A Chilly February Afternoon

It happens on a chilly February afternoon. She’d never called him a friend, nor did he whilst speaking of her. She was hot, as she always was. Long had her body heat increased since she had discovered her ability to wield the element called fire. Her powers, as well as her temperature, heightened, and he found it to be much more painful to be so close to her proximity than he had previously imagined.

“You,” she says, startled, running a shaking hand through her choppy crimson locks. “What do you want?”

Here he pauses. He has no idea what he wants, nor why he is here. “I…” he licks his thin lips, uncertain of what to say. “I just wanted to be near you.” Something very shiny threatened to pour out of her brilliant blue eyes and cascade down the bridge of her delicate nose.

“Enough of your words, Liesmith,” she hisses, glaring at him. “For they are just that - words.” His emerald eyes hold a glimspe of his flickering emotions - hurt, anger, sorrow - Mia could see all of them. “L-” she begins, then, remembering her silent vow to never speak his name again, trails off. She tries again. “Silvertongue. Why are you truly here?” His skin is so pale, a milkier white than even her own. She lets herself feel an ounce of pity for him, but seconds later she becomes stone-cold Mia again and steels her resolve. “I am not your toy, your Midgardian plaything.” Her eyes are lit by a sapphire-hued flame from within, and her teeth are bared. “You cannot have me as you want me, when you want me.” She takes a deep breath, reigning in her rage. Without it, the only things she possessed were the agony of betrayal and the hopes of saving Loki. “Leave.” Her voice cracks, but damnit Mia stands up to him.

“No.” That one syllable is such a quiet sound that she wonders if she had imagined it, cool against her ear. The fine-boned arms that wrap around her waist from behind assure her otherwise.
“I need you,” the raven-haired trickster breathes, and Mia would be comfortable in his embrace forevermore; had she not smelled the unmistakable singe of burning flesh. With a muffled cry she jerks away from him.

“You are Jotun. I am born of flames. This heat, my heat…Loki, it kills you.” His name wrenches itself from her throat.

“I am content to die by your side.” His statement hanging in the heavy air betwixt them pulls their heartstrings taut, and when he reaches for her hand she does not decline. She lets him hold her like this, because even if he denies it, she knows it will be for the last time. His silvery voice again floats to her ear. “Would my lady invite me inside her abode?” She shivers. The tone almost has a pleading quality, but this is Loki, and Loki does not plead. Mia numbly nods, opening the door to her small cabin nestled in the woods of some New England state (he had never cared to learn its name), and shows Loki in as if he did not know every nook and cranny, knew of every place she hid away to sulk in, every shadowed corner where they had…Mia shakes her head furiously, as if to dispell each memory as quickly as it came.

“Mia…” Her name falls like a melody from his silvertongue, but she cuts him off.

“Please, Loki, don’t.” There is an unfamiliar edge to her voice which shocks him - perhaps she is not as exempt from feelings as she claims.

“I love you.” It is a song meant to soothe a savage beast, but it is met with a stunned silence and a tightening of his jaw.

“You do not - cannot,” she spits venomously once she regains the power of speech. “I am a filthy mortal, and you are an Asgardian prince. I am the blazing sun to your icy moon!” The sobs rip unbidden from her throat, each sound more heartbreaking than the last. She might be hotheaded and fiery, yet Mia loved Loki’s cool logic and cold hands. They fit together like two slightly broken puzzle pieces: imperfectly, close but yet so far. She finds that she dares not look at him, for fear that she has conjured up his presence from her tortured lonely mind. She knows better as a pair of thin lips press against the top of her head.

“If this is what you want of me, my absence, then I shall grant you what you desire.” The words are frosty, emotionless. His slender figure steps out of her house through the door he’d entered through so many times; under such different circumstances. Her normally cozy home is not longer “cozy” at all. She screams for him later in the night, awoken by night terrors, and an “I love you” is torn from her very soul, leaving her breathless and weak. She thinks she feels a soft kiss upon her cheek, but for all her eyes accomplish, straining for the sight of him in the dark, she sees no one.

He does not see her again until she is on her deathbed, ten years later, childless and alone, save for the steady hums of at least half a dozen machines working to force her to breathe. Loki feels her soul slowly drifting into Hela’s realm, and the golden apple from Idunn drops from his hand to the tiled floor. His notice is elsewhere. He clenches his fists. He is too late to save his Mia, all because of his wounded pride. He realized how foolish he had been a decade later and was determined to tell her. His heart stopped momentarily when he saw her in that hospital bed. She was pale and lifeless, and Loki had never felt that ache in his chest as he did now. He already missed her burning touch. Never again would she be Mia, the reckless and the fiery. This Mia was unmoving, unsmiling. His knees buckled. She was as beautiful as the day he had left her. He kisses his beloved on the lips tenderly. His “I love you too,” falls on deaf ears, and for just a minute, he swears her heart monitor speeds up when his cold lips meet her unyielding ones. Just for a minute.