He couldn't remember much. Just flashes- glimpses- of what had happened on Asgard. His defeat. Thor had almost stopped him falling into the abyss after the Bifröst's destruction. But he'd let go. He recalled his brother's yell. And the stars; almost endless stars. And then nothing but the blackness of an unfailing sky.

He fell through universes, only to wake in this desert wasteland. A place that looked all too familiar and suspiciously like where Thor had faced banishment on Midgard. Was that what this was? Banishment? Even if self-imposed, that was still what it was, he understood.

He frowned to himself. Letting go had been the right course of action him, and he understood it well. He would no longer be welcome in Asgard after what he had done- no matter how justified he had thought his deeds were.

He was Loki, the defeated.

He could feel his body aching from the blunt force of the impact he had not been conscious to feel. Loki pushed himself to his feet, pain circulating his body as swiftly as the blood inside him. It was only when he was standing that he realised that his armour was gone.

Banishment indeed, he thought. The absence of all but the simplest of his attire made him wonder what else his fall from grace had taken from him. His powers, perhaps?

Loki waved a hand and an image of himself appeared in the desert before him. Not the mirror he was accustomed to seeing, the sallow figure staring back was bloodied and bruised. Clearly falling in and out of the cosmos had not been a pleasant experience for his body. He waved a hand and his mirage dissolved, leaving him alone in his exile.

Loki shrugged and ignored the twinge of pain that stemmed from the action. He could deal with pain. But, as he discovered when he took a step forward and his knee buckled slightly under his own weight, his body was perhaps not so apt to deal with the result of his actions.

Loki knew then that he had to find a place to recuperate; but who in Midgard would welcome the God of Mischief and Lies?

Someone who has no choice, Loki mentally answered himself.

Alice had spent her morning alone, as she usually did, and inside, as she usually didn't. The freak storms of the past few days had kept her inside and away from the normal sun and heat of the New Mexico Desert. Alice had never been fond of thunder; it was far too loud for her liking.

Living in the only house in the middle of a strip of desert didn't exactly encourage walks in a storm unless one wanted to be shish-kebabed by a lightning bolt. No, Alice had the sense to stay inside on days like those.

That day, she hadn't shifted from her plush green sofa; not even noticing that the day had brightened considerably. Alice was far to engrossed in the latest book she'd started from the stack she'd ordered online. She hadn't been able to stop reading all morning as her insatiable appetite for the written word drew her to continue.

She lay on her back with her head propped up by two cream cushions. Her knees were drawn up and she rested her book against them in a lazy sort of way. Idly, she nibbled at a strand of her long dark hair as she flicked over to the next page.

It was just another normal day to Alice. Sighing in contentment, she closed the book, smoothing out the dust cover with the palm of her hand. Finished, she thought, satisfied with the conclusion of the novel. It had taken her approximately two and a quarter hours to read the thick hardback. It had been her second book of the morning too, and she had enjoyed it.

Alice placed her book down on the wooden table as she reluctantly pushed herself out of her too-large and oh-so-comfortable sofa. Her fingers closed around the rim of an empty mug as she walked lazily out of the room for a refill.

All she'd wanted was another cup of tea, no milk, no sugar. All she'd wanted was a nice hot drink after finishing her book. But, as Alice stepped out into the hallway that connected her living room to her kitchen, she realised that she wasn't going to get what she wanted.

She spotted the man standing in her now-open doorway and her instincts took over. She didn't like strangers. Her favourite and complementary Iron Manmug smashed against the sanded-wood floor and she recoiled from the spray of broken pottery that aimed itself at her bare feet.

She fled quickly into her living room, reaching for the small pistol she'd hidden behind a stack of books. When she returned to the corridor, she saw that her intruder had barely moved. And he wouldn't now that she had a gun pointed at him. Alice stared at him down the length of her gun, her eyes trained on the strange man who'd found his way into her house.

"Hey, you; who the hell are you?"

She received no answer from the unusual man, who simply stared at her with a pair of unusual blue eyes. A pair of strikingly unusual blue eyes.

"Okay, I don't do this home invasion shit, so d'you mind getting the hell out of my house?"

Again, he did not answer her. The silence was starting to irritate Alice. She couldn't believe that this random guy had just walked into her house- through a locked door- and now wasn't going to say anything. At least normal thieves had the decency to run away when she pulled a gun on them. Although, this man wasn't acting like any normal thief. He didn't look like the type to try rifling through someone's stuff; he was just standing there.

"Who are you?" she asked, after a while.

Loki was about to answer her, opening his mouth to respond. But finding this house in his weakened state had done enough to take what energy he had from him. He collapsed, unconscious on the floor, and Alice just stared at him, tilting her head to the side.

She paused for a moment before lowering her gun and approaching the fallen figure in her hallway. Only when she was close to him did she notice the blood and bruises covering the man who stumbled into her house. Her eyebrows rose as she looked over the stranger.

"Woah, shit. What happened to you?" she muttered to herself.

Author's Note: So this is where Loki went after he disappeared from Asgard, or at least, it is in this story. :P

Would love to hear your first thoughts on Alice, because she's definitely going to have an... interesting role in this story. ;)

Kit xx