Like Falling Stars
Like falling stars,
we pass one another by.
For a brief moment,
we almost touch,
Hope we might
Explode
into a brilliant light.
But then we miss by one.
Like fallen stars
Through ever-night,
for a moment burning bright,
and then that spark is gone.
I suggest listening to OUaT's "This Boy Will Be Your Undoing" — Believe me, it adds to the story.
Loki looked upward into the midnight sky, alive with a hundred thousand stars—such bright, distant pinpricks of light, spreading out across the night like diamonds on black velvet. The wind whistled in his ears, and moaned down the icy ridge. He had fallen...
The Bifrost had broken and he had fallen.
Loki inhaled, and it hitched, then broke out of him in a gasp. Tears beaded along his thick lashes, and he blinked until they trailed, cold, down the sides of his face and froze there by the frigid wind kicking up all about him, taunting, mocking, howling like a broken, mad thing.
He lifted his hands. They shook violently. He attempted not to stare at all of the blood on his fingers.
Blood, everywhere. On his hands, in the snow. It warmed his back, trickled down his chest beneath his armor.
A wrenching sob tore from him as the numbness of shock faded.
Pain crashed against him like rough sea waves dashing down upon the rocky shores near Fensalir.
He gasped.
Above him the stars twisted and swirled as if they were locked within a kaleidoscope that someone spun before his eyes.
Slowly, he curled his fingers just beneath and to the left of his heart, around the long, jagged splinter of Bifrost that had plunged through him back to front as he had fallen through the chaos of the Void.
The sharp crystal bit into the palms of his hands, and he felt his blood slide down the shard to meet with the red stain spreading out steadily across his middle. His throat spasmed. Then, something yellow-red lit the horizon to his left, and he turned his head.
The sunrise.
Loki closed his eyes as second sob tore through him.
He screamed when a sudden agony shot down every limb. His back arched then fell.
He clutched the shard of Bifrost plunging up from him as if it were the means to life, not the thing that decreed his death, as he lay keening softly in the snow.
TT
Aara looked out across the white landscape alertly, surveying the ridge with quick indifference.
Then out of the corner of her eye saw something glitter brightly. She caught it in her gaze and held it steady, looking out into the distance intently.
"What is that?" Aurora came up beside her.
Aara scoffed. If it wasn't for Scarface they would not be here, forced to trek through the wilderness, without arms, into the heart of their greatest enemy. "I am going to go see. You stay, guard the campsite." She looked around, and then went toward a stout, dry branch lying along the ground. It would serve in place of a weapon. She picked it up with a swift motion and then carried herself away from the meager camp they had prepared.
The snow crunched beneath her feet, and it was only as she nearly topped the ridge that she heard the boot-steps coming through the snow behind her. She turned as Aurora came up. "I told you to stay at the camp!" She hissed.
"I wanted to see..." the fool girl persisted.
Aara turned her back on her companion, refusing to bother about such willfulness. But when she climbed the final steps to the ridge, her anger fled, routed by shock, and her heart stopped.
Behind her she heard Aurora shout something, but she paid no mind to the distant cries.
Aara leapt forward and slid down the ridge, then dodging and weaving through the obstacles in the field; it had been littered with strange, glittering crags of glass that refracted rainbows in the morning light, like icicles or glaciers, but somehow not.
Her eyes focused on the body that lay in the heart of the expanse, upper torso lying in a ring of red snow. Rising upward so the sunlight struck it just so, rose a jagged, spear-like piece of glass protruding from the body's chest.
She stopped, breathing heavily after her sprint down the ridge.
It was a man's body, garbed in strange, foreign armor that was not of Rathmar or any other kingdom she knew in Frostholm. Cautiously, she stepped to the edge of the frozen blood that had seeped into the snow, and looked down at the man's pale face. Perhaps other women would have called him handsome, with his dark hair and high cheekbones, but she did not know how to compare him, because he no longer belonged to the living; it was no good to think of how she took him when he would be dead soon.
She crouched, setting the stick down and easing one hand into fresh snow just beyond the reach of the man's blood. She leaned closer to his face. Then, suddenly, his lashes fluttered.
