrounding Baker Street, on the northern side of Marylebone Road, a sound travelled past closed windows and caught the attention of a few people, passing by 221B Baker Street, who instinctively switched to the other side of the street. It was the sound of breaking glass. Mrs Hudson came into the living room of the apartment on the second floor.

"Sherlock... What are you doing?"

"It's an experiment, Mrs Hudson. I am investigating the effect of the resonance of broken glass on the human ear's perception of the sound of a violin."

As another glass broke from being heated from underneath by a torch, Sherlock Holmes picked up his violin and played two long notes.

"You better clean this up before John comes home."

"He's been away?"

"For several hours!"

Mrs Hudson left the apartment and went back to her own while Sherlock Holmes kept playing on his violin, cradling the citizen of Baker Street to sleep.

John Watson felt unease. He was watching London from behind the window of a taxi cab, taking him from the house of an old friend in the outskirts of Notting Hill. He had enjoyed a pleasant and, as the evening went on and a second wine bottle was opened, increasingly relaxed evening with Stanley and his wife Sarah, who he had met for the first time. They had competed in making Sarah laugh when retelling exaggerated versions of old memories, of which the details were long ago forgotten and had to be made up again, while the other one laughingly protested to how the younger version of himself was being portrayed. Sarah had laid her hand on Stanley's arm and their fingers had circled around each other in a perfectly coordinated, unconscious movement. He had left them standing in the hallway; she leaning towards the doorframe to the hallway after giving him a polite, but warm hug, and he with his hand on John's shoulder, repeating the invitation to a last change barbeque next Sunday. He had promised he would try to come and smiled politely when they encouraged him to bring that new roommate of his, the intriguing detective. When he walked down the gravelled path towards the taxi, he saw, through the corner of his eye, the lights going out in the hallway. In the cab, the feeling which wouldn't let him go had started to grow. It wasn't until he got out of the cab, payed the driver and started walking up to the door leading to the apartment and heard the sound of the violin that he realized what the feeling which had been so acute a moment ago was: loneliness. On his way up the stairs, the sound of the violin growing stronger, he tried the feeling, tasted it on the tip of his tongue before it escaped him, and wondered if Sherlock ever got lonely. He walked into the apartment and said hello to Sherlock, who answered him in the same way. Sherlock was standing by the window, where he usually stood when playing his violin. On his way to the kitchen, John saw that the deep green curtains, which had been hanging in one of the windows, now were lying on the floor between the desk and the chairs, covered in broken glass. He decided to ignore it for now and went into the kitchen to start the kettle.