A/N: For Loki, their story begins shortly after the events of Dark World. For Alice, it begins soon after she kills Mouse. I've been writing bits and pieces of this since January 2020, so nothing In their canon that happened/happens after that applies. Not all chapters are in chronological order. This is mostly a series of interconnected one-shots, for now. Enjoy! :)

Alice's POV

I know he truly loves me, because I am trash. What does he gain from my company, if not my company itself? I have no superpowers. I lived in a sewer when we met. I have no armies or unique technologies. I'm not even beautiful. All I have to offer is myself, and that seems to be enough for him.

I never expected my salvation to come in this form. This wasn't my kind of fairy tale. Rescued by an actual prince, and in turn, rescuing him.

After poisoning my beloved Mouse, it took a few days, but the realization of how absolutely alone I was eventually set in. I killed the only person who knew all of me and stayed by my side anyway. Yes, he did give me an ultimatum; leave Gotham with him, or he'll leave without me. But I was the one who decided that revenge was more important than us being together, alive.

The guilt and loneliness of it drove me over the edge… almost literally. Late one night, I went back to the bridge my life first ended on, tied a weight to my ankle and sat on the guardrail, counting stars until I started to feel sleepy.

Turns out I wasn't the only person out there.

Loki found me mere minutes before I would have jumped, announcing his arrival with some cryptic warning. Something to the effect of, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You don't know where you'll land."

Initially, he seemed to have no intention of stopping me. He merely seemed curious as to why I was doing it. He stood beside me, close enough to restrain me (or push me, which would have been welcomed at the time), but leaning against the guardrail in a relaxed posture, as if this were the ideal circumstance to stop and have a casual chat with someone.

"It's a long story," I remember telling him.

To which he asked, "Afraid you'll be late for something?"

I told him way more than I intended to. About the crash. Waking up in the Cartwrights' house. Being locked in a cellar and forced to befriend my captor's son, who became a brother to me. How Mouse used his talent for mimicry to trick my father into leaving me behind, and how my twin sister Kate came mere inches away from finding me only to fail because, unfortunately, twins don't have telepathy. The article announcing my father's new marriage, being forced to make Mouse a new face out of human flesh, and how this made me split into "Alice". The years of physical and psychological torture. Remembering who I was upon finding Mom's head in that freezer, commiting my first murder, and finally escaping.

Falling in with the wrong crowd, until I became strong and resourceful enough to form my own gang. How I studied my former family, and learned that my father's new wife faked my death by passing deer bones off as mine. My reign of terror on Gotham. My revenge on Dad and Catherine. How Kate completely devalued me after I killed our wicked stepmother; even choosing my interdimensional doppelganger over me in a matter of life-and-death, just for having a more desirable personality.

Me and Kate's temporary truce after she killed my kidnapper. Mouse being sent back to Arkham. Kate helping me break into his cell… only to lock me in with him. Our eventual takeover of Arkham, my fruitless search for kryptonite… and the ultimatum that sealed Mouse's fate, which led me to the decision to end my shit show of a life.

I must have been talking for over an hour, but he didn't move from beside me. Not once did he look at me with any of the fear, contempt or disbelief I expected.

In fact, he told me a story of his own, starting with how he was the one responsible for the attack on New York City a couple of years ago. The Loki, Thor's brother, the Norse "God" of Mischief.

I didn't even believe him until he turned the weight around my ankle into seaweed with one motion of his hand and let it fall into the river, foiling my plan, but I was too surprised to be annoyed. I knew he existed, but the odds of a thousand-year-old space alien happening to stumble upon me in the middle of nowhere after midnight...

Actually, that does sound like a good time to run into aliens.

Anywho... Loki told me about his bittersweet childhood. The prince who couldn't fit into his own culture. Unlimited luxuries, but never feeling loved or respected by his family, who were always the most important thing in the world to him. How centuries of this came crashing down on him when he learned that he was actually the abandoned son of an enemy King, adopted by Odin for political purposes. How this made him so much more desperate for the acceptance he already longed for, he tried to kill Thor and destroy his own native planet.

When his father condemned his actions, Loki lost all hope of connecting with him, and tried to commit suicide. Willfully fell into the void itself, which should have killed him… but unfortunately he survived. I say "unfortunately" because this led to him being tortured, physically and psychologically. His mind pushed to the brink of insanity, but kept intact enough for his talents to still be useful. On top of that, his anger and pain were amplified by a stone given to him by his captor. Thus the jealous rampage that almost killed millions of people who had nothing to do with his grudges.

I can tell he almost cried when he described Odin's disownment of him. Then again when he explained how a petty prank got his mother killed in battle.

