Through The Rift
Thor/Torchwood : Loki/Jack
Loki was filled with despair, aching pain that he had failed them, as he looked at his father's face (not his father, Odin) at his brother (not his brother, Thor) he realized they would trust him only at a distance. Never again would they hold him as close to their hearts as they once had. He would be with them like a shadow, a memory of what could never be, what he could never have. He'd lost it before he'd realized what he would lose with the risk he took in his cunning. Loki had thrown that away into their faces – and for nothing. He had never hated so much in his life as he hated himself; his own blood was putrid slime, cold as his hard heart, cruelty of a being worse then any blood-lusting beast lurked in his cunning mind. Loki took a breath at the edge of the abyss, looked to his father's straining hands – trembling ever so slightly – at his brother's wide eyes. Odin could not hold both Thor and Loki, try as he might. It was up to Loki to make a choice, to see Odin fall with Thor and he, or give them a chance - a gift that he had meant in his actions. He took a breath, and said nothing, silver tongue failed at last – he let himself fall.
This, he thought in satisfaction, I can do right. Taking his own life in a fall to death he could grant his damned blood, even if he had failed to wipe out all those who drew life from like blood.
Falling to the depths, falling among the stars, falling into death, the twisting darkness at his back he felt like a wound, pulsing and greedy.
Jack Harkness watched the night sky, in all the years of his life, the sky never failed to fill him with awe and reverence. He knew what lay up there, if not all of it, then a great deal – enough to fill an immortal's dreams. It would take a better man then Jack to be satisfied with merely that. So he had studied the stars and passing of meteorites from memory, night after night of watching had made his memory a record that any astronomer would lay down his or her life for. He knew something was wrong then, when a star fell where it was not supposed to. He traced it with his eyes - and then checked again by Torchwood's heaven turned eyes and many sensory ears, and followed it's destination to a empty valley, empty of all but a creator and at it's center a man with black hair and pale skin, bruised and bloodied but breathing.
Jack is many things, but he is not heartless or cold, so he takes the stranger home. If Jack puts him in his own bed, it is only because Jack only has one bed. He cleans him up, because Jack isn't one for blood, it stains, and it sends a shudder down his spine. Jack Harkness is not afraid to admit his age, he's merely lost track of it. He knows he can't die, and he loves a good mystery, if only because like knows like when it look's itself in a mirror. Jack's a mystery to many, but this stranger is a mystery to him.
That's all it is, he tells himself.
As if it isn't fate or subconscious want that the man (the boy?) sleeps in his bed the first night he lands (roughly) on Earth.
Loki wakes to humming and music he hasn't ever heard the likes of. His eyes flutter open, halfway, peering though his lashes in a cautious and curious way. All around him is plaster and stone, man-built. This is no rich place of smooth marble and precious metal and jewels.
He is alone all the same. Loki stands, sways, steadies. He takes a step, and another, and makes his way to the door. There stands the source of the humming (but not, Loki thinks, the music) and he is cooking. It's something like bread in a pan, and eggs already cracked and scrambled on a plate beside bacon. Loki does what has known is best, he watches, he waits.
There are two plates on the table.
The man, tall and broad and dark (Loki has known the first two all his life, the last was his alone until this meeting) and when he turns his eyes are dark blue, but he is smiling. The smile does not really meet his eyes, and this is the first time Loki has ever seen such countering features.
"Where am I?" Loki demands, quietly for his whole head and body aches.
"You shouldn't be up and about." Blue eyes measure Loki, look him up and down, and something sparks in those eyes. It's lust, Loki thinks. His skin crawls a warning he won't heed.
"I'm Jack…you are…?" The blue eyed man, Jack, gestures to the plates on either side of the table. There are seats there, small wooden things, and if Loki were anyone else – anyone bigger, or more…in truth, Asgardian, he might hesitate. He trusts his pride to sticks and at least knows it is not stone below him to break his bones. He feels that frail.
"Loki." He says, as he nibbles at the bacon. His grey eyes flash to Jack when he laughs. It startles him, that loud sound of mirth when inside Loki's skull rings solemn and silence.
"You've got to be joking?" Jack's blue eyes swim with mirth, but Loki shakes his black head, and he grows solemn and distant.
"You're really not." He muses, and Loki eats in silence, taking note that Jack has not answered his first question. He repeats it between bites of egg, licking his fingers. Jack watches, and seems hungry, but he doesn't touch the food he's made. Loki, belatedly, wonders if it's poisoned: if he should be worried and wary of this blue eyed man who'd had offered him shelter (for Loki was sure he had not fallen here).
"Where am I?" This time sharper, a demand – Jack's smile is wide and mocking.
"Why, I'd guess if you're a god like in the Norse myths, you'd call this Midgard. Cardiff? Wales? Great Britain?" Loki nods, for the way his life is shaping, this makes ironic sense – the place his brother was banished has become a making of his own exile. He had meant to die.
"Much has then changed since those of Asgard mingled among the mortals of Midgard." Loki recognizes none of those place names, only that this is Midgard.
"I'd say." Jack snorts, and then frowns. Jack's passion is for the stars, but that does not mean he's made himself ignorant of the myths of ancient man – the lore as they know it here is much closer then the vague and scattered sentences his own time places proper importance on. It's though myth that history was first figured, and come of what history won't take for fact, Jack suspects is just that.
"So there was mingling?" Jack is leering, and to that Loki's smile is as strange and full of mystery as ancient history.
"Oh, yes." Loki finds himself purring, content and fed. This is Midgard and here no harm can come to him. He quite likes the daring of this stranger.
"Damn, did you hit you're head in that great fall?" Jack asks, touching Loki's cheek. He's aware of the sting of it, the likely blood. He wonders if his blood is still red. Under Jack's watchful gaze, Loki's cut heals, skin stitching and mending, leaving the blood dry and flecking off his skin in disgrace.
Loki is still smiling, and something in it promises.
"No." Jack's thumb runs down the side of Loki's face, absently, petting. Loki licks his skin; it is salty and smells of grease and heat. Jack's indrawn breath is shaky. There is something of Loki's own broken heart and body in this man; he can see it in the dark blue eyes that hold his own grey.
"You've put me back together – given me shelter, food, how shall I thank you?" Loki's voice is pure purr, wondering aloud wicked things.