Her blue eyes stared into brilliant green—greener than anything she had ever seen; darker than the summergrass that grew for a short season; brighter than pine needles; dark as an expensive dye. Golden flecks swirled in those eyes, and she might have marveled at them but for the perfect agony their depths contained.
His hands fluttered around the shard spearing him in his chest, and his lips parted. He gasped and then breathed three shallow times, a rasping pant like a wolf caught in a trap.
Aara felt strange—
A terror welled in the pit of her stomach that she wanted to be rid of.
Her eyes skittered across his torso hastily, but she could not see how she might save him. The jagged shard had harsh splinters fracturing off of it, and they had shredded through his leather and metal chest-piece as if it were the flimsiest of cloths. When he breathed, the glass trembled faintly and fresh blood oozed around it. He stared at her, his brilliant emerald eyes wide, the fear expressed in them palpable.
"I can't—I do not know..." Her hands shook as she spread them hopelessly. Tears stung behind her eyes, and she hated this feeling of weakness before a dying man she did not know.
He swallowed, and shuddered violently. She reached out, an instinct driving her from somewhere deep inside, and clutched at his arm, sliding her fingers down the firm golden bracer to find his hand, his shaking fingers barely touching the glass piercing him through and through. She held his hand tightly.
"I... I am... Loki."
Aara felt her blood turn as cold as the snow beneath her, and she could not breathe.
"What man would have such a name? It sounds like a pet name for a child. Loki. Ridiculous! It is good you will only know him a short time. No honorable man would be named as such."
"Of course, father."
Aara gasped, but it came out as more a dry sob. She pressed nearer the dying man, then pulled her hand back, reaching up her own arm, fingers fumbling over her sleeve as she shoved the fabric back, exposing the words there.
I... I am... Loki
Aara wrapped her free hand around the words on her forearm, and held his hand fiercely between hers. She felt his blood make her fingers slick and hot. Her eyes sketched across his face. He was watching her, and his breath rattled now in his throat.
She leaned closer, shifting, reaching up to put her hand against the side of his face, sliding a lock of thick raven hair behind his ear gently. Her fingers sunk into his thick hair, carding it dazedly for a moment. His hair was cold, and snow fell from it in little frozen fragments as she carefully wove her fingers through.
His hand shifted away from the glass in him and clutched at her sleeve, long white fingers curling into the fabric, leaving blood behind. Aara knew her body shook, she could feel it in her arms, her legs, her core. His lips parted, but he said nothing, only lifted his head nearer hers with a soft whine of pain.
"Oh, Loki..."
She had never dared speak the name out loud, and now that she had... Tears burned in her eyes, and she blinked them away furiously.
She wiped at her face with her other hand, and pressed her forehead against his, taking in the faint warmth of him, the smell of smoke and salt and burning pine. His breath warmed her cheek, and she looked at him, only parting a little.
"I might have..." But she dared not say it, she did not know him; he could be nothing like her father, but he could be everything. He might have been a good man, or not, and she would never know. Her teardrops fell, streaking through the sparkling dust and grime on his golden armor.
His eyes went wide at her words, not from his pain, but a different shock.
All at once he pushed himself upward, off the snow.
His hand left her arm and snarled harshly in her hair, needing some support. She leaned nearer him, her hand at his neck, her other arm wrapping around his shoulders, and the pain eased where his fingers pulled. He pressed his mouth to hers, desperation and yearning in his movements. He curled his fingers tighter in her braid down her back, pulling it apart.
She kissed him in return, and it felt strange; foreign and wonderful and terrible. She did not want it to end, and leaned into his shaking embrace further. Her fingers shook as she fisted them into his hair at the back of his neck, and her other hand clutched at his shoulder, the ragged green cape hanging from it bunched in her fist, fingernails scratching against the metal of his armor.
He pulled back with a high-pitched pant, and his bright eyes searched her face. His breathing strained, but she kissed him again, reluctant for the end. He met her with the same bittersweet, starving passion of before, pressing his mouth against hers as if longing for her to give him life with her kiss, his tears leaving salt on their tongues.
Aara, for once in her life, wished for the gifts of healing, to be able to somehow save him.
He shuddered in her grasp, and would have fallen hard into the snow if she hadn't wrapped her arms around him and drawn him into her lap. His hands slipped back to rest near the glass shard running through his body.