He told me about some cosmic event called the "Convergence" that came and went not too long ago; I must have been blackout drunk, because I don't remember anything like what he described. Told me how Thor broke him out of prison to help save the world. How he faked his death for freedom, returned to Asgard disguised as a guard, and watched his father fall into the Odinsleep again. Loki tended to him in secret, and had a bit of fun imitating him for a little while, until he felt Odin's reawakening near. That was when he said goodbye to his father and came to "Midgard" for a new start.

Our life stories were so different, but the similarities were outstanding. We were both tortured. We were both abandoned and rejected by our only families at times we needed them most. We both became monsters, ultimately by our own volition, despite others' influences. We both feel guilty, but neither of us understands why we should. No one has ever felt guilty or been punished for what they did to us. No one ever apologized, and no one ever will now, because our actions have vindicated them in their minds.

Like all the shitty things they've done to us can be justified by the shitty things we did afterward. We're not willing to be scapegoats. We own what we did, but we know that reconciliation is impossible unless they own what they did too.

Loki and I were the only two people in the universe–to my knowledge, as of that night–who walked the same line between love and hate, anger and guilt, and madness and lucidity. Most people seemed to be on one side almost all of the time. We weren't. I didn't realize until weeks later that he and I fell in love that night. We met each other on the same wavelength and haven't drifted apart since.

We have been living together for at least three months now, in a small but bright and spacious one-story farmhouse about 40 miles away from Gotham City. He says something about this area makes it invisible to Asgard's all-seeing gatekeeper, so he doesn't need to cloak himself with magic here. Apparently there are a lot of places like that on Earth, and he's trying to find all of them. He says that the spiritual abnormalities of those places can make them dangerous though, or at the very least, cause people to behave strangely. Gotham and any 50-mile radius around it were amongst those places.

That explains a lot.

I have not killed since the night we met. That's right. Alice, Gotham's most wanted, has gone cold turkey. Because I have something to lose now. Something perhaps even greater than all I have already lost. I can't risk being locked away again, and I must stay alive. For him, if nothing else.

His sanity hangs by a thread too, and I am perhaps his biggest motivation for holding on. Instead of seeking vengeance on his brother or approval from his father, he now seeks contentment and redemption that they cannot take from him. His own place in the universe, where he belongs with or without anyone's permission.

They say the blind can't lead the blind. I agree; you cannot help someone overcome insanity if you have never been insane before. If people like us can be rehabilitated, it won't be through conventional medicine, or solely with the help of minds that are limited to rational thought and textbook terminology. He understands things that can only be understood from experience. Things that would scare most people away don't even make him flinch. We can speak frankly on topics most people wouldn't dare breaching with their significant other. Together, we think of unique ways to cope with our traumas that actually work for us at least half of the time, and don't involve cutting other people open. Our friendship has been the best therapy I've ever had.

Loki is the only person who calls me "Beth". He earned the right to use my real name, by wanting to know the real me and believing that she is unconditionally worth saving.

Loki's POV

Beth always describes the night we met as "the night I saved her life". Perhaps I did, but self-preservation was my main objective at the time. I needed a friend. Someone who could begin to understand my thought processes. My head was beginning to feel too small for my mind; I needed to get out. I pleaded, even bargained with her to refrain from any further attempts on her own life.

"I need to see someone survive this. I need to believe that there is hope for people like us. If the darkness swallows you, then it is only a matter of time before it swallows me again too." I remember the edge of desperation in my voice, and she looked as surprised by it as I was.

"You're asking me to stay alive just to keep you from offing yourself again?"

"Yes."

"Hmm. Not bad, for emotional blackmail."

"I can offer you a place to live, and any resources you may need to survive with or without me. Money. Identification. Weapons, in case you still have enemies on your trail. I ask nothing in return but for you to abort your suicide mission. Permanently."

"Why would you do that for a total stranger?"

"You are not a stranger to me. I see myself in you, and I don't think it is fair that we should die because someone else doesn't value us. They are not even thinking about us right now. They are living full lives together, laughing, eating and dancing while we sulk in the shadows hating them for it."

Now I understand how meeting one human changed my brother so suddenly. I once saw humans as a tiny, feeble, hilariously limited mockery of advanced sentient life. In this one mortal, however, I found something far bigger than myself. Even though her lifespan is hardly a fraction of mine, what I have learned through her will benefit me forever: All life is of utmost value, and it is more important to love than be loved.

However, I dread the day we face the one obstacle that neither of us has ever managed to overcome with anyone else: the day one of us finally hurts the other, to the core, in some way. We have both been heartbroken by everyone we love, and neither of us can find it in ourselves to forgive them.

What happens if she hurts me, or if I hurt her? Will we become enemies? Will we spiral down again? Will we unlearn the valuable lessons we taught one another?

Her brother, and my mother. Both tried to save us from our own patterns of destruction when everyone else gave up on us, only to die by our designs. Thus far, we have no idea how much love is enough to keep us from destroying one another, if any.