His face turned whiter than the snow surrounding them, and his lashes looked ink-black against his skin as they fluttered closed and then half-opened.
He looked at her with those dazzling eyes, and the golden flecks in them seemed to stand out starkly against the fields of green.
He gasped, and his eyes went wide. A spasm tore through his body, and she felt more than heard herself cry out. His mouth opened in a silent moan, and for a moment, they stared into one another's eyes.
"No, Loki, no, no— Loki!"
Then, faintly, his thin mouth turned upward in a gentle smile that softened his angular features, and his eyes were bright, so bright; as if he could have—
The light in his green eyes faded. He breathed out, slowly, and it hissed from his lungs.
"No, no..." Aara curled her fingers into his thick, silky hair, and eased him to lie back on the snow. She bent over him, pressed her forehead to his. She did not cry; as a warrior, she could not. There was no place for what was happening now; she had no time—she must travel to Ru'em and they had no time for this.
But something in her felt shattered, and she gulped for air, desperate. She lifted her head, looked down at his face, at his eyes. They gazed up into a sky he no longer saw; his eyes would never again sparkle with that flash of life she had seen for such a fleeting instant. He would never... never look at her as if, as if he...
Tears ran down her nose, slid down her cheeks, and plinked hollowly against his golden armor. She had not even known him! She thought in rage. The only thing she had to remember would be this brief, sickening moment, his blood soaking the snow and his clothes and his hair, pooling on his leather, freezing into scarlet drops. She looked up at the sky, the clouds and the bits of blue peeking through them. The wind made her tear-tracks ice-cold, numbing her face.
She bent her head again, ran the side of her hand down his face gently. She would never know if that light in his eyes was death's peace, or if he thought he might... That he could...
Love her.
"Aara are you a-all right?"
Aara looked over her shoulder. The wretched khevdh just could not listen to orders! She thought spitefully. Without thinking she plucked the stick from beside her and hurled it in Aurora's direction.
"I told you... stay... stay at camp!" Her voice began low and fierce, but ended high, plaintive. She turned, looked down at the dead man's face. Loki. She touched his cheek, then set her hand at his collar, felt the cool metal beneath her fingers. The name seemed apt, now, to her mind. Somehow it fit him utterly. She reached down and held one of his hands in both of hers for a moment, the blood still warm. Oh, how she wished there was not so much of it!
"Did you know him, Aara?"
"No! Shut up, let's go back to camp."
She lurched to her feet, leaving him to the snow. She turned, stalking back across the white expanse.
Tears stung her eyes, and in the bitterness of cold they hurt.
She tucked her hands beneath her arms, close to her sides, felt the blood drying hard and sticky, felt the wind pull at the strands of her hair he had torn loose from her braid.
For a moment, when he had looked at her and smiled so kindly, she felt almost as if she...
As if she could have...
Loved him.
She looked back, from the top of the ridge, and stared down into the white field, littered with great, thick pieces of glittering glass, and the man lying in the center of it all, sunlight striking against his golden armor and the spike of glass in his middle, turning it into a picture of light and whiteness. For a moment, she felt torn between smiling, and falling to the ground, weeping for everything she had lost in such a fleeting moment.
But instead she only stared widely, with tears falling in silent tracks down her face, before turning away.
One thought comforted her.
When the stars and the moon came up that night, the valley would reflect back their light because of the glass, and it would be almost as if he lay in a field of stars.
In silent, endless peace.
A/N:
This is, ahem, just a little something I wrote up one evening because I like the IDEA of the Loki/Aara ["Lora", if we're getting technical, lol] ship. This one-shot was based off of this interesting soulmate AU idea I saw on Tumblr via Pinterest: "what if, instead of having the first words your soulmate will ever say to you written on your arm, instead you have the last words you'll ever hear? So you won't know if you've met your soulmate until you've lost them." I though that was an unusual concept so I went ahead and wrote it out. I was going to write it out, but I left it implied: the last words Loki hears Aara say to him are "I might have..." and that's what's on his wrist. The poem at the beginning was written by me. The real Loki/Aara romance will be in Frostheim, my multi-chaptered fanfic coming out in June!
Review, please, darlings!
WH